Horror House Film

Possession, Obsession, Domination, Masculinity

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by Evert Jan Van Leeuwen

Type

Essays

Subject

Genre > Horror

Keywords

horror, movie sets

Publishing date

2026 (April 28, 2026)

Publisher

Liverpool University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 256 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-83624-491-2

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Book Presentation:
Houses have a long history in horror. They often figure as the locus of hauntings, or play significant allegorical roles as embodiments of their proprietors’ minds. Such houses belong to the spectral Gothic. Horror House Film takes a different approach and analyses a collection of horror films – in different subgenres – in which the house is a solid, massive and often overbearing presence in the lives of the protagonists. These films are about the potentially pernicious effects of houses as material objects of ownership, possession and exploitation. The analyses reveal a strong link between a drive for home-ownership and a drive to possess and exploit other people. They locate this drive within a hegemonic masculinist culture that is closely related to what Erich Fromm has termed the being-is-having mode of human identity formation in contemporary materialistic Western societies, in which a people’s possessions define their selves. The grim and tragic stories told in these horror house films often revolve around the need to possess property as a means of shoring up ontological security, whilst the house owned proves to be no haven but a drain on both socioeconomic and psychological wellbeing.

About the Author:
Evert Jan van Leeuwen is a lecturer in English-language culture at Leiden University. He researches the history and development of English- and Dutch-language Gothic, horror, science fiction and noir fiction.

See the publisher website: Liverpool University Press