Alise Chaffins 
The line between a successful career and homelessness grows thinner every year. This, along with themes of familial strife, motherhood, and finding your sense of self, is present in Vivian Kerr’s directorial debut, Scrap. When Beth (Vivian Kerr) loses her job, she finds herself and her daughter Birdie (Julianna Layne) living …
Director Alice Maio Mackay sits down to chat over zoom with Alise Chaffins about the comedy-horror film Satranic Panic. The Interview with Satranic Panic’s Alice Maio Mackay [Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.] Alise Chaffins: I was super excited to watch this, mostly just because of the …
Musical horror comedies have long been a place to explore gender-expansive themes. Obviously, one of the most famous is the 1975 cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but there have also been cases made for Little Shop of Horrors to be a trans allegory. Genre films are meant to push boundaries, so seeing …
The need to feel a sense of belonging is something that everyone experiences to some degree most of their life. But there is no time in which that need is higher than during adolescence. The dual need to carve out your own path while not becoming too much of an outsider is …
Sometimes, you see marketing for a film, and then when you actually watch the movie, something feels off about that marketing. That was the case when I watched Good One, the debut feature film from writer and director India Donaldson. While this film does feature a young person who learns a …
Fairy tales have always dealt with heavy topics. Children still need to know about complex issues, and sometimes, couching those issues in a fantastical world can make them easier to understand. That remains true for adults. High fantasy stories can cause us to engage with topics that we might otherwise …
I have been a fan of The Boys since the jump. I love the way that it skewers Hollywood. I love the way that it skewers performative wokeness. I love the way that it skewers right-wing fanaticism. And, yeah, the voyeur in me loves the over-the-top violence and sexual content. …
A little over one year ago, Ted Lasso aired its finale. Despite being off the air for an entire year, it has never dipped out of the top five of Apple TV+’s most-watched shows. While plenty of shows gain a new life when they are released in a new format (think Suits …
Have you ever been sitting in your home, watching a nature documentary, and thought, “What this majestic vista needs is a little more murder?” Then you are A) weird and B) in luck. Writer and director Chris Nash apparently also feels that way, and he has given us In A Violent Nature, a new horror film …
My introduction to Steve Martin was probably in The Muppet Movie, but I fell in love with him through a copy of The Three Amigos that my parents had recorded during a free HBO weekend. I have not come close to seeing his full filmography – potential goal for 2025, maybe? – but his comedy …
The Indigo Girls are having a bit of a moment right now. I don’t know if there has ever been a time when they weren’t having a moment, but between “Closer to Fine” appearing in Barbie and the documentary It’s Only Life After All that also released last year, the pair has been in the …
Content warning: How to Have Sex and this review touches on the subjects of sexual assault. Please approach both with caution if this topic is triggering for you. I heard very little about Molly Manning Walker’s debut film, How to Have Sex, so I went into it without many preconceptions. What I got …
I need to stop watching movies where there is a significant age gap in a “couple” because it is always upsetting to me. There are enough lecherous people in the real world, preying on the admiration of young people, that I don’t need to see that behavior on screen. But …
The ’90s were the heyday of the action movie. Movies like Simon West’s Con Air, John Woo’s Face/Off, and James Cameron’s True Lies had wholly ridiculous plots that were somehow both fully aware of their absurdity while also being completely serious. It was an art form that felt like it was invented in the ’80s, perfected in …
Both 2013 and 2014 were years of incredible loss for me. My mother was diagnosed with ALS and died from complications related to that. I went through a divorce. I suffered a stillbirth at 35 weeks of pregnancy. It felt like at every turn, there was something to grieve. The …
I live in West Virginia, right in the heart of Appalachia. I love my state, but I don’t always love the way that the people who live here have been portrayed in the media. Poverty porn, like what was featured in both the book and the film Hillbilly Elegy, reduces the …
As a critic, I try not to pre-judge movies before I watch them, but the truth is, I watch trailers just like everyone else, and it can be challenging to avoid forming some opinions before I see the film. I went into A Man Called Otto with low expectations. I expected it …
Alise Chaffins reviews Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving. Here’s the thing about horror comedies: they are either funny or scary, never both. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that if I’m putting on a horror comedy, it’s going to lean one way or the other. Which makes sense. Both horror and comedy rely on the …
One day, I put on a pair of shoes that were too big so I could run outside to grab the mail. I snagged my big toenail in them, and it tore clean off. So I had a visceral reaction to the premise of Christos Nikou’s recent film Fingernails, which is currently streaming …
Spoiler alert: yes, the dog dies in M3GAN. That’s not the only casualty in this 2023 horror-comedy, but you can experience the rest for yourself this Halloween on Prime Video. When Cady (Violet McGraw, The Haunting of Hill House) loses her parents in a freak accident, her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams, Get Out) becomes …