The acclaimed Masters of Horror series makes a welcome return to Horrorthon with two new episodes.
The Screwfly Solution depicts a sudden global outbreak of femicide, and one woman’s struggle to keep her family together as she flees across a country bent on the eradication of her gender. Are terrorists to blame, or is there a more sinister agency at work? This is as sharply satirical as Homecoming, director Joe Dante’s previous entry in the series.
Dante makes expert use of the horror genre to put across his points about society’s attitudes to women and religious fundamentalism. Famed for his Lovecraft adaptations, Stuart Gordon here turns to that other master fantasist, Edgar Allan Poe, in The Black Cat. A fictionalised account of Poe desperately seeking inspiration while caring for his consumptive wife, Gordon uses the structure of the titular story to make a playful piece full of allusions to Poe’s work, without neglecting its macabre nature.