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 […]
Ghosts and Time-Travel in Laos: An Interview with Mattie Do on The Long Walk
By Yun-hua Chen. Every time we meet the standard expectation of what the film should be, or shouldn’t do, we kind of push it a little harder until it comes to this devastating end. I think a lot of people aren’t always prepared for it.” In The Long Walk, the […]
Of Matriarchs and Magic: Kate Dolan on You Are Not My Mother
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. I hate the use of “strong” as a constant descriptor for female characters, it feels so one-dimensional…. I just took inspiration from all the women I’ve known in my life and they can be strong, but also weak, they can be stubborn but also thoughtful.” It’s Samhain […]
9000 Miles from Home and 30 Miles from Nowhere: An Interview with Caitlin Koller
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. If more work was done to showcase and embrace (the Australian) horror film past it could really help to foster awareness and hunger for local horror films.” How did emerging Australian filmmaker Caitlin Koller find herself in rural Illinois directing one of the most fun horror comedies […]