A01=Barry Curtis
adaptation
amnesia
antagonist
apartment
architecture
art
Author_Barry Curtis
Category=ATF
claustrophobia
creatures
culture
eerie
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
escape
evil
film
forest
genre
ghosts
gothic
graveyard
haunted house
haunting
hollywood
horror
imprisoned
injustice
interior
japan
justice
literature
loss
monsters
monstrosity
motel
mysterious
mystery
noir
nonfiction
nosferatu
past
psycho
psychology
reimagined
road
shining
spaceship
special effects
spooky
structures
supernatural
terror
texas chainsaw massacre
trapped
uncanny
unheimlich
vengeance
Product details
- ISBN 9781861893895
- Dimensions: 120 x 170mm
- Publication Date: 01 Sep 2008
- Publisher: Reaktion Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Horror films revel in taking viewers into shadowy places where evil resides, whether it is a house, a graveyard or a dark forest. With Dark Places, Barry Curtis leads us deep inside these haunted spaces to explore them – and the monstrous antagonists who dwell there.
In this wide-ranging and compelling study, Curtis demonstrates how the claustrophobic interiors of haunted spaces in films connect to the ‘dark places’ of the human psyche. He examines diverse topics such as the special effects – ranging from crude to state-of-the-art – used in movies to evoke supernatural creatures; the structures, projections and architecture of horror movie sets; and ghosts as symbols of loss, amnesia, injustice and vengeance. Dark Places also examines the reconfiguration of the haunted house in film as a motel, an apartment, a road or a spaceship, and how these re-imagined spaces thematically connect to Gothic fictions.
Curtis draws his examples from numerous iconic films – including Nosferatu, Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Shining – as well as lesser-known international works. Japanese horror films and their Hollywood remakes – such as Ringu and The Ring, or Juon and The Grudge – come under particular scrutiny, as he explores Japanese cinema’s preoccupation with malevolent forces from the past.
Whether you love the splatter of blood or prefer to hide under the couch, Dark Places cuts to the heart of why we are drawn to carnage.
Barry Curtis is a Fellow of the London Consortium, Tutor at the Royal College of Art, and has written widely on architecture, film, art and visual culture.
