OCTOBER 29 • 2020 | 25
PHOTOS BY ALEX SHERMAN
ARTS&LIFE
ON THE COVER
What They
Do in the
Newlyweds Jonathan
Barkan and Ariel Fisher
put a Jewish lens
on horror fi
lms.
GEORGE ELKIND CONTRIBUTING WRITER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX SHERMAN
M
any couples have a meet-cute. Jonathan Barkan and Ariel Fisher’
s was
a literal horror story.
The Ann Arbor residents met by chance in 2018, when they were
writers and horror film aficionados visiting an all-night shoot on the set of
Rabid, a remake of the 1977 body-horror film by cult-favorite Jewish Canadian
director David Cronenberg. The movie is about a young woman who turns into
a bloodsucking monster.
Unbeknownst to Barkan, Fisher was mourning the recent loss of her aunt
Claudia, who co-founded the Danforth Jewish Circle, a progressive Jewish
continued on page 26