Brazil's pressing socio-political questions as seen through the country's horror-film-influenced audio-visual production between 2008 and 2022.
Since the 2008 release of
Embodiment of Evil
, the third instalment in the Coffin Joe trilogy, which began with
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul
, Brazil's audiovisual industry has been producing an increasing number of unsettling, often violent and frequently dystopian films, reflecting the wide-ranging social, cultural, environmental and economic problems the country is facing.
This edited volume by scholars from Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States discusses a broad selection of Brazilian audio-visual productions released between 2008 and 2022 which, through their use of aesthetic and narrative devices borrowed from horror cinema, shed light on the country's pressing socio-political questions. Mostly by first-time directors, these productions bear witness to a second 'Golden Age' of Brazilian horror cinema (reflected in new, specialised festivals such as CineFantasy, RioFan, CRASH and Fantaspoa) and ultimately serve to illustrate, in audio-visual form, the tensions at the heart of Brazilian society in the second decade of the twenty-first century.