Gothic Memory and Ghostly Aesthetics: Post Mortem as a Horror Film

During the last decade, the expansion and popularity of horror film productions worldwide have simultaneously soared in countries like Chile where the horror genre was formerly either unprecedented or a rarity. This symptomatic shift responds to the new demands of the global market and the mass-media consumer. Although recent examples of Chilean horror cinema follow the standard traits, devices, and motifs of global horror, at the same time, those film productions adapt their narratives to a national specificity by incorporating cultural practices, economic tensions, and political debates enrooted in the country’s social reality and historical past. Even though productions that depict graphic cruelty and psychological and physical torment within a political context such as La noche los lápices or Garaje Olimpo are usually considered “political dramas,” this chapter argues that Post mortem by Pablo Larraín could be understood under the rubric of horror film despite being classified a drama. In many aspects, Post mortem utilizes the haunting phenomenon as a filmic narrative but also exploits spatial, symbolic, and visual effects associated with the horror genre film tradition to denounce the nation’s traumatic past.