I’m starting a new project this year. Each month, I’ll be rounding up the previous months offerings. You can go back and explore everything you’ve missed!
This month’s theme was focused on women and people of marginalised genders in film. We had a host of fascinating talks which picked up on very different films, depicting women and people of marginalised genders in horror in a range of different ways. There were some common threads through the month, including a focus on how films engage with the monstrous feminine and ideas of feminine monstrosity for subversive and defiant purposes. Linked to this, a number of talks focused on images and dynamics of abjection. Ishan Tripathi’s talk focused on horror as a ‘counter-archive’, offering alternative perspectives to a hegemonic narrative and the idea threaded through each of our talks this month. From Lauren Stephenson’s discussion of anti-capitalist ‘revolting’ girls in films like Ready or Not, to Noah Gallego exploration of The Substance as a critique of Hollywood beauty culture, to Marine Galiné’s exploration of the Irish bog and its connection to abject femininity.
Whatever your flavour of horror, there was something for everyone this month. Where we read a book that tied in with the theme for our book group, I’ve mentioned it here!
Our first talk, ‘You are the Matrix’: Monstrous Matricity and Gothic Intertextuality in The Substance with Noah Gallego, dived into body and bodily horror. In book group, we read Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang as a companion piece, finding a wealth of connections between the two in their approach to critiquing the beauty industry and beauty standards.
Our second talk of the month, we were joined by Ishan Tripathi for her talk on ‘From the Monstrous Feminine to Trans Vampire: Horror as Counter-Archive’. The talk explored three films from three different national contexts and the ways in which they can be read as challenges and counter archives of the experience and lives of women and trans people. For our book-group read this week, we read Flesh and Bone by Arden Powell, which offers a queer, body-horror filled, imagining of the werewolf. Grotesque, gory and glorious!
The third film of the month looked at ‘The Irish Bog and Abject Femininity’ with Marine Galiné. It took a deep dive into the depiction of bogs and holes in a range of Irish horror from a feminist eco-Gothic and ecohorror perspective.
Last, but not least, we were joined by Lauren Stephenson to talk ‘Revolting Women: Final Girls as Anti-Capitalist Symbols in Modern Horror’. The talk looked at three films, You’re Next (2011), Ready or Not (2019) and Death of a Unicorn (2025) so that’s what we watched for the ‘book’ group! Death of a Unicorn was, I’m sorry to say, fairly universally panned! We were joined by our speaker for the book group which was a great chance to have some thought provoking ideas floated before the talk. The talk takes a theoretically informed and critical approach to the final girl with fascinating readings of all three films!
Romancing the Gothic 