The labors of fear : the modern horror film goes to work /

Offering this volume as "the first to position work as thematically central to [horror cinema] and its cultural significance" (p. 4), Briefel (Bowdoin College) and Middleton (Univ. of Rochester) offer an intriguing array of essays that consider horror and various forms of labor and work. Of particular note are essays on George Romero's much-maligned final film Survival of the Dead (2009) and his posthumously published novel The Living Dead (2020) and on the depiction of the "death-care industry" (p. 37) in The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016). Intelligent considerations of It Follows (2014), Get Out (2017), Midsommar (2019), and Us (2019) mark the volume as engaged in current discourse on horror. Marc Olivier's fascinating empirical study of 119 slasher films and the various objects used to dispatch victims draws new conclusions regarding slasher films and demonstrates an analytical methodology that could carve new paths in horror studies. By analyzing and reflecting on these films--and how labor and work in all their forms relate to the terror of the contemporary--this collection illuminates the fears and frights to be found not only in the cinema but also in one's own occupations. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; faculty. --Shannon Blake Skelton, Kansas State University