A Christian Response to Horror Cinema: Ten Films in Theological Perspective Peter Fraser. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015.

A Christian Response to Horror Cinema: Ten Films in Theological Perspective Peter Fraser. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015.Peter Fraser, whose two previous books {Reviewing the Movies [2000] and Images of the Passion [1998]) also tackle the subject of religion and film, develops a theology for the horror film in A Christian Response to Horror Cinema. Despite an admitted ambivalence about the genre as a whole that may separate it from other books on horror, Fraser explains his interest in the subject, as this book was in gestation for two decades: "Working against the grain of a scientific age that tends toward the denial of the possibility of not only a personal God, but a personal devil, the genre of horror insists that what lies beneath our dread of the mysterious and dangerous unknown that horror explores is Satan himself, his minions, and a grisly unreality that if seen without the ghostly veils would make Milton's Pandemonium seem a rather familiar place" (7).Evidence suggests that films with demons have generally appealed to more religious audiences than more traditional bogeymen (e.g., vampires and zombies), but Fraser examines the concept of the demonic in the horror film to a much greater extent than simply films like The Exorcist (1973) and the Paranormal Activity series. Evoking Chris tus Victor (the atonement theory that proposes Christ's death was foremost about the defeat of the forces of evil) over the demonic, five questions govern his examination of the films: (1) What is the monster?; (2) What inhabits the monster?; (3) Why is this chaos unleashed on the people?', (4) What is the broken taboo?', and (5) How can the exorcism be performed?Despite this broader approach to understanding the demonic in horror film, the strongest chapters still tend to be those on the films that naturally lend themselves to Fraser's religious perspective. To put it bluntly, his preference is on those that exemplify how the "genre depends on the paradigms of Christianity and especially those quirky salvific elements like bread and wine and the prayers of priests and the faith of children" (114). This is certainly the case with Carl Dreyer's Vampyr (1932), a work Fraser considers as spiritually rich as his later works. He challenges David Bordwell's long-accepted, neoformalist analysis that reads the film as largely confused and inexplicable. Fraser, on the other hand, sees the film as a "simple tale of possession and redemption" (44), supporting his argument with some of the new scholarship connecting vampire fiction and film to Christianity. Vampyr may be the best example of how "the vampire genre is rooted in a theology of blood redemption" (46), far removed from vampire films of today, such as the Blade (1998-2004) or the Twilight series (2008-2012). Some of Fraser's more interesting thoughts can be found in his chapter on The Wicker Man (1973). Connecting the film to the Hebrew Bible's condemnation of the Ammonite deity Mo lech, Fraser notes that despite the film's increasing popularity as a cult film, most viewers have ignored its cautionary warnings against the rising current of Neopaganism.Some of the author's most memorable comments can be found in the overtly theological The Exorcist, including some intriguing contributions to horror film scholarship. …