Denis Saltykov is a PhD candidate in Film at the University of Pittsburgh; he also studied Sociology in the graduate school of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow). His current research interests are sociological theories of cinema, film genre studies, and politics of contemporary popular culture. His publications have appeared in KinoKultura, New Literary Observer, Sociology of Power, and Russian popular websites such as Kino-Teatr, Kinomania, and Wonderzine. His research focuses on the ways in which recent Russian cinema is adopting Western models of horror and action films. He also researches unacknowledged Russian films that seem bizarre or socially deviant, thus provoking the audiences to treat the given work as a cult object. Beyond his research career, he is the chief editor of the horror genre website RussoRosso.