Horror Archives - Unwinnable

A screenshot from the beginning of Haunting Ground, where a woman in a blond ponytail wearing a white dress is walking through an old and strange castle bathed in red light

The Hubris of Immortality in Haunting Ground

By Charalambos Papoutsis • December 4th, 2024

Azoth would, therefore, appear to be an allegory for Fiona’s womb, but this is a red herring.

A screenshot from the trailer for Red Rooms featuring an all white courtroom with multiple screens showing the faces of three female victims, as well as a judge, lawyers, and a jury

I Want to Ask Your Forgiveness for What I Will Inflict on You: Red Rooms (2023) and the Abjection of Obsession

By Orrin Grey • November 26th, 2024

How much difference is there, after all, between watching a murder take place, and reconstructing that same murder through your favorite true crime series, book, or podcast?

A screenshot from the Trailer of Oddity featuring the title of the movie in dark shades of green

Personal Items Work Best: Oddity (2024)

By Orrin Grey • October 31st, 2024

Oddity is an extremely slow burn, though it keeps elements of eeriness and dread close at hand.

A screenshot from The Substance with Demi Moore staring into a mirror with bold red lipstick and a red dress, gold earrings, and an intense look on her face

You Can’t Escape from Yourself: The Substance (2024)

By Orrin Grey • October 3rd, 2024

One of my pet peeves in modern horror films is when the central premise works only as metaphor, not as actual text.

a screenshot from the trailer of Cuckoo with a woman in a blue jacket reflected in a window where someone in a red dress, a guy with a fancy watch and stubble, and a cowboy dad with a fist in the air look on

The Cuckoo’s Egg: Chimeras and Changelings in Cuckoo (2024) and Longlegs (2024)

By Orrin Grey • August 26th, 2024

Perhaps there’s something going on here; a thematic resonance, a moment in the zeitgeist, that will be teased out with the passage of time, subsequent viewings, and the work of other scholars.

A crop of the box for the double feature The Unseen and the Uninvited, with an art deco painting mostly in shades of green with a man in a suit holding an unconscious woman while in the background a face with wide eyes stares and a shadow lurks

Uninvited and Unseen: Two Chilly Classics of the 1940s on Blu-ray Together

By Orrin Grey • July 26th, 2024

The success of The Uninvited hangs in the air around Lewis Allen’s 1945 follow-up, The Unseen.

A screenshot from Alone in the Dark 2024, featuring a rainy street at night, with two lamps and a click with a street sign that says Dercator

Rebuilding Derceto with Alone in the Dark’s Developers

By Elijah Beahm • April 18th, 2024

“In the horror genre, it’s key to make everything feel grounded in the world you’re creating. How all details must feel as a natural part of the environment, no object is there purely by accident; it has its own story to tell.”

Here Be Monsters