The tactile face : affecting faciality in the horror cinema of Ingmar Bergman, John Carpenter and David Lowery
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Whether human or monster, the face is integral to horror cinema. [...] In this paper, I consider three scenes from "Persona", "Halloween" and "A Ghost Story" to better understand how the face functions in horror cinema. How do we read a face behind a sheet? How do we embody the face of a murderer like Michael Myers? How does a boy feel and affect recognition before a projected image? It is my contention that the face’s connection to ideas of subjectivity, recognition and expression extends how we might understand the embodied experience of watching, interpreting and feeling horror cinema. I argue that representations of the face contribute to our embodied experience in ways that are distinctive, continuing the expansion of our understanding of phenomenology into the subtleties of feeling and affect to more explicitly consider the equally nuanced contribution of faciality.
Author: Webster, Guy
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7127248361
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