Striving to remove barriers that prevent us from building Vibrant, Diverse, Inclusive, Accessible Communities!
Kathryn Bromwich states that horror still treats disability as shorthand for moral depravity. She names this pattern ableism.
She cites Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. It is a Venice hit that stars only non-disabled performers. Victor receives prosthetics and amputations. The film confuses message with spectacle. She then traces older and newer screen habits—facial scarring, wheelchair use, amputation, and prosthetics as menace—showing how these choices teach audiences to read “Disability” as threat.
She lists recent examples: Longlegs, The Substance, Heretic, Weapons, and Nosferatu’s “arthritic” hands. Self-mutilation is used as a plot device. Disability is framed as karmic punishment. Arthouse films also deploy a disabled cameo for unease. These are chosen barrier-creating problems the social model of disability helps explain.
Bromwich notes what works instead. The Haunting, The Wicker Man, The Vanishing, Get Out, Saint Maud, Presence, and Sinners scare without punching down. Bring Her Back casts Sora Wong, who is Low Vision, and keeps the audience with her. She closes with underrepresentation data and a clear answer: disabled writers, directors, actors, and creatives telling our own stories—“Nothing about us without us.”
Read the Full Article: Horror movies have an ableism problem. Isn’t it time we found new ‘monsters’?
By: Kathryn Bromwich
