This book traces a trend that has emerged in recent years within the
modern panorama of American horror film and television, the
concurrent-and often overwhelming-use of multiple stock characters,
themes and tropes taken from classics of the genre. American Horror
Story, Insidious and The Conjuring are examples of a filmic tendency
to address a series of topics and themes so vast that at first glance
each taken separately would seem to suffice for individual films or
shows. This book explores this trend in its visible connections with
American Horror, but also with cultural and artistic movements from
outside the US, namely Baroque art and architecture, Asian Horror, and
European Horror. It analyzes how these hybrid products are constructed
and discusses the socio-political issues that they raise. The repeated
and excessive barrage of images, tropes and scenarios from distinct
subgenres of iconic horror films come together to make up an aesthetic
that is referred to in this book as Baroque Horror. In many ways
similar to the reactions provoked by the artistic movement of the same
name that flourished in the XVII century, these productions induce
shock, awe, fear, and surprise. Eljaiek-Rodríguez details how American
directors and filmmakers construct these narratives using different and
sometimes disparate elements that come together to function as a whole,
terrifying the audience through their frenetic accumulation of images,
tropes and plot twists. The book also addresses some of the effects that
these complex films and series have produced both in the panorama of
contemporary horror, as well as in how we understand politics in a
divisive world that pushes for ideological homogenizations.
