Why Criticism: The Race to Problematize Bittersweet Horror Endings
“In order to fully engage with horror films, it’s important to look at the monster and the world that’s being upended by that monster.”
Tone in the Films of Joe Dante: Attack of the Multi-Layers!
“Not quite comedies, not entirely horror movies and not normal family films, Dante’s work continues to impress with the layers each work reveals over time, a key factor in their lasting power.”
Review: ‘Dark Whispers: Volume 1’
“The problem with ‘Dark Whispers: Volume 1’ is the same as with any horror anthology — the stories are only as good as what’s come before.”
Review: ‘The Invisible Man’ Is a Sight for Sore Eyes
“Whannell’s ‘The Invisible Man’ is an absolute banger, and stands tall as the most spectacular evolution of the story to hit the big screen.”
Review: Oz Perkins’ ‘Gretel & Hansel’
“Great art has every piece in intimate communion with the art as a whole. ‘Gretel & Hansel’ takes an elemental approach to the folklore, gasping with the fears of the original material while exhaling a new mystique of its own.”
Berlinale 2020 Review: Abel Ferrara’s ‘Siberia’
“Ferrara throws everything at ‘Siberia,’ turning it into a playground for emotive relation. But it is Dafoe, his muse, who so thoroughly brings the audience along with the randomness…”
Review: Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s ‘The Lodge’
“Franz and Fiala scale down Kubrick’s more expansive vision, and the result offers its own kind of skin-crawling satisfaction.”
Review: Joe Begos’ ‘VFW’
“A thrilling, gloriously gory and gleefully simple exercise in cyberpunk nastiness, led by a crew of done-with-this-shit action movie icons, ‘VFW’ is a relentlessly entertaining riot.”
Sundance Film Festival Review: Josh Ruben’s ‘Scare Me’
“‘Scare Me’ takes a while to get going, awkwardly finding its footing through its opening scenes, but when it settles into the long night of storytelling in the cabin, Ruben’s debut feature becomes a total delight.”
Review: Richard Stanley’s ‘Color Out of Space’
“‘Color Out of Space’ is one of the weirdest, most disgusting, thought-provoking and provocative releases of the year…”
The Spirit of Revolution: How World Cinema Defined the 1920s
“There is a danger and dynamism to 20s cinema which was gradually eradicated by the standardisation of production processes.”
Review: Sophia Takal’s ‘Black Christmas’
“Playing with of-the-moment vocabulary familiar on college campuses, the latest ‘Black Christmas’ upends several slasher conventions, even if the film is a step down from the director’s excellent ‘Always Shine.'”
‘The Curse of the Cat People’: Val Lewton’s Groundbreaking Introduction of Childhood Fantasy
“Lewton’s insights into both childhood and adult inner personal conflicts are legacies which deserve recognition in the foundational history of horror, both for psychological thrillers and fantasy films.”
Review: Mike Flanagan’s ‘Doctor Sleep’
“In a weird way, Flanagan might have inadvertently made the best X-Men movie to date.”
Robert Eggers Unlocks ‘The Lighthouse’
“‘The Witch’ may be the superior film, but ‘The Lighthouse’ shows Eggers growing by leaps and bounds as a storyteller and visual stylist.”
Cinema Viscera: Italian Zombie Horror
“This is a world where faith, governments, businesses, families and the other institutions humans have built will all crumble, just like human bodies, which will inevitably succumb to their fragility and fall victim to total destruction.”
Manic Lust in Neo-Giallo ‘Knife + Heart’
“As a love letter to a cinematic wave of films that were (and are) often dismissed as style devoid of substance, ‘Knife+Heart’ triumphs in both story and genre evolution.”
Review: Ruben Fleischer’s ‘Zombieland: Double Tap’
“Despite the warmed-up leftovers, ‘Zombieland: Double Tap’ manages to locate a few bright spots, and none are more appealing than Zoey Deutch.”
Genre at Terminal Velocity: The Films of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
“What allows Cattet and Forzani’s films to flourish is that they modify cinematic influences to accommodate today’s instant gratification culture.”
Emilio Miraglia and the High-Gothic Giallo
“Miraglia’s deliberate interweaving of castles and glimmering blades taps into the one element that both Gothic and giallo art share: the ability to taffy-pull delight from terror. Both Poe and Bava would tip their hats.”