Skip to content
1981
Horror Geography
  • ISSN: 2043-068X
  • E-ISSN: 2043-0698

Abstract

This article examines how horror cinema constructs sacred and profane geographies through the lens of childhood temporal consciousness and supernatural encounters. Drawing on both western Christian and Islamic traditions, we argue that children’s temporal innocence – their inability to fully conceptualize or measure time – functions not as a deficit but as a unique perceptual capacity. This innocence renders them attuned to alternative temporalities that modernity suppresses, positioning children as privileged witnesses to supernatural phenomena. Horror cinema leverages this perceptual gap to create ‘chronological trauma sites’ – spaces where modern time discipline breaks down and supernatural entities emerge. Our central argument is that horror films mobilize children’s disconnection from standardized temporal regimes to interrogate broader tensions between secular modernity and sacred worldviews. The article also examines how horror’s spatial imaginaries are shaped by differing religious conceptions of sacred geography. Western Christian traditions privilege linear temporalities and marked sacred sites, while Islamic cosmology recognizes the ongoing permeability between material and spiritual realms, especially in domestic and threshold spaces. These divergent frameworks produce distinct horror geographies that are revealed through architectural anomalies, disrupted routines and malfunctioning timekeeping devices. Finally, we reflect on how gender mediates access to these temporal geographies. By drawing together horror film theory, religious studies and cultural geography, this article contributes to a deeper understanding of how horror cinema imagines alternative temporalities and contested sacred spaces – spaces where the supernatural offers a counter-narrative to the hegemonic control of modern time.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/des_00032_1
2025-11-05
2026-04-21

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Adam, B. (1995), Timewatch: The Social Analysis of Time, Chichester: Wiley.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Al-Qobbaj, A. A. and Marshall, D. J. (2024), ‘Dwelling and healing with saints and jinn in the haunted landscapes of Palestine’, Cultural Geographies, 31:3, pp. 36579, https://doi.org/10.1177/14744740241234297.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Amenábar, A. (2001), Los otros (The Others), Spain: Cruise/Wagner Productions, Sogecine and Las Producciones del Escorpión.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Anvari, B. (2016), Zeer-e sāye (Under the Shadow), Iran: Wigwam Films.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Bayona, J. A. (2007), El orfanato (The Orphanage), Spain: Rodar y Rodar and Telecinco Cinema.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Bowman, M. (2016), ‘Belief, legend and perceptions of the sacred in contemporary Bath’, in J. Davies, D. Elkington and C. Hart (eds), The Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity, Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, pp. 10522.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Bustillo, A. and Maury, J. (dirs) (2020), Kandisha, France: Esprits Frappeurs.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Chittick, W. C. (1989), The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Derrida, J. (2006), Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International (trans. P. Kamuf), London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Eliade, M. (1959), The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (trans. W. R. Trask), New York: Harcourt.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. El-Zein, A. (2009), Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Fakhry, M. (2004), A History of Islamic Philosophy, 3rd ed., New York: Columbia University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Foucault, M. ([1975] 1995), Discipline and Punish: The Girth of the Prison (trans. A. Sheridan), New York: Vintage Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Harvey, D. (1989), The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Oxford: Blackwell.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Hooper, T. (dir.) (2013), Djinn, United Arab Emirates: Image Nation Abu Dhabi.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Khalifa, N. and Hardie, T. (2005), ‘Possession and Jinn’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 98:8, pp. 35153, https://doi.org/10.1177/014107680509800805.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Khosroshahi, Z. (2019), ‘Vampires, jinn and the magical in Iranian horror films’, Frames Cinema Journal, 16, https://framescinemajournal.com/article/vampires-jinn-and-the-magical-in-iranian-horror-films. Accessed 23 September 2025.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Nasr, S. H. (2006), Science and Civilization in Islam, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Peterson, M. A. (2007), ‘From Jinn to genies: Intertextuality, media, and the making of global folklore’, in S. R. Sherman and M. J. Koven (eds), Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture, Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, pp. 93112.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Pile, S. (2005), ‘Spectral cities: Where the repressed returns and other short stories’, in E. Rooksby (ed.), Habitus: A Sense of Place, 2nd ed., London: Routledge, pp. 15269.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Smith, J. I. and Haddad, Y. Y. (2002), The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Stern, M. S. (2008), ‘Time in Islam’, in H. Selin (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 208285.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Thompson, E. P. (1967), ‘Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism’, Past and Present, 38:1, pp. 5697, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/38.1.56.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Thrift, N. (1996), Spatial Formations, London: Sage.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Vidler, A. (1992), The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/des_00032_1
Loading
/content/journals/10.1386/des_00032_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): architecture; children; cinema; ghosts; maternal archetypes; time
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test