In Apocalyptic Dread, Kirsten Moana Thompson examines how fears and anxieties about the future are reflected in recent American cinema. Through close readings of such films as Cape Fear, Candyman, Dolores Claiborne, Se7en, Signs, and War of the Worlds, Thompson argues that a longstanding American apocalyptic tradition permeates our popular culture, spreading from science-fiction and disaster films into horror, crime, and melodrama. Drawing upon Kierkegaard’s notion of dread—that is, a fundamental anxiety and ambivalence about existential choice and the future—Thompson suggests that the apocalyptic dread revealed in these films, and its guiding tropes of violence, retribution, and renewal, also reveal deep-seated anxieties about historical fragmentation and change, anxieties that are in turn displaced onto each film’s particular ‘monster, ‘ whether human, demonic, or eschatological.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Apocalyptic Dread, Kierkegaard, and the Cultural Landscape of the Millennium
2. Cape Fear and Trembling: Familial Dread
3. Strange Fruit: Candyman and Supernatural Dread
4. Dolores Claiborne: Memorial Dread
5. Se7en in the Morgue: Dystopian Dread
6. Signs of the End of the World: Apocalyptic Dread
7. War of the Worlds: Uncanny Dread
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the author
Kirsten Moana Thompson is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Wayne State University and coeditor (with Terri Ginsberg) of
Perspectives on German Cinema.
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