It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

This book is fascinating insight into genre.

This is a wonderful collection that explores the diversity of queer experience and its authors' connections to horror movies. From classics to modern horror, from bi to trans experiences, from joy to heartache and danger (lots of danger, sadly), this collection stands as a compendium of queer writers and a new world of filmic exploration. Standouts for me were Carmen Maria Machado and the amazing Jude Ellison S. Doyle, but as a whole a book worth having if you love horror and want a pile of insight you won't otherwise find very easily in the canon of thought on horror movies.

Queer horror and queer horror spectatorship has been getting a lot of attention in the last few years, but few texts have presented the subject in such a beautiful and personal framework as It Came From the Closet. I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in horror, academic or personal, queer or otherwise.

I usually never write negative reviews but this book was so bad I didn't even finish it. Some of the writers are looking so hard to find queer content in these films that they are literally making up same sex narratives that never even happened in the movies. They spend so much time talking about their own lives than the films. I will give this book away to a friend who is interested, I don't even want it on my bookshelf.

I'm queer and love horror. But these essays, to me, feel much more like *reading into* a movie than *reading* a movie. Smart readers, watchers, and critics watch movies and notice interesting things about the movie or notice how the movie reflects things about human psychology or society. They show how the movie means more, to more people, than it first appears. This anthology does little of that. Rather, the movies feel peripheral to the sharing of personal experiences.Most of the essays are about the authors themselves. They are idiosyncratic and particular, in the strict sense of those terms. Many of the essays are written by people who want to tell a traumatic or uncomfortable story about their lives, and they fit the movie to illustrate their lives' narratives. That's respectable and important, but it wasn't what I was expecting. Most of the essays are well-written, but even when they were talking about my favorite horror movies or common queer experiences, I couldn't understand why. There's little explained about why we should listen to each author or respect their takes on the movies. I'm glad they had a forum to share experiences, and many have writerly accolades in academic and literary circles. But the book felt like a conversation I couldn't get into.I feel like the hype around this collection and the title of the book set up a bait-and-switch. It sounds like it's going to be about horror. But it's foremost memoir-esque. If you're looking for that, you'll love it. But if you're looking for something more analytic about the genre or queerness, you won't find it here.

This work does not hold much value for a student of film. There is almost no insightful criticism here.

IT CAME FROM THE CLOSET is a highly engaging and thought-provoking collection of 25 essays by LGBTQ+ writers relating how horror films are seen through their queer gaze and how those films informed their gay identities. Many of the essays read as memoir pieces as much as film profiles, but they're all fascinating and well written.Sachiko Ragosta explains how "Eyes Without a Face" parallels their own transition story. Will Stockton sorts through his mixed emotions as a kid who loved horror films but is now unsettled by his troubled son's new Chucky doll. Interpreting "Halloween" as a coming-out story, Richard Scott Larson reflects on the physical and emotional masks people wear to hide their identities. Laura Maw recalls her girlhood crush on the character Annie, a teacher played by Suzanne Pleshette, in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds." Tosha R. Taylor compares Lon Chaney Jr.'s character in "The Wolf Man"--someone who can't contain the monster inside himself and whose father believes he can be cured--with her own childhood under her homophobic father and placating mother. S. Trimble's thoughtful essay on "The Exorcist" admits rooting for the monster; she writes: "Horror helped me love my terrible truths, the things about me that disquieted others."Other films examined include "Hereditary", "Pet Sematary", "The Blob", "Godzilla", "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "Get Out", the "Friday the 13th" franchise and "Sleepaway Camp", which editor Joe Vallese (What's Your Exit?, with Alicia A. Beale) calls "the at once deeply transphobic and effusively homoerotic cult slasher."This entertaining essay collection is filled with smart observations and touching autobiographical tales.