Another neighbourhood gone straight to hell.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve added reviews of a couple of horror movies about youth run wild: Them (2006) and Citadel (2012). Ciarán Foy, the writer-director of Citadel refers to this genre as “hoodie horror,” but this doesn’t seem to be a label that has achieved a lot of traction yet. I suspect it goes back to films like Don’t Look Now and The Brood, though in Don’t Look Now it’s a hooded raincoat and in The Brood the little monsters are wearing hooded snowsuits and pyjamas. Today, the hoodie is a class marker, and the movies are more about juvenile delinquency than the supernatural. The hood is short for a ‘hood full of hoodlums. But either way, the hood retains a power to threaten. Personally, I just hate to see kids driving with their hoods pulled up over their heads. What is this doing to their peripheral vision?