T o James, in horror, even in the slasher sub-genre, there is the concept of “original sin,” some kind of loss or grief that sets everything else in motion. This original loss often stems from some type of past human brutality that continues to haunt us. “Ghosts are everywhere in the horror genre. Whether they are actual vengeful spirits and beings or people haunted by the ghost of experience and memory. They exist in the places we refuse to see because those places are in the corner of every eye and within every shadow, and facing them means facing ourselves, and that historically has made people uncomfortable because they don’t want to be reminded of how dark the night really can be,” says James. He feels that artistic films with serious themes, such as Get Out, Us, Midsommer, and the VVitch, are finally causing critics to see the cultural value and relevance of the horror genre. “Sadly, horror is considered as degrading and smutty as the worst porno by a lot of people, but now the same critics are looking at the genre with new eyes and finally starting to see what we’ve known all along,” he says. As a queer author, James finds the themes of the horror genre personally relevant. “For many queer people, growing up is a constant horror, and you spend your life terrified and hiding from everyone, and sometimes really awful horrific things happen to us—it did to me—and in horror, that’s what I get to tackle, that’s what I get to approach and shed light on and explore.”
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