Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema: Screening Loss is an accessible and wide-ranging exploration of grief as represented in many of the most interesting recent horror films on the topic. Of particular interest is the collection's inclusion of insightful essays addressing the socialization of grief through gender, sexuality, the family, and colonialism and how these complexities manifest in the themes and aesthetics of horror films. -- Johanna Isaacson, Modesto Junior College Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema: Screening Loss offers a welcome multinational approach to the role played by, and complex and contradictory representations of, grief and loss in this genre. The various contributions demonstrate how universal themes of grief and loss are particularised in individual films and are often deployed to examine legacy and contemporary issues of national, familial and individual vulnerability. The book ultimately provides a valuable lens through which to examine a wide range of subgenres from arthouse to gothic horror. -- Sarah Arnold, Maynooth University and author of Maternal Horror Film: Melodrama and Motherhood This collection is fascinating, poignant, and timely, a true gift to scholars and horror fans living in a grieving world that has been subjected to a deadly pandemic for more than two years. In her introduction, editor Erica Joan Dymond begins with the premise that horror cinema has become more nuanced over the last twenty years. The chapters that follow provide compelling arguments for why this is the case. As contributor Asper Taylor Ballas contends, Grief and the elaborate human response to it, stands as one of the most defining human qualities, and, therefore, contending with grief means a deep, thoughtful, and even horrifying look into humanitys core. Focusing on new, cutting-edge films about which little has been written, and international in scope, Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema is sure to set the stage for future discussions of grief, loss, and horror. -- Kimberly Jackson, Florida Gulf Coast University
