When talking about horror movies, Morgan Carey’s eyes light up as she discusses the themes of a genre often overlooked.

“These movies usually reflect the issues that a lot of us deal with in day-to-day life,” she says. “While they might not be regarded as the same level of art as how others may classify them, they still hold a lot of impact.”

Carey runs Good For Her Films, a monthly film screening series at Starr Hill Beer Hall that celebrates its two-year anniversary this May. The free series focuses on movies, mostly in the horror genre, featuring “femme rage”—a film motif where a character who is subjugated to some sort of violence goes through a transformation and fights back. Carey says watching these stories can become a sort of cathartic experience.

“I’ve always felt like there’s a lot of healing in watching this type of film because, speaking from my own experience, anger is not an emotion that’s accepted to express if you’re a woman,” she says. “Seeing the characters in these films finally expressing their anger makes you feel like you have that capacity and that power as well.”

Carey began the series while rediscovering her love for femme rage movies and wanted to find a local community that also enjoyed them.

“I thought that the themes explored in these types of movies must resonate with more than just me,” she says. “These are very fun movies to watch with other people. I asked myself ‘How do I find them and how can we all watch them together?’”

When Carey started the Good For Her screenings in 2023, she expected only her friends to show up, but was quickly surprised when larger crowds started forming at every event.

“It’s just gotten bigger and better each time,” she says, adding that when they screened the recent body horror film “The Substance” last December, she was starting to worry they would run out of seats due to the large number of people coming. “Seeing the community turnout and new faces every month, it’s been truly crazy to experience, but also very validating and invigorating to me to give this the life I think it deserves.”

The series quickly became more than just watching a movie. It developed into a community event with an artisan market directly before each screening that highlights local artists making horror-inspired art like enamel pins, posters, and the popular Good For Her Coloring Book. The series also donates to a local community nonprofit every month and has raised more than $8,000 for places such as RVA Community Fridges, River City Harm Redux, Safe Harbor and others.

After 20 events, Good For Her Films will be celebrating its two-year anniversary with a screening of the Megan Fox demonic possession movie “Jennifer’s Body”—the first movie Good For Her ever showed—along with a vendor market, photo op, trivia, and a few other surprises.

For an event centered around femme rage, the atmosphere at a Good For Her event is friendly and welcoming.

“It’s been a good environment for everybody,” Carey explains, adding that they’ve taken great to create a “woman-and-queer-friendly space that celebrates anger and joy and acknowledges that these are emotions that demand to be felt, which can even help us fight against the oppressiveness of the patriarchal society we are forced to engage with in our every day.”

She adds that while femme rage was the cornerstone, the whole series is really about celebrating the building of community.

“It’s also really funny when random people walk in and they’ll have like 80 faces looking back in their direction,” she laughs. “Then they look at the screen and it’s something like the dating ritual scene from ‘Midsommar’ and they’re like ‘What is going on?’”

Carey continues to find new ways to expand the event, most recently partnering with Shelf Life Books to launch a monthly book club to discuss books with themes based on the screened film, which are available for purchase at Shelf Life Books in the special Good For Her section.

“The book club idea was actually brought to me by Athena [Palmer] at Shelf Life [Books], who is a fan of Good For Her. It just made sense for us to have more opportunities to come together and talk about these themes and explore them outside of film.”

Although the events are free to attend, running the series requires a lot of resources. To help sustain costs, Carey started the Good For Her Movie Club membership service for $7 per month, which includes perks like a free movie from their physical media stand, early access to shopping and merch releases, membership discounts, and various movie club events.

As for the future of Good For Her, Carey has plenty of ideas she wants to explore as the series continues including a possible Good For Her print magazine or a short horror film competition with local filmmakers.

But one thing she has no problem with is finding a movie to show.

“I definitely have a running watchlist of films in the Good For Her Cinematic Universe that just keeps getting longer and longer, but that’s a fine problem to have.”

The Good For Her Films two-year anniversary takes place at Starr Hill Beer Hall on Thursday, May 15 with the artisans market and book club beginning at 6 p.m. and the film screening of “Jennifer’s Body” starting around 8 p.m. Free to attend.