Old Stories, New Victims: Possession of Men in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (1985) and Demon (2015)

Abstract

Abstract Horror operates as social history and social practice, regularly sacrificing symbolic threats to normalcy and proper socialization to the altar of hegemony. Possession/exorcism cinema, which likewise functions through iterative scapegoating, is typically studied according to its exploitation of young women/girls—with little consideration of possessed young men and those embedded within other social dynamics. This article analyzes A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (1985) and Demon (2015), as the possession of Jesse in the former corresponds to his suggested homosexuality, while the possession of Piotrek in the latter dramatizes his expatriate resistance to a coercive family culture. Suffering in horror is typically justified through a dispossession of quality traits and a possession of discursive liabilities. Though one might expect such victim choices to undermine the conservative sensibilities of the genre, these films leverage and reinforce the very mechanisms upon which horror depends.