Mariana Colin ’19 MA remembers being transfixed by the cardboard cutouts of monsters she saw in her local video store, where she repeatedly rented 1990’s Troll 2 as a kid.

“Troll 2 is not good,” she says, laughing. “Nobody thinks it’s good, but it was kind of instrumental in my horror education as a very young child.”

Colin has built on that foundation and now runs a successful YouTube channel, The Morbid Zoo, a project that started as her capstone project at NC State and has garnered more than 180,000 subscribers. On it, she releases videos replete with history and analysis about movie monsters. Tune in to see what John Carpenter’s The Thing suggests about American paranoia or to get a detailed cultural history of clowns as a backdrop for It. Trace the evolution of vampires in her celebration of Sinners, which won four Oscars last March.

“That’s all monsters are,” she says, “expressions of our anxieties and our visions for where society is going.”

The original aim for Colin was to focus on one fiend per video. But in the last couple of years, she’s expanded the channel to include her analysis of the contemporary American media landscape. She’s also launched a podcast, Once More with Feeling, where she stacks an original movie, like Pete’s Dragon, beside its remake, offering insightful — and hilarious — commentary. “I have a sort of basic faith in human curiosity,” she says. “That’s what I’m trying to appeal to.”

“I have a sort of basic faith in human curiosity. That’s what I’m trying to appeal to.”

Colin, 33, produces her content while finishing her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois. She’s also good for recommendations. Campy horror? “The Slumber Party Massacre,” she says. A cult classic? “Basket Case,” she doesn’t hesitate. And with the joy in each suggestion, there’s a deeper recognition of how much horror has captured her imagination since those Troll 2 rentals years ago. “[Horror is] not a fantasy. It’s a catastrophe,” she says. “Because horror constitutionally has permission to make people feel bad, I think that allows for a lot of interesting interrogations of what we’re doing and what we’re feeling and why, and I think that’s a large part of why horror is doing so well right now.”

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