Feeding the Monster: Why horror has a hold on us

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.

Times Literary Supplement (Book of the Year)

A must-read for anyone seeking a refreshed perspective on the genre ... A worthy successor to Stephen King's Danse Macabre -- Neil McRobert ― Esquire Published On: 2024-08-20 Personal in tone and omnivorous in its frame of reference, it's timely and deeply empathetic. -- Hephzibah Anderson ― Observer Published On: 2024-07-28 A handy guide to the screen life of horror . . . Bogutskaya's passion for her subject beats like a heart through the pages. -- Catriona Ward ― The Times 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 Anna Bogutskaya takes us beyond bad dreams and beasts, the monsters, vampires, ghosts and ghouls, into the human heart pounding deep inside horror. Once more proving why her voice is so needed in the regrettably dick-heavy genre landscape. -- Terri White Feeding the Monster brilliantly excavates why horror holds such fascination for some of us and reveals that in an horrific world, horror can keep us safe - and ultimately, that horror is a genre of radical empathy. -- Heidi James I follow Anna Bogutskaya wherever she takes me. If your heart belongs to the dark side (and you're sick of having to apologise for it), you need this book. Spooky Girls Club 4 Eva. -- Kirsty Logan Bogutskaya reclaims horror as the "genre of empathy". It is not only a love affair from which we cannot escape but also one that we should embrace, wholeheartedly. ― Irish Times It's always scary to walk into a dark room - and the world of horror film theory represents just such unknown territory for me. So it's good to have a hand to hold. Anna Bogutskaya's Feeding the Monster offers that reassurance. If you'd like to feel the pulse of this vital genre - through familiar recent classics such as Midsommar, Titane, Get Out and The Menu, but also many more you'll want to watch - then this rich collection of short, cleverly themed essays, written in an intimate yet authoritative first-person voice, is definitely the place to start. The world may still wonder "What's wrong with you?" for liking horror, but there's nothing wrong. Horror makes you feel less alone; this book does too. -- Wesley Stace

Book Description

A captivating look at what draws us to the shocks and thrills of horror, by film critic and broadcaster Bogutskaya.

About the Author

Anna Bogutskaya is a critic, author, film programmer, podcast producer and host. She writes for BBC Culture, Little White Lies, New Statesman, Guardian, MUBI, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Face and Time Out, amongst others, and has programmed films for BFI, Edinburgh International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest. She publishes her movie newsletter Admit One, produces and hosts The Final Girls podcast, created and produced the horror anthology podcast Eerie and has produced podcasts for Paramount, Studiocanal, BFI and Vertigo Releasing, as well as contributing to many others. Her first book, Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate, was published in the UK and US in 2023.

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