Introduction

Abstract

This project examines the ways that the technologically produced and reproduced image functions in twenty-first-century American horror films. My analyses cover a wide spectrum of horror subgenres: popular remakes of J-horror movies like The Ring (Verbinski, 2002), in which the technologically reproduced image serves as the film’s ghostly antagonist; “metahorrific” installations, such as the Scream series (Craven, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2011) and The Cabin in the Woods (Goddard, 2012), films that are conscious of their status as technological (re)productions; science-fiction/horror hybrids like Splice (Natali, 2009) and Prometheus (Scott, 2012), where advances in film technology and computer-generated images offer the viewer access to spectacles that radically redefine our understanding of humanity and its origins; and films in which the camera is a character in its own right, like the Paranormal Activity series (Peli, 2007; Williams, 2010; Schulman, 2011, 2012) and Cloverfield (Reeves, 2008). The thematic focus of Technology, Monstrosity, and Reproduction centers on the image as a site of monstrous birth. As threatening and ominous as these monsters may be, they also represent the possibility for a renewed belief in the reality of the world and humanity’s place within it.