Media Studies Online

Ecohorror

Overview

Eco-horror (also environmental horror or natural horror) deals with fears about the environment. While eco-horror is not necessarily new as a genre, dedicated critical analysis and scholarship into eco-horror is quite recent. Eco-horror scholarship considers the ways in which the subgenre reflects and informs anxieties about science, the environment, and the nonhuman world.

Collections

• Ecohorror Cluster in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment Vol. 21. Issue 3 (Summer 2014), edited by Stephen A. Rust and Carter Soles
• Creature Features and the Environment Special Issue in Science Fiction Film and Television, Vol. 14 Issue 3 (Autumn 2021), edited by Bridgitte Barclay & Christy Tidwell

Articles & Book Chapters

• “Sweet-and-Sour Soup for the Psyche: Horror’s Ecophobic Leanings” by Simon C. Estok in English Language Notes, Vol. 59, No. 2 (2021). doi 10.1215/00138282-9277282
• “‘Isn’t Self-destruction Coded into Us, Programmed into Each Cell?’ A Thanatological, Posthumanist Reading of Alex Garland’s Annihilation (2018)” by Heidi Kosonen in Journal of Ecohumanism, Vol. 2 No. 2 (2023). doi.org/10.33182/joe.v2i2.3007
• “Monsters: Horrors and Moral Panics” by Claire Molloy in Popular Media and Animals (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
• “‘They Have Risen Once: They May Rise Again’: Animals in Horror Literature” by Bernice M. Murphy in The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature, edited by Kevin Corstorphine and Laura R. Kremmel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
• “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Woods?: Deep Dark Forests and Literary Horror” by Elizabeth Parker in The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature, edited by Kevin Corstorphine and Laura R. Kremmel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
• “Ecohorror” by Christy Tidwell in Posthuman Glossary, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova (Bloomsbury, 2018)
• “Horror” by Jonathan Wald in Environmental Humanities, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-9712434
• "Bug in the Rug" by Maurice Yacowar in Film Genre Reader III edited by Barry Keith Grant (University of Texas Press, 2003)

Books, Monographs

• Menacing Environments: Ecohorror in Contemporary Nordic Cinema by Benjamin A. Bigelow (University of Washington Press, 2023)
• Massacred by Mother Nature: Exploring the Natural Horror Film by Lee Gambin (Midnight Marquee Press, 2012)
• Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film by Dawn Keetley and Angela Tenga (2016)
• Brute Force: Animal Horror Movies by Dominic Lennard (SUNY Press, 2019)
• Monstrous Nature: Environment and Horror on the Big Screen by Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann (University of Nebraska Press, 2016)
• The Forest and the EcoGothic : The Deep Dark Woods in the Popular Imagination by Elizabeth Parker (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

Books, Edited Volumes

• Animal Horror Cinema: Genre, History, and Criticism, edited by Katarina Gregersdotter, Johan Höglund, Nicklas Hållén (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
• Beasts of the Deep: Sea Creatures and Popular Culture (2018), edited by Jon Hackett and Seán Harrington
• Fear and Nature: Ecohorror Studies in the Anthropocene, edited by Christy Tidwell and Carter Soles (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020)

Playlist

References

• Tidwell, C. (2018). Ecohorror. In R. Braidotti & M. Hlavajova (Eds.), Posthuman Glossary (pp. 115–117). Bloomsbury.
• Tidwell, C., & Soles, C. (Eds.). (2021). Introduction: Ecohorror in the Anthropocene. In Fear and nature: Ecohorror studies in the Anthropocene (, pp. 11–31). The Pennsylvania State University Press.

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