"I worry about the messages that Hell House provides audiences about violence and victimhood. Why are women’s bodies the particular media for Hell House’s message? Why must their female characters be broken and damned? In The Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism, Jason Bivins writes, 'the body is the locus of the politics of Hell House.'[1] The scenes, particularly AIDS and abortion, suggest a conservative political ideology, in which characters are punished for supposedly choosing sin. Young female characters are damned for any encounter with sexuality. Bivins argues that these Christian haunted houses are antifeminist. I want to push his analysis further. This particular version of the religion of fear is not only antifeminist, but misogynist. Hell Houses are built upon the fictional destruction of women’s bodies."
~ Kelly J. Baker
"Hell House" – Sacred Matters Magazine
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