Film

A collection of 523 posts

Film

The Thaw Review (Film, 2009) The Archives

The Thaw is a global warming-tinged spin on The Thing. A group of students are invited up to an Arctic research center to study the effect of the melting icecaps on native polar bear populations. They discover an abandoned laboratory with no power and a quickly rotting polar bear corpse inside. Soon

Film

1BR Review (Film, 2020)

1BR is apartment complex Gothic. This is the natural modern extension of the traditional Gothic. Instead of a sprawling mansion with hidden doors, the setting is a home separated from the larger house, able to hear everything that happens but never truly know what’s going on. Your neighbors can be t

Film

Host Review (Short Film, 2020)

Host is about a digital seance. A group of friends meet together during quarantine to have a seance led by a spiritualist. The rules are light a candle, turn off the lights, and keep a trigger object nearby to draw the attention of the astral plane. Focus on the image of being connected by a circle

Film

Unrest Review (Film, 2006) The Archives

A young woman enrolls in medical school to help herself find a logical explanation for why she can see dead people. It doesn’t work. The first cadaver she has to hack into in Gross Anatomy gives her horrific visions of murder and mayhem that soon come to life in her new hospital home.

Film

The Speed Cubers Review (Short Film, 2020)

The Speed Cubers is a short documentary about the competitive Rubik’s Cube solving scene. The focus is on two world record holders: Feliks Zemdegs of Australia and Max Park of the United States of America. They are both heavily favored to win any tournament they enter, including the traditional 3x3

Film

Douglas Review (Film, 2020)

Douglas is a very different special in a lot of ways. For one thing, it’s not a standup special about trauma. Gadsby makes that clear in her prelude, a delightful device where she quite literally announces the exact order of her set and the intentions of key moments before beginning the actual show.

Film

Bound to Vengeance Review (Film, 2015) The Archives

Bound to Vengeance is a throwback revenge thriller with a particularly nasty streak. Eve is a young woman who finally finds a way to break free from her captor and escape. When she tries to find the keys for the van, she discovers a huge file of Polaroids of other young women, just like her, capture

Film

The Greatest Showman Review (Film, 2017)

All of this sets up my expectations for The Greatest Showman. I know a lot about P.T. Barnum. I was obsessed with the Barnum musical growing up and read many books on his life and the history of his circus. It should come as no surprise that a man who is quoted as saying “there is a sucker born ever

Film

Child's Play Review (Film, 2019)

The Child’s Play remake tries to be a little bit of everything. It’s social commentary on conglomerates and the necessity of interconnected technology in our lives. It’s a heartwarming (at times) story of a boy and his mom trying to get a fresh start in a new city. It’s an evil doll film with an amb

Film

Bone Tomahawk Review (Film 2015) The Archives

In a frontier town in the old west, a criminal drifter comes into town and promptly gets shot in the knee and arrested. By morning, the criminal, the deputy sheriff, and the doctor who spent the night in the jail are missing. The only clue is an arrow made from a human bone. Now the sheriff, the dep

Film

Problematic Horror Tropes

What I’m not loving is reliving the problematic horror tropes of my formative years with the genre. I’ve been doing content warnings here for a good while now. I think it’s responsible media criticism. I’ve made videos about it. I’m alarmed by how often I have to repeat certain warnings. It feels li

Film

Hamilton Review (Film, 2020)

For the uninitiated, Hamilton is the 2015 Broadway musical by writer/composer/star Lin Manuel Miranda about Alexander Hamilton. Act I deals with the Revolutionary War; Act II deals with the foundation of the US government and the succession of the presidency. Told with an iconic hip-hop score and ca

Film

Rebound Review (Film, 2014) The Archives

Rebound is an indie psychological horror about a young woman, Claire, trying to restart her life. She walked in on her boyfriend cheating on her, dumped him, and kicked him out of the apartment. Still everywhere she looks, she can’t get his image out of her head. She chooses to drive cross-country b

Film

Anon Review (Film, 2018)

In the near future, privacy no longer exists. Everyone’s memories are public record as every detail of a life is accessible like a computer. Police can play back footage to see what really happened at a crime site. A woman convinced of her partner’s infidelity can request access to whatever her part

Film

Scare Package Review (Film, 2020)

Scare Package is a bit of a different beast. The stories are connected by the idea of film itself. The cold open sets up the film as a meta horror, with a man dissatisfied with his career as a cold opener character in a horror film. His job is to flip the street sign or plant the cursed object in th

Film

Fat Girl Review (Film, 2001) The Archives

Fat Girl is the exception that proves the rule. Breillat presents the masterpiece of the New French Extremism in this unnerving suspense/horror about two young sisters exploring their sexuality on vacation. The older sister, Elena, is a beautiful young woman who falls head over heels for a college s

Film

Eli Review (Film, 2019)

Eli suffers from a rare chronic illness. His family is not sure exactly what triggers it, but exposure to the outside world causes his body to react as if he’s being burned alive. They travel to the remote treatment facility of Dr. Horn who promises a cure through her own method of gene therapy. She

Film

The iMom Review (Short Film, 2016)

“The iMom” is a satirical horror/sci-fi short by writer/director Ariel Martin. It opens with an infomercial advertising the benefits of a a digital mother surrogate (including actual footage of one of the increasingly realistic androids being developed in laboratories) before shifting to an overtaxe

Film

Our House Review (Film, 2018)

Ethan believes he has invented a device that can provide wireless electricity. After a failed test run at the college campus and a tragic loss in his family, Ethan discovers that his invention has an alternate purpose. This wireless electricity generator actually creates a portal between the world o

Film

10 Cloverfield Lane Review (Film, 2016) The Archives

10 Cloverfield Lane is the giant monster attack/apocalypse horror film we deserved when the original Cloverfield came out in 2008. That film was an ambitious but messy shakycam disaster film with the bones of a good intimate horror/survival film trapped inside.

Film

Confessional Review (Film, 2020)

This film is meant to leave you feeling angry about injustice in the world. It’s also an unrated horror film that has no content warning or parental advisory on it. The provided plot description is intentionally vague to avoid spoiling anything.

Film

The Falling Review (Film, 2015)

The Falling is, quite honestly, one of the strangest horror films I’ve ever seen. After the death of their close friend Abbie (Florence Pugh), a group of young women in a boarding school begin to experience uncontrollable fainting spells and mass hysteria. Is it the spirit of Abbie speaking through

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Why I Write What I Write

I’m going to take a step back today. Do you know why I write about media? I like discussing media. I like having deep, meaningful discussions about film and television, games and theatre, and everything in between. I specifically like talking about horror, fantasy, and sci-fi. But when I tried to ha

Film

Head Count Review (Film, 2019)

In Head Count, Evan goes to visit his brother in the middle of the desert. He runs into Zoe and her friends, who invite him to join them for a party at their rental house. They take turns reading scary stories around the campfire. Evan pulls up a poem from an anonymous story website that warns of wh

Film

Hush Review (Film, 2016) The Archives

Hush is a home invasion horror film about a deaf novelist being tormented by a total stranger for no reason. I could also say that Hush is a modern home invasion horror film and be accurate enough.