Horror Studies - Volume 16, Issue 2, 2025

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is considered one of the canonical works in the horror genre, and its central character Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) has occupied a key space in the cultural imagination since the film’s release. The same is true neither for Psycho II (Franklin 1983), which followed more than two decades later, nor for the two sequels that followed in 1986 and 1990 respectively. Despite their mixed-to-positive reception, the films have generally become footnotes in the story of Hitchcock’s original. I suggest this is because scholars only recently developed the appropriate language to discuss them, with Psycho II a demonstrable example of a legacy sequel decades before the term was conceived. This article therefore re-examines Psycho II through the lens of the contemporary legacy sequel trend, arguing that the film aligns with such works in its narrative, marketing and reception, thus making the case for this return to the Bates Motel as a key antecedent. Moreover, it argues that the entire franchise should be read in relation to notions of (traumatic) legacy, with Norman’s character journey in these four films analogous to that of other survivors in contemporary examples of legacy sequels.

Zombie fiction arrived in Latin American countries at the end of the first and in the second decade of the twenty-first century as a part of a global phenomenon, although typically with local peculiarities. This article presents a brief outline of the development of the genre in several Hispanic countries – notably in Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Peru, pointing out some characteristic features of national literatures – and also proposes some general observations about this literary trend in the Hispanic context. These visions of zombie invasion are used as a tool to describe local political and social problems, as well as to serve as a metaphor to express issues surrounding national identity.

This article attempts to explore how the notion of geotrauma allows us to understand the negotiation of subjectivity of the Anthropocene human as it is contaminated by the nonhuman other. The concept of geotrauma or geotraumatics was developed by theorists including Nick Land, Reza Negarestani and Robin MacKay as a full materialist extension of the psychoanalytic notion of the unconscious, relating the techniques of subject formation to violent external processes that inscribe their traces on the subject. In this essay, the American historical horror television series The Terror (2018) will be analysed as a weird narrative in which contamination, as contact with the outside, here referring to both the unmapped landscape and the monstrous ‘Tuunbaq’, renders possible a geotraumatic account of the explorer-subject. It will also examine The Terror as a narrative that frames the pretrauma of Anthropocene anxieties by exploring how geological changes, especially the freezing-thawing of glacial landforms, impact the human body and psyche.

Marble Hornets is a found footage horror web series that pioneered media adaptations of the Slender Man online folklore. The series dramatizes psychological trauma through both its narrative and its engagement with digital culture. Characters experience and recall trauma via recording devices and online networks, mirroring the alienation of the Digital Age. The Slender Man’s role in the series evokes real-life trauma descriptions – as an unsettling mental absence paired with an inexpressible presence – highlighted by characters’ inability to discuss or document him despite constant threats. The active, subjective camera gaze intensifies this psychic ambiguity, reflecting metatextual uncertainty and paratextual framing. Furthermore, Marble Hornets explores how the internet facilitates traumatic experiences and their circulation: originating on a message board and propagating through YouTube and social media, it embeds the viewer’s own interface in the narrative. Slender Man thus serves as an allegory for online-perpetuated trauma, including cyberbullying, alienation and radicalization, implicating audience complicity.

This article explores Sous La Seine (2024) as an ecohorror film that reconfigures the shark horror genre through satirical critique and intertextual engagement with Jaws (1975). Set against the Paris 2024 Olympics and featuring a preternaturally oversized Mako shark, the film juxtaposes nationalist spectacle with ecological collapse, foregrounding human complicity in environmental destruction. Drawing on theories of the Anthropocene and posthumanism, it examines how Sous La Seine subverts the ‘killer shark’ trope to interrogate capitalist, political and media-driven narratives. In doing so, the film illustrates how genre can expose the violence underpinning capitalist and environmental exploitation.

Review of: Comic Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik (eds) (2024)

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 296 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-39950-575-8, h/bk, $125

Review of: Capitalism Hates You: Marxism and the New Horror Film, Joshua Gooch (2025)

Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 280 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-51791-797-5, p/bk, $28