Karyn Kusama

Over the last ten years, Karyn Kusama has made a significant contribution to cinematic horror. Her two horror features, Jennifer’s Body (2009), a teen comedy about what happens when your best friend starts eating boys, and The Invitation (2015), a slow-burning paranoia film about a Hollywood Hills dinner party haunted by loss, social anxiety and cults, represent very different engagements with genre hybridity and the terrifying nature of everyday social relations. Most recently the short, “Her Only Living Son,” the final segment of the female-directed horror anthology film XX (2017), asked what raising a demonic son might tell us about masculinity and contemporary culture. Her film work and interviews reveal a filmmaker fascinated by the potential of genre to tell meaningful, intimate stories, as well as one who, frustrated by the limits of both studio and independent productions, takes a creatively pragmatic approach to her work.