Osgood Perkins is emerging as one of the most significant directors of horror in the 21st century. His films are wildly diverse and have elicited an equally wild diversity of response from viewers and critics. Perkins has thought a lot about horror, has frequently spoken about its larger meanings in interviews, and is committed to its centrality as a genre – something he articulates in this 2025 conversation with Interview Magazine:

"The horror genre continues to subsist with the idea that things have never been worse. They felt that way in the late ’60s during the Vietnam War, and it made Night of the Living Dead. It was so unimaginable that there could be something like the Vietnam War happening and then there’s this movie about undead people. We all want to say, “The world has never been worse. The world has never been crazier.” But everyone’s always said that for all of time. . . . There will always be death and tragedy. You can’t fix that. You can’t move away from that. All you can do is take it with you."

This proposed collection of essays will explore Perkins’ corpus of horror films (so far). I’m looking for at least one contribution on each of his films as well as essays that make larger thematic, aesthetic, philosophical, political claims across multiple films. There has been surprisingly little scholarship on Perkins’ work – and this collection will aim to become the go-to source for insightful and readable criticism on Perkins' films.

Topics can include but are not limited to:

-Studies of any one of the films Perkins has directed: The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015), I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), Gretel & Hansel (2020), Longlegs (2024), The Monkey (2025), Keeper (2025) – and The Young People (planned for a 2026 release). 

-The Monkey as a Stephen King adaptation

-I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House and the (female) gothic

-Gretel & Hansel as revisionist fairytale; representations of the witch

-Keeper in the body horror and folk horror traditions

-Longlegs and Silence of the Lambs, Seven, and Zodiac

-Horror subgenres: the occult, the gothic, body horror, fairly tale, dark fantasy, possession, serial killer, comedy horror, folk horror, elevated horror

-Perkins’ relation to Anthony Perkins, Norman Bates, Hitchcock and Psycho (e.g., his role as the young Norman Bates in Psycho II [1983])

-Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone episode, 'You Might Also Like', written and directed by Perkins (2020), an episode that references the well-known original Twilight Zone episode, ‘To Serve Man’ (1962)

-Thematic preoccupations that cross multiple films

-Perkins’ horror influences (e.g., Val Lewton)

-Perkins’ relation to contemporaries and his position in 21st-century horror

-Perkins’ philosophy of horror

-Perkins’ films’ politics

-Perkins’ distinctive aesthetic style

-Audience and critical reception of Perkins’ films

-Industry, production (e.g., relationship with A24, Netflix and Neon), and/or marketing studies of the films

The series editors of the 21st Century Horror series at Edinburgh University Press have expressed interest in the book, and I will be sending the proposal to them.

Please send an abstract of 300-500 words and a short bio to Dawn Keetley at dek7@lehigh.edu by March 31, 2026. I will notify everyone of their status within 2 weeks. If selected for the collection, your essays of 5000 – 7000 words will be due by August 31, 2026 (there may be some wiggle room). Please feel free to email me if you’ve got questions!

Also, I'm collecting scholarship on Perkins, so email me if you know of anything not included in the bibliography below.

Bibliography

Church, David, Post-Horror: Art, Genre and Cultural Elevation (Edinburgh University Press, 2021); on Gretel & Hansel (pp. 161-2) and I Am the Pretty Thing (pp. 233-39).

Dishman, Rich, ‘Val Lewton and Oz Perkins: The downward road is crowded’, Horror Homeroom, 14 May 2019, https://www.horrorhomeroom.com/val-lewton-and-oz-perkins-the-downward-road-is-crowded/.

Keetley, Dawn, ‘Black mold, white extinction: I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, The Haunting of Hill House, “Gray Matter,” and H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Shunned House,” in Haunted Nature: Entanglements of the Human and the Nonhuman, edited by Sladja Blazan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 43-66, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-81869-2. (I can send copies of this if anyone wants one.)

Kremmel, Laura, ‘I am the pretty thing that lives, dies, and haunts in the house’, Horror Homeroom, 2 December 2017, https://www.horrorhomeroom.com/pretty-thing-lives-dies-haunts-house/.

Murphy, Bernice, ‘Girl trouble: The Blackcoat’s Daughter/aka February’, Horror Homeroom, 30 March 2017, https://www.horrorhomeroom.com/the-blackcoats-daughter/.