It Lives Again! Horror Movies in the New Millennium

by Axelle Carolyn

A comprehensive analysis and overview of the state of horror cinema at the start of the 21st Century.

Axelle Carolyn discusses and dissects films from the Asian remake trend of The Ring and The Grudge to the so-called torture porn of the Saw and Hostel series, taking in independents and foreign productions as well as the blockbusters.

Fully illustrated in full colour, It Lives Again! is your definitive guide to modern cinematic horror.

Foreword by Neil Marshall and Introduction by Mick Garris.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, Horror

191 pages, Hardcover

First published May 16, 2008

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now please don’t take this the wrong way, but these days I think of horror movies in a similar way that I think about God – I’m not so much interested in horror movies or God per se, but I’m fascinated by horror movie fans and religious believers. I want to know what they think it’s all about. How do horror fans justify all that cruelty and misogyny? And how do religious believers justify all that cruelty and misogyny? You see, there are parallels.

So I read Kim Newman’s rather wonderful Nightmare Movies, an encyclopedic gallop through almost every single modern horror movie, full of fun and wit and charm. And Kim just seems way, way too nice to be such a major gorehound. So I read Phil Russell’s unapologetic, fairly revolting Beyond the Darkness and that gave me a much better idea – Phil is a genuine sadistic creep, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying that, he pretty much says it himself, and you can easily understand that there are quite a few freaks out there who lap up all this stuff and when your mainstream critics say “utterly meretricious torture porn tripe” (say, Captivity, Murder Set Pieces or The Human Caterpillar) they say “now THAT’S more like it!”

Anyway, I was intrigued that this book is written by a young woman, and I very much wanted a female perspective on the whole horror phenomenon, particularly the modern stuff, which loves to get more and more extreme with every passing year. I wasn’t after a feminist diatribe, I was after a female horror fan's point of view, which this author is. Unfortunately, Axelle Carolyn writes in a brisk, almost impersonal manner, providing a very competent summary of mainstream horror productions between 2000 and 2008. There are lots of glossy pix, which the other two books do not have, but in the end this is a book for fans only, with lots of interview material woven in and industry gossip. (Plus, for every damn film we get the budget and the box office which is what determines if it’s a hit or a flopperoony. It made me think that you never get that with books – the budget for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Puke was only £344 and when it opened in 5 million bookshops throughout the world it took 489 trillion trillion dollars – hit! Only movies get judged in this most crass most ultra-democratic manner.)

Since you asked, this is one horror movie I do recommend :

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A smart, lavishly illustrated overview of horror films of the 2000s from a true insider - who happens to be a beautiful former model married now to film director, Neil Marshall. Not your stereotypical nerdy horror buff. I was reminded of how many quite good films have been released amongst all the soulless remake dross and pretty-teens-in-peril schlock over the past 8 or 9 years, most of them from the UK, Spain, and the Far East (The Descent, Severance, The Orphanage, (Rec), The Eye and Dark Water to name but a few), as well as some great stateside stuff like The Signal and May. This book has already prompted me to add many titles I'd never heard of to my Netflix queue. Carolyn also does a nice job of contextualizing the themes and trends in horror filmmaking and makes her case that these movies are not just created in a cultural vacuum and perform specific functions in the mass consciousness. Any horror movie fan will want to check this out.