Horror Joy

In this episode of Horror Joy, Jeff talks with author Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold, about the relationship between horror and joy
Sullivan links the joy of horror to subverted expectations, catharsis, and the generative possibilities of horror, especially in books, where meaning is co-created with readers and not all answers need be provided.
Sullivan discusses how his Irish Catholic upbringing functions as an enduring identity that shapes his sense of mystery, belief systems, and worldbuilding, including fragility, debate, and misinterpretation as story engines.
He describes his beginnings as a writer through libraries, early storytelling inspired by Jurassic Park, reading widely, manual labor jobs, and later mentorship in a graduate program with author Miriam Toews.
The conversation turns to The Marigold’s Toronto setting, ecological crisis and wildfires, urban wildlife like raccoons, and the novel’s critique of capitalism, corporate greed, and gig-economy precarity.

Jeff and Brian begin a Horror Joy mini-series on haunted and haunting houses by discussing Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining and the Overlook Hotel as a possibly sentient space.
They ask whether the hotel merely contains ghosts or actively amplifies violence, racism, sexism, and repetition.
They critique the “Indian burial ground” trope, discuss Grady’s claims that Jack has “always been” the caretaker, the final photograph’s time-loop implications, and scholarship on hereditary or cyclical violence.
They emphasize the film’s maze motifs (hedge maze, carpets, corridors) and consider the steadicam and “autonomous camera” as intensifying dread, while noting Dick Hallorann’s disposability and ending with “joy” found in the film’s craft and unsettling images.

References:
Graham Allen. ‘A Mad Image, Chafed by Reality’: Kubrick, the Uncanny and the 4th of July 1921 Photograph in The Shining
F. Brigo & S. C. Igwe & N. L. Bragazzi. Kubrick’s The Shining and the erased myopathic face
Laura Mee. The Shining. Liverpool University Press, 2017
Paul Sunderland. The Autonomous Camera in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

Brian and Jeff are joined by author A.C. Wise to talk about joy in horror, her books The Ghost Sequences (2021) and Out of the Drowning Deep (2024), and her new novel Ballad of the Bone Road (Jan. 26, 2026).
Wise describes horror’s joy as an adrenaline-driven extreme emotional response akin to excitement, and traces her horror roots to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, darker fairy tales, and lifelong ghost-story interests.
They discuss how others react to her genre work, her day job at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and shifts in speculative fiction toward mainstream popularity and genre mashups.
Wise explains Out of the Drowning Deep as a noir/horror/science-fantasy blend exploring faith, meaning-making, and a feedback loop between divinity and belief, including inhuman, unsettling angels.
She recounts the near-rights-issue backstory of The Ghost Sequences cover and notes the title story’s inspiration from a ghost-themed art installation.
A.C.'s recent horror joys: Sinners, Staircase in the Woods, The Buffalo Hunter, and the game Dead Take.
A.C. Wise Website

In this Horror Joy episode, Jeff and Brian discuss the 1992 film Candyman as the final entry in an “academic horror” course, focusing on how the movie links urban legend, the university, and racialized violence.
They follow graduate student Helen Lyle’s dissertation research into the Candyman myth at Chicago’s Cabrini-Green, highlighting how academic distance and the “white gaze” turn Black suffering, especially Daniel Robitaille’s lynching, into an object of study.
Drawing on writers such as Zayla Crocker, George Yancy, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Robin R. Means Coleman, they argue the film reflects its early-1990s moment (including Rodney King and the Los Angeles uprising), critiques systemic racism and misogyny, and frames Helen as both privileged researcher and exploited academic.
They Will Say: Ritual Naming and Living beyond the Pale with Candyman
Horror Noire A History of Black American Horror from the 1890s to Present
Bernard Rose’s Candyman and the Rhetoric of Racial Fear in the Reagan and Bush Years

Jeff and Brian are joined by director Rod Blackhurst about his forthcoming independent horror film Dolly, releasing in theaters only on March 6, 2026.
Blackhurst explains how horror can produce joy by confronting internal dread—identity loss, isolation, and moral extremity—through a cinematic language that bypasses reason and provokes visceral response.
He describes Dolly as an extreme, unrelenting film rooted in a real person’s fears about inheriting a “monster” mother’s traits, and as a collision between opposing views of motherhood and family.
Dolls function as uncanny stand-ins for children and chosen family, with a larger, partially withheld mythology.
Blackhurst discusses casting, including Sean William Scott’s dramatic role and Fabianne Therese’s demanding lead performance, emphasizing actor safety, and he rejects “torture porn” as his aim. He also reflects on gatekeeping, genre labels, influences like Barbarian, and using proof-of-concept shorts (Baby Girl, Night Swim) to get features made.