Emelie preys on our nightmares and so has more in common with thrillers like Rosemary’s Baby than current pulpy horror flicks. Its scares are strongest when they’re coming from what’s hidden, and from what’s left unsaid.
The woods: few phrases conjure up scares so visceral. This portrait of a Puritan family confronted with witchcraft is ultimately about our most fundamental fears: the dark, the unknown, and, of course, one another. Believing that their settlement’s way of practicing their faith is too liberal, a family of six—husband William, wife Katherine, eldest daughter […]
Before I settled down in my seat to watch the new horror/comedy Nina Forever, my friend and I were discussing a particular film that I liked and he didn’t. He did admire its audacity, though. He said it was a film you had to go “all in for.” Fortuitously, Nina Forever is an absolutely “all […]
Southbound comes from the makers of the popular “V/H/S” series, and they are doing their darndest to bring back the horror compilation, a long dormant venture that most recently peaked in the 1980s with Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt. Southbound ditches the campy humor of those examples and tries for a more gritty, grungy […]
The found-footage horror film is the ugly stepchild in a family of ugly stepchildren. If slasher films do not get respect, found-footage movies, save for one or two, tend to elicit groans and rolling eyes. They are super cheap to make, the cinematography and sound are generally awful, and the acting worse because, for the […]
Body is reminiscent of an episode of an old Alfred Hitchcock TV show. (I’m not aging myself here. It aired long before I was born). It has a quick, concise high-concept idea that can play out in an hour. It also barely rates as a feature, coming in at 75 minutes, and for the most […]
Extraordinary Tales is the perfect little bon mot to kick off the Halloween season. It is a slight, charming, and charmingly macabre animated adaptation of five Edgar Allen Poe short stories, all illustrated, directed, and adapted by Raul Garcia. There is also a mediocre framing device that sets up Poe as a raven chatting with […]
If you are a young couple and have a dream of opening your own bed and breakfast, it’s best not to buy one of the oldest houses in New England for the task. Usually something very bad happened there, or something very unpleasant lives there. That’s the lesson Jessica and Dan learn in the Rasmussen […]
The makers of The Final Girls pull of an admirable trick. They present a credible, genial spoof of 1980’s slasher flicks while successfully incorporating a sentimental yet credible theme of appreciating and letting go of grief. It’s impressive and gives the movie more heft than most of the joke-a-minute spoofs that, say, the Wayans brothers […]