Monstrous Forms

It makes us jump. It makes us scream. It haunts our nightmares. So why do we watch horror? Why do we play it? What could possibly appealing about a genre that tries to terrify us? Why would we subject ourselves to shriek-inducing shocks, or spend dozens of hours watching a television show about grotesque flesh-eating monsters? Monstrous Forms offers a theory of horror that works through the genre across a broad range of contemporary moving-image media: film, television, videogames, YouTube, gifs, streaming, virtual reality. Acknowledgments; Introduction: Haunted Screens; Part 1: The Sensational Address; Chapter 1: Shocks to the System: How We Watch/Play/Browse Horror; Chapter 2: I'M SCREEEEEEEEAMING!!!!:: The Lowly Art of the Jump Scare; Chapter 3: The Blackest Eyes... The Devil's Eyes: Horror's First-Person Camerawork Part 1: Killer POV...; Chapter 4: The Blackest Eyes... The Devil's Eyes: Horror's First-Person Camerawork Part 2: The Searching Camera...; Part 2: Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps); Chapter 5: The Monster Function; Chapter 6: Monsters, and the Viewers Who Love Them; Chapter 7: Monster Stories/Storied Monsters; Epilogue: Three Ways of Looking at Horror; Selected Bibliography; Index