For cinephiles like me, the vast majority of films watched throughout the year don’t need specific reasons to “convince” me to visit the theater or turn on the TV on one of the streaming channels. That said, there’s always a standout element in the movie to be watched that raises …
Tiger Stripes can be described as Carrie meets Turning Red, which unfairly minimizes the courageous central performance from young Zafreen Zairzal. But even with a fresh setting – an all-girls’ middle school in the Malaysian jungle – there’s regrettably no freshness in the plot. That makes this only a frustrating …
If there is a more reliable setup for a thriller these days than “young woman trapped in a place with a man,” I don’t know what it is. It’s incredibly versatile, whether you start out with the man being sweet and progressing to darker places, or have him be malevolent …
Horror is one of the most difficult genres to tap into. It’s really challenging to keep viewers at the edge of their seats with genuinely scary elements. However, every once in a while, we get to see a movie that truly captures the essence of the genre and takes us …
2022’s Venice Film Festival opened with the Noah Baumbach directed White Noise, a quirky and chaotic genre-mash up. It is a visually enrapturing film about a family surviving a toxic event while grappling with the feeling of impending doom and the mundane cataclysm of their lives. Adapted from Don DeLillo’s …
I firmly believe that horror based on reality is always scarier than any supernatural horror film. Sure, don’t get me wrong, revengeful spirits and terrifying monsters make for some good thrills and chills, but at the end of the day, I can easily write them off as fiction. Instead, watching …
Google a definition of the word reality, and you’ll get #1 – “the world or state of things as they actually exist” and #2 – “the state or quality of having existence or substance.” But what makes something real? What actually exists? What percentage of people have to agree something is reality for it to be so? …
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 …
Bad horror movies are a dime a dozen, with their formulaic narratives and low, often limiting, budgets. 2024 alone has seen the bizarre Night Swim, an interesting idea poorly executed in Imaginary, and, more recently, Tarot, a daft concept that was more banal than spooky. To give those pictures’ credit, though, at least …
Universal Pictures has a long history with horror films, so much so that they rebranded their classics under the name Universal Classic Monsters. In this case, Abigail is a reimagining of one of those classic films, Dracula’s Daughter (1936). Objectively, the film is good and features a great cast of characters; the standouts among the …
Kristi Shimek is Arcadian’s editor and one of the people responsible for helping to create the post-apocalyptic tension in director Ben Brewer’s horror thriller. Arcadian is a story of survival, where ferocious creatures that go bump in the night are after a father and his twin boys. The film stars Nicholas Cage as the dad, Paul, with Jaeden Martell and Maxwell …
Religious horror films have carved a niche within the horror genre. These films have scared audiences for years, drawing criticism from the spiritual community. Say what you will about the quality of those films, but they have remained in the cultural conversation. That sort of baggage makes new religious horror …
Immaculate recently premiered at SXSW before coming to theaters all over. The movie, from director Michael Mohan and writer Andrew Lobel, is a psychological horror film years in the making. The idyllic Italian countryside warmly embraces Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney), a woman of deep faith who believes she was saved from death as a child …
What would happen if you tried to make contact with the devil on live television? Well, Late Night with the Devil has a staggering answer to this question. Helmed by the directing duo of Cameron and Colin Cairnes, the movie chronicles the journey of a late-night talk show host Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), …
Anyone who was alive on New Year’s Eve in 1999 remembers that the world was supposed to end, and there was a lot of panic about it. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but there’s a universe in which things could have played out differently, which is vividly imagined in the directorial …
Amelia’s Children is the latest movie from writer and director Gabriel Abrantes. Starring Carloto Cotta (as twins!), Brigette Lundy-Paine, Anabela Moreira, and Alba Baptista, this is a horror movie about mothers and sons and well, a whole lot of creepy. Edward, our main character, is adopted. His search for his origins takes him to Portugal where …
Jamie Nash literally wrote the book on screenwriting for television, Saves the Cat! Writes for TV, that is. The director is out with a new horror feature, Last Night at Terrace Lanes, that’s a ton of fun. With a script by Adam Cesare, Last Night at Terrace Lanes is a horror comedy about what happens when …
Night Swim, a horror movie from director Bryce McGuire starring Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, and Amélie Hoeferle, is the newest release from Blumhouse and Atomic Monster. Based on a four-minute short film, the film is about when “everything you fear is under the surface.” When a movie begins, and the production company logos pop up …
Infinity Pool is a Brandon Cronenberg psychological thriller that was met with positive reception, but it wasn’t my cup of tea. The film stars Alexander Skarsgård, who plays the protagonist, James Foster, and Mia Goth, who plays Gabi. Both actors have received high praise from many critics for their performances in the film, …
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 …