The 1975 horror film Stepford Wives¹ examines the isolation and gendered oppression of suburban wives as part of the reproduction of capitalist society. The film takes place in a predominantly white, middle-class suburb, where women have been transformed into robotic housewives who think only of chores and their husbands. The film casually implies that “the solution to women’s struggle would be to get a maid,”² and while it was an influential cinematic exploration of gender oppression, it failed to recognize how the gender class struggle intersects with capitalist exploitation, racism, and imperialism.

In the 21st century, horror films have more explicitly linked these axes of oppression, as explored by Johanna Isaacson in her 2022 essay collection, Stepford Daughters — the title is a nod to the many works inspired by the 1975 film. As the author argues, horror films provide a rich medium for fictional exploration of these class struggles:

But there is a flip side to horror, a genre that explores taboo topics. In this book I seek out films that explore forbidden forms of realism, accurately showing the horrors of contemporary social forms and unleashing dark, but ultimately utopian fantasies of fighting back. Commercial, middle-brow genres avoid depicting these realities, as exposing the myths that secure contemporary power relations threatens those who benefit from those myths’ proliferation and invisibility. (4)

In resolving the plot tensions incited by the monstrous personifications of contemporary reality, horror films can also “create memorable figures of refusal and resistance” (26), unlike more commercial fare:

Whereas conventional realistic or romantic comedy narratives depict reconciliation to these conditions as inevitable, livable, or even heroic and pleasurable, horror provides a space and language to burn it all down in volcanic ash and perhaps imagine something new in its place. (65)

The author surveys these aspects of horror films from the 2000s and 2010s through a Marxist-Feminist lens, pulling out four themes, each covered in a chapter.

Chapter 1 examines care work in horror films (illustrated by Hereditary (2018), The Babadook (2014), Under The Shadow (2016), Dark Water (2002), and The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)). The author reflects on the home as a recurring setting for horror that investigates women’s issues. The protagonists of the featured films are generally young mothers left vulnerable by the lack of social support. The care work that burdens them become haunting monstrosities. Women resisting these socially-dictated care roles are also transformed into monsters:

The possessed woman symbolizes all that society rejects — the unsightly excesses of anger, the disgusting expulsion of impure fluids, the unthinkable extremes of sexuality. But possession is also a reclamation of these extremes. The possessed woman is a perverse, rebellious body that is uncontrollable by men. (46)

This chapter is one of the stand-outs of the collection; the themes and motifs are the most broadly applicable to other works in the horror genre. It is easy to extend the author’s analysis to works of horror in other genres, like the two-part television anthology, The Haunting³. Although each season of this Netflix show revolves around a very different family, in both cases, the self-sacrificing expectations of motherhood transforms the warmth and security of the domestic home into an isolating psychological trap, with the mother figures turning to violence to seek out and protect their children.

Chapter 2 investigates (paid) domestic labor as a subject of horror. The films discussed in this chapter (Housekeeping (2015), The Maid (2005), Get Out (2017), La Llorona (2019), Good Manners (2017)) explore how waged care work exploits racialized or otherwise economically precarious workers. Care work also forms one part of the division of labour under colonialism: Black slaves and Hispanic immigrants and other migrant workers have long been forced into domestic labor, freeing white women from this day-to-day drudgery but preventing racialized women from caring for their own loved ones. One of the recurring motifs Isaacson points out is how mundane care work can transform into horror as its demands on us increase:

Slowly escalating terror is a convention of the horror genre that helps us understand how everyday tasks and conditions can become horrific before we have a chance to do anything about them. (72)

Economic pressures prevent these protagonists from escaping these horrific working conditions, forcing them to confront their monsters by other means.

Chapter 3 investigates emotional alienation in work. From camgirls to salesmen to artists to domestic work, labor requires putting on an emotional affect or selling emotional intimacy.⁴ These demands not only for one’s physical labor but for the expression of one’s own humanity reach horrific proportions in the films explored here (Maps to the Stars (2014), Parasite (2019), I Blame Society (2020), Cam (2018), Sorry To Bother You (2018)). This chapter is the weakest of the set: personal psychology rises to the forefront, while class analysis takes a back seat. Perhaps because this topic is less controversial to discuss in mainstream discourse, or perhaps because this chapter featured more well-known films, there was relatively little new added to the discourse and the films were less cohesively pulled together.

Chapter 4 focuses on a narrower scope: “coming of age” as a horrifying prospect in the post-recession economy. As a result, Isaacson is better able to wrap these films (It Follows (2014), Assassination Nation (2018), The Fits (2015), The Lure (2015), Teeth (2007)) into a clear message about the ways race, nationality, class, and gender shape youths’ understandings of their opportunities in society, and possible ways out of the horrifying world they find themselves in. “Young people,” she writes, “are told they live in a dog-eat-dog meritocracy, [and] there is no way out but to participate in individualized, systemic violence.” (156) In this environment, horror is a way to “narrate the real conditions of their lives and to begin a journey towards realistic growth and resistance.” (147)

One of the strengths of Isaacson’s criticism is her emphasis on how protagonists eschew individualistic solutions and confront these monsters through collective action and solidarity (or, conversely, highlighting when films fail to imagine these solutions and slide into nihilism). These more “radical” plot beats are more common in genre and indie fiction, like the films critiqued here. However, the positive examples of enacting social change that Isaacson points to remain limited: solidarity and small vigilante groups (best exemplified by It Follows). Perhaps this is a shortcoming of the available source material; there are few movies in which the heroes overcome their challenges through broad, organized collective action and those that do exist (e.g., The Wandering Earth (2019)) seem better suited to the large-scale problems typical of science fiction rather than the individual haunting typical of horror. However, I think it also reflects the author’s own political persuasions: the examples of real-world resistance that she touts are largely limited to mutual aid and teach-ins.

I appreciated Isaacson’s examination of the interaction between many forms of class struggle: gender, the relationship between worker and employer, and colonialism. Her selection of movies is well-suited to explore these axes, featuring films not only from the imperial core but also from countries as varied as Guatemala, Poland, and Iran. However, her criticism remains within the cultural sphere, with gestures towards the “interlocking oppressions and complicated, structural truths” (103). The writers she cites to support her argument are predominantly academic cultural critics and feminists, not Marxists from the national liberation movements. Horror criticism that engages more deeply with Marxist writing on imperialism could show how all these axes of struggle spring from the same economic system, and how successful anti-imperialist movements have leveraged broad, organized collective action to liberate themselves from imperialism and at the same time made strides in poverty alleviation and gender equality (see, for example, the USSR, China, or Cuba).

The book’s subtitle promises to provide “weapons for feminists” and I think it falls somewhat short of this goal. It’s not clear to me how I would wield the essays from this book. It is better to think of it as a series of good examples of how to bring Marxism into one’s enjoyment of horror films. Discussing the political themes of films and other works of fiction is an accessible way of broaching broader philosophical and political questions, and is therefore a worthwhile skill for communists.

Last modified on 2026-10-27