This book offers the first substantive academic study of Australian horror cinema. More specifically, it examines the dominant thematic concerns, generic conventions, and stylistic motifs at the core of an Australian horror cinema tradition. This research interrogates the cultural mythologies that shape these concerns, and investigates the "Australianness" of Australian horror movies. In terms of its approach, the book is a combined genre study and cultural history. Rather than a chronological examination of texts by historical period, the analysis examines distinct subgenres, aesthetic groupings, and tropes that characterize Australian horror cinema. The focus of analysis is on understanding these textual groupings in terms of themes, plots, narrative conventions, settings, and, to a lesser extent, style, as well as distilling the social and cultural meaning of these films. While the book's emphasis is on understanding Australian horror movies in terms of culturally distinct tropes, the discussion also includes analysis of transnational issues and contexts.

Author Biography

Mark Ryan is Research Leader, Creative Arts, and Senior Lecturer in Film, Screen and Animation for the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. He is the co-editor of the Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand 2 and Australian Screen in the 2000s (Palgrave Macmillan). His research has been published in such journals as New Review of Film & Television Studies, Media International Australia: Incorporating Culture and Policy, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Senses of Cinema, Studies in Australasian Cinema, and Creative Industries Journal. He is currently the President of the Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand (SSAAAZ) and an Executive Member of the Australian Screen Producers Education and Research Association (ASPERA).