Hello, and welcome to Week 2 of Fandom Horrorfest 2020! This week, I’ll be focusing on horror directors and the contributions they’ve made to our favorite genre. While I could’ve gone the direction of just talking about the more popular horror masters, I figured 1) you could get that kind of list literally anywhere on the internet, and 2) why not include some more diverse creators, because diversity, much like horror, is kickass! So please enjoy week 2, and I hope it encourages you to look into some movies and creators that you hadn’t thought about before!
Karyn Kusama
Kusama is another woman director whose horror films pack a punch. She has directed both 2009 Jennifer’s Body and 2015 The Invitation, two films that are so different from one another that they really demonstrate her prowess and skill when it comes to telling horror stories. Jennifer’s Body is a wonderful horror comedy; its poor performance at the box office and initial mixed reviews have always bewildered me. Kusama offers a fun and fresh take on the possession sub-genre and accomplishes a movie that is both funny and disturbing at the same time, a combination that many horror directors have tried and often failed spectacularly at. The Invitation, on the other hand, is a horror film with a much more serious tone that focuses on human grief and vulnerability. Again, the stark contrast between these movies really says a lot about Kusama’s ability to tell very different stories in very different ways that engage her audience without coming off as too preachy or pretentious.
Karyn Kusama is a strong leader in modern feminist horror. Nearly all of her films feature female protagonists, and her entire filmography is full of characters that are fairly portrayed as flawed yet strong, a tonal mix that many directors have struggled to offer consistently, especially in the horror genre. Just look at the characters in Jennifer’s Body: Kusama’s ability to circumvent sexual and thematic tropes in order to tell a story about the everyday horror of sexual abuse and to ask questions of her audience about the nature of victim-blaming and toxic masculinity. While I enjoyed The Invitation, I honestly cannot recommend Jennifer’s Body enough. I feel like so many people passed on it due to early negative reviews, and it may be one of the most misunderstood horror movies in existence. If you want to watch a movie that will make you jump, make you laugh, and even make you ask some tough questions of yourself, then do yourself a favor and check out Kusama’s most noteworthy horror film.
