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.
