By Gary D. Rhodes. Here is an amazing history, one far more enduring than, say, Paramount’s connection to the comedy genre or Warner Bros. to the gangster. The question of precisely when Universal horror movies began is equally as fascinating as it is complicated.” In the 21st century, Universal Pictures […]
A Woman on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown: Repulsion by Jeremy Carr
A Book Review by Dávid Szőke. A fascinating study that examines themes mostly, but not exclusively, central to feminist visual representations, without losing sight of the paradoxes that shade contemporary approaches to Polanski’s work in the light of the #meToo movement.” “We are clay […] and nothing is real for […]
Low Cost, High Reward – Blumhouse Productions: The New House of Horror
A Book Review by Thomas M. Puhr. It’s this nebulous balancing act between artistic risk and bottom-line business that makes such companies so fascinating, and books like this one so illuminating.” Not a week seems to go by without a new horror movie bearing the Blumhouse logo making the rounds, […]
Bargaining with the Devil: Bill Skarsgard and Landon Liboiron’s Soul of a Man
By Dávid Szőke. Eerily beautiful in recapturing the early Gothic film.” Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Bon-Bon” (1832) is a grotesque retelling of man’s futile endeavor to tempt immortality by making a Faustian contract with the devil. Set in a French wine cellar, the original story pulls the reader into […]
Horror and Feminist Reconstruction – An Interview with Michelle Garza Cevera on Huesera: The Bone Woman
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. It was very important to start the film as one that portrayed how big motherhood feels in society, how sacred and untouchable it is, and in certain ways, how it rules our lives – as women we’re trying to feed that unreachable goal of becoming this perfect caring […]
Gentle Mary: Michelle Garza Cervera’s Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022)
By Thomas M. Puhr. The scariest thing in Huesera is not the ghostly bone woman, but the all-too-real fear that one may choose the wrong path when faced with one of life’s many forked roads.” Among a throng of worshippers, a young woman climbs the stone steps leading to a […]
Family Dynamics: Corey Deshon’s Daughter (2022)
By Jeremy Carr. It’s a pressure cooker scenario executed by debuting writer-director Corey Deshon with an acute tonal balance, and Vivien Ngô’s performance, in the title role, is the obvious catalyst for Daughter’s swift narrative momentum.” A young woman flees through a desolate landscape, pursued by two individuals. They’re first […]
Terror and the Family: An Interview with Brad Anderson on Blood
By Ali Moosavi. What drew me to Blood was that I could play the family drama aspect of it, the torment that this mother is going through, her struggle to keep her kids healthy and safe, along with the darker supernatural subtext.” Director Brad Anderson may not be as well […]
Hell is Other People’s Kids: Roxanne Benjamin’s There’s Something Wrong with the Children (2023)
By Thomas M. Puhr. [While] the narrative structure proves flimsy…. it’s an admirable effort, and the film’s underlying commentary on parenthood separates Benjamin’s film from some of its lazier competitors.” Children often seem to exist in a world few adults can access. They develop their own sort of language: a […]
Shower Me with Likes: Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes’ Sissy (2022)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Sissy satisfies on most fronts, eliciting shocked guffaws and legitimate scares in equal measure. It’s easy to imagine it one day becoming something of a cult classic.” Cecilia seems to have it all. Her mental health video podcast, “Sincerely, Cecilia” – which includes episodes with titles […]