Modern Ghost Melodramas: 'What Lies Beneath'

Michael Walker examines a wave of ghost films that came after The Sixth Sense and The Ring in the late 1990s. The book looks at films from the US, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Britain, and argues that they are better understood as ghost melodramas than as conventional horror.

Walker separates atmospheric ghost stories from gore-driven horror. He draws on melodrama studies and psychoanalysis to read the supernatural as a way of exploring grief, guilt and family secrets. Case studies include The Orphanage, Dark Water and The Others, alongside The Sixth Sense and The Ring.

This edition is published by Routledge under ISBN-13 9789462980167.