By Danny Anderson The year is 1968 and two attractive young people find themselves seduced by a Devil-worshiping cult. The cult seeks the vitality of their youth and will stop at nothing in a plot to indoctrinate them as servants of Satan. This plot summary surely rings a bell for horror aficionados, but the fact…
Tag: Halloween
A Happy Lovecraft Halloween!
By Austin Freeman It’s spooky season again–that time when the barrier between the living and the dead, the mortal and the damned, grows thin. Spectral shapes scratch at our bedroom windows. And we, sloughing off the illusions of our civilized and rational age, slink back into the mouldy embrace of pagan tradition. Halloween is coming….
John Carpenter and the Origins of Evil
By Danny Anderson Let there be no doubt about my position. John Carpenter is a great artist. And critics, many of whom seemingly made careers out of missing this point, have largely come around to acknowledge this fact. If there was any remaining doubt about Carpenter’s artistic achievements, Jordan Peele, the director of three modern…
Halloween (2018) in the Age of #MeToo
By JR. Forasteros Is there a more-maligned genre than horror? When master of horror fiction Stephen King won the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a Yale professor complained, He is a man who writes what used to be called penny dreadfuls. That they could believe that there is any literary value…
Calling All Saints: We Need a Lent for Halloween
By Danny Anderson Growing up a low-church Protestant, I had a tragically shallow liturgical education. When I moved to New York City in my mid 20s and first saw Catholics with ash on their foreheads on that particular Wednesday, I was utterly confused and thought I had wandered into an episode of The Twilight Zone. For…
Sometimes Dead is Better: Pet Sematary and Some Halloween Easter Reflections
By Danny Anderson Is it going too far to call Pet Sematary an Easter movie? Hear me out. First, let’s admit up front that Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s 2019 adaptation of Pet Sematary doesn’t explore the depths of human grief that it’s source material does. Stephen King’s 1983 novel is a classic work of…
Who Has a Problem with Evil? Halloween, Fascism, and Theodicy
By Danny Anderson Ted Bundy is once again having a moment. The current interest in his story can be traced to two new productions: Netflix’s four-part documentary series Conversations with a Killer, and the film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile which recently premiered at Sundance and stars Zac Efron. The critical conversation around the Efron…
Monsters and Saints: Stranger Things Meets Daniel 7
Our friend, Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade over at EcoPreacher has written a piece on Stranger Things I thought was worth sharing here: “Monsters are mythical creatures symbolizing that which terrifies and terrorizes us. Whether it’s the Demogorgon of Stranger Things, or Grendel in the medieval story of Beowulf, or the beast with ten horns…
Who Has a Problem with Evil? Halloween, Fascism, and Theodicy
By Danny Anderson Ted Bundy is once again having a moment. The current interest in his story can be traced to two new productions: Netflix’s four-part documentary series Conversations with a Killer, and the film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile which recently premiered at Sundance and stars Zac Efron. The critical conversation around the Efron…
Cain, Abel, and the Protection of Sacred Knowledge
By Molly Kluck Cain and Abel were first introduced by the DC universe as caretakers and tenants of The House of Mysteries and The House of Secrets respectively (Cain and Abel). Connected to these houses are two horror-themed comic book series named after the houses. The comic book series used the brothers as narrators (House of Mystery Vol….
Pop Culture and Theology 