Review by Choice Review
Kawin (English and film, Univ. of Colorado) offers a survey of horror films from the origins of cinema to the present. After defining horror and exploring significant themes, elements, and methods of interpretation, the author investigates hundreds of films via specific subgenres through the organizing principle of types of monster, whether supernatural, natural, or human. The volume is both comprehensive and thorough, but the sheer number of films considered allows most only a sentence or two; thus many of the readings are slight and only brush the surface. In addition, the volume does not engage many of the current theories of horror, although it is well grounded in the standard approaches. Two final chapters survey examples of horror comedy and "horror documentary," respectively, allowing new approaches to studying hybrid genres. The strength (and, for that matter, the weakness) of the volume is the sheer number of films considered, and even scholars in the field will find a few mentioned here of which they were previously unaware. Students will find it a thorough taxonomy that gives them a mean by which to approach and understand horror. A good, if flawed, introduction to the field. Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; general readers. K. J. Wetmore Jr. Loyola Marymount University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
