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Spending half my childhood in Northern Michigan, I was told many tales of ghosts, witches, Bigfoot, and many other bizarre entities that live within the densely wooded forests of our cottage. Another bizarre creature that many of the locals talked about was the Dogman, a bipedal creature that varied between 6 and 8 feet tall with the physical attributes of a man and the head of a dog. Being one of the younger kids around the lake where our cottage rested, I was tormented by these tales by the older kids whose parents had cottages around the lake as well.
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 Sexuality and gender have been thematically embedded into horror since the Gothic term originated sometime during the eighteenth century. Whether our on-screen heroes (and villains!) are just queer coded or they explicitly display some form of same-sex affection & gender variance, the fear-ridden environments that they live in often blur the lines between fiction and reality. Here is a list of twelve notable LGBTQ+ genre works to check out in this summer.
Balancing both bleakness and optimism, The Black Phone is a solid thriller from longtime scare-master Scott Derrickson (Sinister, Doctor Strange) that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome and handles its sensitive subjects with care. Make no mistake, if you’ve seen the trailers, then you know what the film is about, and it doesn’t shy away from its touchier topics. However, with a degree of dark humor and great acting, this film proves that there is still life to be squeezed out of the masked psychopath genre.
 Hundreds of standalone horror films are released in theaters and on streaming each year, and a huge portion of the genre that keeps people coming back is its franchises. Casual and dedicated fans alike swarm around long-running sagas, and a lot of the time, studios prioritize them. Whether it be through a new trilogy, a Golden Age series, or a legacy sequel from this current trend, one common thread ties them all together: queer coding, and this list of titles can prove it.
It’s been eight years, but David Cronenberg is back with a vengeance, and he has returned to the subgenre he’s synonymous with. Following Titane’s historic Palme d'Or win last year, it’s safe to say that body horror is bigger than it has ever been, so it’s natural to assume we’ll be seeing an influx of these films in due time. But Cronenberg returning from his assumed retirement is surprising, especially given his track record through the 2000’s. After eXistenZ, he no longer seemed interested in how the body works and moved on to how the brain works. Every journey though, must come full circle, and Cronenberg is bringing it back to where it all began with Crimes of the Future, a film that takes its name from one of his earliest films (I too, initially thought this was a remake). Still keeping with the times, Cronenberg brought back actor Viggo Mortensen, who became his heavy hitter throughout the new millennium, with the two churning out a hat-trick of films from 2005-2011. So how does this new pulsating parable stack up in a career that spans half a century?
Men is, by design, the sort of film meant to cause discussion and controversy. That it does so with fine acting and a good visual lens is a big thumbs-up. That it has the bravery to confront one of society’s issues with a slow-burn plot is admirable. Perhaps it was inevitable that it would stumble a little in it’s finale but overall, it still is a good ride while it lasts.
Doctor Strange 2 opens many portals to a fun and exciting film but doesn’t stay in most of them long enough. After the fun and intrigue of the first entry, there was a lot of hype and curiosity for the sequel that saw original director Scott Derrickson leave and be replaced by horror veteran Sam Raimi. Both are fine directors that have managed to bring superheroes to the big screen but as I sat watching the spectacle of Multiverse of Madness, I couldn’t help feeling like something was missing.
 In the trailer for A24’s Men, beyond the sinister, inescapable grin of Rory Kinnear, there is a much darker presence: trauma. Having seen her partner (Paapa Essiedu) fall to his death, the film’s protagonist, Harper (Jessie Buckley), is clearly not coping well as she tries to enjoy her countryside getaway. In this village, is every man actually Rory Kinnear? Of course not. So why does Harper see his face everywhere she turns? Something much stranger is going on here, and it’s pretty clear that the site of this supernatural occurrence is (at least partially) in Harper’s mind. Trauma will do that.
There’s an AutoZone in my small Missouri town that I have passed all of my life. I’ve only been inside a few times, but every single time that I pass it, I am suddenly struck by a rather strong malaise. Imagine my surprise, when about halfway through Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Casey (Anna Cobb, in her feature film debut), focuses her small video camera on an AutoZone. What we can primarily hear is the rush of cars, and what we can primarily see is the blinding haze of the sun shine. What honesty.
X opens in the endearing fashion of showing the conclusion to the story and then prompting us to ask what had happened on the secluded farm property that serves as the main setting. There are signs of violence and bloodshed as buzzards fly overhead and a sheriff arrives on the scene. We’ve heard the same lines before. “What the hell happened here,” or “sheriff, you’ve got to see this.” Hardcore horror fans may be rolling their eyes at the devices at play because they are all well-known to those who’ve seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or similar country-based gore-fests. Set a few decades back with a van full of young adults, the story premise is playfully straight-forward. However, Ti West’s newest film doesn’t just jump into the known sandbox, but plants its own flag firmly and proudly, expanding on the subgenre with style.
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