This volume examines American horror films as key sites for exploring contemporary anxieties around gender, power and trauma. In this groundbreaking study, the author traces the resurgence of demon-possession narratives in US cinema following the 2008 financial crisis – a period marked by intensified misogyny, the rise of fourth-wave feminism, and shifting representations of sexual violence. Through incisive analysis of films such as Deliver Us from Evil (2014), The Neon Demon (2016) and The Scary of Sixty-First (2021), this study explores how the possessed body, particularly the possessed female body, emerges as a battleground for cultural fears about sexuality, violence and agency. Demon Possession demonstrates how demon-possession films reflect, reproduce and sometimes challenge dominant narratives about sexual violence and victimhood. Reframing possession as more than merely a horror trope, this book offers a vital lens for understanding gender and sexual politics in an age of economic precarity and social reckoning.
