SIGNED EDITION
Feeding the Monster: Why horror has a hold on us (hardback)
by Anna Bogutskaya
Zombies want brains. Vampires want blood. Cannibals want human flesh. All monsters need feeding.
Horror has been embraced by mainstream pop culture more than ever before, with horror characters and aesthetics infecting TV, music videos and even TikTok trends. Yet even with the commercial and critical success of The Babadook, Hereditary, Get Out, The Haunting of Hill House, Yellowjackets and countless other horror films and TV series over the last few years, loving the genre still prompts the question: what's wrong with you? Implying, of course, that there is something not quite right about the people who make and consume it. In Feeding the Monster, Anna Bogutskaya dispels this notion once and for all by examining how horror responds to and fuels our feelings of fear, anxiety, pain, hunger and power.
A must-read for anyone seeking a refreshed perspective on the genre ... A worthy successor to Stephen King's Danse Macabre -- Neil McRobert ― Esquire
Personal in tone and omnivorous in its frame of reference, it's timely and deeply empathetic. -- Hephzibah Anderson ― Observer
A handy guide to the screen life of horror . . . Bogutskaya's passion for her subject beats like a heart through the pages. -- Catriona Ward
Wonderfully written and highly detailed, Feeding the Monster is both a deeply personal love letter to horror movies and a thorough feminist analysis of them, and I fiercely love it. The cannibal chapter is chef's kiss. -- Chelsea G. Summers
Deliciously witty and astute. Anna Bogutskaya takes a microscope to horror and then flips it back on us and our deepest, darkest turmoil. -- Prano Bailey-Bond