Synopsis:
If Sinners and the 1999 cult classic The Mummy taught Emma Cole anything in the year she spent bingeing scary movies, it’s that we love to swoon, sweat, and scream. We seem to crave the uncanny and the transgressive. Emma would know: Her day job as a Harlequin book editor revolves around steamy stories that ruffle feathers and rip bodices. In Love Never Dies, she shows how our favorite horror films flirt with familiar tropes and themes to give us romantic subplots that are just as spine-tingling.
Emma takes readers behind the scenes of films like Tod Browning’s Dracula and Josh Ruben’s Heart Eyes, exploring how and why movies blur the lines of horror and romance. The books dives into
The “Dark Moment” and how it signals an HEA (Happily Ever After)
Why not having a lover (spoiler alert) saved Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode in Halloween
Rosemary’s Baby, Interview with the Vampire, and Gothic horror’s comeback
How romance, especially monster romance, is often a stand-in for uncomfortable truths
From vampires and monsters to slashers and psychological thrillers, Love Never Dies explores the enthralling nature of horror romance films that are full of heart. It’s just that sometimes, those hearts are on the outside.
Review:
Fittingly for a book that is, in part, about romance, Emma Cole’s “Love Never Dies,” is brimming with adoration for horror cinema, the other side of that same coin. It’s also a book that I loved reading- one that I devoured with a full heart and an open letterboxd watchlist. With some infectiously affectionate analysis of staunch favourites, promising introductions to a wealth of films I’m now itching to watch, and perhaps best of all, some passages that made me reconsider those movies that didn’t tickle my fancy when I last saw them- I learned a lot from “Love Never Dies.” I even put some money where my mouth is- prompted to rewatch Torneur’s “Cat People,” from 1942 and cozy up for the very first time with Harry Kümel’s “Daughters of Darkness,” from ‘71. Both stunning. There’s plenty more I plan to sit down with- from high-camp slashery rom-coms, to tragic monster romances, to Twilight. “Love Never Dies,” is written with the unbridled enthusiasm of a fan and the insight of an academic, a productivity-destroying combination that all but demands you sack off whatever you’re meant to be doing, pop yourself some popcorn and fall in love with something horrible.
(I’ll note here that Emma was kind enough to send me her book, and I consider her a pal. That said, my thoughts are my own)
There’s a rambling version of this review in which I slapdashedly rehash the whole thing, and sprinkle in some of my own room-temperature takes, and generally projectile vomit lots of words at you- but now I’ve written this, for accountability, I’ve hopefully spared us all that. That said, I do want to talk briefly about horror, romance and the relationship between the genres. I co-host a horror movie podcast with my easily-terrified mother, and her default view of the horror genre, having not seen much, and having liked even less, is that it is fundamentally at odds with what she would consider romance. Love can not blossom alongside disembowelling and eye-gouging, and headbutting… I’m working on it.
You and I and especially Emma Cole know however, that horror and romance have rather a lot in common- obsession and intimacy, vulnerability and the body are all fertile ground for both. So are desire, possession, jealousy and the appalling things we might do in the name of love. Love is inherently scary too because it’s risky, you’re asked to expose the soft, unprotected parts of yourself and trust that you won’t get hurt and regret it- of course, there’s more explicit horror that has some pointed thoughts about the myriad of ways in which that could go wrong. Sometimes desire can become a monstrous thing, or perhaps, we desire something monstrous. There’s the quiet horror of having to let go, and also the generally louder, bloody, manic horror of refusing to. “Love Never Dies,” explores all of this shared territory and beyond- how horror and romance are not opposing forces but complementary, how they can bleed into one another, their tropes and the ugly, beautiful ways that they can intersect.
It’s done well, in themed chapters- vampires, slashers, queer relationships in horrormance- with intermittent deep dives into particular films and directors. It’s a structure as well-paced and accessible as Cole’s writing itself, her summaries certainly did an admirable job at jogging my (appalling) memory, and setting up the premises of what I hadn’t watched- though potential readers should take fair warning that this one is spoiler-heavy, a non-issue for me and my aforementioned appalling memory. “Love Never Dies,” does not skimp either in referring to other non-fiction, books and essays giving its arguments a welcome depth beyond enthusiasm and appreciation- with a back matter goldmine featuring a further reading list, alongside all of the movies discussed and a list of international horror romance too. Cole is generous with her expertise, and expertise it certainly is.
Cole, wisely, tells us on a couple of occasions how this and that tangent are too broad for her debut, deserving of books of their own. That’s sensible, if rather frustrating to readers who would follow her down every rabbit hole she cares to go down- one can only hope that she gets around to writing them if “Love Never Dies,” is any indication of what she has to offer. Bravo.
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