I’m always excited to stumble upon enough queer horror movies to fill one post, and it appeared I’d hit the lottery this time around. However, by the time I finished this triple feature, I was reminded that horror is in the eye of the beholder.
A SAVANNAH HAUNTING (2021)
Somehow, a movie touted as being based on a haunting the writer/director experienced in his own home in Savannah, Georgia turns partially into a lesbian teen sexual romance ghost story, so I’m guessing there were major liberties taken in telling the true story. Delicious.
Anyway, the writer/director also plays a sleazy sexy bigoted redneck handyman in the film, and the guy playing the husband of the main straight couple is a cutie too, so bonus for gay guys watching the film.
The couple and their teen daughter and pre-adolescent son move into a new home in Georgia. The mother is not coping well with the drowning of their younger daughter. She soon begins to experience classic signs of a haunting…things falling down stairs, a creepy doll that just won’t stay in the trash, her young son talking to an imaginary friend, etc.
Meanwhile, the troubled teen daughter begins having sexual encounters with a lesbian ghost who I believe is from the past but dresses like a modern day slut and uses cellphones.
And of course there’s a character who tries to warn the couple that they are in danger—a Black voodoo priestess who informs them the land was once a plantation and something dark and sinister happened involving slaves.
There’s a lot to work with there, but all we get is the slutty lesbian ghost and the ghost of the dead daughter. It’s like there are all these elements presented to tell a richer story, but they never pan out—or come together.
Even so, the film captures the feeling of everything from 1970s and 1980s haunted house movies to more modern ghost movies like The Conjuring and Paranormal Activity, so I was entertained. I just wish filmmakers would stop defaulting to “Mockingbird” as the song mothers sing to their children. No modern day mother sings “Mockingbird” to their children. Hell, even 30 years ago, Ross and Rachel sang “Baby Got Back” to Emma, not “Mockingbird”.
I SAW THE TV GLOW (2024)
As much promotion as this was getting as a trans horror film, I personally found it to be merely a horror adjacent film and more an allegory on trans identity. One of the main characters is trans in real life, but their trans identity is never discussed in the movie.
Artsy and beautifully drenched in vibrant neon colors, the film is about a young teen boy named Owen who meets a slightly older teen girl named Maddy (she is addressed with female pronouns in the movie) who is totally into this supernatural show called The Pink Opaque. Maddy begins to draw Owen into the show.
Weird horror visuals are presented through the characters’ viewings of the show—there are no horror elements in the actual movie.
There are also some nods to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, including one of the characters in the TV show being named Tara, and Amber Benson, who played lesbian character Tara on Buffy, in a fleeting cameo. Pretty clever.
The whole concept of The Pink Opaque show is about two girls discovering an underworld of monsters. Maddy often talks about reality and the show becoming blurred for her. Owen more than once runs away from her when she tries to invite him into the underworld, in essence her other world. See where this is going? She questions his sexuality (not gender identity), and he admits that he doesn’t really know, that he’s only into the TV show. It seems as if Owen is fascinated by, confused by, and scared of Maddy trying to show him who she really is—perhaps because he sees himself in her and what she’s going through. But again, this is all metaphorical, never a gender identity story that proudly comes out of the closet.
References on The Pink Opaque show include the line “they can’t hurt you, don’t think about them”, and the idea of being buried alive and suffocating, both quite applicable, I imagine, to feelings trans people experience.
The mere fact that Maddy gets lost in a TV show to escape her reality is something many queer people admit to, and very often in the horror/sci-fi/fantasy realms. In the end, I Saw the TV Glow comes across as a rather tragic story about how Maddy finds herself and tries to assist Owen in finding himself as well, but he simply can’t accept who he is.
GANYMEDE (2024)
As I Saw the TV Glow reminds us, for many queer people horror is a form of escape. And as I’ve said in recent times in movies I’ve covered in this age of trauma porn horror films, there’s a subset of queer trauma porn horror films that explore the horrors of being gay, and for many viewers it’s anything but an escape and hits too close to home. In other words, those types of horror movies, and this is one of them, need trigger warnings for queers because they are disturbing and upsetting. It’s the very reason my Comfort Cove horror series is about the joys of being gay in an all-gay city in which the monsters are actual supernatural entities.
Ganymede, which lands on the homo horror movies page, is about a star high school wrestler from a conservative Christian family who starts to fall for an openly gay kid.
As he starts to recognize his feelings, he is haunted by his own demons because his parents and reverend force hatred of queers on him.
The metaphorical demon parts are spooky and fleeting moments in what is otherwise an unsettling family drama. It’s beautifully written and acted, but this is not the kind of movie you watch for frightening fun. Also, if you’re queer, chances are you know how this story goes and/or have lived it. And if you’re not gay and/or anti-gay, it’s likely a story you won’t want to see. Be warned—there’s familial and religious abuse, self-loathing, and gay bashing.
The demon terrorizing the main kid is so awesome I wish it had been real, and I have to give it up for the fabulous gay ghost corpse that appears late in the film—in an odd segment that clashes with the tone of the rest of the film. It’s sort of that moment of levity we need in the midst of all the sadness and also a pivotal tool to segue away from the extremely heavy journey we’ve been on. There is a revelatory outcome if you watch the film to the end, and for some it should be very cathartic.
