Millennial Filmmakers and British Horror Cinema: How 4th Wave Feminist Empowerment Manifests Through Female Directed Horror

In the past five years British horror cinema has had a surge of female directed features.  From Alice Lowe’s Prevenge (2018) to Amulet (2020), the genre has been redefined in terms  of spectatorship and auteurism. Stella Hockenhull argues that female directors create  empowering films, and, using genre film to explore this, I wonder on a question asked by  Molly Haskell; is there such thing as a distinctly feminine approach to film making? (1975:73)

Feminist film theory hasn’t had a mainstream progression since Laura Mulvey’s work in the mid 70s, leaving outdated readings of female oppression in the forefront of our minds. Understanding the state of feminism today and its influence on society, we can understand what women are looking for in film to find empowerment. Using theories from Sarah Projansky, Alison Peirse, and Barbara Creed, this work will look at three films released since 2020: Saint Maud (2020), Promising Young Woman (2020), and Censor (2021), evaluating their empowerment through 4th wave feminist ideals. Female horror fans in Britain have a fascination with monstrous figures and strong female characters (Peirse 2020: 233), which is demonstrated by the three films I have chosen to discuss. The horror genre is home to many fans-turned-filmmakers, inviting a meta understanding of the conventions and expectations and allowing for women to control horror narratives in a phenomenon unseen anywhere else in cinema. This has both encouraged and empowered the development of ambiguous and destructive female protagonists across the genre.

Mainstream feminism from the early 2000s promotes an "explicitly white focused and implicitly racist depiction of the beginning of feminism" (Projansky 2001: 69). Furthermore, 4th wave feminism, starting in the 2010s, has no outward changes. The TV show Fleabag (2016), created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, is one of many dissociative feminist narratives emerging from 4th wave feminism. Emmeline Clein, writing for Buzzfeed, suggested that it was perhaps a reaction to the clumsy girlboss feminism of the noughties and sexy Cosmo quizzes doing nothing for women's rights. Clein proposes that "instead we now seem to be interiorising our existential aches and angst, smirking knowingly at them, and numbing ourselves to maintain our nonchalance." She dubbed this new outlook "dissociative feminism" (Clein 2019). Sarah Projansky writes that "the anti-feminists’ post-feminist feminist blame the oppression of women on a version of feminism that they imagine to exist" (2001: 71). Fleabag is a show about a self-destructive, detached, and depressed woman. She is the new "Young Millennial Woman – pretty, white, cisgender, and tortured enough to be interesting but not enough to be repulsive. Often described as 'relatable,' she is, in actuality, not" (Liu 2019). Fleabag presents a woman who can have everything yet still languishes in her self-hatred; the audience is aware of her privilege, yet her self-destruction makes her attainable. The same type of reaction swarmed around the 2020 TV adaptation of Sally Rooney's book Normal People (2018) and the character of Marianne. 

Fleabag © BBC/Two Brothers/Luke Varley

These TV shows cling to this removed sense of reality that seems to originate from the voices of millennial women in the film and arts industries; women like Emerald Fennell, Ana Lily Amirpour, even Lena Dunham and her show Girls (2012–2017). These shows also hold feminine trauma, whether this is a normalised eating disorder for Marianne or witnessing her best friend's suicide for Fleabag. This idea of grief and how it can corrupt is one of the reasons why these women are so important and so "relatable." This emotional turmoil is the dominant theme in the films I’ve chosen to discuss.

Women interpret these works as empowering because they reflect a certain helplessness. They represent white women in places of privilege feeling stuck, powerless, and cynical. Kristin Scott Thomas' famous monologue from season 2 of Fleabag states that "women are made with pain built-in" and is endlessly circulated in feminist circles. Yet it is never denied, never mocked. It is brave enough to create the question: "Why are the very women who, in theory, hold the most social power so interested in divesting themselves of it?" (Liu 2019). Cassie from Promising Young Woman is an almost perfect example of this: her self-destructive nature and awareness of her privilege and grief are vital aspects of her characterisation. The film follows a med school dropout who, after a tragedy in her past, preys on predatory men at night. The audience finds her relatable even though she has been frozen in time by her grief. We, as an audience, do not know Cassie. Emerald Fennell manages to capture a devastating story narrated by a character of whom we barely glean the surface. Cassie dissociates from almost everything, remaining detached even when men assault her, staring at the ceiling unsurprised and resigned. She doesn't even remember her birthday. The devastation of Nina's passing leaves her stuck. Her character is not meant to empower the audience but somewhat reflect it.

The rape-revenge narrative can be found everywhere, from French avant-garde to the Hollywood blockbuster. Evolving from seventies exploitation cinema and gaining mainstream traction, the most common academic study of the sub-genre is the 1978 film I Spit on Your Grave, which Carol J. Clover describes as shocking, "not because it is alien but because it is too familiar, because we recognise that the emotions it engages are regularly engaged by the big screen but almost never bluntly acknowledged for what they are" (2015: 120). This reflection is perhaps why audiences reacted so strongly to Promising Young Woman. It was not about a direct, violent assault and the idea that "rape, or the threat of rape, is a lever that transforms a woman into a powerful and independent agent who can protect herself" (Projansky 2001: 100). Cassie is vulnerable, and she is aware of her vulnerability.

This year, Edgar Wright and Ridley Scott have also presented rape-revenge narratives with Last Night in Soho (2021) and The Last Duel (2021). Both films met with mixed reactions and a disappointing box office draw, despite the online aggregator Rotten Tomatoes awarding them both scores over 70%. These films, and Promising Young Woman, have strayed from the typical formula that dictates rape revenge. I am hesitant to call them that at all.

Photo by Focus Features - © 2019 PROMISING WOMAN, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Cassie has a decisively dissociative reaction to many things in this film, which seems increasingly common in narratives following millennial women, written by millennial women. As an outlier in a world built of people following a patriarchal agenda, her presence allows for "two conflicting versions of feminism—one that encourages women to be free to express their sexuality and another that warns women to protect themselves from sexual violence" (Projansky 2001: 92). Cassie speaks out in a way that isn't "socially acceptable" to the audience; staring down catcallers rather than putting her head down, being rude to customers in her workplace, and avenging her friend through non-lethal psychological trickery. She confronts the University Dean who dismissed Nina's assault, giving her abuser the "benefit of the doubt," and tells her she left her daughter in a frat house with alcohol. The dialogue following the Dean’s victim-blaming of Nina until she finds her daughter in possible danger is unnervingly familiar and dangerously accurate. These characters are oblivious, turning a blind eye until it affects them directly. It’s also proven with Alison Brie’s character Madison earlier in the film—she laughs off the assault until she believes herself to have been assaulted. However, Cassie does not enjoy this; there is no satisfaction in other women’s pain. Part of the film’s trick is that Cassie is no avenging angel; there is no euphoria in her actions, no catharsis in her vengeance. In rape-revenge narratives, "the castrating woman, usually a sympathetic figure, is rarely punished" (Creed 1993: 123), and yet Cassie knows the consequences. She is aware of how unsustainable her life is, and the cost of this is her death. There is no room in a world of rape culture for people who ask questions. She is an anomaly.

Surprisingly, Cassie’s more minor actions become empowering to the audience. The actions that are deemed not "socially acceptable" are the parts we latch on to. Almost like a love letter, Fennell manages to contain a litany of misogynistic microaggressions throughout the film, and Cassie has a retort, eye roll, or dead stare for each one. The film makes young white women feel seen. In Alison Peirse’s book Women Make Horror, Sonia Lupher establishes that "female horror filmmakers turn to the genre because they are fans, and because they read horror films as legitimising women’s fears and experiences in a creative and cathartic way" (2020: 224). Promising Young Woman can be read as empowering through its delivery. The sets and wardrobe for this film look like they were manifested directly off a "pastel Instagram aesthetic" Pinterest board. The styling is unashamedly cliché and feminine; Cassie wears ribbons in her hair, bubble-gum pink and soft green, a constructed caricature of happiness. It’s a pretty film, mood-boarding like a millennial woman’s dream of latte art and cherry-print t-shirts. Cassie is broken on the inside, but that doesn’t mean she has to look that way. This film wasn’t made to be explicitly empowering to women, despite many interpretations of its messaging. Promising Young Woman is a film created inside a layer of deception—from the marketing to the narrative to the characterisations. Even the casting was explicitly done to trick the viewers. Cassie is not a "girl boss," nor is she taking revenge. Instead, it seems to embody the idea that "life in rape culture manifests as a quiet, constant drain on your sense of security" (Doyle 2019: 38) and how, after being exposed to the failure of justice, authority, and your friends, you become something other.

This direction of the film’s narrative is argued as a "post-#MeToo film," the 2017 public scandal exposing well-known men in power for sexual abuse and harassment. Part of Promising Young Woman focuses on the idea of "nice guys," the type of man who truly believes he is a model citizen—and so do you. Promising Young Woman’s casting reflects this by using well-known comedians and heartthrobs of the 2000s and early 2010s—actors like Bo Burnham, Adam Brody, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. The audience goes into the film with a false sense of security. How could one link these famously funny men, these "nice guys," with a scathing social commentary? The farce of the film, the hollow feeling the audience gets, is perhaps like the shock of many people at home on their phones seeing these assault allegations. How, in 2017, the abuse of power and women was still extensive. The film itself is a ruse. The marketing allowed Cassie to come across as a "girl boss," a murderous siren, yet perhaps the most empowering part of Promising Young Woman is also the most controversial. An anticlimactic ending, a desolate, bleak outlook that left people angry and feeling cheated. Cassie had a victory, hollow as it was, yet we do not rejoice. She dies brutally.

One of the more deliberate choices that Emerald Fennell makes is the fact that the film does not mention the word "rape," nor is there a single second of nudity. There is no exploitation here, just trauma, grief, and the aftermath of a horrific event. The "empowerment" this performs is questionable and problematic. We recognise everything in this film, from throwaway comments about women wearing makeup to the easy slut-shaming performed by rejected men. Culturally, there is a belief that "rape is a symbolic act defending masculinity against women" (Schubart 2007: 28), which is why feminism and rape-revenge tend to have a complicated relationship. The film’s UK release date only punctuated the outrage and desperation felt by women across the country after the systematic failures of the police in March 2021, becoming available to stream a month after Sarah Everard was killed. Promising Young Woman is not a new story, nor is it particularly groundbreaking, but it is a product of socio-political tensions and rape culture in today’s society. This film is "a way for women to enjoy genre films as metaphors for everyday female experience" (Lupher in Peirse 2020: 225). Allison Gillmor argues that "for many women, the horror genre is profoundly cathartic: it constructs imaginary spaces where they can work through true-life trauma" (Gillmor in Peirse 2020: 225).

Gillmor’s ideas of navigating trauma can be seen in several female-directed horror films, including Censor (2021) and Saint Maud (2018). Following Hockenhull’s first observation that films made by women are empowering, we often overlook horror films unless they are psychoanalytical or related to stock characters. Prano Bailey-Bond made her feature film debut with Censor in 2021, a psychological horror following Enid, a film censor in 1985, the height of the video nasty hysteria. The narrative sees Enid watching a film that evokes suppressed memories from her childhood when her sister went missing. Film and reality begin to distort as she investigates the director.

Niamh Algar in Censor (2021)

In an interview with Mike Muncer for the podcast The Evolution of Horror, Bailey-Bond revealed that she didn’t originally intend for Enid’s character to be a woman. The script, much like her short Nasty (2015), started as a male censor. Bailey-Bond wanted to question if the violent imagery horror possesses can influence us to commit violent acts, then further posed the question: what protects a film censor from losing control? The director was interested in the idea of being a bad person, and if this was a male character it would lean more toward sexual violence. Having seen enough violence towards women in the genre, Bailey-Bond introduced Enid (Muncer 2021). By having the focus of the narrative on how a woman is being affected by these films, it allows for a more empowering, but also meta, reading. This is recognised in the script when Enid is approached by a film producer and offered a job on screen. She simply replies: "I’m not sure how much I like the idea of being raped and cut into pieces on camera." To which he replies: "No, but the public would love it."

The female horror fan in popular culture is only a recent phenomenon despite women making up a vital part of the attendance and culture of horror films in the past 50 years (Peirse 2020: 222). Society in the 80s thought these horror films and video nasties would turn us all into monsters, following Stephen King’s observation that horror is "morbidity unchained, our most base instincts set free, our nastiest fantasies realised" (King 1981: 175). The choice to make this film about a woman allows for a more nuanced dissection of violence and self-doubt.

One of the reasons I argue that Censor is empowering is through the narrative ambiguity surrounding Enid. The plot never specifies what happened to her sister, Nina, allowing us the space to believe that Enid could have taken her into the woods and killed her purposefully. It’s my preferred reading of the film. The blame Enid’s mother harbours for her and the isolation she experiences parallels contemporary "elevated" horror films like Hereditary (2018) and The Babadook (2014). Discourse between mothers and their children is becoming increasingly commonplace in female-directed narratives, and it translates in the carer positions the protagonists of Saint Maud and Censor possess. It is under Enid’s care that her sister vanishes, just as Maud’s patient dies under her charge. Throughout the noughties and early 2010s, female power was aligned with moral responsibility (Short 2006: 40), and yet the failure of these tasks does not make Enid or Maud less. Amelia Moses’ indication that many female directors of horror like to reclaim "tropes and narratives that are problematic" (Moses in Peirse 2020: 225) can be argued whilst reading these films. Much like how bad men are associated with sexual violence, bad women are intrinsically linked to moral failure and rejection of any maternal future. Both films could be read as a satirical commentary on women as "caretakers."

The short film Childer (2016), directed by Aislínn Clarke, questions the expectations of motherhood: "a mother is expected to be self-sacrificing, selfless and wholly in service of her children and is seen as a terrible person if she falls short" (Peirse 2020: 227). As Censor started with this question about horror making us bad people, Bailey-Bond creates a character who fails at this feminine expectation and spends the rest of her life trying to make up for it. Enid states that she wants to protect people through her work, and her life starts to unravel when she finds out a man has killed his wife and eaten her face—an act committed in one of the films she censored. Filmmakers like Cronenberg have suggested that "censors tend to do what only psychotics do; confuse reality with illusion" (1987), which is what Enid does. Spiralling in the failure of her past and present, Enid is too far gone in her obsession to recognise her own innocence when it is revealed that the killer never watched the accused film. I am hesitant to lean into a more postfeminist reading of the film, as it can also be argued that there is no inherent feminism present in women’s horror cinema. Any apparent subversion of the horror genre in female-directed films must be considered first and foremost as natural expressions of repetition with difference (Peirse 2020: 224).

Following this lead, Censor introduces an empowering representation through a stilted reading of self-fulfilling prophecy, indulging a satirical take on femininity. Interestingly, the flickering imagery used in Censor’s final act can also be found in Marvel’s WandaVision (2021), with eerily similar visuals. Both flicker between worlds of coloured filters and dreary blue palettes: the world of make-believe obnoxiously bright and happy, and the "real world" harsh and dull to juxtapose the false construction of their imagination. Wanda and Enid both strive for a world with a nuclear family. Enid’s fantasy portrays the same world as the VHS she picked up earlier in the film: rainbows and brilliant technicolour frame a smiling family. It was titled The Day The World Began. Wanda mirrors the set of old American sitcoms: I Dream of Jeannie (1965), The Brady Bunch (1969), and Full House (1987). Both narratives follow women after trauma. By creating this "fantasy," both characters parody the patriarchal belief that "the feminine imagination is essentially non-violent, peaceful, and unaggressive" (Creed 1993: 156). Enid and Wanda create a false reality to mask the harm they are causing themselves and others. It is only after the dream fractures that the audience is welcomed beyond their fantasy to see other characters screaming in fear and pain or silently crying. "The women are performing femininity while simultaneously functioning independently and successfully in masculine areas" (Projansky 2001: 82), causing harm whilst layering fabricated masks of childhood nostalgia and comfort. This construction can also be found in Promising Young Woman through Cassie’s wardrobe.

Alison Peirse observed that there is a "weird, preconceived notion that women and horror films don’t mix" (2020: 7), which is a question Censor ponders throughout the narrative. The film starts with a cut from a real video nasty as Enid unflinchingly watches a girl get violently dragged into darkness. "Eye gouging must go!" is underlined on her pad as she rewinds the scene, looking for another figure in the darkness of the screen. Her control is tightly wound; she resembles a schoolmistress with her glasses on a gold chain and her hair perfectly styled. As the narrative unwinds, so does Enid’s hair, until it is unbound and long, falling down her back—visually exposing her fall from sanity: "a collapse of the false self is necessary for the real self to emerge" (Janisse 2012: 148). This visual representation of the "unhinged" woman through long, loose hair is a popular one, also visited in Jennifer’s Body (2009), Saint Maud, and The Witch (2015). In the final scenes there is a return to meta readings as Enid runs in a white nightgown, laughing as blood drips down her face. The image itself is empowering to female horror fans, who see this image in history so often followed by brutal voyeuristic murder.

As a horror fan, Bailey-Bond allows the audience to experience a different type of spectator position through Enid, who watches these banned films with brutal efficiency, unwavering when her co-workers are covering their eyes. Kier-La Janisse suggests that "watching horror is cathartic because it provides a temporary feeling of control over one unknown factor that can’t be controlled" (2012: 9). In most cases this factor can be translated to death, and yet here it’s referencing the monster that lives under Enid’s skin. Creed argues that the spectator switches identification between victim and monster depending on the degree to which the spectator wishes to be terrified and/or terrify (1993: 155). The meta understanding of the spectator in Censor invites the horror fan to reconcile the genre with the turbulence of moral panic that clouded artistic freedom in the 80s. In her short Nasty, Bailey-Bond parodies video nasties turning us all into monsters; in Censor she invites us to celebrate it.

In the intervention of "elevated" horror, young audiences have an increased desire to watch women go insane. Viewers joke about "girlbosses" and applaud the unhinged protagonists as they spiral into feral fervour. These protagonists include characters like Thomasin from The Witch, Cassie in Promising Young Woman, and Maud in Saint Maud. "Female fandom plays a crucial role in the way female horror filmmakers activate gender generative forces towards a female-focused end" (Peirse 2020: 224). The fascination with the breakdown of the female psyche can be empowering for female audiences and is often more favoured by them too. Films like Midsommar and Raw (2016) are far less lauded by a male audience. Saint Maud follows this lingering theme of feminine pain and trauma. The narrative follows Maud, a recent Catholic convert working for a private caring practice after an undisclosed but traumatic event at her last job in a hospital. As she starts to care for Amanda, a dancer with terminal cancer, she believes it is her religious duty to save her soul and she begins to descend into obsession.

Morfydd Clark in Saint Maud (2019)

There are moments throughout Saint Maud that feel decisively feminine. Much like Julia Docournau’s feature Raw, the relationship between body and mind is not sexualised or trivialised for voyeuristic purposes. Despite Alison Peirse claiming that there is "no specific woman to find, no universal experience applicable to all" (2020: 9), if a man made this film, it wouldn’t have the same echoing reaction. Glass’ take on body horror is refreshing and exemplary in terms of the female subject. Historically, horror has been a safe space for men to discuss and experiment with taboo or controversial subjects. Having a female-directed film about a woman’s toxic piety allows for a female audience to have a greater connection to their own thoughts and desires surrounding religion and the body—empowering them. Morfydd Clarke is a physically small woman, and the assumed frailty of her character juxtaposes her conviction and drive to complete her mission from God. Parallels have been drawn with the film and others like Midsommar (2019), The Witch, and even shows like Midnight Mass (2021). The experience of watching Saint Maud is much more individual and claustrophobic than the overwhelming oppression of Dani’s self-destructiveness in Midsommar. The small seaside town embraces the idea of entrapment. Glass invites elements of social realism in the film, from the distressing pub scene to the pins in Maud’s shoes. Filmed in Scarborough, the faded glamour and stickiness of the setting is just as dark and suffocatingly stilted as Maud’s persevering dedication.

Religion, women, and horror have had a long-standing partnership when it comes to genre cinema. Cult classics like Carrie (1976), The Devils (1971), and even Witchfinder General (1968) present dark obsessive narratives about repression, control, and feminine destruction. When watching these films, it is often the religious fanatic that unsettles audiences most; characters like Margaret White and Bev Keane expose our disturbing fascination with devotion. "Horror films speak to our deepest fears, and most terrifying fantasies" (Creed 1993: 155). Maud lingers on the phrase "never waste your pain" when reading the William Blake book Amanda gifted her. Scars cover her lower abdomen and beads line her prayer mat; her pain is both grounding and beyond. Glass allows Maud to have autonomy through the film, subverting usual tropes surrounding body horror—Maud’s pain is not exploited. Critics will read this as feminist despite the lack of empowerment self-harm promotes. Her self-flagellation is not a new concept in terms of Catholicism, and as "images of blood, vomit, piss, shit, etc. are central to a culturally/socially constructed notion of the horrific" (Creed 1993: 13), Maud fluctuates between clean order and messy disturbance. In Censor, Enid struggles with the concept of being a bad person, but Maud is aware of her imperfections, tortured by her hedonistic past and desiring to feel her penance to God, the connection otherworldly.

Maud’s body holds the scars of her mental deterioration. Her sanity is so delicate that when she is accused of being insane, she breaks down instantly (Janisse 2012: 133). The detached feminist is seen in a more abstract light here—Maud’s loneliness manifests through her relationship with God, and when Amanda questions this she lashes out, hitting her. Millennial filmmakers find catharsis in the mental deterioration of the women on screen. As a recurring theme that seems to be becoming more and more popular in female-written and -directed work, the corruption of grief is difficult to assess in terms of audience empowerment. Horror tends to focus on the actions that cause trauma, so by having the narrative be focused on the aftermath, we explore the character’s mental health and neuroses through the storyline. Gérard Lenne stated that the horror of mental health is somehow ameliorated not only because it is understandable, but because it is a supposedly "female" illness (Lenne in Creed 1993: 4). Many read Saint Maud through the lens of mental illness, and Glass invites this reading through the ending shot—the last thing the audience sees is her screaming in agony, free from illusion. Despite its popularity with audiences, and recurrence in female-led horror films, the connection between gender and mental health on screen is questionably lopsided. The taboo of male mental health is rejected in the genre film, with only contemporary examples like Joker (2019) recognising the same chords that films like Black Swan (2010) do. Despite understanding the burden of feminine self-expectation, the self-destructive rejection of possibility renders Maud incapable of moving on. Her immobility reflects the dissociation of women in the past ten years; even when she is assaulted, she simply lies there, eyes glassy.

"A decade ago, thousands of young British people took to the streets to register their fury, variously, at the police shooting of Mark Duggan, the rise in tuition fees and the axing of the Educational Maintenance Allowance. They already felt betrayed by those meant to protect them and those elected to represent them" (Self 2021).

In 2022 we have minimal changes; we riot again over the killing of women who are told not to walk alone. Millennials and Gen Z feel stuck, much like these characters are. Promising Young Woman reflects casual misogyny and the flippancy of rape culture, Censor satirises the female caretaker position, questioning female "evilness," and Saint Maud corresponds to this exploration of mental health and obsession in a decisively feminine deterioration. Millennials, women in particular, cling to aspects of control. In the worlds they create they allow female characters "a manic attempt to gain control back; even by the most irrational means" (Janisse 2012: 134) for a cathartic release. Hockenhull’s deduction that female-directed films are empowering is a false notion of optimism. In the past five years, features directed by women in the UK have remained experimental in terms of subject matter, yet they all cling to this idea of stillness in a world that moves on around them. Whilst none of these women have conflicts involving typically feminine "struggles" like not having children by the age of 30, they all resonate to a deeper understanding of generational trauma and deterioration of the feminine psyche. "Horror is a genre that paradoxically thrives in times of depression or war—like comedy it is comfortingly cathartic" (Odell and Le Blanc 2007: 32), and its resurgence in mainstream and British cinema is no exception.

Filmography

Film

• Amulet. 2020. [Film] Directed by Romola Garai. United Kingdom: AMP International, Dignity Film Finance, Kreo Films

• Black Swan. 2010. [Film] Directed by Darren Aronofsky. United States: Cross Creek Pictures, Dune Entertainment

• Carrie. 1976. [Film] Directed by Brian De Palma. United States: Red Bank Films Censor. 2021. [Film] Directed by Prano Bailey-Bond. United Kingdom: Film4, Silver Childer. 2016. [Short Film] Directed by Aislinn Clarke. United Kingdom: Causeway Pictures Salt Films

• Hereditary. 2018. [Film] Directed by Ari Aster. United States: A24.

• I Spit On Your Grave. 1978. [Film] Directed by Meir Zarchi. United States: Cinemagic Pictures

• Jennifer’s Body. 2009. [Film] Directed by Karyn Kusama. United states: Fox Atomic, Dune Entertainment

• Joker. 2019. [Film] Directed by Todd Phillips. United States: Warner Bros. Pictures

• Last Night In Soho. 2021. [Film] Directed by Edgar Wright. United Kingdom: Film4, Perfect World Pictures

• Long Live the New Flesh: The Films of David Cronenberg. 1987. [film] Directed by L. Postma. UK: Channel 4.

• Midsommar. 2019. [Film] Directed by Ari Aster. United States: Square Peg, B-Reel Films Nasty. 2015. [Short Film] Directed by Prano Bailey-Bond. United Kingdom: Soul Rebel Films

• Prevenge. 2018. [Film] Directed by Alice Lowe. United Kingdom: Western Edge Pictures, Ffilm Cymru Wales

• Promising Young Woman. 2020. [Film] Directed by Emerald Fennell. United Kingdom, United States: FilmNations Entertainment, LuckyChap Entertainment

• Raw. 2016. [Film] Directed by Julia Ducournau. France: Petit Film, Rogue International Saint Maud. 2020. [Film] Directed by Rose Glass. United Kingdom: Film4, StudioCanal

• The Babadook. 2014. [Film] Directed by Jennifer Kent. Australia: Screen Australia, Causeway Films

• The Devils. 1971. [Film] Directed by Ken Russell. United Kingdom: Russo Productions

• The Last Duel. 2021. [Film] Directed by Ridley Scott. United Kingdom, United States: Scott Free Productions

• The Witch. 2015. [Film] Directed by R. Eggers. United States: A24.

• Witchfinder General. 1968. [Film] Directed by Michael Reeves. United Kingdom: Tigon British Film Production, American International Pictures

Television

• Fleabag (2016- 2019) [TV Programme] United Kingdom: Two Brothers Pictures

• Full House (1987-1995) [TV Programme] United States: Jeff Franklin Productions, Lorimar Telepictures

• Girls (2012-2017) [TV Programme] United States: Apatow Productions

• I Dream Of Jeannie (1965-1970) [TV Programme] United States: Screen Gems Television, Sidney Sheldon Productions

• Midnight Mass (2021) [TV Programme] United States: Intrepid Pictures, Netflix Productions

• Normal People (2020) [TV Programme] United Kingdom: Element Pictures, BBC, Hulu Originals

• The Brady Bunch (1969-1974) [TV Programme] United States: Paramount Television, Redwood Productions, ABC

• WandaVision (2021) [TV Programme] United States: Marvel Studios, Disney

Bibliography

• Clein, E. (2019) ‘The Smartest Women I Know Are All Dissociating’ In: Buzzfeed News 20/11/2019 At: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmelineclein/dissociation feminism-women-fleabag-twitter (Accessed 5/1/2022)

• Clover, C., (2015). Men, Women, And Chainsaws. New Jersey: Princeton University Press

• Creed, B. (1993) The Monstrous Feminine. New York: Routledge

• Doyle, S. (2019) Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers. New York: Melville House Publishing

• Fletcher, R., 2020. Saint Maud and the True Horror of Broken Minds and Bodies | Den of Geek. Den of Geek. Available at: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/saint maud-and-the-true-horror-of-broken-minds-and-bodies/ (Accessed 27 January 2022).

• Haskell, M. (1975). Are Women Directors Different? In: Village Voice 3/02/1975 Janisse, K. (2012) House of Psychotic Women. Surrey, England: FAB Press King, S. (1981) Danse Macabre. New York: Everest House

• Liu, R. (2019) ‘The Making of a Millennial Woman’ In: Another Gaze 12/6/2019 At: https://www.anothergaze.com/making-millennial-woman-feminist-capitalist fleabag-girls-sally-rooney-lena-dunham-unlikeable-female-character-relatable/ (Accessed 5/1/2022)

• Muncer, M. (2021). WOMEN IN HORROR MONTH: Censor (2021) and other recommendations. [podcast] The Evolution of Horror. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/episode/66ud3tg6d47kLCbKWUvyK2?si=SMgppkEtTvOj3AS wYvTIeg. (Accessed 19 December 2021)

• Odell, C and Le Blanc, M. (2007) Horror Films. Herts, UK: Kamera Books

• Peirse, A. (2020) Women Make Horror. New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press

• Projansky, S. (2001) Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture. New York and London: New York University Press

• Rooney, S. (2018) Normal People. Ireland: Faber & Faber

• Schubart, R. (2007) Super Bitches and Action Babes: The Female Hero in Popular Cinema. North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc.

• Self, A (2021) ‘Forget pensions—why Britain’s millennials are preparing for social collapse’ In Prospect Magazine 28/03/2021 At: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/uk-millennials-age-generation-divide jobs-youth-employment (Accessed 26/01/2022)

• Short, S. (2006). Misfit Sisters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan