Shyamalan’s three films portray an imbalanced and endangered world; they engage to varying degrees with the imagery and anxiety surrounding terrorist attacks in the wake of September 11, 2001, while[…]
The new Ghostbusters seems quite pleased with itself, but it leaves the overwhelming impression that nobody involved really believed in it. Despite the original film’s numerous flaws and Bill Murray’s[…]
It is this very concept of challenging traditional models and exposing not viscera but inconsistencies within societal constructs that makes The Machinist arguably one of the most horrifying films ever[…]
Designers · Historical & Epic · Horror
The Witch thrives on its damning details. It seems authentically claustrophobic and austere. Threats to faith take their toll. The untouched surroundings and natural lighting allow each period detail revelrous[…]
“… the living being is only a species of the dead.” – Nietzsche * * * Dead Man. Dead Man’s Curve. Dead Man on Campus. Dead Man Walking (1988). Dead[…]
Editor’s note: We’re posting Erich “Mr. Acidemic” Kuersten’s viewing guide a couple of days before Halloween to give our readers a chance to locate these “cool and strange” suggestions spanning cinema’s[…]
A reluctant genre force who admits his pictures start out as regular films but turn into horror movies much the same way he describes the process of filmmaking itself as[…]
The film makes a far more subtle statement about childhood’s inevitable, metaphorical death: All innocent children must eventually grow into corrupted adults, and adults will only suffer for trying to[…]
Adam, a vampire and underground rock musician, sneaks down the quiet corridors of a Detroit hospital, dressed in a physician’s scrubs with his face concealed by a surgical mask and[…]
The Babadook presents a normative vision of what it believes is a stable, happy existence, one in which if our emotions are difficult to bear, we simply lock them in[…]
The continuing attention being showered on Jennifer Kent’s 2014 The Babadook from horror luminaries such as Stephen King and William Friedkin has prompted some impressive critical writing, while simultaneously anchoring[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · Horror · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part,[…]
“The most powerful aspect of Wolfen is not, then, its status as an exemplary and indeed essential period piece, but its unusual situation of contemporary New York City within the[…]
“The monster movie has always been predicated on some anxiety about technology – whether it’s nuclear bombs or genetic engineering – and we may now wonder if this isn’t an[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Horror · Reviews
“I can always make something work, if I have a camera.” – John Landis There are two John Landises. There’s the director equally at home with comedy as he is[…]
“Inherent to defamiliarization or riddling is, of course, a process of refamiliarization: as the film proceeds, we wish to see the strange normalized, the riddle answered. But in The House with Laughing[…]
“Godzilla has no anarchy or eccentricity, much less any experimental spirit or Japanese weirdness. Edwards is too preoccupied with turning the movie into something new, serious, and, worst of all,[…]
“If Godzilla is not benevolent but merely indifferent, then his mercy amounts to that of a man sidestepping an anthill instead of trampling it under his heel.” Conventional academic and[…]
Dr. Steve Jones has written a book on a subject few people have examined in depth, though the press and critics have vilified it to no end. It’s a subject[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · New Media
This is the second of two articles riffing on found footage horror and new media. The first was Sarolta Mezei’s “Found Footage Horror #1: The Dead Rising: Aspects of Spectrality in[…]
