Conclusion

Abstract

Our exploration of the four tissue types of horror cinema might raise a few eyebrows, and a few questions with them: Why describe The Amityville Horror, and not Phantasm or Antichrist, for example, in terms of connective tissue, since all of these films contain conspicuous moments of exsanguination? Might these films resemble more than one tissue type? Why focus on the oculomotor muscles in The Ring and not Psycho, which also contains a close-up of its main character’s eye? Why focus on these specific films anyway? The eight chapters of Embodiment and Horror Cinema might seem random or arbitrarily chosen, although they share certain virtues, namely the fact the many mainstream critics unfairly deride or ignore them, and so do not write much that is terrifically insightful about them. Also, these films cut across different subgenres—the thriller, the supernatural film, and techno-horror—such critics typically do not count as “body horror.” These chapters work to demonstrate that even films without much carnage in them, such as Psycho, the Universal monster films, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, or without any explicit thematization of the infidelities of the flesh, such as The Ring or Paranormal Activity, deserve serious reconsideration as examples of “body horror,” since they all verify, to a significant degree, the axiom that all horror is body horror.

The dissecting room and the slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein