It is obnoxious to claim that I didn’t watch the film because I stated that the reason he was hospitalized leading to his death was an attempt to castrate himself. Further, when social issues are incorporated into a film, especially as haphazardly as it was in this film, it is perfectly valid to include them in a review. I have been reviewing horror films for over a decade for various online and print publications and have never shied away from including valid social context and commentary. Media criticism is all about establishing and evaluating a piece of entertainment media within valid contexts. I believe my reading of this horror film is valid for a number of reasons explained above.

Horror films are capable of discussing serious issues in a serious way. I question the intelligence of someone who believes that horror films have never and will never comment on social issues, especially since the entire morality of the American horror system is built on the Production Code (aka Hays Moral Code). The Hays Moral Code was a conservative Christian reaction to a string of high profile crime cases involving Hollywood actors designed to sanitize the entire film system to proper Christian values to not alienate the American public just when film screenings were becoming ubiquitous. Hundreds of horror films (and other genres, as well) were rewritten or reedited by the studios to meet the Hays Moral Code. It’s why sexuality and drug use was always punished onscreen and the bad guy could never be the victor. Vilification of anyone who did something wrong became associated with vilification of current events and hot button topics, usually through stereotypes and approved talking points about controversial issues. You were not allowed to lead the poor confused children astray by suggesting something not typically wholesome was okay or acceptable.

Even after the Production Code was no longer in play, organizations like the MPAA continued to exert those standards on film, resulting in a repression of anything related to topics of sex and sexuality through much higher ratings than equally violent films would receive.

You might have the skills and perspective to dig deeper in a film like Insidious: Chapter 2 and understand that using the stereotypical “something must have happened in their childhood to make them think they’re different” argument doesn’t actually mean a character is actually transgender. That’s not the narrative presented in the story. The narrative in the story is that this man was forced to live as a woman from a very young age to satisfy his abusive mother, attempted to complete that cycle of abuse at the end of his life because of his mother’s influence, and now lives his vengeful afterlife as a woman at all times. The idea of gender identity is used as a source of horror and instant animosity because the villain is aggressively trying to get revenge for being forced to live his life this way.

A cross-dresser, as you called this character, would typically not attempt to remove their genitalia because the interest stops at just wearing the clothing. Now, if we consider the murders committed in the film to be a performance for his mother until he’s passed on, the cross-dresser reading of the character could start to come into focus. There is no suggestion in the film that this is all a show for the mother. She is forcing him to live as a woman for unspecified reasons. There’s the mention of the father’s influence–his boy name was his father’s decision–but nothing is elaborated on that. All we see is the mother abusing and manipulating him to live as a woman for so long that his identity in the afterlife is the woman in the black veil. The character may be trying to break back into the world through a male form, but the two male characters are the only ones who are actually capable of crossing into The Further that we meet in the two films. It’s suggested at the end of the film that this murderous ghost, dressed and acting as a woman, has finally possessed a female character with the girl in the wheelchair and Elise’s shocked reaction–a visual parallel to her murder in the first film by this character.

The great thing about film is that people can watch the same title and come away with very different perspectives on what the creative team set out to do. We have differing opinions on the film. The main difference between us, however, is that your defense of your opinion was to attack me for not sharing your views of the story and completely rejecting the premise of how I read film as text, while I actually took the time to actually lay out my arguments and then expand upon them when in a discussion about a film and film criticism. I’d love to have heard an actual argument for why this character is a cross-dresser based on the facts presented in the film and how that is somehow a perfectly inoffensive marginalization of a stigmatized sexual (or, in some cases, non-sexual) interest. You chose to attack my opinion, instead.

Firstly, the character is not a transgender woman. His mother forced him to play the role of a girl, yet he lived his adult life and identified as male, only using the feminine clothing as a disguise for his killings. That is cross dressing. Cross dressers do NOT identify as the opposite sex. The castration aspect I attribute to his mother’s presence in his life, even after her death. He was driven to insanity under the guise of her suffocating abuse, and her memory haunted him long after she passed.

Secondly, did you even watch the film? Crane didn’t die from complications due to the attempted castration. He jumped to his death.

Lastly, if someone is willing to rely on a horror movie to shape their opinion on particular social issues, that individual’s intelligence (or lack thereof) should be called into question.