Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema: Screening Loss examines bereavement as it appears in horror films of the last two decades. This book addresses global hits such as Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth and Jennifer Kent's The Babadook as well as lauded arthouse films such as Lars von Trier's Melancholia and Ari Aster's Midsommar.

Over the course of the past two decades, horror cinema around the globe has become increasingly preoccupied with the concept of loss. Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema: Screening Loss examines the theme of grief as it is represented in both indie and mainstream films, including works such as Jennifer Kent's watershed film The Babadook, Juan Antonio Bayona's award-sweeping El orfanato, Ari Aster's genre-straddling Midsommar, and Lars von Trier's visually stunning Melancholia. Analyzing depictions of grief ranging from the intimate grief of a small family to the collective grief of an entire nation, the essays illustrate how these works serve to provide unity, catharsis, and—sometimes—healing.

Part I: Loss and the Child: Grief and Endangered Youth

Chapter 1. Horror at the Crossroads: Mapping the Child’s Grief in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Lindsey Scott

Chapter 2. “We Can Survive This”: An Examination of Loss and Grief in Juan Antonio Bayona’s Elorfanato (The Orphanage) (2007)

Erica Joan Dymond

Chapter 3. Elevating Grief: Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) and the A24 Horror Film

Andrew Grossman and Todd K. Platts

Part II: Loss and Gender: Grief and Motherhood/Womanhood

Chapter 4. To Make You Feel My Love: Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014), Motherhood, and Loss

Rebecca L. Willoughby

Chapter 5. The Myth of the Natural Woman: Horror and Grief in Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019)

Aspen Taylor Ballas

Part III: Loss and National Identity: Grief and History

Chapter 6. O Father, Where Art Thou?: Grief and Cannibal Culture in Jorge Michel Grau’s Somos lo que hay (We Are What We Are) (2010)

Megan DeVirgilis

Chapter 7. Sadness is Rebellion: The Ontopolitics of Queer Loss in Mladen Đorđević’sŽivot i smrt porno bande (The Life and Death of a Porno Gang) (2009)

Andrija Filipović

Chapter 8. The Grieving Dead: Haunting and the Haunted in The Spierig Brothers’ Winchester (2018)

Racheal Harris

Part IV: Loss and The Known World: Grief and Annihilation

Chapter 9. “No One Will Miss It”: Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist (2009) and Melancholia (2011) and the World-Without-Us

Michael Brown