Nicol’s Reviews > Scream With Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism, 1968-1980 > Status Update

”these six works of domestic horror urge us toward a vertiginous realization. That realization, time and again, is that domestic abuse and the regulation of women’s bodies and rights is horror . . . the point of origin of the horror, in all of them, is the abuse and dehumanization of women.”

”Domestic horror in the 2020s is a call to speak out, a call to protest, and a reminder that we’ve been at this moment in history before and that the consequences of failing to resist are extremely high now . . . Is also hell-bent on reminding us that the danger becomes infinitely graver if we allow ourselves to be silenced.”

”Friedkin took Alfred Hitchcock’s oft-quoted dictum to heart: ‘‘Torture the women!’ The trouble today is that we don’t torture women enough.’ Friedkin tortured the women plenty. When we watch and feel horror at Chris’s battery, we are simultaneously watching the actual physical battery of the body of Ellen Burstyn.”

“When I watched Duvall’s performance, I find myself thinking about the horrific Edvard Munch painting The Scream-like that painting, Duvall’s performance is an embodiment of absolute fear.”

“Abuse victims need advocates that can hear them and who will listen. And that’s exactly what Hallorann does.”

“Half of the directors of the original films (Polanski, Friedman, Kubrick) were abusers of women themselves, students of how much strain and agony the female body and mind could take before crumbling.”

“The Shining is not just a supernatural horror story about a ghost ridden hotel; it is first and foremost an allegory for sustained domestic violence, inflicted and justified by a man who honestly believes his wife and children owe him their lives.”