Overview

The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema illustrates how global horror film depictions of children re-conceptualised childhood at the turn of the twenty-first century. By analysing an influential body of transnational horror films, largely stemming from Spain, Japan, and the US, Jessica Balanzategui shows how millennial uncanny child characters resist embodying growth and futurity, unravelling concepts to which the child's symbolic function is typically bound. The book proposes that complex cultural and industrial shifts at the turn of the millennium resulted in these potent cinematic renegotiations of the concept of childhood. By demonstrating both the culturally specific and globally resonant properties of these frightening visions of children who refuse to grow up, the book outlines the conceptual and aesthetic mechanisms by which long entrenched ideologies of futurity, national progress, and teleological history started to waver at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jessica Balanzategui (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia)
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.610kg
ISBN:  

9781041189244

ISBN 10:   1041189249
Pages:   332
Publication Date:   01 December 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: The Child as Uncanny Other, Section One: Secrets and Hieroglyphs: The Uncanny Child in American Horror Film, 1. The Child and Adult Trauma in American Horror of the 1980s, 2. The Uncanny Child of the Millennial Turn, Section Two: Insects Trapped in Amber: The Uncanny Child in Spanish Horror Film, 3. The Child and Spanish Historical Trauma, 4. The Child Seer and the Allegorical Moment in Millennial Spanish Horror Cinema.., Section Three: Our Fear Has Taken on a Life of Its Own: The Uncanny Child in Japanese Horror Film, 5. The Child and Japanese National Trauma, 6. The Prosthetic Traumas of the Internal Alien in Millennial J-Horror Section Four Trauma’s Child: The Uncanny Child in Transnational Remakes and Co-productions, 7. The Transnational Uncanny Child, 8. Progress and Decay in the Twenty-first Century: The Postmodern Uncanny Child in The Others, 9. ‘Round and round, the world keeps spinning. When it stops, it’s just beginning:’ Analogue Ghosts and Digital Phantoms in The Ring, Conclusion

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Author Information

Dr. Jessica Balanzategui is Senior Lecturer in Media at RMIT, before which she was Senior Lecturer in Cinema and Screen Studies and Deputy Director of the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology. She is the author of The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema (Amsterdam UP, 2018), the founding editor of Amsterdam University Press’ book series, Horror and Gothic Media Cultures.

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