The New Cinematic Weird argues that weird fiction is rising also in audiovisual culture. Presenting several detailed analyses of weird cinematic works, the book shows how the new cinematic weird is best understood as atmospheric worldings - affective intensities that suffuse the experience of the cinematic weird. The weird exists as an experiential field, an inflation of the world. These worldings disclose a variety of experiences. The book engagingly shows how creepy, unsettling, ominous, uneasy, and eerie atmospheres provide a way into the weird experience. This book is important to anyone interested in the audiovisual weird, cinematic atmospheres, how audiovisual media produce worlds, and how weird fiction challenges our conception of the way the world is.

Steen Ledet Christiansen is professor of popular visual culture at Aalborg University, Denmark.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Feeling Weird

1. Creepiness, Ecstasy, and Weird Narration in The OA

2. Unsettling Time in Dark

3. Ominous Metamorphosis in Starry Eyes

4. Discontinuity and Unease in Stranger Things

5. Eerieness and Disorientation: Channel Zero: Candle Cove and David Bowie's Blackstar and Lazarus

6. Unworlding and Disquiet in Annihilation

Conclusion: For the Weird