Open Graves, Open Minds

This looks to be a very interesting new book from OGOM contributor Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes of Manchester Metropolitan University. In Horror Film and Affect: Towards a Corporeal Model of Viewership (Routledge), he pursues his research on the corporeal experience of body horror familiar from his earlier work.

This book brings together various horror theories that have received consistent academic attention since the 1990s – abjection, disgust, cognition, phenomenology, pain studies – to make a significant contribution to the study of moving images of mutilation and the ways in which human bodies are affected by those on the screen on three levels: representationally, emotionally and somatically. Aldana Reyes reads horror viewership as eminently carnal, and seeks to articulate an alternative model that understands the experience of feeling under corporeal threat as the genre’s main descriptor. Using recent, post-millennial examples throughout, the book also offers case studies of key films such as Hostel, [REC], Martyrs or Ginger Snaps, and considers contemporary horror strands such as found footage or 3D horror.