Sabrina Martins - BA English & Comparative Literature

'Nature Strikes Back!': Representations of Climate Change in Horror Films

Horror is a genre that constantly redefines itself. With the rise of ecocriticism, ecohorror – films in which fear is incited by the non-human world rebelling against mankind – is gaining more attention. When watching Them (1954), The Birds (1963), Jaws (1975), The Host (2006) and more recently Annihilation (2018), it is hard not to see in them an echo of humanity’s mistreatment of its planet and a reflection of the
current climate emergency. Rather than simply focusing on the ecological morality of these stories, I wish to explore how the environment is portrayed and designated, and see what it tells us about our relationship with it. Horror and our conception of the  environment are intrinsically connected to the question of otherness: when looking at the monsters in Jaws and Annihilation, they are simultaneously familiar and other to us. Additionally, it is hard not to think of today’s climate catastrophe as anything but a horror story. In this presentation, I will then show how this genre is able to stimulate our environmental consciousness.