This edited collection focuses on gender and contemporary horror in film, examining how and if representations of gender in horror have changed.

Despite the constant changes in contemporary popular media, the horror genre retains its attraction for audiences of all backgrounds. This edited collection explores modern representations of gender in horror and how this factors into the genre's appeal.

Horror has found a resurgence on television in the post-millennial years. This book will investigate the changing and challenging roles that gender has undergone in TV horror, examining a range of shows, including Hannibal, American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, Penny Dreadful, Supernatural, The Exorcist, iZombie, and Bates Motel.

Examining the popularity of low-budget cinema, particularly slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films, the author argues that, while such films have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasure to their mostly male audiences, in actuality they align spectators not with the male tormentor but with the females being tormented--particularly the slasher movie's "final girls"--Who endure fear and degradation before rising to save themselves.--Adapted from publisher description.

The book investigates contemporary women directors who put 'a poetics of horror' to new use in their work, expanding the range of gendered and racialized perspectives in the horror genre.

In Recreational Terror, Isabel Cristina Pinedo analyzes how the contemporary horror film produces recreational terror as a pleasurable encounter with violence and danger for female spectators. She challenges the conventional wisdom that violent horror films can only degrade women and incite violence, and contends instead that the contemporary horror film speaks to the cultural need to express rage and terror in the midst of social upheaval.

“The Dread of Difference is a classic. Few film studies texts have been so widely read and so influential. It’s rarely on the shelf at my university library, so continuously does it circulate. Now this new edition expands the already comprehensive coverage of gender in the horror film with new essays on recent developments such as the Hostel series and torture porn. Informative and enlightening, this updated classic is an essential reference for fans and students of horror movies.”—Stephen Prince, editor of The Horror Film and author of Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality “An impressive array of distinguished scholars . . . gazes deeply into the darkness and then forms a Dionysian chorus reaffirming that sexuality and the monstrous are indeed mated in many horror films.”—Choice “An extremely useful introduction to recent thinking about gender issues within this genre.”—Film Theory