{"id":98637,"date":"2025-10-17T11:11:37","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T15:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/?post_type=cu_story&p=98637"},"modified":"2025-10-20T21:50:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T01:50:23","slug":"research-indigenous-stereotypes-horror-films","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/research-indigenous-stereotypes-horror-films\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear Factor: Carleton Researcher Explores Indigenous Stereotypes in Horror Films"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Fear Factor: Carleton Researcher Explores Indigenous Stereotypes in Horror Films\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

Twenty years ago, Laura Hall<\/a> saw a movie and had an epiphany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The longtime fan of horror films sat down to watch The Descent<\/em>, a 2005 British production in which a group of women explore a spooky cave system. Cue the monsters and mayhem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA woman falls into a deep pool of thick blood and emerges only to be attacked by a cannibalistic humanoid in the depths of caves in Cherokee homelands,\u201d Hall, now a sociology and anthropology<\/a> professor at Carleton University, writes in the opening of her brand-new book Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes: Settler Colonialism in Horror<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Carleton University sociology and anthropology professor Laura Hall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey aren\u2019t really still making movies depicting Indigenous people as cannibals,\u201d she thought at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cNo way! They are! This isn\u2019t just a \u2018past problem.’\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Hall\u2019s realization \u2014 that even in the 21st<\/sup> century, horror films rely on racist Indigenous stereotypes to scare audiences \u2014 sent her in a new research direction. And while she remains an aficionado of the genre, watching Halloween<\/em> every Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre<\/em> at least once a year (when her kids are asleep and her partner is out), as her book reveals, there\u2019s a lot to unpack from a critical academic perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany horror movie narratives are about conflict between civilization and savagery,\u201d says Hall, \u201cand many of the demons that attack people are racialized \u2018primitives\u2019 with not-too-subtle elements of indigeneity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Faceless<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Love for Horror and Halloween<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in Sudbury, Ont., Hall developed a love for scary stories and over-the-top Halloween decorations from her father, who was born in England and worked as an engineer in the mining industry. (\u201cI became a diehard environmental and Indigenous rights activist, of course, living in a mining community,\u201d she quips.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1980s, horror films were mainstream. By age 12, she was renting moves like Friday the<\/em> 13th<\/em> on videotape with her friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hall\u2019s upbringing was also shaped by her mother\u2019s Mohawk side of the family, who were from Kahnawake, Que. She fished, picked blueberries and was encouraged by her mother to learn about Mohawk history and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even though she was exposed to Indigenous tropes in the moves she watched \u2014 the zombie animals in Pet Sematary<\/em> and haunted house in Poltergeist<\/em>, for example, are both spawned by ancient \u201cIndian\u201d burial grounds \u2014 Hall\u2019s research and cinematic interests didn\u2019t intersect until she saw The Descent<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Promotional poster for The Descent (Neil Marshall, UK, 2005). Celador Films \/ Path\u00e9 \/ Lionsgate<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After an undergraduate degree in Canadian Studies<\/a> at Carleton, Hall went to grad school in Toronto, where she scoured reference libraries for academic analyses of horror films and rented \u201cweird movies\u201d from Suspect Video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, nearly two decades later, she makes some eye-opening observations in Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes, among them the idea that the violence inflicted upon Indigenous Peoples by colonizers is often inverted in film.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIt is this appropriation of Indigenous suffering that makes horror so crucial to settler colonial storytelling,\u201d she writes.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cHorror may seem to disrupt settler worlds, but it appropriates the suffering and bloody violence of colonization\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe idea then becomes that fantasies of this kind of suffering and fear can be projected onto the screen for white settlers to consume. Indigenous Peoples have seen genocide and ecocide, only to birth new generations in a world overtaken by colonizers who both appropriate and disappear those stories, all while making this twisted notion of the savage, the Indian, into the real<\/em> monster. Alongside appropriations of suffering, there are those fears that the colonized will seek revenge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Man<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Horror Stories Reinforcing Indigenous Stereotypes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Amid the drawn-out response to the calls to action from Canada\u2019s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Hall argues that efforts to seek equity and justice can be undercut by fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cMany of these movies portray Indigenous women as monsters,\u201d she says.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cIn this realm of storytelling, this notion of savagery is continuously reinforced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can the average Canadian respond with empathy, she asks, when they\u2019re being taught to fear?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This doesn\u2019t mean Hall wants horror films to be censored. She\u2019s an advocate for critical thinking, so people understanding what they\u2019re watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Poster
Promotional poster for Slash\/Back (Nyla Innuksuk, Canada, 2022). Mixtape VR \/ Good Question Media \/ Scythia Films \/ Stellar Citizens.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt makes horror even more interesting if you\u2019re analytical,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWe should be able to have conversations about \u2018Indian\u2019 burial grounds and the real depths of these issues.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Hall also calls for space for more Indigenous-made horror movies, a burgeoning genre that includes 2022\u2019s Slash\/Back<\/em>, director by Inuit filmmaker Nyla Innuksuk, in which a group of girls work together to fight an alien invasion in Nunavut (which Hall calls a \u201cpretty good metaphor for colonization\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe original horror of the North American continent unfolded in 1492, with the onset of mass European arrival, invasion, and genocide,\u201d she writes in the conclusion of Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes.<\/em> \u201cDecolonization necessitates material as well as ideological renewal and return for Indigenous Peoples. Telling better stories is also about providing the material basis for Indigenous people to tell those stories ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Book
Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes: Settler Colonialism in Horror by Laura Hall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twenty years ago, Laura Hall saw a movie and had an epiphany. The longtime fan of horror films sat down to watch The Descent, a 2005 British production in which a group of women explore a spooky cave system. Cue the monsters and mayhem. \u201cA woman falls into a deep pool of thick blood and emerges only to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":99043,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[13],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-98637","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-research-discovery"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/98637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/98637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99129,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/98637\/revisions\/99129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=98637"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=98637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}