A new film discussion club on campus is proving that ‘what goes bump in the night’ isn’t just for Halloween. 

Monsters in the Margins is a movie dialogue group formed by sisters Cyndi and Estefany Álvarez Santillán. 

It focuses on the inherent “otherness” that is placed on marginalized people and how that intersects with monster depiction in media. 

Both sisters are graduate teaching assistants. Estefany teaches Spanish courses on campus, and Cyndi is in the English department. The club is a blend of both of their academic fields, with an emphasis on community on top of its scholarly nature.

Fittingly, the club was formed this February, on Friday the 13th. It holds bi-monthly meetings in Spanglish, or combined Spanish-English. 

“There isn’t a lot of people that I feel are attracted to that title because maybe you’re scared of Spanish or maybe you’re scared of English. So it is definitely more that we want to benefit the community that do fall into this little niche,” said Estefany.

The club opens up opportunities for speakers of either language to practice and feel comfortable in the discussions held.

“I feel like that’s open to anyone talking about marginalization – or that they’ve ever felt that way – because there’s so many components to it,” said Cyndi.

The club has already featured Andy Muschietti’s short “Mamá,” and Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” and “The Shape of Water.” 

It analyzed Muschietti’s work alongside its later 2013 film adaptation, and paired “Frankenstein” with the 1973 Spanish film “The Spirit of the Beehive.” 

It reviewed “The Shape of Water” with articles related to the film, instead.

Inclusion of older films and academic articles adds a scholarly aspect to club meetings.

“There is scholarship, but I feel like it’s scholarship that isn’t too heavy or difficult to understand because mostly we’re focusing on the movies and the things that happened and analyzing it from that perspective,” Estefany said, “So it’s pretty approachable.”

The work of del Toro has been featured multiple times already in the club’s catalog. The sisters expressed a fondness for the director.

“He is from Guadalajara, our family’s from Jalisco, so he’s kind of like our weird uncle almost because we have close proximity,” Estefany said, “He has a really artistic way of portraying horror and gothic.”

The current line-up of films was chosen to focus on Black, Indigenous, and people of color directors that show the monster, or the “other,” according to Estefany.

They picked “Frankenstein” for its focus on exploring femininity in horror, Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” and Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” for their focus on the blending of what is monstrous with everyday humans.

“One of the things that we emphasize in this club is the wheel of power,” Estefany said “The further you move from the center, which is power and basically represents whiteness, heterosexualness, cis-genderness, the further that you are, the more like a monster you are.”

The club is set to feature del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” Peele’s “Get Out” and Coogler’s “Sinners” on April 10, 17 and 24, respectively. Further titles and themes will be explored in the next semester.