Ernest Mathijs is a Professor in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of British Columbia. He researches cult cinema, censorship, genre film, movie audiences, Belgian cinema, and Canadian and European horror films. He has written on the reception of fantasy films (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit), on David Cronenberg, Utopia, reality-TV Big Brother, Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Beuys, Monty Python, The Room, and on the activism and acting of Delphine Seyrig.

His most recent books are 100 Cult Films: The Sequel (2026, with Xavier Mendik), The Screen Censorship Companion (2024, co-edited with Daniel Biltereyst) and The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema (2020, co-edited with Jamie Sexton). His essays have appeared in Screen, JCMS (Cinema Journal), Literature/Film Quarterly, and elsewhere. He has also published 100 Cult Films, Cult Cinema, The Cult Film Reader, Alternative Europe, The Cinema of the Low Countries, and Einstein Meets Magritte, amongst others. He is the author of monographs on David Cronenberg and Ginger Snaps.

Ernest is the co-producer and co-writer of the two-part documentary The Quiet Revolution (2019), an overview of Canadian horror film since the 1970s. He was an editor of the Cultographies book series; he sits on the editorial board of the journal of Audience and Reception Studies Participations, and he is an associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC. He is obsessed with the question ‘how long is a moment?’