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Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin (affiliate link) is the most unsettling book I’ve read this year and I mean that as a compliment. The premise: It’s 1980s New York and a repressed film archivist is restoring a cursed underground horror film from Nazi-era Germany. As someone who went to film school, I was immediately intrigued. What I didn’t expect was how deeply personal and disturbing Felker-Martin’s vision would get. Some spoilers ahead.
Title: Black Flame
Author: Gretchen Felker-Martin
Genre: Queer horror / psychological horror
What Is Black Flame About?
Set in 1980s New York, Black Flame follows Ellen, a film archivist restoring a cursed underground horror film called The Baroness. As she works frame by frame, the film begins to bleed into her reality. She sees visions, hears voices, and has strange encounters that may or may not be supernatural. The deeper she goes, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel.
Why it’s queer: Ellen is a deeply repressed queer woman clinging to a suffocating version of heterosexual normalcy. She’s terrified of her attraction to women and fantasizes about exerting masculinity. The horror isn’t just supernatural. It’s internalized homophobia, misogyny, and generational trauma.
The Real Monster Is Internalized Homophobia (And It’s Devastating)
Ellen is deeply uncomfortable in her own life. Repressed, judgmental, obsessed with masculinity, and resentful of her “weak” boyfriend Jesse. She fantasizes about the kind of man her parents would approve of. She polices her own desire at every turn. When she encounters Rachel, a film critic who lives the life Ellen is too afraid to want, her response isn’t curiosity. It’s vicious, almost reflexive cruelty.
Watching her is genuinely uncomfortable and that discomfort is completely intentional.
Felker-Martin isn’t writing a triumphant coming-out story. She’s asking a harder question: what happens when repression doesn’t just wound you but warps you? When survival curdles into self-destruction and then into something darker?
Ellen’s horror is internal before it’s ever supernatural.
The Cursed Film at the Heart of This Novel
I really loved the interesting way Felker-Martin uses film restoration here. Archivists preserve the past but what happens when the past is violent, fascist, or cursed? Ellen’s visions of the filmmaker’s history reveal old money, occult protection, and grief over a lost male lover, making it clear that this story is about inherited trauma as much as haunted cinema.
There’s something Felker-Martin is saying here about what it means to handle violent history with care and whether “care” is even possible when the thing you’re preserving wants to consume you.
The Relationships: Messy, Queer, and Charged
Ellen’s dynamic with her boyfriend Jesse is pretty uncomfortable. He’s overly affectionate and eager to be “the good boyfriend.” We also learn that she’s his first sexual experience, which adds another layer of imbalance.
Then there’s Rachel, the film critic, who sees through Ellen, something she can’t handle. The way Ellen lashes out at her is one of the most painful scenes in the book. The cruelty shows her self-loating.
We also meet Freddie, Ellen’s ex from college, who feels less like someone she’s running toward and more like someone she’s using as an emotional escape.
None of these relationships offer Ellen or the reader any real comfort.
The Ending: Gory and Somehow Transformative
Fair warning: Felker-Martin does not ease you into the finale. Her writing throughout is vivid and claustrophobic, and by the end it gets genuinely grotesque. This is not horror that winks at you but earns every uncomfortable moment.
I keep thinking about the shift where Ellen stops fearing destruction and starts choosing it. Whether that reads as liberation, nihilism, or something in between maybe says more about you as a reader than it does about the book. I haven’t fully decided where I land which is honestly the mark of a book that’s still working on me.
Final Verdict: Is Black Flame Worth Reading?
Yes, if you can handle it.
Fascinating, brutal, and layered, though I still have questions about the curse, the ending, and what the film was all about.
Black Flame is a queer horror novel that uses the genre to do real psychological and political work. It’s not comfortable and may leave you with more questions. It’s a genuinely original horror story about what happens to people who are never allowed to be themselves, told through the language of cursed cinema and visceral dread.
Read this if you: enjoy queer horror with real teeth, like morally complicated protagonists who don’t redeem themselves neatly, or want a book that treats internalized shame as the terrifying force it actually is.
Maybe skip it if: you need your horror cathartic or your queer narratives hopeful. This one doesn’t offer either.
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Queer Book Club Questions
- Do you think the horror in Black Flame is supernatural or a manifestation of Ellen’s psychological unraveling?
- How did you interpret Ellen’s shift into someone who choose destruction rather than fears it?
- How does Felker-Martin use generational trauma to complicate who’s “responsible” for who Ellen becomes?
- How did you interpret the ending? Was it hopeful, nihilistic, or symbolic?
If you’ve read Black Flame (affiliate link), I need to hear your take on that ending. Drop me a message on Threads or Bluesky.
Gays & Confused covers queer horror, cozy rom-coms, and everything in between. If you want book picks that actually make you think (and occasionally spiral), follow along so you don’t miss what we’re reading next.
