Technology, Monstrosity, and Reproduction in Twenty-first Century Horror

Dealing with a variety of twenty-first century horror films, Jackson examines how the technologically produced and reproduced image functions as a site of monstrous birth. These monsters, threatening and ominous as they may be, represent the possibility for a renewed belief in the reality of the world and humanity's place within it. Through a wide spectrum of horror sub-genres, this book examines how the current state of horror - its sense of being at an end, its increasing self-awareness, and its concern with the relationship between media and message - reflects these anxieties in Western culture. Horror films bring them to a mass audience and offer ever new figures for the nameless faceless 'antagonist' that plagues us. At the same time, horror provides material with which to build a different understanding of ourselves, its monsters representing ends but also beginnings.