Christianity and Horror Cinema

<p><i>Christianity and Horror Cinema</i> explores ways that Christian beliefs spiritualities practices and symbols provide the religious and existential depths out of which the monsters of Western horror cinema have emerged arguing that they are in several respects the monsters for which Christians are responsible. Horror cinema preys on Christianity’s narrative moral cultural and aesthetic traditions; reverses them; upends them; inverts them; and offends them. But it also reflects and relies on them. The book focuses on seven subgenres in the cinema of horror: ghosts witches the demonic or Satanic vampires nature horror zombies and psychological horror. Each chapter traces the history of that subgenre taking up a theological analysis of ways that horror cinema capitalizes on ambiguities contradictions anxieties and tensions in Christianity—for example its treatment of the body nature sexuality women or those it deems pagan or religiously other. The author examines a variety of films that are important for thinking about the relationship of Christianity to horror cinema. The book will be of interest to scholars of religion theology and film studies.</p>