Where Horror Lives
At some point, we probably all had an imaginary friend. But what if that friend wasn’t so imaginary. And that’s the jumping point for South by Southwest psychological horror thriller Daniel Isn’t Real. Up-and-coming horror director Adam Egypt Mortimer, and Brian DeLeeuw, adapted DeLeeuw’s own novel, In This Way I Was Saved, for the indie […]
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Several horror movies are generally regarded as kickstarting the 1980’s slasher movie boom. Critics and fans alike hail John Carpenter’s Halloween as the subgenre’s official starting point. But it was Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho that shifted horror’s focus from aliens, Gothic monsters, and atomic beasts to the psycho-sexual killer. Somewhere in between these movies, The Texas […]
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When Screen Gems released Vacancy in 2007, horror was in somewhat of a transition. The ‘Torture Porn’ subgenre was breathing its last gasp. Hostel II underperformed, Saw IV marked that franchise’s downward slide, and new entries like Captivity and I Know Who Killed Me were failures. Yet this was also the same year that saw […]
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Amidst the wave of remakes in the 2000’s, Hollywood occasionally ventured outside horror. Spike Lee re-visited controversial Korean revenge-thriller Old Boy in 2013. And Martin Scorsese himself re-worked Hong Kong pot-boiler Infernal Affairs into his 2006 crime thriller, The Departed. Yet one of the more ambitious remakes in recent memory was Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. […]
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Fresh off the notoriously frustrating Hollywood movie-making experience that was Alien 3, David Fincher bounced back with one the best thrillers of the 1990’s. New Line Cinema released Fincher’s Se7en in the fall of 2005, giving the acclaimed director his first major theatrical success. In spite of its grim subject matter, Se7en scored big at […]
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Do you really know the people around you? What if your friend, or lover, wasn’t who you they were anymore? That’s the simple premise driving Elle Callahan’s indie thriller, Head Count. It’s a premise that highly-regarded thrillers have used, including The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Though Callahan’s Head Count leans closer to […]
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Aside from Nicolas Cage (Mandy, The Wicker Man), John Travolta may have one of the more interesting Hollywood career arcs. After shooting to leading man status in the 1970’s, Travolta’s prospects nosedived in the 1980’s. Before Tarantino saved his career with Pulp Fiction, Travolta was stuck starring in Look Who’s Talking sequels. Following the disaster […]
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Another month on Netflix. And here we have another stalking movie. While it may look like another Lifetime psychological thriller, We Belong Together originally aired on Black Entertainment Television (BET). Not that it really matters. From its basic plot to its production values, We Belong Together looks indistinguishable from a Lifetime or Hallmark made-for-television movie. […]
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Are we already halfway through June? Time flies by for horror fans when you’re coasting through another good year for the genre. In 2019, we’ve seen a horror movie defy the “January Jinx”. We’ve already gotten Jordan Peele’s follow-up to Get Out, and we still have It: Chapter Two and Midsommar to look forward to. […]
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Art is pain. At least that’s what horror movies would have you believe. In less than a year, Suspiria twisted limbs in a dance academy, and Velvet Buzzsaw gave us evil paintings. And now Netflix wants to invest the world of classical music with horror. The streaming giant’s latest release, The Perfection, orchestrates a twisting […]
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