Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes
Settler Colonialism in Horror
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University of Regina Press
Published:16th Sep '25
Should be back in stock very soon
ONE OF THE HILL TIMES TOP BOOKS OF 2025
Turning a lens on the dark legacy of colonialism in horror film, from Scream to Halloween and beyond
Horror films, more than any other genre, offer a chilling glimpse—like peering through a creaky attic door—into the brutality of settler colonial violence. While Indigenous peoples continue to struggle against colonization, white settler narratives consistently position them as a threat, depicting the Indigenous Other as an ever-present menace, lurking on the fringes of “civilized” society. Indigenous inclusion or exclusion in horror films tells a larger story about myths, fears, and anxieties that have endured for centuries.
Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes traces connections between Indigenous representations, gender, and sexuality within iconic horror classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th. The savage killer, the romantic and doomed Indian, the feral “mad woman”—no trope or archetype escapes the shadowy influence of settler colonialism. In the end, horror both disrupts and uncovers colonial violence—only to bury its victims once more.
"Hall offers a new and necessary avenue of study in a genre that’s almost as old as the movies themselves." —The Literary Review of Canada
“This is the book I’ve waited my whole movie-geek life for.” —Jesse Wente
“Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes is a must read for anyone consuming horror media. Laura Hall masterfully dissects the ways in which settler-colonialism is at the core of sexism, racism, sanism, and white supremacy, and how we see those systems of oppression at work in historical and contemporary horror.” —Jessica Johns, author of Bad Cree
“Expertly foregrounding the most overlooked horror in this film genre—settler colonialism—Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes is deadly.” —Christine Sy
"Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes is brilliant scholarship that pinpoints the ugly truth about the treatment of Indigenous people in horror cinema. But Hall is doing much more than examining tropes of mysticism, savagery, and settler colonialism-as savior in horror; she is directing our attention to the recuperative power of certain portrayals, thereby reminding us that an anticolonial lens can produce whole and full human stories—even scary ones.” —Robin R. Means Coleman, author of The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror from Fodder to Oscar
"Colonization. Land theft. Violence. Bloodied Bodies, Bloody Landscapes makes the case that what we call 'horror' in film is really just a reshaped version of those realities, and once you see it, it’s hard to unsee." —Jury Citation, 2026 Saskatchewan Book Awards Indigenous Publishing Prize
ISBN: 9781779400802
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 400g
288 pages