Nightmare Movies: A CRITICAL GUIDE TO HORROR FILMS Horror Book Review

This is the best overview of the contemporary horror film that I’ve come across.  The obvious flaw, of course, is that it is now nearly 20 years out of date, but if you wanna disussion of the horror film from ‘Night of the Living Dead’ through the late 80’s this is the place to go.  I would love to see Newman write a book covering the horror film from the last 20 years, though maybe it could just be a few new chapters added on to the end of this one, as the horror film really went to hell in the 90’s.  (Though unlike most people I think it’s really recovered now, and the genre may well be doing better than ever, as a matter of fact.  But, that ain’t got anything to do with anything.)


‘Nightmare Movies’ is extremely comprehensive.  Obviously, it’s not gonna cover everything as that would be utterly impossible, and many films are merely mentioned once by name, but as far as giving you a good overall view of the various subgenres, ‘Nightmare Movies’ can’t be beat.  Beyond this, Newman always manages to fit in a paragraph or two, at least, about any horror movie of real significacne, if not a whole lot more.  Most significantly, Newman is just an excellent critic and writer.  He takes horror movies very, very seriously, and is quite discerning.  Some people will be aggravated by this, as they just wanna hear these films endlessly praised, but I like this more critical approach better.  If every horror film in the world is worth watching then you don’t really need a book to help you look into them, do you?  You can just see everything you can find.  Newman is British, and he writes in a very erudite manner, so much so that it’s pretty shocking that this book was written by him in his early to mid-20’s.  He’s also quite witty I think, and thus keeps things interesting even when the films are not.


Yeah, definitely a must-read for anyone who actually wants to study the horror film.