“Nothing Inside”: On Pablo Larraín’s El Conde (2023)
This man who watches you returns from hell […]; he is hollow, he is full of air. Dry hands hold him upright from behind, like a house of cards being[…]
Tagged: horror
Defending Cinematic Heresy: John Boorman’s The Exorcist II: The Heretic
Despite ritualistically crowning lists of the worst sequels ever made, in no way does The Heretic exemplify “sequelitis.” It’s neither a quick cash-in nor a rehash of the original. Its[…]
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Cults · Horror · Religion & Spirituality · War
Rosemary’s Baby: The World as Coven
Rosemary’s Baby has been seen as eerily prescient, predictive, but in fact it looked back; Polanski already knew evil and horror, and specifically the horror of the giant covens of[…]
Absurdism · DIY · Experimental & Underground · Horror
An Enraged Eye: Nathan Schiff’s Vermilion Eyes as Anti-Film
“I felt there was a dead end to the kind of films I was making. . . . I was losing sight of reason in favor of result and so[…]
The Demiurge in the American Eyesore: Night Tide
If Curtis Harrington had not had the ruined mall of hell unveiled to the world in 1905 as Venice of America as a setting for his occult fable, he might[…]
Body Horror · Horror · Mumblecore · Romance
Lucky McKee’s May and the Retelling of Frankenstein for the Indie Rom-Com Era
Not only does May challenge the tropes of mumblecore and indie-rom com movies, but it also retells elements of Frankenstein, offering a female protagonist who is both monster and monster-maker.[…]
Rate Your Hunch: Women and Intuition in Barbarian
Hinting at women’s complicity in a film plotted around men’s violent treatment of women is, well, ballsy. That Cregger’s script doesn’t delve into the larger cultural conditioning and structures that[…]
Wild Imagination: Forty Years of The Thing
“You just can’t beat wild imagination.” – Bob Bottin * * * It took decades for John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) to find an audience, on home video and cable.[…]
Drama · Mystery · Philosophy · Thrillers & Action
Are You Still Watching? Demonlover (2002) and the Spectre of Voyeurism
This is the central thesis Assayas raises here – instant gratification via the image suggests a greater degree of control over what we consume (including its ethics) when in fact[…]
Family · Horror · Linguistics and Language
Ghost Story: Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil/Gæsterne (2022)
What kind of guests are so pathologically accommodating that their hosts can get away with murdering them? * * * What’s in a name? On one hand, Speak No Evil[…]
Absurdism · African American · Horror · Surrealism · Westerns
What’s Behind That Curtain: The Wizard of Oz and Jordan Peele’s Nope
The theme of exploitation is evident in Nope’s multiple references to a classic film. Not Jaws, The Goonies, or Close Encounters, or any of the Western films nodded at in[…]
Franchises & Series · Horror · Men & Masculinity
Saw and the Danger of Not Talking about Masculinity
We see how Jigsaw can fail, again and again, to help anyone and still blame it on them. We see how people can live through how little his traps teach[…]
Directors · Gender · Hollywood · Horror · Men & Masculinity
The Jaws of War: How Quint Decodes Masculinity in the Films of Spielberg
If the sum of Spielberg’s work is about how men live in the world, Jaws is his most particular point on the subject, a film centered with almost fantastical totality[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · New Media · Societal Trends · Theory · Thrillers & Action · TV & Streaming
A Spectre in the Participatory Panopticon: The Database Horror of Unfriended: Dark Web
The encounter between the lead characters and The Circle evokes a wider sense of anxiety regarding the extent to which we upload information about every area of our lives into[…]
Eco · Horror · SF & Fantasy
My New Life as Human Fertilizer: Jaco Bouwer’s Gaia (2021)
In his creation of a nonhuman cinematic world that mines horror from its confrontation of human fear of irrelevance and inadaptability, Bouwer ultimately suggests that survival in the era following[…]
Family · Horror · Women in Film
Home Wee Home – It’s Where the Horror Is: Miniature Models, Crime Scenes, and Toxic Femininity in Hereditary and Sharp Objects
A living doll, everywhere you look. It can sew, it can cook, It can talk, talk, talk. – Sylvia Plath, “The Applicant” (Oct. 11, 1962) And they stuck me together[…]
Crime · Gothic · Horror · Melodrama · Photo Essays
To Cut or Not to Cut? The POV Shots in Eyes Without a Face (and how they differ from those in Psycho)
Franju demonstrates how beauty hides pain, until pain becomes beautiful. * * * Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage/Eyes Without a Face is a reliably haunting film, a beautiful nightmare[…]
Comedy · Crime · Drugs · LGBT & Queer · New Media
Post-Irony Film & The Scary of Sixty-First
The Scary of Sixty-First expands the umbrella of “buzzword cinema” — it’s a Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy with a lesbian sex scene by a popular podcaster and it-girl of the edgy[…]
The Black Rose in the Garden: A Second Look at The Babadook
Amelia has cultivated a fearful respect of Mr. Babadook. She is in control of him and feeds him worms from her garden. Instead of trying to exorcise the demon, she[…]
Dreams and the Human Material in Night of the Living Dead
Dawn brings the forces of reason and order (ironic, in that the posse clearing away the few remaining dead are little more than trigger-happy, thrill-seeking rednecks, not the wise and[…]
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