Essays
“My Money Is Still in Your Pocket: The Death of the American Dream in Michael Mann’s Thief.” On heists and capitalism. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 8/7/23.
“The Horror of Powerlessness: Skinamarink and the Rapture.” On the vestiges of horror from being raised evangelical. Tor.com, 4/13/23.
“This Is A Test: A Taxonomy of Documentaries from True/False 2023.” On film festival coverage. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 3/20/23.
“Saying Goodbye.” On memory, the grieving process, and Kogonada’s After Yang. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 11/2/22.
“23: Back to Middle-Earth.” On the failures of Amazon’s The Rings of Power. Newsletter, 10/15/22.
“You’re Gonna Give Me Back My Spur.” On vampires, the American West, and Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 8/3/22.
“Optimism, Identity, and the Fourth Doctor’s Scarf.” On a knitting project. Tor.com, 4/26/22.
“Stealing Fire: Frankenstein (1931).” On horror, transgression, and transcendence. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 10/6/21.
“You May Find Yourself.” On Talking Heads, quarantine, and Stop Making Sense. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 9/7/21.
“Love Your Enemies: A Biblical Reading of Michael Sarnoski’s Pig.” On weakness and vulnerability as spiritual discipline. RogerEbert.com, 8/3/21.
“I’ll See You In Hell.” On The Empire Strikes Back and foiled plans. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 6/11/21.
“Objects in Motion.” On Michael Mann’s Collateral. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 3/18/21.
“Biodigital Jazz.” On Tron: Legacy’s status as an intelligent mess. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 2/7/20.
“The World Spins Madly On: Only Lovers Left Alive and Long Dark Nights of the Soul.” On vampirism and the cyclical nature of soul-searching. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 8/7/19.
“The Heart of a Home.” On Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle and what makes a person feel loved. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 12/12/18.
“Women, Aliens, and Dangerous Things: Female Bodies in Alien 3.” On being a woman in a man’s world and what that does to the soul. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 8/13/18.
“I’m Coming Back: On 2001, Interstellar, and Love.” Bright Wall/Dark Room, 5/25/18.
Reviews
“A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.” On Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. Bright Wall/Dark Room, 11/30/21.
“Finding Grace in Screen Violence.” On CHVRCHES’ fourth studio album. Think Christian, 9/29/21.
“Rehoboam and Reckoning in Westworld Season 3.” Think Christian, 3/17/20.
“The Ecclesiastes Wisdom of A Star Is Born.” Think Christian, 10/11/18.
Podcast Guest Appearances
Xenomania Part VI: Alien Covenant. Frankenstein’s Podcast.
Sarah Welch-Larson talks Becoming Alien. Writers on Film Podcast.
There Will Be Blood. Pod Thomas Anderson by One Heat Minute Productions.
Solaris (2002). Eye of the Duck.
Episode 39: [Whispers to date] “That’s the resurrection.” Young Adult Movie Ministry.
Becoming Alien: Sarah Welch-Larson. Veterans of Culture Wars.
WC002 — Sarah Welch-Larson. So Grosse Such Pointe Much Blank.
Posthumously Uncomfortable with Sarah Welch-Larson. This Is Your Afterlife.
Seeing and Believing 264: Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Seeing & Believing, Christ and Pop Culture.
O, Death (The Irishman, Nick Cave). The Think Christian Podcast.
Book
Becoming Alien: The Beginning and End of Evil in Science Fiction’s Most Idiosyncratic Franchise.
The Alien films are perceived to be a fractured franchise, each one loosely related to the others. They are nonlinear, complicated, convoluted: a collection of genre movies ranging from horror to war to farce. But on closer examination, the threads that bind together these films are strong and undeniable. The series is a model of Catherine Keller’s cosmology as a cycle of order out of chaos, an illustration of her concept of evil as discreation. When viewed through the lens of Keller’s Face of the Deep, the Alien films resolve into a cohesive whole. The series becomes six views of the idea of evil-as-exploitation, its origins, and its consequences. Each film expands on the concept of evil set forth by its predecessors, complicating that conception, and retroactively enriching readings of the films that came before.
