Puppet-Creepy

This week, we begin with Richard Attenborough's 1978 psychological horror curio Magic, in which deranged magician Corky (Anthony Hopkins) faces off against his darker impulses in the form of his ventriloquist dummy Fats. Plus, a new meta-slasher and a book recommendation. Light-to-medium spoilers below.

From the Grave.

Three ideas from horror cinema's past.

◆ Magic, dir. Richard Attenborough, 1978.

Creepiness. Ventriloquist dummies present a creepiness that exists at the other end of the realism spectrum from the uncanny valley—they aren’t near-human, they’re just human enough. Like dolls, they are objects that we shouldn’t apprehend life within, and yet it’s incredibly easy to do so. And the Kuleshov effect is absolutely operative with respect to a crude dummy’s face. When Corky says or does something that Fats doesn’t like, a reaction shot on the immobile dummy reads like a real reaction—we can see the disapproval on his face. We know we shouldn’t, though, and it’s unnerving precisely because it moves us even despite the rational thoughts in our reasoning minds. 

Darkness solid. Is embodied darkness—evil given solid shape—especially potent, or is it safely contained by a material form? Different movies and stories would answer this question differently, but the answer here is that the monstrous form is uniquely dangerous. In Magic, Fats channels Corky’s worse impulses—he's an id or a dark half. Fats is the opposite of a safe container, pushing and cajoling Corky to malevolent heights of bad behavior. And Fats is also someone who Corky can’t quit. There’s a scene in which Corky’s agent asks him (challenges him really) to refrain from voicing Fats for just 5 minutes: Corky cannot do it. In Magic, Corky’s darkness—instead, maybe, of being integrated into his personality—is, in the form of an external, embodied presence, entirely irrepressible. 

A reversal. Nothing unsettles quite like a reversal that upsets our established sense of reality. The most disturbing scene in Magic depicts a reversal of puppet and puppeteer. Fats may have a lifelike personality, and Corky may give in to Fats’s advice, but Corky is in charge. Until he isn’t. When the relationship between man and dummy finally unravels, we witness Fats taking control. We see Corky, sunk to the floor, responding to Fats’s instructions, doing what he’s told to do. It’s an upsetting reversal of hierarchy, personality, and reality. 

Right Behind You.

A thought on horror's present.

◆ Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, dir. Jane Schoenbrun, 2026.

Perspective. Slashers have always presented a fundamental, unsettling instability when it comes to identification—do we identify with slasher or victim? The most provocative classic slasher franchise, in this respect, is, with its signature reliance on the killer’s POV, Friday the 13th. Camp Miasma takes a Friday the 13th-like slasher franchise and points its camera directly at the issue of identification. This is a film that knows that there’s no straightforward answer to the question—audiences identify with both the killer and the victims. In Camp Miasma, this is addressed explicitly at the story level, and visually—toggling from the killer’s perspective to the victim’s (and, in an indelible image central to the story, the killer reflected in the eye of a victim). What feels new here is the focus precisely on this toggle: on the pleasure to be found in shifting, overlapping identification—pleasure delivered in Camp Miasma with a knowing wit and humor, putting us in a familiar position as a slasher audience, but with more self-awareness, and perhaps a touch of embarrassment at being so well read. 

Living Deliciously.

A recommendation.

◆ Spread Me, by Sarah Gailey, 2025.

Desire.  Reading up on Sarah Gailey’s novel Spread Me, you’ll come across the “erotic horror” label and references to John Carpenter’s The Thing—all accurate for sure, but the genre it kept insistently evoking for me was the erotic thriller. The fundamental tension for station leader Kinsey is that she’s irresistibly, erotically drawn to the thing that will destroy her. That the object of desire is not a Catherine Tramell but instead a human-shape-inhabiting virus makes this a horror story, one that meditates on the erotic in a way unusual in either genre. Here, desire opens up a new relational space with the earth—the erotic finding fresh conceptual territory, sex finally a doorway to becoming. Wild, fascinating, and scary too. 

Dead of Night publishes every Tuesday.

Since Dr. Abdul El-Sayed won his primary in Michigan last week, we've seen odious Islamophobia from Republican leaders, a ramping up of long-festering anti-Muslim bigotry in the party, and almost no intra-party pushback. Now is a time for solidarity across religious and ethnic lines and a moment to identify, call out, and shame both the open bigots and the cowards sitting on their hands.