Full Description
Before 2010, there were no Israeli horror films. Then distinctly Israeli serial killers, zombies, vampires, and ghosts invaded local screens. The next decade saw a blossoming of the genre by young Israeli filmmakers. New Israeli Horror is the first book to tell their story. Through in-depth analysis, engaging storytelling, and interviews with the filmmakers, Olga Gershenson explores their films from inception to reception. She shows how these films challenge traditional representations of Israel and its people, while also appealing to audiences around the world.
Gershenson introduces an innovative conceptual framework of adaptation, which explains how filmmakers adapt global genre tropes to local reality. It illuminates the ways in which Israeli horror borrows and diverges from its international models. New Israeli Horror offers an exciting and original contribution to our understanding of both Israeli cinema and the horror genre.
A companion website to this book is available at https://blogs.umass.edu/newisraelihorror/ (https://blogs.umass.edu/newisraelihorror/)
Book trailer: https://youtu.be/oVJsD0QCORw (https://youtu.be/oVJsD0QCORw)
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Precursors: From The Angel Was a Devil to Frozen Days
Part I Subversion
2 The First Hebrew Horror: Rabies
3 A Korean Revenge Thriller in the Israeli Countryside: Big Bad Wolves
Part II Conversion
4 Horror in the IDF
Zombies in the Fatigues: Poisoned and Cannon Fodder
Freak Out: "The Final Boy" on the Base
The Specters of Violence in The Damned
5 The Jewish Supernatural: JeruZalem
6 Slasher on the Kibbutz: Children of the Fall
Part III Aversion
7 Escaping Israel: Another World, Madam Yankelova's Fine Literature Club, and The Golem
Coda: Is There I-Horror?
Notes
Index
