Admittedly the bar has been greatly lowered when approaching any new film from M. Night Shyamalan, quondam wunderkind of cinema, whose SIXTH SENSE left us breathless with delight, and whose subsequent work left us more and more dismayed as the work deteriorated from the thoughtfully disturbing SIGNS, through the kitsch of THE VILLAGE, the silliness… Read More »
A Pale Shadow of A POLTERGEIST
The original POLTERGEIST was said to have a curse attached to it. Perhaps because the producers opted to use real skeletons rather than models because they were cheaper. Perhaps because taunting the supernatural might tick off the wrong non-corporal entity. Aside from the deaths associated with members of the original cast and crew, certainly the… Read More »
IT FOLLOWS and It’s Relentless
IT FOLLOWS slyly juxtaposes the familiar with the alien as it tells its exceptionally effective tale of terror. The clichéd tropes of low-budget horror — the remote lake house, the eager and nubile kids having sex in the back seat of a car, a terrified girl in high heels and lingerie running in terror down… Read More »
Perry Blackshear, MacLeod Andrews & Evan Dumouchel Insist that THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE
THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE is a first-rate existential horror film, as well as a psychological thriller. I got the same vibe watching it that I had gotten watching PI and BRICK, the maiden efforts of Darren Aronofsky and Rian Johnson respectively. Writer/director Perry Blackshear understands more than just how to create evocative, even sumptuous, visuals, he knows… Read More »
OUIJA
I have several Halloween rituals, one of which is to seek out the seasonal schlock horror film. There is almost always one low-budget groaner released for a quick buck and a putative future in the secondary market of home video. My reasons are two-fold. Sometimes there is a pleasant surprise to be found in the… Read More »
THE GUEST — Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett
I admit that I have been waiting for the next film from Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett since seeing their last one,YOURE NEXT. The pair have a way of creating astute character studies while also embracing genre films with a piquant elan. I was not disappointed. THE GUEST is smart, scary, and a fascinating exercise in the psychology of… Read More »
DELIVER US FROM EVIL
DELIVER US FROM EVIL is a curious blend of intensity and lassitude. Though rife with images of gory mutilations, animal and human, there is in its decorous pacing the whiff of the better Merchant-Ivory productions of times gone by, where things unfold in their own time and without any unseemly rush amid lush surroundings and… Read More »
SPIDER
David Cronenberg’s particular genius is getting inside our deepest, most primal fears, the ones that exist in the id and are impervious to any assuaging from the land of logic. Hence in RABID, Marilyn Chambers grows something suspiciously phallic in a most unexpected place, in VIDEODROME, our televisions turn on us, and in DEAD RINGERS,… Read More »
CABIN FEVER
What we have in CABIN FEVER is the classic tale of city kids out in the deep dark woods with all the attendant mischief that that sort of thing engenders. The saving grace is that these kids are not outstandingly stupid, say, like the Blair Witch kids. You know, the ones that kept crossing and… Read More »
VAN HELSING
VAN HELSING is a film that does not do things by halves. One might, in principle, admire the way it pulls out all the stops early on, but the results, a hemorrhaging husk that eventually dissolves into the same sort of dust as the staked vampires that people its running time, prevents admiring it in… Read More »