Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold On Us

by Anna Bogutskaya

Genres: Horror, Non-fiction
Pages: 288
Rating:

Synopsis:

Zombies want brains. Vampires want blood. Cannibals want human flesh. All monsters need feeding.

Horror has been embraced by mainstream pop culture more than ever before, with horror characters and aesthetics infecting TV, music videos and even TikTok trends. Yet even with the commercial and critical success of The Babadook, Hereditary, Get Out, The Haunting of Hill House, Yellowjackets and countless other horror films and TV series over the last few years, loving the genre still prompts the question: what’s wrong with you? Implying, of course, that there is something not quite right about the people who make and consume it. In Feeding the Monster, Anna Bogutskaya dispels this notion once and for all by examining how horror responds to and fuels our feelings of fear, anxiety, pain, hunger and power.

I’m not a horror fan, myself, but four years studying English literature plus a lot of innate curiosity means I was interested to read reflections on horror as a genre anyway, when I spotted Anna Bogutskaya’s Feeding the Monster in the library.

I was a little worried it would reference a lot of horror films that I know nothing about and thus be impossible to follow; though it does reference a lot of horror films, it usually gives enough context to follow the point. It’s not just a list of horror films that fit a certain theme, but a dissection of why certain themes are attractive (and horrifying, of course, at the same time): the chapter on cannibalism in particular, and the way it discussed the potential romanticism and eroticism of cannibalism, was very good.

There’s a lot of focus on women in horror: it’s fairly common to consider horror inherently misogynistic, but it’s rarely that simple, and Bogutskaya discusses that quite a bit — along with Black, queer and trans horror, too, though there’s less space devoted to this.

It probably is a better read if you’re more of a horror fan than I am, and know a bit more about the horror films being referenced. It gives you more of a chance to come up with counterpoints or enhance the argument for yourself with your own examples. Still, I found it an interesting read all the same.

Rating: 4/5