Transcendental repair: The ghost film as family melodrama. Issue 1 (1st April 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cronin, Claire
• Is Part Of: Horror studies. Volume 10:Issue 1(2019)
• Page Start: 27
• Page End: 43
• Publication Date: 2019-04-01
• Subjects: Horror in mass media -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Horror -- Periodicals; 700.4164
• DOI: 10.1386/host.10.1.27_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2040-3275

Abstract

Although the ghost film is a staple of horror, its moral dilemmas, character types, emphasis on the suffering family and conservative forms of narrative closure align the subgenre with classic Hollywood melodrama. This blending of melodrama and horror has occurred throughout film history, most notably in the 1940s cycle of gothic romances and the 1970s–80s cycle of haunted house movies. In this article, I focus on contemporary Hollywood ghost films from the 2000s–10s that use the figure of the ghost to allegorize threats to domestic life. This use of the supernatural speaks to a modern sense that the rupture and repair of the nuclear family can only be addressed on a transcendent, imaginary plane. While other scholars have aptly considered recession-era supernatural horror as expressive of economic anxieties, I complicate this analysis by drawing attention to how ghost films within this cycle manifest cultural fears and hopes about the viability of family life. To this end, I offer a close-reading of James Wan's Insidious (2010) as a nightmarish, uncanny family melodrama.