Terror Australis

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.