This week on Newsnight Review, Kirsty Wark is joined by film critic and fiction writer Kim Newman, writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet, and writer and academic Sarah Churchwell to review a fright-filled selection of the week's culture.
FILM | Horror on screen
FILM - Horror on screen
The works of the Hammer Horror company are chiefly remembered for lashings of gore, crazy science and fangs.
With a Hammer retrospective under way in London and the news that the company have filmed their first new works in 30 years we look back at the franchise.
The panel review two new films - Jennifer's Body and Paranormal Activity - to look at how the horror landscape changed since the days of Hammer.
Unusually for a horror film, Jennifer's Body is written and directed by women. Diablo Cody, who picked up an Oscar for Juno wields the pen. Does her tale of the high school cheerleader turned literal man-eater challenge stereotypes of women in horror?
The recent domination of so called "torture porn" was challenged this Halloween when the low budget, pared down film Paranormal Activity beat Saw VI to the top slot at the US box office.
The film is shot entirely on the home video camera of a young couple, determined to trace the source of mysterious happenings in their home.
Jennifer's Body is showing at cinemas across the UK. Paranormal Activity opens in the UK on 27 November.
The Hammer Festival continues at the Idea Generation Gallery in London until 15 November.
THEATRE - Grand Guignol
Le Theatre du Grand Guignol was founded in France in 1894, and specialised in grisly horror shows obsessed with death, sex and insanity inspired by stories from the daily news.
The melodramas and gory special effects thrilled and shocked audiences for decades with the company measuring their success in the number of audience members who fainted at each performance.
Playwright Carl Grose has revisited this lost theatrical form for the Drum Theatre, in Plymouth and embeds original Grand Guignol plays into his new work.
Set in the eerie streets of Paris' Montmartre, the production focuses on a psychiatrist, Alfred Binet, who enters the chilling world of a gruesome theatre company. But when the psychiatrist starts to unpick the playwright's mind, the boundaries between theatre and truth begin to blur.
Can live horror compete in an age of Hollywood special effects or does the visceral quality of live violence offer something that film can never recreate? And can the horrors of previous generations only ever be played for laughs?
Grand Guignol continues at Plymouth's Drum Theatre until 14 November.
BOOK - Invisible
One of America's foremost novelists, Paul Auster is known for meta-fictions which challenge the readers expectations of narrative. With his new work, Invisible, he seems to have challenged himself.
The author told Review that the dark tale of murder, incest, lies and illusions led him to "tremble with emotion while writing".
The story is set in the summer of 1967, when American student Adam Walker is witness to a horrific act of violence which leads him to Paris in search of revenge. The tale is told through the writings of an older, dying Adam who wants to make the events into a novel.
Does the book represent a change in direction for Auster? And is he right to claim that the book is essentially a work of horror?
Invisible is published by Faber & Faber.
RELATED INTERNET LINKS
Drum Theatre, Plymouth
Jennifer's Body
Paranormal Activity
Faber & Faber
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