The Bite #110

HOUSEBOUND And Tricks Of The Mind, A Lego Haunted House And MORE!

May 19, 2020

In this Issue:

Horror History: Housebound And Tricks Of The Mind
Image of the Week: Join Us
Tiny Bites – This Week’s Best Horror Headlines
Things We Love: The Haunting Of Lego House
Hey, That’s Us! – Shudder in the News

HORROR HISTORY

Housebound And Tricks Of The Mind

As most of us have learned recently, isolation kind of sucks. It grates on you in a way that most humans aren’t used to being grated on. Even worse, it gives us time to think, and we’re not so great at being left with our thoughts. We may gobble up every gruesome scene we can, but nothing holds a candle to the torment of the human mind.

That notion has helped flicks like Gerard Johnstone’s Housebound strike a chord. But, while we may have always intellectually understood that alone with our thoughts isn’t where we want to be, most people have recently received a harsh reminder as to why. In constant succession. Day after day.

The film follows Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly), a troubled but ultimately well-meaning delinquent who finds herself under house arrest after trying to rescue her confused cohort who had managed to knock himself out with a sledgehammer as the two were attempting to rob an ATM. The would-be thief is quickly strapped with an ankle monitor and dumped on the doorstep of her mother and stepfather, neither of which she cares for.

Kylie’s real problem comes from the home itself. She’s seeing things, and she’s not quite sure what to do with what she’s seeing. In the beginning, she thinks the answer is as simple as her isolation brain playing tricks on her. Your own personal hell is supposed to come with demons, right?

It’s not long after our plucky (and cranky) protagonist realizes that she’s seeing ghosts that her court-appointed psychologist writes her off as losing her marbles. The jerk even goes so far as calling her a liar. Now, no psychologist should be saying such things to their patients, but, outside of some bedside manner issues, Dennis (Cameron Rhodes) isn’t necessarily wrong for calling nonsense. Not only is his patient notoriously annoyed at the world and royally miffed she’s in her current situation, but brains send a lot of weird signals when they start feeling antsy!

Isolation? Very high on the list of things that make brains antsy. It’s why people are so easily spooked when they’re home alone, and why we’ll form a bond with anything (see: Wilson in Cast Away) when we feel detached from the rest of humanity. When we don’t like the scenarios we’re in, our heads can sometimes toss in a character or two.

Unfortunately, those new characters are often spookier than we’d like.

*Amelia Emberwing is a film and television critic who spends too much time talking about dinosaurs, superheroes, and folk horror. You can find her over at Birth.Movies.Death., /Film, Collider, Nerdist and more.

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Join Us

Freelance artist SPDRMNKY XXIII created this incredible poster that takes Doctor Strange and throws him headfirst into Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead.

Save the yard work for later and spend some time revisiting your favorite home movies. New members can try Shudder free for 30 days when they sign up online with promo code: SHUTIN

TINY BITES

QUARANTINING WITH GHOSTS, HORROR IN HOMELESS SHELTERS AND MORE

Forbes wrote about why they think Scream 5 won’t be the same without Wes Craven.

Bloody Disgusting made a list of 15 wicked needle drops in horror including Scream, Us, American Psycho, and The Final Girls.

Take in all of the 80s glory of these 10 VHS horror movie covers.

Generocity wrote about the appeal of a Stephen King horror marathon at a homeless shelter while sheltering in place.

Still don’t believe horror movies have always been political? 25 Years Later’s got you covered with this look at nuclear and social anxiety in 1950s horror films.

More and more people are turning to horror on TikTok and, honestly, we’re living for it. Here are 12 great examples from Seventeen.

Check out this Chilean animated horror short, The Wolf House, that explores the horrors of Pinochet’s dictatorial regime.

Looks like Two Sentence Horror Stories will return for a second season on the CW.

The New York Times wrote about the terror folks are experiencing who are currently quarantining with ghosts…

… but The CUT seems to think it wouldn’t be all that bad…

… and The Mary Sue stepped in with a how-to guide to facilitate sharing your space with your new spectral roomies.

Author Elisabeth Thomas writes gothic horror novels but says that, now, life is starting to feel scarier than fiction.

THINGS WE LOVE

The Haunting Of Lego House

Lego is speaking our language with their latest big build — a gigantic, 3231 piece Haunted House full of ghosts, ghouls, and all manner of things that go bump in the night.