Apostate Café

Looks like it is the season for Christian horror films. Here are some trailers:

The Familiar

First, from Miles Hanon (who worked on End of the Spear and Beyond the Gates of Splendor), comes The Familiar. Sam, lonly and bitter after the death of his wife, again faces his childhood demon when his estranged sister-in-law, Laura, reappears. The sexual attraction between the two blinds him to the fact that his demon is taking possession of Laura an is intent on destroying them both…

Visit the movie Web site at www.FamiliarTheMovie.com.

The Message

Next up is The Message. A young wife and mother of two children is challenged to overcome her passive beliefs on religion after a serious car accident. Receiving haunting images of her past she is forced to make a decision that will decide her fate…

The new issue of Rue Morgue magazine has a cover story about Christian Horror as a genre. The authors talked to a number of people active in the genre including T.L. Hines and Mike Duran. There is a also a nice plug for the Christian Horror site at christian-fandom.org, and for Fear & Trembling magazine. I am quoted a couple of times (ego stroke), but I am really glad they were able to interview Scott Derrickson, who addresses the subject with far more intelligence and lucidity. When talking about Christian horror as a genre, Derrickson says:

I don’t know that I accept Christian horror as a defined subgenre… if you include The Exorcist and The Omen in that subgenre I’ll accept the term, because those films, as well as horror films made by professing Christians, are dependent upon Christian theology for their stories. I certainly object to the idea of defining a subgenre by the religious beliefs of the filmmakers and not the films themselves.

And later:

Scott Derrickson, director of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Hellraiser V: Inferno, and the upcoming remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, was the subject of a recent article in Relevant Magazine. Most of this territory has been covered before (like here, here, and here ), but I can’t complain about the author’s closing remark:

In fact, if our God is capable of using anything and anyone for His will, maybe it’s not too much to suggest that God can use horror films for His glory, too.

Read the full article: Can Horror Be Used For Good? at Relevant Magazine.

Periodically I’ll see what else the Web has to offer in the "horror from a Christian worldview" arena. And there usually isn’t much new. This last week, though, I came across a few interesting blogs.

All Hallows Eve, whose author enjoys "fiction that glimpses the mysteries of grace and redemption from our universal human dilemma, and the workings of unseen metaphysical forces." What a great way to put it. And a nice nod to Charles Williams in the blog name.

Gospel of the Living Dead, maintained by a hard-core theologian and lover of zombie movies.

The Teeming Brain, by self-described horror writer, scholar, musician, composer, teacher, and part-time philosopher Matt Cardin.

Theofantastique, an academic exploration of myths and archetypes and their expression in popular culture.

And finally, horror writer Dan Keohane has a blog. His blog has been around for a while, but he is actually posting to it these days. Keep your eyes peeled for his upcoming stories in Apex and Cemetary Dance.

A quick shout out to the folks at Fear & Trembling, a Webzine of “Christian-friendly” horror. There seems to be a decent mix of original fiction and poetry, and some classic tales of the macabre thrown in as well. As of October ‘07 four issues are available.

I must to confess to being a little jealous… they claim to be “the only site dedicated to publishing original and Christian-friendly horror on the [W]eb,” and seem to have some traction; whereas the Christian Horror site at Christian Fandom has sort of languished for the last year under my editorship. But in any case, a couple of the folks involved with F&T are fellow members of the Christian Realist community, and I wish them the best of luck.

Fresh from the folks over at Relief Journal is the new Coach’s Midnight Diner: Jesus Vs. Cthulhu Edition. 276 pages of genre writing — horror stories, weird tales, and hardboiled detective fiction — in a Christian vein. There was also a sample-sized edition available, which I think is a brilliant idea: the first couple of pages of each story in a PDF, which gives you a taste for the writing, without giving the stories away. It was linked on the Relief Journal home page for a while, but seems to have disappeared. But it is available on Scribd.

I haven’t ordered my copy yet, but I plan to. Even if it turns out to be only mediocre, it is a great idea, and the type of thing we should encourage… besides, who wouldn’t want to read about mad Greek Orthodox Christians in space?

• Order direct from Relief Journal; or
• order from Amazon.