Let’s start off with the good. Panos Cosmatos knows exactly the kind of aesthetic he wants to project, which is a psychedelic, deep-toned phantasmagoria. It’s perfect for stoners and those who like their films vividly […]
Tag: Horror
The Haunting of Hill House (Flanagan, 2018)
This is certainly not your mother’s Hill House. Mike Flanagan has taken Shirley Jackson’s novel and re-imagined it as a family saga—something I was apprehensive about, because family sagas are so common nowadays. I’m rather partial to Jackson’s […]
Annihilation (Garland, 2018)
Will 2018 give us another film as strange, mesmerizing and uncompromisingly cerebral as Annihilation? As I sit here writing this, I am inclined to say no. I’m sure there will be films I’ll like better, and […]
Unsane (Soderbergh, 2018)
I wouldn’t say that Unsane is necessarily quality cinema, for a lot of it is of the pulp thriller variety that could pass off as an adaptation of a number of books with black covers with sinister […]
Hereditary (Aster, 2018)
Kudos to Ari Aster for making a film that is so unbridled in its insanity that it has the durability of Teflon. There are several images in Hereditary that will be hard to forget anytime soon. From […]
A Quiet Place (Krasinski, 2018)
A Quiet Place is among the best experiences I had watching a film this year, as it utilized its technical facets with a great amount of intelligence. From the sound design to the cinematography, John Krasinski ensures you […]
The Endless (Moorhead & Benson, 2017)
My somewhat low rating here does not mean that I don’t respect Benson and Moorhead’s ambition. Creating a legible sci-fi tale involving temporal loops and sinister, omniscient forces is not an easy feat, and they […]
Raw (Ducournau, 2016)
After letting Raw sit with me for a while, I’ve come to admire it more than actually love it.
The Eyes of My Mother (Pesce, 2016)
Goodness is this film gruesome. There’s death, there’s torture, there’s kidnapping, there’s psychosis—and it’s all elegantly framed and put together with a tastefulness that seems at odds with the story.
The Neon Demon (Refn, 2016)
The Neon Demon? Oof. I didn’t know you could say the word “dull” in so many colours.
Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Aldrich, 1964)
The film is the very essence of “hag horror”: we’ve got a mentally unstable protagonist (Davis) wasting away in a decaying Louisiana mansion, we’ve got dismemberment, we’ve got gaslighting, we’ve got sassy maids with suspicious minds.
The Lure (Smoczynska, 2015)
The Lure is part-fairy tale, part-Bildungsroman, part-trippy rock opera, and a whole lotta ‘80s glitz and glam wrapped into one twisted, salacious treat. Except, it’s an incredibly messy one, so the experience is not as exceptional as I’ve made it sound.
Prevenge (Lowe, 2016)
Prevenge isn’t very original if we’re being honest here, nor does it reach levels of sheer insanity and bloodcurdling horror.
Get Out (Peele, 2017)
Jordan Peele has crafted a fantastic send-up of some of pop culture’s most famous horror stories (Ira Levin’s, in particular), mixing it together with a screamingly good social satire that skewers those fluffy white, bourgeois liberals who, gosh darn, try so hard to prove they’re not racist, and in the process show that, yeah, they really are (even if unintentionally).
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (Lynch, 1992)
I can see why, if the original run of Twin Peaks is your Holy Grail, Fire Walk with Me grinds some people’s gears. In some respects, it’s the complete antithesis of the show: purposely brutal, elliptical, graphic, morose, and very much David Lynch reclaiming his demon child from being further damaged by the cartoonish machinations of the show’s second season.
