HOME INVASION HORRORS: A HISTORY AND ANALYSIS OF CINEMATIC BREAK-INS

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Home invasion narratives have been around nearly as long as cinema itself, popularized by the silent era’s “race-to-the-rescue” movies and classic Hollywood’s “gangster raid” films, and influenced by the slasher and stalker sub-genres. They emerged as a fully formed sub-genre following the success of major releases like The Strangers (2008) and The Purge (2013), with more than 100 such films issued in the 2010s alone.
Commonalities and differences can be found in the home invasion films featuring criminals, stalkers, and psychopaths, in addition to the inverted and hybrid releases that revise established narratives. This book examines the history, cinematic and societal influences, and reasons for the popularity of home invasion films, offering potential allegorical readings of the narratives and a comprehensive list of these films.

“A thorough and fascinating survey of an underrepresented genre of horror and thriller cinema.”—Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., seven-time Bram Stoker Award nominee and coeditor of Many Lives of the Purge

Read what others have said and review Home Invasion Horrors on Goodreads!

Table of Contents:

Preface 1
Introduction 3

1. Establishing the Elements of the Home Invasion ­Sub-Genre 7
Setting 7
Characters 9
Plot 15
Themes 20

2. History of Criminal Invaders 26
Varieties of Criminal Home Invasion Films 27
Themes and Tropes 27
Classic Criminal Home Invasion Films 28
Modern Criminal Home Invasion Films 43

3. Twenty-First Century Criminal Home Invasion Films 65
The Home Invasion Explosion 66
Reasons for the Increase 67
Changes to ­Twenty-First Century Criminal Invasions 75
­Twenty-First Century Criminal Home Invasion Films 78

4. Psychopath Home Invasion Films 110
Elements of Psychopath Home Invasion Films 110
Early Psychopath Home Invasion Films 116
­Twenty-First Century Psychopath Home Invasion Films 124
Variations on the Anonymous Psychopath 139

5. Stalker Home Invasion Films 165
Elements of the Stalker Home Invasion Films 165
The Stalker Film Influences 168
Stalker Home Invasion Films 176

6. Sympathy for the Invaders: Inverted Home Invasion Films 202
Elements of the Inverted Home Invasion Films 202
Contextualizing Inverted Home Invasion Films 207
Inverted Home Invasion Films 209

Conclusion: Home Invasion Hybrids and Revisionist Reboots 227
Vampire-Home Invasion Hybrids 227
Supernatural Home Invasion Hybrids 228
Extraterrestrial Home Invasion Hybrids 230
Doppelgänger Home Invasion Films 231
Creature Feature–Home Invasion Hybrids 232
Home Invasions in Other Genres 233
The Future for Home Invasion Films 233

Chapter Notes 235
Filmography 243
Bibliography 249
Index 253

About the Author:

With over 20 years of experience as a film critic and journalist, Ryan Izay started as the Los Angeles representative covering press junkets and red carpets for the UK-based website, Real Movie News, in addition to working as a features writer for Screen Rant, developing list-based articles for Total Nerd at Ranker, and as a staff writer for the horror genre magazine Girls and Corpses. He is a senior adjunct professor in the cinematic arts department at Azusa Pacific University and works remotely for Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida.