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Mean Ghouls: When Does Queer Horror Get To Sit At The Table?

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Note: I spoke with a handful of queer filmmakers for this article. To protect people’s identities and careers, their names have been removed.

The intersection of queerness and horror has been fervently dissected these last few years, and now the junction feels more like dated gospel than innovative speculation. The “why’s” may range from otherness to villain empathy, but it is, without a doubt, a genre that resonates with us. Today, the horror genre remains a vehicle for queer filmmakers to share their stories through metaphor, subtext, or even having the Final Girls be trans women. Horror has always been queer, but the rise of indie, queer horror is in full effect as LGBTQ+ directors like Alice Maio Mackay (So Vam, T Blockers) and Robbie Banfitch (The Outwaters) are getting just as much notoriety as an expensive “requel to the sequel” franchise installment. Yet despite ubiquitous queer appreciation for the genre, a significant faction of LGBTQ+ film festivals, particularly the ones that come to mind when you read “LGBTQ+ film festival” seems to maintain an antiquated view of the genre; that is, horror is still smut, sub-par art not to be taken seriously or considered for their elite programming. Across the 2022 programming for the top 3 LGBTQ+ film festivals in the country, a total of 3 horror features were showcased.

A Not So Uncommon Issue For Queer Horror Filmmakers

“I got a letter back from a [programmer] who said my film ‘was not a good representation of the queer community,” says a filmmaker, who submitted her “lesbian cannibal” film to a major queer festival on the west coast. She was invited by a friend in programming and a former mentor on the festival’s board. “It’s a genre film! It’s supposed to be scary, campy, and transgressive. But they didn’t get it. My film was too unsafe…for them.” What is a “good representation” of the queer community, and who gets to decide that? The mainstreaming of queer stories tends to circumvent the unappealing, often flawed, yet honest sides of queer existence for safe and palatable representation. These festivals champion diversity and inclusivity. Their mission statements claim to uplift unique, queer stories. But seemingly, only the stories they deem acceptable representation.

Strangely enough, in a genre that often appeals to an incel or two, the horror community has carved out space for queer stories. Some of the most popular titles on Shudder are queer horror and genre fests that dedicate entire nights to LGBTQ+ content. “I made a queer horror short…I assumed it’d probably not do well in horror festivals, but to my surprise, [they] embraced it a lot,” said another queer filmmaker I spoke to. “And basically radio silence from queer fests, except one…they were the only queer festival we ever got into despite most of my festival budget going to queer fest submissions.” The festival fees add up quickly; $30 here, $80 there, and before you know it, you’ve spent $500 applying to less than 10 festivals, which is a significant amount of money for an indie filmmaker. “Learned my lesson,” he tells me, “not going to spend on queer fest submissions when I have my next genre short.”

The bias queer festivals have against the genre has at times escalated beyond the simple rejection to outright public ridicule. It’s not enough to simply deny a horror movie from their lineup; programmers from elite queer festivals seem to have a vendetta against watching horror at all. All too common are the stories that after submitting projects and paying the festival fees, programmers seem to take liberties with degrading the work of queer horror filmmakers on social media platforms.

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The Weaponization of Letterbox to Gatekeep

“Mostly middle school filmmaking,” was our first official review from a film school alumni working for an LGBTQ+ festival. We predicted Death Drop Gorgeous would be too DIY for many folks, but our excitement to share it with the world was quickly slashed down. The mistreatment didn’t end there, unfortunately. Four other programmers from major queer film festivals we applied to took to their Letterboxd accounts to let us know how much they despised the film. Of note: not once have we, as a filmmaking collective, experienced this with programmers of genre fests.

This experience isn’t unique to us. Several other queer horror filmmakers I spoke with shared similar stories. “It seemed like they were going out of their way to be malicious,” one filmmaker, who had his horror movie degraded by a festival programmer, told me. “I didn’t pay an $80 submission fee to have some NYU alum write a scathing review on his Letterboxd account, you know?” 

These festivals are the gatekeepers of what and how LGBTQ+ content reaches the masses. Not having the funds for marketing meant we reached out to publications about Death Drop Gorgeous, hoping to get the word out. One popular gay publication told us to get back to them if we got into a “big gay festival” despite having screened and won awards at other festivals at the time. As we’ve begun our submission period for our sophomore effort, Saint Drogo, not much has changed in the three years we’ve been away. We were solicited for a screener for the film, only for a programmer of that fest to take to, you guessed it, Letterboxd to rate it poorly.

A Rampant Regina George Syndrome

As someone who has served on a jury for a film festival, in addition to volunteering as a programmer/screener for another, there is a degree of privacy that comes with this role. You have the privilege of viewing a film before anyone else, sometimes before it’s entirely complete. As a programmer, even if you do not like the movie, you still treat the project with respect, and do not take this responsibility as an opportunity to be the first to berate it. While a handful of underground queer festivals are committed to genre-bending, all-inclusive programming, they don’t get nearly enough recognition as the elite LGBTQ+ festivals of New York City, Los Angeles, or San Francisco.

I know what you’re thinking: “Gays being mean? Water is wet, Mike.” And to that, I say: why the fuck are we so resigned to cruelty being the standard? Horror has been, and even more so now, a vehicle in which queer filmmakers share their experiences. It is just as valid a medium as other genres of LGBTQ+ film and should be treated as such. By excluding horror, these festivals exclude significant portions of our community, silencing queer storytellers that have gravitated toward the genre to share their compelling truths. The suppression of queer art is already in full effect by conservative governments. We cannot continue to segment our own with classist standards of what queer filmmaking “should” be or “should” look like. Also, this Regina George Syndrome these programmers act out doesn’t serve us; classism only further divides, and given the prevalence of very real horrors against the LGBTQ+ community, further internal alienation will only make us an easier target. 

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There’s this movie about an aging drag queen and a black gay man both trying to combat ageism and racism within their community as they struggle to sustain income. Both are pushed to the fringes, treated as outcasts, and driven to take extreme measures to find security. I’m certain that the feeling of being an outsider is a universal experience for queer folks. This is the plot of Death Drop Gorgeous, sans horror elements. This is “middle school filmmaking,” unworthy of acceptance but free reign to ruin because we chose horror as a mode to entertain with our themes of otherness. It’s time elite queer festivals and classist programmers recognize that horror has depth under all its blood, and truly, where’s the fun in that plot without a little penis going through a meat grinder?

Michael J. Ahern is a filmmaker and screenwriter located in Providence, RI. His first feature film Death Drop Gorgeous, which he co-wrote and co-directed was the Audience Award winner at Salem Horror Fest and Wicked Queer: Boston's LGBTQ Film Festival. His second feature film Saint Drogo premiered at Salem Horror Fest in April 2023 to a sold out crowd. He is also an organizer, working for AS220, an arts non-profit located in downtown Providence and serves on the board for Haus of Codec, a transition-aged shelter for LGBTQ+ youth.

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Editorials

What’s in a Look? The Jason Voorhees Redesign Controversy

The Jason Voorhees redesign sparked heated debate, but is the backlash overblown? Dive into Friday the 13th’s formula and fan expectations.

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If you’re a longtime reader of Horror Press, you may have noticed that I really really like the Friday the 13th franchise. Can’t get enough. And yet, I simply couldn’t muster a shred of enthusiasm for piling hate on the new Jason Voorhees redesign that Horror, Inc. recently shared with an unwitting public.

Why the Jason Voorhees Redesign Controversy Feels Overblown

Hockey mask? Check. Machete? Check. Clothing? Yeah, he’s wearing it. I really didn’t see the problem, but very many people online pointed out all the places where I should. The intensity and specificity of the critiques shot me right back to 2008, reminding me distinctly of watching Project Runway with my friend’s mom while I waited for him to get home from baseball practice. What, just me?

But the horror community’s sudden transformation into fashion mavens got me thinking about other things, too: the character of the franchise as a whole, how Jason Voorhees fits into it, and why I feel like this reaction has been blown out of proportion. (A disproportionate reaction to a pop culture thing? On my Internet? Well I never.)

Baghead Jason

What Does A Jason Look Like, Anyway?

What confused me the most about this reaction was something I couldn’t quite get a bead on. What does Jason Voorhees look like? His look, both masked and unmasked (especially unmasked), changes wildly from film to film, even when he’s played by the same person (in three consecutive movies, Kane Hodder played a hulking zombie Jason, a shiny slime monster Jason, and a Jason who was mainly seen in mirrors and looked like his face was stung by a thousand bees). And then there’s the matter of him being both a zombie child and a bagheaded killer before receiving his iconic hockey mask.

However, if you synthesize the various forms of the character into the archetypical Jason Voorhees, the one that most people might visualize in their head when told to imagine him, the result doesn’t not look like this new redesign. Frankly, I even think “redesign” is too strong a word for what this is. This image shows a dude in outdoorsy clothes wearing a hockey mask. It looks enough like “Jason Voorhees” to me that my eyes just slide right off of it.

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What Do We Expect From Friday the 13th, And What Do We Need?

Ultimately, many people clearly disagree with my assessment of this redesign, which led me to ponder the franchise as a whole. If there’s something to complain about with this new look, that implies that there is a “right” way and a “wrong” way to be a Friday the 13th movie.

This I can agree with. While the franchise is wide-ranging and expansive to the point that it has included Jason going to space, fighting a dream demon, and taking a cruise ship from a New Jersey lake to the New York harbor, the movies do still follow a reasonably consistent formula.

Step 1: Generate a group of people in a place either on the shores of Crystal Lake or in Crystal Lake township (they can travel elsewhere, but this is where they must start).
Step 2: Plunk Jason down near them, give him a variety of edged weapons, and watch what happens. One girl survives the onslaught, and sometimes she brings along a friend or two as adjunct survivors. Bada bing, bada boom, you have yourself a Friday the 13th movie.

If you fuck with that formula, you’ve got a problem. But beyond that, there’s really not a hell of a lot that the movies have in common. Sometimes you have a telekinetic final girl, other times you have a child psychologist. Sometimes the dead meat characters are camp counselors, but other times they’re partiers or townies or students attending space college.

Hell, even the people killing them aren’t always the same. Look at Pamela Voorhees in the original movie or Roy in A New Beginning.

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So why this protectiveness around the minutiae of Jason’s look?

It’s Us, Hi, We’re The Problem, It’s Us

I don’t mean to discount everyone’s negative opinions about this Jason redesign. There are a multitude of aesthetic and personal reasons to dislike what’s going on here, and you don’t have to turn that yuck into a yum just because I said so. But I think we’ve had online fandoms around long enough to see how poisonous they can be to the creative process.

For instance, was The Rise of Skywalker a better movie because it went down the laundry list of fan complaints about The Last Jedi and basically had characters stare into the camera and announce the ways they were being fixed?

Look, I’m not immune to having preconceived disdain for certain projects. If I’m waiting for a new installment in a franchise and all that I’m hearing coming out of producers’ mouths is “prequel” and “television show,” those are fighting words.

However, the constant online pushback to projects that are in early development might be one reason it has taken us so long to actually get more Friday the 13th (I’m talking in addition to the long delays amid the lawsuit, of course). It’s been more than a decade and a half without a new Jason vehicle, and that time keeps on stretching longer and longer.

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Poll taken from Horror Press Instagram account

What Fans Really Want From a New Jason Voorhees Movie

Instead of just letting the creative tap flow and having a filmmaker put out the thing they want to make, then having somebody else take the wheel and do that same thing for the next installment, it seems like producers are terrified of making the wrong move and angering the fans, which has prevented them from actually pulling the trigger on much of anything.

Look, we survived A New Beginning. And Jason Takes Manhattan. Even Jason Goes to Hell. A controversial misstep can’t kill the immortal beast that is Friday the 13th. I say let’s just let them make one. Having something tangible to complain about is better than having nothing at all.

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Editorials

Monstrous Mothers: Unveiling the Horror in ‘Mommie Dearest’ and ‘Umma’

The horror umbrella is massive and encompasses many subgenres including thrillers, sci-fi, and even true crime. I like to quip that movies like Mommie Dearest and Priscilla belong to the latter category. I even point out they have final girls surviving their monsters, but like most jokes, there is a lot of hard truth behind that. To be clear, Mommie Dearest is highly contested even by Christina Crawford, who wrote the book about the abuse suffered at the hands of her alcoholic guardian. However, the fact remains that there is an abusive mother terrorizing children at the heart of the horror. This is a tale as old as time in the genre, and we see these themes of motherhood, mental illness, and generational trauma often. So, why do we typically forget this movie when discussing titles like Psycho (1960), Run, Hereditary, etc.?

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I challenged myself to fill a gap in my cinema history this month and watched Mommie Dearest. I was very familiar with the movie due to how many drag queens reference it and because of Joan Crawford’s villainous reputation. However, I had never seen it in its entirety before, which is weird because I write about my own maternal baggage often. Without ever seeing the film, I knew this movie, categorized as a drama, belonged under my favorite genre label. Some sources even try to meet in the middle and classify it as a psychological drama, which is a phrase that does a lot of heavy lifting to remove itself from what it actually is. After all, what else should we call a film about being abused by the person who should love us most other than horror?

Does Mommie Dearest Belong in the Horror Genre?

The horror umbrella is massive and encompasses many subgenres including thrillers, sci-fi, and even true crime. I like to quip that movies like Mommie Dearest and Priscilla belong to the latter category. I even point out they have final girls surviving their monsters, but like most jokes, there is a lot of hard truth behind that. To be clear, Mommie Dearest is highly contested even by Christina Crawford, who wrote the book about the abuse suffered at the hands of her alcoholic guardian. However, the fact remains that there is an abusive mother terrorizing children at the heart of the horror. This is a tale as old as time in the genre, and we see these themes of motherhood, mental illness, and generational trauma often. So, why do we typically forget this movie when discussing titles like Psycho (1960), Run, Hereditary, etc.?

Mommie Dearest recounts a version of Christina Crawford’s upbringing by Hollywood royalty Joan Crawford. It depicts her as an unstable, jealous, manipulative woman who only holds space for her beliefs. As with most abusive parents, she takes out her frustrations and feelings of inadequacy on those around her. Specifically, those who cannot fight back due to the power dynamics at play. This version of Joan is a vicious bully, which feels familiar for many people who grew up with an abusive parent. How many of us never knew what would set our parental monster off, so just learned to walk on eggshells? How many of us grew up believing we were the problem for way longer than we should have? How many of us normalized the abuse for so long that it carried over into adulthood, letting us believe being mistreated is just part of living?

Watch the trailer for Mommie Dearest

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The Lasting Impact of Abusive Parents in Horror Movies

While my mother wasn’t the active bully in our home, part of my struggle with her is her complicitness in the hell she helped create for all of us. Which is why, while I don’t think Mommie Dearest is a great film, I believe it’s a decent horror flick. It made me want to revisit a better movie, Umma, that also dealt with motherhood, mental illness, and trauma. Iris K. Shim’s 2022 PG-13 horror sees Sandra Oh playing a single mother who has not healed. After growing up with her own mother, who was especially cruel to her, she has built her world around that trauma and forced her daughter to live within its walls with her. As someone who was severely homeschooled by a woman who still really needs to find a therapist, Umma hits me in my feelings every time. 

Watch the trailer for Umma below

Maternal Monsters: A Common Thread in Psycho, Hereditary, and More

Before the film starts, Oh’s character, Amanda, has turned her back on her family and cultural heritage. She has built a life that she’s not really living as she hides in her home, afraid of electricity due to the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mom. So, when her uncle shows up with her mother’s ashes, she is triggered and haunted. All of the issues she hasn’t dealt with rush to the surface, manifesting in ways that begin turning her into her deceased mom. Amanda does eventually force herself to confront her past to avoid becoming her mother and hurting her daughter. So, while Umma is different from Mommie Dearest, it’s not hard to see they share some of the same DNA. Scary moms make the genre go round which is why movies like M.O.M. Mothers of Monsters, Serial Mom, Mother, May I?, and so many others will always pull an audience by naming the monster in the title.

I doubt I am the first person on Norma Bates’ internet to clock that some of horror’s most notorious villains are parents, specifically moms. I’m also sure I cannot be the first person to argue Mommie Dearest is a horror movie on many levels. After all, a large part of the rabid fanbase seems to be comprised of genre kids who grew up wondering why the film felt familiar. However, I hope I am the first to encourage you to watch these two movies if your momma trauma will allow you to hold space for a couple more monstrous mothers this month. Both have much to say about how we cope with the fallout of being harmed by the people who should keep us safe.

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