Brandon R. Grafius' 3 favorite reads in 2023

Means Coleman’s book does what the best histories do – it takes familiar material and asks us to look at it in new ways, see patterns we’d never noticed before, and re-evaluate what we think we know.

It’s a magisterial tour through the history of American horror films, focusing on the role black Americans have played in these movies.

While engaging with the now commonplace trope that “the black guy dies first,” Means Coleman goes far beyond these generalities to look at places of resistance, the frustration of talents that went wasted through the racism of American culture and the Hollywood Studio system, and what the most recent decade of horror films might tell us about the future of race in America.

Chapman’s brilliant novel is part ghost story, part addiction narrative, and all white-knuckle horror.

The painful sharpness with which the characters are drawn seems to indicate they could only have come out of real life; regardless of whether this is true, readers who have known anyone who has struggled with addiction will surely recognize these characters.

It’s a book that hurts in the way that the best horror is supposed to.

Poole builds off his remarkable 2018 Wasteland to explore the tangled relationship between the American horror film and the empire.

For Poole, the most dangerous films are those that imply that we can overcome any evil if we stick together, put our minds to it, and use a little American muscle and know-how.

Through this framework, a film like Jaws is convincingly read as a movie that makes us feel better about our role as dominators of the world, and the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels fit in perfectly with the callousness and cruelty of the 1980s. And rather than being a dry, academic tome – it’s a lot of fun to read.