It could be said that a country’s horror movies tell us something essential about its culture, its fears, and its desires. America, the great melting pot, gleefully cribbed monsters from European novels like Dracula, our own imperialist impulses, and later, we began to express a more individual, distinctly “American” sensibility in 1950s with the birth of creature features and atomic age fever dreams. The Vietnam War followed by Reagan’s reign gave us the slasher--helpless people stalked and brutally dismembered in the woods, usually after betraying a moral or cultural norm.
Read MoreMSF: Male Seeking Female (2014)
There’s a particular difficulty in reviewing so-bad-they’re-good films. By the very fact of including “bad” in the descriptor, you’re necessarily being critical of the creative forces behind the movie. Rare is it that an intentionally “bad” film turns out to be enjoyable.
Read MoreMemory Box (2015)
Attendees at this year’s Fantastic Fest who checked out the delightfully surprising dramedy Aloys were in for a treat of a different sort before the film proper began—a tragic, beautiful little short called “Memory Box.” The simplicity of its’ title betrays the complex framework of the story. In a not-very-distant future, people can pay to participate in “boxes”—elaborate role playing scenarios that let individuals relive past experiences, allowing them to literally relive their happiest memories, with companies and their employees painstakingly recreating places, events—and people.
Read MoreGreen Room (2015)
In my career as a horror journalist, I’ve spent a good deal of time writing about grindhouse movies—what they were, what they weren’t, and what contemporary films aping the style get it right and which are simply pedestrian imitations of what filmmakers think a grindhouse movie was. For the uninitiated, grindhouse films were a peculiar subgenre that cropped up between the 1960s and 1980s, aimed nominally towards those who frequented the theaters along 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York. Most often horror oriented but also including dark dramas, action movies, and straight-up smut flicks, they were loud, nasty, violent, and amoral—gritty tales with their roots in the pulp magazines of the 40s and 50s, catering to the audience’s basest desires and most misanthropic beliefs.
Read MoreThe Witch (2016)
Once in a while, a horror film comes along that transcends both the genre and audience expectations to become not just a classic fright flick, but a classic in its' own right. The Shining. Rosemary's Baby.
Read MoreThe Visit (2015)
Why hasn't anyone done this before? Grandparents are the killers. It just makes sense, and with M. Night at the helm, the concept is simple and weird enough to actually work.
Read MoreManiac! (1977) #RetroReview
Anyone and everyone who’s ever browsed a DVD section knows about the mockbuster: The ultra-low budget, dubiously constructed ripoff of whatever is big at the movies at a given moment. In the wake of Snakes on a Plane there was Snakes on a Train; when Transformers hit big screens, Transmorphers hit the Redbox. For hardcore aficionados of the rental store or the bargain bin, they’re sort of the comic relief for long, dry, browsing periods, something to give you a chuckle when you’ve grown frustrated that the special-edition Blu-ray 25th Anniversary widescreen edition of Hellraiser really is out of stock.
Read MoreJurassic World (2015)
A couple of decades after the events of Jurassic Park, the world has inexplicably grown bored with the concept of dinosaurs in a theme park. Having seen attendance steadily decline over the last ten years, the park’s operators create a bigger, badder dinosaur in hopes of reinvigorating public interest and increasing revenues. Almost immediately, however, the dinosaur poop hits the fan and potential repeat customers start dying off.
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