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Feeding the Monster: Why horror has a hold on us

Anna Bogutskaya

A captivating look at what draws us to the shocks and thrills of horror, by film critic and broadcaster Bogutskaya.

27 in stock

£12.99£9.99
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780571385775
Date Published
25.09.2025

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Summary

Zombies want brains. Vampires want blood. Cannibals want human flesh. All monsters need feeding.

Horror has been embraced by mainstream pop culture more than ever before, with horror characters and aesthetics infecting TV, music videos and even TikTok trends. Yet even with the commercial and critical success of The Babadook, Hereditary, Get Out, The Haunting of Hill House, Yellowjackets and countless other horror films and TV series over the last few years, loving the genre still prompts the question: what’s wrong with you? Implying, of course, that there is something not quite right about the people who make and consume it. In Feeding the Monster, Anna Bogutskaya dispels this notion once and for all by examining how horror responds to and fuels our feelings of fear, anxiety, pain, hunger and power.

Critic Reviews

A must-read for anyone seeking a refreshed perspective on the genre ... A worthy successor to Stephen King's Danse Macabre

Neil McRobert, Esquire

Critic Reviews

Personal in tone and omnivorous in its frame of reference, it’s timely and deeply empathetic.

Hephzibah Anderson, Observer

Critic Reviews

A handy guide to the screen life of horror . . . Bogutskaya's passion for her subject beats like a heart through the pages.

Catriona Ward, The Times

Critic Reviews

Wonderfully written and highly detailed, Feeding the Monster is both a deeply personal love letter to horror movies and a thorough feminist analysis of them, and I fiercely love it. The cannibal chapter is chef's kiss.

Chelsea G. Summers

Critic Reviews

Deliciously witty and astute. Anna Bogutskaya takes a microscope to horror and then flips it back on us and our deepest, darkest turmoil.

Prano Bailey-Bond

Critic Reviews

Anna Bogutskaya takes us beyond bad dreams and beasts, the monsters, vampires, ghosts and ghouls, into the human heart pounding deep inside horror. Once more proving why her voice is so needed in the regrettably dick-heavy genre landscape.

Terri White

AnnaBogutskaya

Anna Bogutskaya is a freelance critic, author, film programmer and creative producer. She writes for BBC Culture, Guardian, MUBI, the Face, TimeOut, amongst others, and programmes films for BFI, Edinburgh Film Festival and Fantastic Fest. She produces and hosts The Final Girls podcast, created and produced the horror anthology podcast Eerie and has produced podcasts for Paramount, Studiocanal, BFI and Vertigo Releasing, as well as contributing to many…

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AnnaBogutskaya

Anna Bogutskaya