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Hardback

Horror House Film

$588.99
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Houses have a long history in horror. They often figure as the locus of hauntings, or play significant allegorical roles as embodiments of their proprietors' minds. Such houses belong to the spectral Gothic. Horror House Film takes a different approach and analyses a collection of horror films - in different subgenres - in which the house is a solid, massive and often overbearing presence in the lives of the protagonists. These films are about the potentially pernicious effects of houses as material objects of ownership, possession and exploitation. The analyses reveal a strong link between a drive for home-ownership and a drive to possess and exploit other people. They locate this drive within a hegemonic masculinist culture that is closely related to what Erich Fromm has termed the being-is-having mode of human identity formation in contemporary materialistic Western societies, in which a people's possessions define their selves. The grim and tragic stories told in these horror house films often revolve around the need to possess property as a means of shoring up ontological security, whilst the house owned proves to be no haven but a drain on both socioeconomic and psychological wellbeing.

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MORE INFO
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Liverpool University Press
Country
United Kingdom
Date
28 February 2026
Pages
256
ISBN
9781836244912

Houses have a long history in horror. They often figure as the locus of hauntings, or play significant allegorical roles as embodiments of their proprietors' minds. Such houses belong to the spectral Gothic. Horror House Film takes a different approach and analyses a collection of horror films - in different subgenres - in which the house is a solid, massive and often overbearing presence in the lives of the protagonists. These films are about the potentially pernicious effects of houses as material objects of ownership, possession and exploitation. The analyses reveal a strong link between a drive for home-ownership and a drive to possess and exploit other people. They locate this drive within a hegemonic masculinist culture that is closely related to what Erich Fromm has termed the being-is-having mode of human identity formation in contemporary materialistic Western societies, in which a people's possessions define their selves. The grim and tragic stories told in these horror house films often revolve around the need to possess property as a means of shoring up ontological security, whilst the house owned proves to be no haven but a drain on both socioeconomic and psychological wellbeing.

Read More
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Liverpool University Press
Country
United Kingdom
Date
28 February 2026
Pages
256
ISBN
9781836244912