Queer horror in contemporary Spanish cinema: La abuela (Paco Plaza, 2021) and Malasa¿ 32 (Albert Pint¿, 2020)

The success of recent Spanish horror cinema must be understood in the context of a genre with a long tradition and popular acceptance. The films studied in this article, La abuela (Paco Plaza, 2021) and Malasa¿ 32 (Albert Pint¿, 2020), are among the most remarkable of this new wave, and include recognizable features for horror film scholars. Specifically, both present queer characters and, through a terrifying representation of otherness, exploit the mechanisms of homophobia. This article places these films in the tradition of Spanish queer horror cinema and analyses the particularities of these new contributions. It focuses on how the representation of the queer, non-reproductive and non-normative body serves as the basis for the creation of a new horror. At the same time, it analyses how these films incorporate other contemporary anxieties, especially those caused by gentrification in large cities.

Queer horror in contemporary Spanish cinema: La abuela (Paco Plaza, 2021) and Malasa¿ 32 (Albert Pint¿, 2020) Articles