Hispania

Jorge Marí's collection of essays entitled Tracing the Borders of Spanish Horror Cinema and Television does just what the title promises, within the timeframe of 1995-2015. The introduction outlines prior media scholarship on Spanish horror and points out the lack of existing work on "the renaissance of the horror genre in Spain" since 1995. The goal of this volume, then, is to explore "at length and in proper detail" significant cinematic and television productions within this period, emphasizing elements that are particularly Spanish, as well as those that are international (2).

Part 1, "The (Postmodern) Gothic," contains two essays that examine the gothic characteristics of three films. First, in "Trapped in the House of Mirrors: The Others as a Transnational Gothic Thriller," Santiago Juan-Navarro reads Alejandro Amenábar's film as "more concerned with the formal mastery of a new hybrid genre (the postmodern gothic thriller) than in making political, moral, or historical statements" (18). Hence, Juan-Navarro analyzes the concepts of space, superimposed realities, and "self-conscious" fiction (29) that make The Others an example of the "female gothic," questioning the boundaries between real and fictional worlds through "restraint, innuendo, and suspense" (22). Next, in "Contemporary Spanish Gothic Heroines," Ann Davies studies how Julia in Los ojos de Julia (Guillem Morales) and María in Hierro (Gabe Ibáñez) continue to assert subjectivity in their quest for "contingent meaning" (37). In opposition [End Page 647] to both postmodern and patriarchal "grand narratives" (38), both heroines utilize their senses (sight, touch) to persist in finding out the truth.

Both essays in Part 2, "Mothers, Children, Patriarchy, and the Biopolitics of Reproduction," propose new readings of social roles in popular films. Sohyun Lee's compelling and detailed argument in "Monstrous (Re)productions: Mothering Patriarchy on the Spanish Horror Screen" reads the "mother figure" as "(re)productions of female monstrosity [ … ] as a means to convey and maintain a patriarchal discourse" (53). Her examination of Andrés Muschietti's Mama and J. A. Bayona's El orfanato reveals that, although both films incorporate newer models of family social structure, they ultimately portray the mother as a mere "accessory for the father-ruled nuclear family" whose inferior, even "monstrous" status is perpetuated. Following Lee, in "Suspendido en el tiempo: Children and Contemporary Spanish Horror," Maria Pramaggiore considers three films: La habitación del niño (Álex de la Iglesia), No-Do (Elio Quiroga), and La casa muda (Gustavo Hernández). She asserts that the child is an instrument used to scrutinize "dark moments" in twentieth-century Spain and Uruguay, serving to criticize how reproduction was/is used as a political tool (68).

In Part 3, entitled "Sound, Vision, Media, and Intermediality," the authors focus on spectators in relation to sight and sound. Samuel Amago's aptly named "Dude, Where's my Phallus?!: Locating the Horror of La piel que habito," starts with a review of horror elements in films leading up to Pedro Almodóvar's horror-centered work (93). In engaging detail, Amago then shows how the main character him/herself becomes a media creation symbolizing male domination and desire, as well as "a metaphor for the future uncertainty of masculinity" (101). Anne Hardcastle's "Why They Film" investigates why fictional filmmakers in "found footage" films continue to record in the face of serious danger. The author concludes that, as with documentaries, the shooting continues in order to "produce documentation, evidence, and testimony," as well as entertainment (119). Martin Barnier's "Sound of Fear in Recent Spanish Films" describes various audio phenomena that heighten fear in the audience and characters in several films: acousmêtre (an unseen voice, 125), computers, video, and other "supernatural" sounds. Barnier suggests that "new technologies" of the 1990s are perceived as audio threats that shift into images in the 2000s.

As the longest section with four essays, Part 4, "The [REC] Phenomenon," is itself a testament to the popularity of the series. Several essays...