Reece Goodall
I am an Early Career Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies. I have recently completed a PhD in French Studies on contemporary horror media in France, funded by an SMLC Doctoral Fellowship, under the supervision of Dr Mary Harrod and Dr Douglas Morrey.
My research is concerned with French horror media in the 21st century, and the existence of the horror genre in France on a spectrum spanning from art cinema heritage to US genre fare. It examines the history of the genre, asking why it failed to truly materialise in France prior to the past 20 years, and considers the industrial factors that facilitated its emergence in cinema and on television. It explores the ideological concerns present in the French horror corpus, exploring how these texts reflect issues of race and gender in contemporary France and demonstrate a crisis of French identity. Finally, it uses the case study of Alexandre Aja, a globally-successful French horror director, to explore the intersection of industry and genre - is Aja a French director with Hollywood success, a journeyman turning in US-esque products or has his generic status enabled him to transcend issues of national classification?
My intention is to build on this project to ask a number of larger questions, and to develop an analysis of cinema that situates it in a web of socio-culture and politics. In an era where borders are increasingly malleable, what does it mean to speak of national cinema? What tools should we use to explore a famously US-centric genre, and how should they be adapted by scholars? Can national genres become transnational or postnational?
Research Interests
French/US horror cinema
The history of horror cinema
Genre in French cinema
The national, transnational and postnational
Transnational genres/transnational authorship
The interplay between popular media, news and politics
Film music
Conference Papers
‘The most reverent and holy slimeballs’: religious commentary in The Exorcist and Repossessed' - Cine-Excess 2023: Raising Hell: Demons, Darkness and the Abject (October 2023 forthcoming)
'Histoires de la sorcière: narratives of witchcraft in Marianne (2019)' - Witchcraft and the Supernatural in Belief, Practice and Depiction, Romancing the Gothic (August 2023)
'A Titane of French horror: an auteurial and genre analysis of Julia Ducournau' - Fear 2000: Horror Uncaged, Sheffield Hallam University (July 2023)
‘Untold stories: positioning Candyman through its unmade sequels’ - Candyman and the whole damn swarm, Sheffield Hallam University (October 2022)
'"I've seen this movie before": marketing the requel' - Fear 2000: Horror Undying, Sheffield Hallam University (July 2022)
'What's 'European' about European horror?' - Weekday Night Bites, BAFTSS Horror Studies (October 2021) - organiser and chair - link
'Alexandre Aja: a post-national genre auteur II?' - Global Gallicisms II: Circulating Frenchness through Mainstream Film and Television, University of Warwick/University of Paris (September 2021)
'La Rage du Démon: rewriting France’s history of horror' - Fear 2000: Horror Unbound, Sheffield Hallam University (September 2021)
'La nuit a dévoré la France: zombie cinema and French national identity' - Theorizing Zombiism 2: Undead Again, University of Gothenburg (July 2021)
'Alexandre Aja: a post-national genre auteur?' - NECS 2021, University of Palermo (June 2021)
'Fear and the banlieue in French horror cinema' - SMLC Postgraduate Symposium, University of Warwick (January 2021)
''I was a lonesome cowboy': the Western and nostalgia in the Toy Story series' - Genre/Nostalgia, University of Hertfordshire (January 2021)
'Taking The Good Fight to Trump: impeachment and the 25th Amendment as narrative devices' - Trump, Television and the Media: From Drama to "Fake News" to Tweetstorms, London Metropolitan University (October 2020)
'"It's Your Crazy Mother!": maternal themes in the films of Maury and Bustillo' - Fear 2000: contemporary horror worldwide, Sheffield Hallam University (June 2019)
Publications
Goodall, Reece, and Mary Harrod, 'Netflix Original Films and European Auteur Cinema: 'Universal' 'Particularities in Alexandre Aja's Oxygen' in Christopher Meir and Roderik Smits (eds.), European Cinema in the Streaming Era: Policy, Platforms, and Production (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2023)
Goodall, Reece, 'Fact, fiction, and Conjuring a spin-off: narrative verisimilitude in Annabelle Comes Home (2019)' in Todd K. Platts (ed.), The "True" Case Files of the Warrens: Essays on The Conjuring Franchise (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming)
___, 'Vampires and the Western' in Simon Bacon (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire (London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2024)
___, 'Alexandre Aja: a post-national genre auteur' in Mary Harrod and Raphaëlle Moine (eds.), Is it French? Popular Postnational Screen Fiction from France (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2023)
___, ‘Race, class and the Goal of the Dead: marginalised identities in French zombie cinema’ in Linda Flores, Emma Tonkin and Connor Heffernan (eds.), Zombies, Pandemics and Politics (University of Wales Press, forthcoming 2023)
___, 'Folk Horror in Inside No. 9: ‘Mr. King’ and Contending Eco-narratives' in Simon Bacon (ed.), Future Folk Horror: Contemporary Anxieties and Possible Futures (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2023), pp. 303-316
___, 'Game Horror as a Reflection of America', Offscreen 27:6-7 (2023) - link
___, 'Teenage Alienation and Fractured Identities: Re-Evaluating Wes Craven’s My Soul to Take' in Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and John Darokwski (eds.), A Critical Companion to Wes Craven (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2023), pp. 91-104
___, ‘“Watch carefully what is about to happen”: Les Documents Interdits and the interrogation of France’s cultural memory’, Horror Homeroom, Special Issue 7 (2023): 37-45 - link
___, 'What makes a major? Recent books on French studios', French Screen Studies 23:1 (2022): 36-41 - link
___, 'Opening the Cabinet: Composing a Score for Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari', Weimar Film Network (2021) - link
___, Ralph Fiennes vocal stardom series, Animation Studies 2.0 (2021)
- 'Re-evaluating celebrity vocal stardom through the animated villains of Ralph Fiennes' - link
- 'Contextualising Rameses in the stardom of Ralph Fiennes' - link
- 'Accent, inflection, and Lord Victor Quartermaine' - link
- 'How voice makes a villain: Fiennes and the Moon King' - link
___, 'John Kramer for President: the rise of authoritarian horror', Horror Studies 11:1 (2020): 123-140
Teaching and Responsibilities
CH169 - Beyond Science: Collaborative Student-Led Challenges (group mentor)
FR121 - The Story of Modern France (seminar, and lectures on Jacques Audiard/Un héros très discret and Ladj Ly/Les Misérables)
FR268 - French Cinema and Society from the First to the Second World War (module convenor, 2023-24)
FR335 - Gender and Representation in French Film and Media since 1970 (lecture and seminar on Julia Ducournau/Grave)
FR340 - States of the Nation: French Cinema & Society from 1995 to the present (seminars on Lucie Aubrac and François Ozon)
Supervisory experience
URSS (2023) - project on extreme cinema in France
World CUR (2023; with Mary Harrod) - project on comparative legal systems in USA and the UK
Memberships/Associations
Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick (2023-)
BAFTSS Horror Studies Special Interest Group (2020-)