It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

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There are spoilers for the movies but you don’t need to have seen all of them to gain something from the essays.

THE RING really traumatized me as a kid and unlike many (if not most) queer people, I had a ~decent~ childhood. Because these aren’t really about the movies themselves you can still appreciate the essay without having watched it.Zapadł mi w głowę prześwietny esej osoby agenderowej na temat postrzegania ciała i seksualności, bardzo egzystencjalny w wydźwięku; co ciekawy, był to jedyny esej, w którym pojawiło się słowo „aseksualny”, a to i tak tylko przy wyliczaniu postaw wobec seksu. no essay was particularly horribly written or totally uninteresting and i would recommend it to any queer horror newbie! A fascinating, often compulsively readable anthology centring on the interconnections between horror films – from vintage monster movies to Get Out - and queer existence, that brings in aspects of memoir, academic theory and literary frameworks from Barbara Creed to Julia Kristeva to Anne Carson but remains accessible throughout. Horror, the anthology argues, while often full of misogyny and anti-trans, homophobic tropes, is also uniquely subversive and queer. Kirsty Logan ’s latest book is Now She is Witch (Harvill Secker, 2023), a queer medieval witch revenge quest.

What an intelligent, articulate, and culturally relevant anthology of essays by queer people reflecting on queerness in/and horror films. I've spent years dissecting horror films on my own and finding the queer-coding; however, it's only been recently that I've seen that reflected back to me. Weaving elegantly between passages on theory to first sexual encounters and wrenching experiences with a surrogate, the essays take surprising turns and don't look for easy answers. Though there is not a unique definition universally agreed upon, because what might be horrific to some people, might not be to others, it seems that the themes explored in this genre are widely appealing to the queer community. I couldn’t relate to the abuse story she was telling, but it was something deeper than that, I felt anxious, and so agitated that I had to stop reading it a few times.Covering class, race, and ability, this collection carefully untangles the threads of why we can’t look away, even when we desperately want to turn off the TV. The movie inclusion was more like a gimmick so this wouldn't be 'just another nonfiction queer memoir essay collection' rather than an an actual component when it came to writing the essays, at least the ones I read. Manages to strike the balance between in-depth, heartfelt discussions of queer identity and the coming-of-age stories of people across the spectrum with a sense of humour and lightness of touch. It Came from the Closet is a fantastic collection of diverse queer perspectives—an accessible, provocative, and much-welcomed addition to the growing body of queer horror analysis of our favorite films, new and old.

It felt extremely intrusive to be given details about an adoptive child that apparently the child himself hasn't been made privy to and therefore cannot possibly have given consent for it to be shared with the world at large. Samara from The Ring's [or ghosts from The Grudge] contortions of limbs and body serving to paint the disabled, or differing joints\bodies, as horrific and frightening. on that same note tho, i have not seen a single movie mentioned so i can’t really say i’ve felt/observed what the authors dive deep into. Jest kilka esejów naprawdę fantastycznych, do których będę wracać, a większość jest takich okej, bez rewelacji, z fajną myślą albo z uwagi na poruszaną tematykę/wybrany do analizy film; niestety, jest kilka naprawdę złych, w tym jeden potencjalnie szkodliwy, który nie wiem, jak przeszedł przez edytorów.It Came from the Closet is a heterogeneous anthology and even though the essays are short, the authors dig deep into their personal life experiences while using horror to reflect on their queer identity, and vice versa. His writing has also been listed as notable in The Best American Essays , and he is an active member of the National Book Critics Circle. But the genre’s murky history of an alarmingly heterosexual male gaze, queer-coded villains and sometimes blatant homophobia, is impossible to overlook. Some essays tend more towards personal reflection and memoir, others more towards analysis of various films through a queer lens; some move into lyrical "creative nonfiction" territory and others take their tone from the humanities graduate student essay or the chatty, freewheeling blog post. His work has appeared in the anthologies "Instant Classic (That No One Will Read)" (Night Beats / tRaum, 2023) and "It Came From the Closet" (Feminist Press, 2022), as well as in anthologies recognized by Lambda Literary: the 2021 finalist "Trans-Galactic Bike Ride," the 2012 finalist "Letters for my Brothers: Transitional Wisdom in Retrospect," and the 2011 winner "Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community.