Like Ronseal, The Autopsy of Jane Doe does exactly what it says on the tin. Writers Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing have done their research and come back with a horror film based on the meticulous process of sleuthing through a cadaver. Of course there’s more to the film than a mere autopsy — just […]
London Film Festival 2016: Brimstone
One of cinema’s greatest characters, let alone villains, is Robert Mitchum’s insidious preacher Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter. With ‘love’ and ‘hate’ emblazoned on his knuckles, Powell stalks the Southern Gothic landscape with sinister desires and an ominous aura of dread. Mitchum’s performance is one not easily forgotten or trumped. That was until […]
London Film Festival 2015: Green Room
Punk Music has always had an uneasy relationship with violence, but for all the bravado, safety pins and rioting it’s never been explicitly tied to outright murder. That was until ultra-violent thriller Green Room hit theaters. Following on from his widely praised debut, Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier cranks the drama up to eleven and produces an exhilarating, albeit […]
London Film Festival 2015: The Ones Below
Sometimes a film is intrinsically indebted to another. The Ones Below owes such gratitude to Roman Polanski’s pregnancy horror classic, Rosemary’s Baby. Building directly from another film, especially one as renowned and distinctive as Polanksi’s, adds a certain amount of pressure and expectation to a film; unfair or not, audiences expect you to either trump your predecessor or add to its legacy. […]
It Follows
It Follows taught me to fear everything onscreen. The film’s visual language elicits constant unease and feeds off our growing existential dread. The movie takes you in and traps you, leaving you addicted to its inescapable paranoia. The film opens with an unassuming shot of a suburban street in early autumn. Birds chirp and all seems […]
The Babadook
The Babadook is out to get Amelia (Essie Davis) and her son Samuel (Noah Wiseman). Yet for the first third of the film, there’s not the slightest hint of a monster. A rhythm is established, and the film’s language is as well; cross-cutting means something bad is about to happen, for instance. But just as I […]
Let the Right One In Is Not Your Typical Horror Movie
Quiet and meditative. Romantic, stark and beautiful. Poignant. These are not the words one usually associates with the horror genre. And yet, the ostensibly horror-themed Låt den rätte komma in, or Let the Right One In, has been praised by the world over using these very descriptors. The film follows Oskar, a 12-year-old boy who […]
On the War Between Movies and TV for the Soul of Horror
Few things have aided the rise of horror on television more than the decline of horror at the movies. There is a rich history of great horror at the movies. Consider the early Universal monster flicks of the 30s and Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary, contemplative re-imagining of the thriller sub-genre. Think about the classic slasher films in […]
This Is The End
In a world where simple gross-out humor just isn’t enough to push the boundaries of funny, only people like Seth Rogen and his longtime writing partner, Evan Goldberg, seem to be able to surprise audiences enough to inspire fits of uncontrollable laughter. Some may lament that Hollywood filmmakers have forgone the sweet, vaudevillian humor of […]
Warm Bodies
Warm Bodies shares a lot in common with last year’s Chronicle, a film I really enjoyed. Like Josh Trank’s debut, warm Bodies is a film with surprisingly large scale that somehow managed to slip under the radar of most film buffs and journalists; I had heard nothing about it until a trailer was released, and it […]
The Beast and The New World
Director Peter Dukes has been making budget short films since 1999. In this piece, Tim and I review two of his more recent efforts. The first is a horror/fantasy werewolf film entitled The Beast starring Bill Oberst, Jr. The other is an award-winning fantasy/science fiction short entitled The New World starring Katy Townsend. The Beast One criterion on […]
Prometheus with Søren and Ari
Here’s how our Dueling Reviews format works: each contributor writes an independent, abbreviated, spoiler-free review of the film. Then, the contributors come together in a podcast and discuss the movie in depth. Søren’s Review I will perhaps be deemed a heretic for what I am about to say, but here it is: I am not […]
The Cabin in the Woods with Søren and Ari
Here’s how our Dueling Reviews format works: each contributor writes an independent, abbreviated, spoiler-free review of the film. Then, the contributors come together in a podcast and discuss the movie in depth. Søren’s Review The first 5 minutes of The Cabin in the Woods is a perfectly written hybrid of idle dialogue, sudden shock, and scantily-clad females: […]
