Why Horror is a Healthy Obsession in a Horrific World

Freaky Nikki moves with an unnatural gait, her face hidden behind a vase of roses. Sunken into the recliner, I experience what I can only describe as an electric chill. My scalp tingles, arms pimple up in a groundswell of goosebumps. My fingers, buzzing like the rest of my body, stop mining for popcorn. Every muscle thrums. Every nerve is a live wire.

What I’m feeling is dread, pure and potent. It’s possessing me, not unlike the black magic that’s hijacked Inde Navarrette’s character on the big screen I’m bowing before.

But it goes by another name, doesn’t it? This elusive, full-body tremor. This dragon us horror fans chase to no end.

Elation.

Exhilaration.

Maybe even ecstasy.

Somehow, this level of spine-tingling fear excites me. I’m smiling in horror.

I step into the rain. The night is dark, but the theatre’s signage has turned the pavement into a kaleidoscope of color, like something out of a Giallo film. I text my brother as I walk to my car.

“Go see Obsession,” I say. “Immediately.”

And thank God for auto-correct; I can’t get the words out fast enough. I need to tell someone. I need to scream about this movie until my vocal cords drum a hole through my throat.

Driving home, I’m thinking of It Follows (RADiUs-TWC, 2014), of an old woman lumbering across a high-school campus. I’m thinking of The Exorcist III (20th Century Fox, 1990), of nurses and super-sized shears. I’m thinking of the last time I was this physically affected by a movie, this enraptured. (But I’m also not paying attention: a driver lays on their horn, and I swerve back into my lane. Now that was scary.)

Later, in bed, I interrogate my relationship with horror. How can anything be so double-sided? How can some images make me fear for my life while others make me feel alive? I consider the horrors I’m screen-fed daily: bloody children, forests ablaze. Instead of an intoxicating shock to my nervous system, I feel an iron cloak draped over my shoulders, a vice tightening around my gut. I feel weighted. Cemented. Like some petrified troll out past sunrise.

How, then, is it possible to feel any other way about something scary — real or not?

I squint from the blast of blue light. I probably look like Michael Johnston’s character in Obsession (Blumhouse, 2025), Bear, hunched over in bed, creeping Nikki’s social media accounts. Unlike Bear, though, I’m not stalking my crush; I’m searching for a quote by Stephen King. (Okay, maybe I am stalking my crush.) “We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones,” King says. I read his words again, then again, then I’m remembering R.L. Stine’s philosophy on horror, which he compares to a roller coaster. There’s going to be thrills, you’re going to be scared, but you’re going to get off safely at the end (assuming this isn’t Final Destination 3 [New Line Cinema, 2006]).

Catharsis. Safety. A ride that ends — and, by doing so, permits the rider to release some of that real-world weight, the cement that makes it harder to navigate this beautiful but increasingly brooding existence. I’m nodding along now. How can two horror masters be wrong?

A familiar tune kicks up in my mind. Susan Sarandon is standing in the rain, a sodden newspaper draped over her head. She’s singing about a light in the darkness of everybody’s life. Horror is that light — it probably always has been — somewhere to put the tension we live with daily, if only for ninety minutes. It’s a place to confront our stressors, poke them without them biting back. (There’s a reason most horror fans are nice: free therapy.)

But it’s also about agency, isn’t it? I consider the difference between watching the news and watching a horror movie. One leaves me feeling powerless; the other puts me in control. One makes me anxious; the other metabolizes my anxiety. Is it any surprise, then, that horror is having a moment — and a hell of a long one? As horror fans, we’re not celebrating suffering. We’re rehearsing our survival.

And maybe not even rehearsing. When you break it down, horror is just that: a break. We’re looking out for our mental health. That’s survival 101 in a world where fresh atrocities are a tap and a scroll away, where tech companies have snared our attention and exploited our brain’s reward circuitry.

As I slip off to sleep, the image of Inde Navarrette’s frowning expression is etched into the back of my eyelids — it’s already iconic — but I’m beaming. Somewhere in all this darkness is the promise of another thrill, another chance to feel like I did the first time my brain clocked Captain Howdy strobing onto the screen in The Exorcist (Warner Bros, 1973), or Zelda springing up in bed in Pet Sematary (Paramount Pictures, 1989), her back all corkscrewed, or Freaky Nikki masking her face with a big bouquet of blooms, my latest obsession.

The horrors persist, but so does Horror.

And we’re all a little better for it.

Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Alive in the Dark was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Book Review of Carnalis by Tiffany Morris

“. . . a sensational, sapphic love story that starts off sweet, then goes horribly wrong.”

Carnalis (Nictitating Books, 2026) is a sensational, sapphic love story that starts off sweet, then goes horribly wrong. This 155-page novella follows Mi’kmaw ballet dancer Alex and her rich, white girlfriend Lauren. When Alex gets injured during a ballet performance, it leaves her completely dependent on Lauren, especially as Alex is new to Toronto and doesn’t know anyone else. Lauren, a party girl who flaunts her wealth, offers to take care of Alex during the recovery, which makes her look great on paper, but Lauren’s violent thoughts and insatiable cravings for meat prove to become more and more problematic as time goes on. As Lauren becomes increasingly dangerous, even stealing her first taste of human flesh, Alex might be in more trouble than she could ever imagine.

In Carnalis, Morris tackles several important underlying themes, including social class, decolonization, domestic violence, and consent. She uses the power dynamics between antagonist Lauren and protagonist Alex to both parallel the racism experienced by Indigenous peoples, as well as the difference in social classes, especially the wealthy versus those who are closer to the poverty line. With Alex’s injury, she cannot work and therefore is completely dependent on Lauren for financial support. Between this and Lauren’s aggressive and violent behaviors, Alex is stuck with nowhere to go and must find her way out of a domestic violence situation. It is Alex’s self-empowerment that makes this book shine as pink horror.

Carnalis does carry a content warning for graphic violence, domestic violence, murder, and cannibalism, most of which is to be expected from the book’s summary. Morris is truly knowledgeable about human anatomy, and it is this breadth of information sprinkled throughout the book that will surely make readers cringe. Her writing is vivid, descriptive, visceral, and all things you’d want in a book about cannibalism.

Carnalis is grotesque, sensual, and even a little erotic. For a book that can be read in one to two sittings, Carnalis is deep and impactful. This novella is great for anyone who’s into body horror, pink horror, social horror, and books about cannibalism. Carnalis is brilliant, fast-paced, and eye-opening into the social dynamics between the Indigenous and their oppressors. Morris has written another novella that will be praised for years to come.

About the Author

Tiffany Morris is a Mi’kmaw poetry and fiction writer from Mi’kma’ki (Nova Scotia, Canada). She holds a Master of Arts in English from Acadia University with a focus on Indigenous Futurisms and apocalyptic literature, and her work often explores themes of apocalypse, climate change, and Indigenous survivance. Her short story “Night in the Chrysalis” is featured in the Indigenous horror collection, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology. Morris’ horror poetry collection Elegies for Rotting Stars won third place in the Elgin Awards, and her first novella Green Fuse Burning was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novella, the Ignyte Award for Outstanding Novella, and the Aurora Award for Best Novelette/Novella. Her most recent horror novella is Carnalis from Nictitating Books.

Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Power Dynamics in Cannibalism was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Feminine Rage as Creative Passion in Your Monster

Caroline Lindy’s semi-autobiographical debut feature film Your Monster (2024, Bombo Sports and Entertainment Merman Films, Vertical) walks a fine line between monster romance and psychological horror. It elegantly braids its rom-com, musical, and horror elements, then pays them off in spectacular fashion in the jaw-dropping finale. One of the most intriguing things about the film is how the rage its monster represents is of a piece with protagonist Laura’s creative passion. Like the speaker in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Stings,” Laura has “a self to recover.” In the poem, that self is personified by a queen bee; in the film, Laura’s buried self is a male monster. It’s by giving voice to her rage that Laura (not unlike Plath herself) reaches her full artistic powers.

At the beginning of the film, young actress Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera) has been dumped by her long-time boyfriend, writer-director Jacob (Edmund Donovan), just after her cancer surgery. She learns that he plans to cut her out of House of Good Women, the Broadway musical she helped him develop, though he promised her the lead role (who he even named Laurie Francis!).

Heartbroken and convalescing alone in her childhood home, Laura discovers the monster (Tommy Dewey) who lives in her closet. He looks a lot like Ron Perlman’s Beast and has sharp teeth and claws. He’s offended that she claims not to remember him, though it quickly becomes clear they first met when she was a child (and he, probably, was a child-monster).

At first, Monster seems to be the roommate from hell, but he proves to be charming, supportive, and a talented artist in his own right. They strike up an uneasy friendship that turns passionate as she embraces her inner rage. He incites her to reclaim her voice, as an artist and otherwise.

Early in the film, Laura and Monster squabble over the TV remote. She wants to watch the Fred Astaire film Royal Wedding (1951), while he’d rather watch Night of the Living Dead (1968). (The juxtaposition of these films aptly encapsulates the genre mashup of Your Monster.) When Monster relents, Laura is moved to tears by the movie musical, and is amazed to discover Monster weeping as well. “You love musicals!” she exclaims.

In the next scene, Laura — bolstered by her love for musicals — considers crashing the auditions for House of Good Women. When she tries to talk herself out of it, Monster tells her Jacob should give her the lead role “because you’re good, because it’s your fuckin’ part,” and offers to eat Jacob, if necessary. Laura manages to get an audition, but when she starts to sing “My Stranger” (which she co-wrote with Jacob), she finds she has no air, due to her recent surgery. It doesn’t help that Jacob is clearly aghast to see her. Her voice strengthens as she continues to sing, but it’s too late: she’s blown the audition.

Back home, Monster’s response to Laura’s devastation is to tell her what a good actor he is. She’s dubious, but he proves it by performing a scene from The Comedy of Errors: “Are you a god? Would you create me new? Transform me, then, and to your power I’ll yield.” This gesture instigates their romance, but it also gives us a clue that Monster may be Laura’s own creation.

As soon as Monster finishes his speech, Jacob phones, and Monster tells Laura, “Tell him to go fuck himself. We’re acting.” Laura takes the call and learns that acclaimed TV actor Jackie Dennon (Meghann Fahy) got the role of Laurie. Jacob suggests that Laura understudy Jackie, fully expecting her to decline — but she accepts, putting herself back in her toxic ex’s orbit.

Jacob radiates shame and discomfort in Laura’s presence, to the point that “I’m sorry” might as well be his mantra. At the table read for House of Good Women, he quotes Malala Yousafzai — “We cannot succeed when half of us are held back” — and claims that his musical-theater piece champions women, in spite of his egregious behavior towards Laura.

Meanwhile, Laura and Monster grow closer. In the aftermath of their wild sexual encounter, Monster expertly plays Liszt’s “La campanella” on the piano, to Laura’s surprise. He begins to play Leon Russell’s classic love song “A Song for You” and asks her to sing it for him. Perhaps still lacking confidence after her disastrous audition, she demurs, but Monster hilariously sings off-key until he finally gets her to sing. “There it is!” Monster exclaims in appreciation of her beautiful, strong voice.

She has her voice back in more ways than one. During rehearsal, Laura defends Jackie against Jacob’s relentless criticism, which prompts Jacob, in spite of his earlier Malala quote, to tell Laura that she’s too far forward on stage: “I need you back. Back, back, back, back.” In front of the cast and crew, Laura calls out his self-centered, entitled behavior in an expletive-filled rant. It’s a long-overdue but ill-timed explosion, and it gets her fired. But when Jackie learns that the role of Laurie was written for Laura, she hatches a plan. To Jacob’s shock, it’s Laura who plays Laurie on opening night.

At the start of House of Good Women, Laurie Francis, in the aftermath of a shattering love affair, is sent by her father to finishing school. Initially, Laura plays Laurie as passively going through the motions, but later she shows a quiet resolve, standing up to the headmaster’s threats against “girls like you.” When Laurie’s schoolmates advise her to get out her frustrations by screaming into a pillow, she instead lets out a scream so primal that the audience bursts into applause.

Laura is met with even more thunderous applause at the end of Act One, but Jacob is livid. As he rushes to confront her during intermission, Laura takes a ruler from the headmaster’s desk, breaks it in two, and brandishes a jagged half. Jacob unleashes his fury at Laura for wresting away his creative control. He can’t seem to fathom the audience’s rapturous response to her performance, and he believes she’s destroying his chance at success, which is all he truly cares about. In a deadly quiet voice, Laura threatens to rip his throat out. Then Monster appears. We see him carry out Laura’s threat, though it’s likely that she herself kills Jacob.

When the curtain reopens, Laura gives a literally show-stopping performance as Monster beams from the wings. “My Stranger,” formerly a paean to the start of a devastating affair, becomes a love song to Monster and to Laura’s integrated self. Covered in blood, Laura sings about her “rip roaring heart growing stronger,” while Jacob lies dead on the stage floor. She may have painted herself into a corner before the horrified eyes of the audience, but in the dream-logic of the film, it’s the only possible ending. Laura lifts her arms in triumph as her voice soars. Her rage breaks through into joy and artistic fulfillment. She is no longer a stranger to herself.

Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

This Rip Roaring Art was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Review of Paranormal Kentucky: An Uncommon Wealth of Close Encounters with Aliens, Ghosts, and Cryptids

Paranormal Kentucky: An Uncommon Wealth of Close Encounters with Aliens, Ghosts, and Cryptids (The University Press of Kentucky, 2025) is a unique anthology by Marie Mitchell and Mason Smith that features over twenty occurrences of supernatural encounters in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Mitchell and Smith, both retired instructors from Eastern Kentucky University, spent two years doing research for Paranormal Kentucky and, in doing so, have developed a wonderful collection of terrifying tales. The book is separated into four sections: UFO’s, Civil War Ghosts, Haunted Historic Homes and Places, and Other Monsters, and contains a thrilling introduction and epilogue. All of these local myths and encounters are assumed to be true, with historical evidence to back them up. From famous cryptids like Mothman and Bigfoot to haunted hotels and bizarre alien abductions, Paranormal Kentucky has something for every supernatural fanatic.

Many of the stories in Paranormal Kentucky feel as if they’re being told for the very first time. The writing is very straightforward and unembellished, giving the accounts of each story room to breathe and solidifying this book as non-fiction. There isn’t a dull story in the collection, but there are certainly a few highlights. “Alien Attack” is about a western Kentucky farm family who were terrorized by three-foot-tall glowing little humanoid creatures. This story is accompanied by real newspaper headlines, which are easily researchable and can be confirmed as a true-life event. “Mary Todd Lincoln Seeks Solace in Séance” follows the Mary Todd Lincoln house in Lexington and its plethora of family artifacts. Although the house curators claim there has never been a paranormal experience, that doesn’t stop Mitchell and Smith from diving into the hauntings of the First Lady herself. There is even a note from the White House Historical Association that mentions Mary Todd Lincoln hosting her own séances in the White House. “The Gray Lady” haunts Liberty Hall in Frankfort, the home of John Brown, one of Kentucky’s first US Senators. This kind spirit is the aunt of Mrs. Brown, and her photograph is still hanging in Liberty Hall. When Mitchell and Smith saw the portrait for themselves, they had a private tour, but mentioned the Gray Lady never showed herself during the visit. Regardless, there are several witnesses who have seen her on the famous staircase and wandering the garden. In “Devious Goatman Lures Victims Onto Coal Train Trestle,” there are reports in the Louisville Courier-Journal of several deaths that span several years. Goatman, a half-man, half-creature, is said to entice his victims, leading them to their deaths on the Norfolk Southern Railroad trestle bridge. Included in this story are references to many newspaper articles and interviews confirming these encounters.

Paranormal Kentucky is filled with supernatural history. Mitchell and Smith have done an incredible job capturing the breadth of paranormal encounters in the Commonwealth. Each story is completely believable and is set up in such a way that seems to invite readers to explore many of these places for themselves. Paranormal Kentucky is a must-read for anyone into the supernatural, those who follow UFOs, and those into historical hauntings. This book was hard to put down, and it cannot be recommended enough.

About the Authors

Marie Mitchell and Mason Smith enjoy tracking cryptids, searching for Little Green Men, and chasing ghosts around the Commonwealth. However, these former journalists and retired Eastern Kentucky University professors have never been haunted by spirits themselves. They’ve never actually seen Bigfoot, nor have they ever been abducted by aliens — that they’re aware of. But they are fascinated by eyewitness accounts from people who believe they have experienced such phenomena. What the couple found through their travels and research was too entertaining to keep to themselves, so they invite you to join them on this journey into Kentucky’s paranormal activity.

Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Hauntings of the Commonwealth State was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Review of Abyss by Nicholas Binge

The first time I started reading Abyss (2026, Tor Nightfire) by Nicholas Binge, I put the book down after a few pages. Not so much because of the writing, but because its description of modern life felt too real to me. The opening one and a half paragraphs of the book go like this.

“It’s 2:35 in the morning and, for some reason that he is utterly unable to fathom, Joe is still awake. I’ll be in bed by eleven, he told himself early that day. And he was watching an hour-long video on YouTube where a celebrity chef cooks potatoes forty-seven different ways. Then, he had to quickly check Instagram before he closed his eyes just to make sure no-one had messaged him (it helps to ignore the fact that no-one ever messages him), and two hours later found him-self lost at the end of a collection of increasingly banal reels algorithmically focused around cooking, weightlifting, and parenthood. He stopped going to the gym a year ago. He isn’t a dad, even if he finds the reels oddly comforting. At least he still cooks. Or, well, he tries to.”

Ouch, I thought as I read the book. So much of this sounds familiar. Isn’t reading supposed to be an escape from the real world? Yet, curiosity got the better of me, and I picked the book again. And I am really glad I did so.

This slim novella follows Joe, who, following a period of unemployment, joins a company named Ponos as an administrative assistant. When he goes to his workplace, he ends up finding horrors he could never have imagined. Everything in Ponos is strange, yet would ring oddly familiar to anyone familiar with corporate culture and late capitalism. Binge deftly weaves in the uneasiness of corporate culture with an intriguing cosmic horror plot.

Joe meets his ‘line manager’ Virgil — the name likely a nod to Dante’s Inferno as Joe falls into the hellish abyss at Ponos — as well as a chatbot called Wellbot. Through Wellbot, Binge captures the uncanniness of AI chatbots. It tries to act like a human, but it seems somehow off, and it turns out to be a source of surveillance and intrusion. For instance, during Joe’s second day at Ponos, Wellbot asks him why he didn’t check in with it before leaving. When Joe says he didn’t realize he had to do that, Wellbot says, “Try not to think about our relationship as ‘having to’ or not, Joseph. I’m here to help. I care about you, and I hope you care about me! It’s helpful for me if you check in, just so I can be sure you’re happy at the end of the day. Okay?”

At Ponos, Joe is asked to do “commonplace, mind-numbing tasks,” laid down by a software called DailyPlan. He completes a mandatory health and safety training which “consists of a bunch of condescending slides and extremely obvious multiple-choice questions.” When he gets to the actual tasks, there is one that involves grouping names he doesn’t recognize into ten groups based on “productivity targets” and then categorizing total “synergy” the spreadsheet churns out. He has no idea what any of this has got to do with anything.

The descriptions of the corporate workplace and the uneasiness beneath the surface reminded me of the popular series Severance (Apple TV, 2022). Like Lumon in Severance, Ponos in Abyss turns out to be a source of mystery and creeping horror. The lack of knowledge Joe has about the relevance of what he is doing also parallels what the characters in Severance also go through, and these similarities haven’t gone unnoticed by readers. However, while Severance leans more toward science fiction, Abyss ends up turning into cosmic horror.

Things get weirder for Joe when Virgil asks him to take a printout of a picture of a sheet with strange mathematical symbols. This simple but mysterious talk sends him down a labyrinthine rabbit hole that shocks, confuses, and terrifies.

Abyss is very overt with its themes. It is an indictment of corporate culture, late capitalism, and notions of productivity, as well as generative AI. It also emphasizes the need for human connection, while also exploring depression and mental health. The book does not hold back with its metaphors while dealing with its themes. It was also successful in creating tension and kept me on edge while reading.

The writing style was straightforward, and the plot was fast-paced and relatively unpredictable. At under 150 pages, this book can be easily read in one sitting. I did so, and found it lingering in my mind for long after I turned the final page.

I had mentioned similarities with Severance, and I know I am not the only one who had seen those parallels. The two pieces of media are different in many ways. Yet they both pose one central, terrifying question — what if you are stuck at work forever?

About the Author

Nicholas Binge’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal, The FT, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, and more. His work has been translated into eleven languages and multiple works are in development for film and television. Ascension, a New York Times Editor’s Choice Pick, has been hailed as a must-read ‘5-star horror novel’ by Stephen King, and was a nominee for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2023 for Best Science Fiction novel. His novel, Dissolution, described as an ‘expertly crafted’ puzzle by New Scientist, released to international critical acclaim.

Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

A Descent into the Corporate Abyss was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Depths of Being Understood by Something Equally Misunderstood

Yes, even my cold and unromantic heart has fallen victim to the gorgeous fish man in The Shape of Water (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2017). In my defense, that is a conventionally attractive fish with a heart of gold. Before y’all come at my throat, I know he is an amphibian; let’s not split hairs. From Frankenstein to Beauty & the Beast, and even Hellboy, the femmes and thems have come forth with their desire to be with these men (monsters). With romantasy on the rise, I’ve seen an even bigger uptick in the “hear me out” community and, quite frankly, I’m here for it.

Imagine the world you live in doesn’t respect you. The men hate you no matter what you do, and society at large seems hell-bent on erasing your existence — on downplaying your struggles while telling you nothing is wrong. You try to escape it, but that doesn’t work; you try to conform to it, and that just makes everything worse. All you want in the world, besides good friends, is someone who understands you — who truly sees you outside of the confines built by someone else. Along comes a man, a beast, a something? Something curious, adventurous, who wants to get to know everything about you.

In some cases, a provider or a protector, but in most cases — someone who will be there with you through it all. Is the creature/monster attractive? Not by conventional means, probably, but that is hardly the point.

You see, monster lovers rest in the fantasy. The grip of the unknown, the intrigue, the desire to be known as our deepest selves without judgment. But also the desire to learn something new, to explore things you likely would not with a human. It’s an all-risk, all-reward scenario most of the time.

In the case of my earlier reference, The Shape of Water, we are masterfully introduced to this principle. Who else but Guillermo del Toro knows the heart of a woman and a creature so deeply?

In The Shape of Water, we follow Elisa — a mute woman who works at a government lab in Baltimore during the Cold War Era. While she is largely isolated (due to her disability), she does have one good friend at her workplace, Zelda. Now, Zelda is a Black woman working in the same place as Elisa but facing much different subjugation. However, the bond between these two feels so deep and unshakeable. It is Zelda who encourages Elisa to continue contact with the Amphibian Man, never once judging her along the way and even helping her escape with him in the end. Elisa finds the Amphibian Man being held in a water tank, and while he could be a frightening sight, Elisa is drawn to him. She teaches him to sign, she feeds him, is gentle with him — in ways the government officials never were, and he returns the affection. Against what would be conventional notions, they fall for each other, and Elisa makes it her mission to free him. Their love transcends their respective species as it slowly grows throughout the film. Even though Amphibian Man can’t speak, you get the sense that he would do absolutely anything for Elisa — unlike most of the men around her.

Granted, The Shape of Water is another version of Beauty and the Beast, but much less child-friendly. Elisa and her friends are living in a time of sexism, segregation, and extreme government overreach (sound familiar?). So when she is confronted with a creature, just as alone, scared, and confused as she is — is it any surprise at all that she is drawn to him? Her attraction to him is not necessarily based on his physical appearance but on their shared grief, fear, and trauma. It is based on their shared experiences of being trapped and misunderstood. She teaches him to sign and communicate. She teaches him that not all of humanity is out to imprison him, and he helps her realize that she is stronger and more capable than the people around her have ever allowed her to be — or believed her to be. Fundamentally, Elisa is looking for an escape, and so is the amphibian man (who is never really given a name, btw).

I could talk about The Shape of Water at length, but a more modern-day example of this trope for me would be Lisa Frankenstein (Focus Features, 2024), directed by Zelda Williams. Lisa Swallows is another lost and isolated girl. In the film, she is dealing with the murder of her mother by talking to the grave of a dead Victorian pianist. She’s an outcast at school, has the quintessential evil stepmother, and gets shunned by her crush at a party. The cemetery brings her some kind of odd peace, and talking to this Victorian-era dead boy she’s never met seems to as well. By some stroke of fate, a lightning strike brings him to life, and Lisa goes to great lengths to keep him by her side. Of course there is murder, mayhem, and the painstaking task of making a zombie presentable, but Lisa does it all because that zombie treats her like a person who matters. I mean, he literally kills her enemies without question, and even if he is a zombie, I think that’s kind of hot. It is Lisa and the Creature against the world — you can’t help but find yourself rooting for them. If you have not seen Lisa Frankenstein, I’m not going to spoil the ending for you — I am simply using this example to highlight a theme.

A theme that no doubt will take the forefront in an upcoming film called Wicker (Black Bear Pictures, 2026), directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson. As much as I joke, I know for a fact I will be front and center when this is in theaters. Based in medieval society, Wicker follows a woman well out of “suitable marrying age” and a bit crass — who is ostracized by her village because she is a fisherwoman. She smells like fish, and people don’t have a problem reminding her of it even though they need the very resource she is providing them. But she is in no way bothered by this; in fact, she chooses to be a spinster. Until she commissions a master weaver to make her a husband — and he does, out of wicker. From what I can tell, their love is meant to be depicted as pure, uncomplicated, and rather steamy. A joyous ode to monster romance by not painting the creature as some terrifying thing that needs justification but simply, just is. A woman wants companionship, and she gets it from a very, very hot wicker basket. If only it could always be that simple.

Wicker builds on the theme that I believe romantasy or monster romance tries to convey. The idea that femmes and thems want deeply to be cared for and understood, and we’d like to have a bit of fun while doing it. It speaks to the idea that the monster in our worlds is not always in the shape of an actual monster but in the people around us — those that cast us out for being a little different, for choosing unconventional lives, or deciding that patriarchal norms just aren’t for us. In this, a “hear me out” is more of a “please listen to my soul.” It breaks present-day notions that all femmes and thems care about are looks or money and bares the deeper truth: that we just want to love without fear. We want whimsy, yearning, mystery, and hot sex, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Loving the monster, for me, is loving a version of myself. A deeper version that I would never really allow anyone to see. As a Queer, Black, Non-Binary individual — the world I live in is steeped in self-protection. There isn’t a day that goes by when my rights and existence aren’t called into question, and unfortunately, that doesn’t change when I am dating someone. Sometimes, the person I’m dating is the very one who seeks to make me smaller than I have ever been. I know I am not alone in this.

Oppression breeds sacrifice, sacrifice breeds loneliness, and in turn, breeds want. The romantasy genre is an accessible way for many of us to quench that thirst. While some would rather tout the genre as a low-intellectual thing, I think it is more based on high empathy — which is a kind of intellect. One I would argue is on the decline in our world. Empathy is what breeds change, understanding, and ultimately love.

When one is forced to always be aware of people and the world around them, having something to escape into is paramount to survival. A zombie, a sincere amphibian, a gruff demon, a man made entirely of wicker — as long as they are willing to sit and listen for a while, I’m okay with that.

Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

On the Girls Who Love Creatures was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Anonymous

Poems from the Series “Infinite Branches: Queer Speculative Disability Poetry in Conversation” — Guest Edited by Toby MacNutt. Each entry in this series includes a poem and the poet’s response to another poet in the series.

Poem Text

Routed

Through thin rubber soles, feet feeling gnarled roots
i leap down ledges formed by
root-held loam dammed against erosion
placing each forefoot with quick precision

i’m traversing the gnarled goblin forest
passing amidst twisted soft moss-covered trunks
when the wicked witch reaches out its sharp stick
to prick my arm and demand i stop

but warm in emerald moss embraced forest
i pay no heed ’til long after tree-enriched soil
yields to thin sun-hardened earth over mountain rock
and horribly, it’s here my roots grow, out

on the open, stony, shrub-scattered windswept ridgeline
i stop.

other runners still speed by, each leaving
a small breeze in their wake, seeing me human — 
thinking i’m like them, doing the Southern Crossing
or maybe even that epic S-K route, not

still, grounded, exposed, frozen and rooted
on the open shrubland ridge, growing my own
gnarled bare brown trunk and tiny scrubby leaves,
i think my running shoes were new

growing more and more alone
and i was only half a day from home
though i know there’s never a good time
to be embedded into the ground

i wonder if the forest roots could reach me, if
their fungal hyphae would extend to greet me,
if those goblin trees will choose to recognize me — some
scrubby little crooked-twigged new mossless dull species —

the flies that land on my new-bent body
haunt their huddle also; but with this expanse
of barren land a barrier to below-ground communion,
at what distance must they

and i belong to separate ecosystems?

Formatting Description

Left-aligned text, grouped into stanzas of four lines each, except for one in the middle that stops and breaks abruptly, and the final stanza, which extends.

Downloadable PDF

(PDF)

Link to Poem on Interstellar Flight Press Website

(Link)

Author Statement on “Routed”

Seeley’s “Crooked Triptych” read to me as considering Crooked an innate, organic characteristic, which immediately led me to choose quite a different poem from among my publications, framing the body as a malfunctioning machine. My disability (a sudden result of a vaccine injury) is something I’m still coming to terms with, unlike queerness, my awareness of which grew so quietly and organically that I've always been personally comfortable with it.

The poem here isn’t that one.

It’s incredibly isolating to be caught between deep social divisions, but being dismissed by people who understand the value of vaccines has given me an appreciation of why some might seek community in groups that oppose vaccination. I’m fortunate to have a supportive and understanding family. Hoping to help others find support without abandoning evidence, and hoping awareness will lead to more research, I’ve been increasingly open about my experience.

Queerness, though, remains very personal. Every time I consider a project like this one, I decide it's not worth the stress of worrying that my family, especially extended family, will see my name linked to it. When I understood it wasn’t possible to use a reprinted poem under a pseudonym, and having no other appropriate response to Seeley’s Triptych available, the only choice was to write something new.

Of course, this meant I found myself unable to write anything at all for weeks, let alone such a specific poem.

As well as being completely blank on the poetry front, I began dwelling on my new physical limitations and the difficulty of adjusting to a lifestyle I couldn’t have imagined a few years earlier. One evening, having finally decided I needed to ask again to move to the end of the queue of poets for a fresh start, responding to a different poem, I stood in the shower and thought again about “Crooked Triptych.” After my recent reflections, the impression of crookedness and trees now recalled my last multi-day hike, just a week before that vaccination put an end to such adventures. Then I thought about how, even in this project, so rooted in identity, I can’t be open about who I am. To protect my queer identity from those I'm closest to, I must do things differently. Write a new poem instead of choosing an existing one. Come up with a pseudonym. Set myself apart from this community.

I got out of the shower and wrote this poem to reflect that isolation and invisibility, of plans being overturned—having never seriously considered being open about queerness with my family, this is the first time it has seemed like a source of stress or inconvenience. The runners in the poem, those who don’t know me as well, don’t see my disability. It's not obvious from the outside in real life, either. Sometimes I wish it had happened a decade earlier so I'd have had longer to get used to it, or when I were older, so I'd have gotten to experience a relatively recent confidence in my body and in interacting with the physical world for a few years more—but as in the poem, there's never a good time.

The sense of comfort and confidence I felt when reading Seeley’s poems fed into that sheltered, crooked, goblin forest. It's beautiful, and a little out of reach, just like the real one.

About the Author

The writer joins Rasha Abdulhadi in calling on you — yes you, even as you read this — to renew your commitment to refusing and resisting genocide everywhere you find it.

About the Series “Infinite Branches: Queer Speculative Disability Poetry in Conversation” — Guest Edited by Toby MacNutt

Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt.

Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Routed was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Book Review: Scream with Me by Eleanor Johnson

Scream with Me (2025, Atria Books/Simon & Schuster) is a clever book of film criticism through a feminist lens and explores horror as a vehicle for activism, most specifically body autonomy, patriarchal oppression, and women’s rights. According to Johnson, it might be difficult to perceive horror as a feminist genre because horror commonly fetishizes the torture of women and women’s entrapment, but domestic horror is fueled by abortion rights and women’s liberation. Johnson says these six classic films: Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Stepford Wives (1975), The Omen (1976), Alien (1979), and The Shining (1980), showcase domestic violence and reproductive abuse through the lens of horror and argues that the true horror lies within a domestic sphere, not an otherworldly one. This is especially true as the aforementioned films both display dehumanizing acts of violence against women and were released coinciding with Roe v. Wade and second-wave feminism.

Johnson names Rosemary’s Baby as the first American film to conceptualize reproduction control and violence as horror. The author emphasizes the importance of religion and anti-religion plays in Rosemary’s Baby and how the movie’s release aligns with the rising fight for reproductive rights in the 1960s. She also notes that neither rape nor fetal anomaly would have been grounds for abortion at the time of the film’s release, which makes the film even more terrifying.

Johnson also names The Stepford Wives as a feminist horror film and mentions how its release coincided with the fight for women’s liberation during the second-wave feminist movement. She spends some time comparing Bryan Forbes’ film to the book by Ira Levin and notes that Forbes changes certain things that seem inspired by events of the time. For instance, in the scene where Joanna’s husband Walter mentions the Men’s Association, the book has both of them in mutual disgust, whereas Walter joins the association in the film, much to Joanna’s surprise. Johnson also brings up how The Stepford Wives is like the blueprint for the Modern American Tradwife and mentions that the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution is crucial to the film’s release.

In the penultimate chapter, Johnson explores the decline in domestic horror after 1980 and speculates that it could be because things did get a little better for women after the Equal Rights Amendment. However, the final chapter investigates three domestic horror films from 2024, all directed by women: Immaculate, The First Omen, and Apartment 7A. These films each reimagine at least one of the six domestic horror films mentioned in Scream with Me and center on reproductive rights, using art to protest the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

In horror, women are typically seen as victimized, vulnerable, and sometimes completely helpless. Scream with Me analyzes these patterns and digs deep into the patriarchal oppression that creates the need for women’s liberation, as well as how politics impacts pop culture and media. The title not only symbolizes the screams within and caused by horror, but also the collective scream by women everywhere who are consistently fighting for their freedom and bodily autonomy. Scream with Me is an intelligent and timely read that will change the way you look at horror, specifically seeing domestic horror as a form of protest. Johnson makes very compelling arguments, and her book is one to study, especially for those interested in feminism and women’s rights.

About the Author

Eleanor Johnson is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University who specializes in late medieval literature and culture. She is also the Poetry Section editor at Public Books. Johnson is the author of poetry collections The Dwell and Her Many Feathered Bones, as well as four books: Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages, Staging Contemplation, Waste and the Wasters, and most recently, Scream with Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968–1980).

Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Domestic Horror as Protest was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Deer Dive into B Films Bambi: The Reckoning and Deer Camp, ‘86

Of all the critter-haunted films ever produced, there are essentially only two in which deer are showcased — Bambi: The Reckoning (ITN Studios and Jagged Edge Productions, 2025) and Deer Camp, ’86 (The Rhino, 2022). One entry is a schlock-reimagining of a Disney masterpiece. The second is a slightly older retro-trash treatment of American Indian women's disappearances. The latter invokes the idea of cultural missteps causing carnage. The former tickles the motivations of animal cruelty/pollution revenge. Still, they are linked thematically.

These two deer films are also linked by modesty. Both films are B-grade; shot in fifteen days and twenty days, respectively. Both are campy, though only the latter involves campers. And only the former traces its lineage to lush hand-drawn 1940s animation.

The lushness of Bambi: The Reckoning (2025) is undeniable. The film represents the third entry to the Twisted Childhood Universe, which includes sick Peter Pans (Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, 2025) and misshapen Winnies the Pooh (Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, 2023). (Pinocchio: Unstrung [2026] is on deck; each has recently entered the public domain.)

The Bambi film owes less fidelity to Felix Salten’s 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods (Ullstein Verlag) than the Disney adaptation (Bambi, 1942). It joins a cluster of eco-horror films such as Frogs (American International Pictures, 1972 [killer frogs]), Grizzly (Columbia Pictures, 1976 [killer bear]), and Night of the Lepus (MGM, 1972 [killer bunnies]). (I could go on — e.g., Orca (Paramount Pictures, 1977 [killer whale]).

But rather than assess the contrived environmental commentaries of Bambi: The Reckoning, I intend to contrast its rooted determinants against those of the above-referenced, slightly earlier film: Deer Camp ’86. In it, admittedly, the malevolent attacker is not a deer per se. Indeed, the camping protagonists initially mistake it for a bear with a white face. When the killer is seen more clearly, it appears as a biped with a bleached, elongated, quasi-deer skull for a face.

By the conclusion of the film, it’s revealed not to be a deer at all. But it is deer-like. It partakes of deer-ness.

In any horror film, the origins of malevolence require explication; the why behind the mayhem — whether it be infection, pollution, radiation, paving over graves, haunted dolls, or a wronged innocent — must be outlined. The varied engines of evil rationalize, on some level, the set-piece serial slaughtering. They justify the butchery. When skillfully handled, the justification for the havoc heightens the viewer’s connection to the gore because it makes the blood meaningful.

With many slasher films, the victims “deserve” their sad ends according to a narrative logic. Often, they are punished for engaging in premarital sex. In other stories, the reason for the horror takes the form of a foreigner. Think: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (United Artists, 1978) or Dracula (Universal Pictures, 1931). With still others, it’s the hubris of science. Consider: Them (Warner Bros, 1954) or Tarantula (Universal-International, 1955). In some, like Teeth (Roadside Attractions, 2007) or Attack of the 50-Foot Woman (Allied Artists Pictures Corporation, 1958), it’s misogyny.

With Deer Camp ’86, one might suspect that the pathogenesis of the tumult would be trophy game hunting; that the carnage-cause would be the shooting of deer. There is a hint of that, granted. The six heavy-drinking young men gathered in a cabin are a bit too killing-oriented. (I will grant that hunters kill by definition, but I have never met a hunter who reveled in the killing aspect of the activity; there is no bloodlust in conventional sportsmen, but rather a respectful participation with the natural world.) One young hunter in the Deer Camp group shoots a crow without intending to eat it. He’s not just a hunter; he’s a bad hunter and his buddies are not much better.

The young men in Deer Camp ’86 are boorish — one might characterize the film as a low-budget horror version of The Hangover (Warner Bros, 2009). It’s young men behaving badly. They even treat each other shoddily. But the real cause for the sequential slaughters is more complicated; the cause is revealed to be payback for a previously unknown offender’s infraction, but for most of the film, it seems to be an unintentional, misinformed cultural insensitivity.

This works for any viewer — like your reviewer — who is frequently panic-stricken at the thought of committing some unwitting cultural faux pas. The message is that we should not romp about in indigenous forests just like any other forest. On Native lands, the non-Natives become the outsiders. We should be more sensitive. And if we’re not, we should not be surprised by the horror which cascades from our unthinkingness.

In Deer Camp, it’s not the woods (on a Michigan Indian Reservation) that are haunted; it’s that the woods are embodied with an unfamiliar set of values and beliefs. When the young Deer Camp men first approach the woods, they first stop at a tavern on its outskirts — the Peace Pipe — for libations. They are greeted by a sort of guardian of the gate, a pretty Native bartender named Sky. The cute boy in the bunch aggressively flirts with her. She offers a sort of land acknowledgment speech to the whole bar: “Now I know some of you think this was once our land, but you’re wrong. It’s still our land.” It’s a caution that goes unheeded.

While there is a certain irony in the immature hunters becoming the hunted — the tables being turned — this is not an anti-hunting film (Contra: Bambi [1942]). Rather, it’s a wobbly commentary on the disappearance of Indigenous women. But before this too-tidy end-reveal, none of the deer hunters seem to have had any obvious role in the problem. They’re blameless, except for their cultural assumptions.

Deer Camp presents a unique variation on the fear-of-the-foreigner trope common in Cold War-era North American films, the fear-of-the-immigrant theme of Dracula films, or the fear-of-the-othered-outcasts narratives like Freaks (MGM, 1932) or The Hills Have Eyes (Vanguard, 1977). There, the threat is outsiders. Here, the threat-etiology is not Native Americans; it is misconstruing their world. In a sense, the foreigner is the forest.

Conversely, the comeuppance in Bambi: The Reckoning is posited (by means of the opening montage) as revenge. The reader will recall the scene in the original Bambi in which hunters shoot Bambi’s mother (the narrative retold in the opening credits sequence). The root cause of the deadly hooves appears at first to be reprisal.

Reckoning is a much more sophisticated-feeling film with its woodsy British setting, better production values, and professional score. But its ruin-genesis is initially elementary and mismatched when it appears that Bambi simply attacks everyone, hunter or no. The revenge is rather untargeted.

The revenge motive trope is a familiar one. Two favored examples: Theatre of Blood (Harbour Productions Ltd/Cineman Productions, 1973) and Mad Max (Kennedy Miller Productions, 1979). The punch of the revenge-horror formula is that the viewer simultaneously roots both for the vindicator in evening the score and for the victims in avoiding butchery. It works two ways at once. This vacillation fuels engagement.

Yet this dual-sympathizing miscarries in Reckoning because Bambi is unselective with her victims. Whoever stands in the way gets antler-ed in the neck. Perhaps grief, more than revenge, is the stag’s initiative. The rage is impersonal, like Cujo (Warner Bros, 1983) or Earthquake (Universal Pictures, 1974). Additional explanation is layered in, including toxic spills in the forest and a kidnapped fawn held by an evil corporation, but the buck remains indiscriminate. Both the slimy corporate actors and a corporate actor’s family are caught up in the terror.

What forms the strongest link between these two films is the subtext of choosing the wrong pals. Marry the toxic-polluter in Reckoning and put yourself and your progeny at risk of antler-stabs. Buddy up with the psycho in Deer Camp who executes the charming bartender, and you yourself may fall victim to a stone-arrow-wielding Wendigo.

It’s a parental fear; having one’s children choose the wrong associates, fall in with the wrong crowd, or select a murderous mate. Parents know that if their child prefers the ‘wrong’ friends, they may face tragedies not of their own making. The ramifications of conspiring with calloused collaborators are real and often outsized. Psychologically, this is fertile ground.

On this level, both of these low-budget deer-slayer films succeed.

Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The Cervids’ Vengeance: Sympathetic Yet Sinister Stags was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.