Abstract:
Rect ft years have seen a conspicuous resurgence of the horror genre in New Zealand ineona. What sets recent New Zealand horror films apart from their local antecedents, however, is their self-conscious reframing of local identity against an international backdrop. Contemporary Kiwi horrors such as The Locals, Black Sheep, The Tattooist and Perfect Creature eff),ctively extend horror', characteristic focus on questions of otherness to the otherness of local and global cultural identities. In this way, they subject New Zealand cinema's Gothic tradition to a type of remapping, in which the Gothic is ironized, hybridized or displaced. In a number of these films (several of which are international co-productions) the Gothic even comes untethered from the local landscape and moves aiross nationalfrontiers. By reworking the tropes of New Zealand horror, these films take up the challenge of re-articulating New Zealand identities for the early twenty-first century, producing a palimpsestic vision of nationhood determined not by essences but by codes.