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Posted on August 6, 2018

Mohawk and Downrange: Two Films for Our Time

Guest Post

Thus far, 2018, like its predecessor, has been a good year at the box office for horror. Small-budget films like A Quiet Place and Hereditary have been all the buzz, breaking into the mainstream. Two lesser-known recent films, Mohawk (2017) and Downrange (2017), are also deserving of attention. They recently became available on streaming services and speak to our present moment, especially in the context of immigration/the “other” and gun violence.

Directed by Ted Geoghegan and set during the War of 1812, Mohawk takes place in the American wilderness as Americans track down a British officer, Joshua Pinsmail (Eamon Farren), who befriends a tribe of Mohawk Indians and encourages them to join the British against the Americans. The Mohawks want to remain neutral but are forced to choose sides when members of the tribe are slaughtered.

Posted on July 19, 2018

5 Twilight Zone Episodes That Influenced Modern Horror Film

Dawn Keetley

The Twilight Zone (1959-64) is not only one of the most acclaimed TV series but also one of the most influential on artists of all kinds, but especially on the creators of horror. The list below identifies five episodes that in my view powerfully shaped some of our best modern horror films. There are undoubtedly more, but this is a beginning.

Posted on May 28, 2018

George Romero’s Martin: Pop Culture’s Vampire Rebuked

Guest Post

George A. Romero’s 1978 film Martin stands as a brilliant early example of the metafictional film. The rise of the metafictional film is perhaps the most notable innovation within postmodern film, acknowledging itself as a film, accepting that it is a work of fiction, and making this an aspect of the plot. This can be brought about in a myriad of ways: characters addressing the camera and speaking to the audience, characters acknowledging cliches of the genre, as well as the insertion of the film process itself into the film.

The most popular metafictional films are often reactionary in nature, parodying a modern trend of filmmaking and exploring its shortcomings and repetitive structures. This is why so many metafictional films come out either when a genre is at its height, as in the case of Deadpool (2016) or Wayne’s World (1992), the former parodying the modern world-building superhero epic and the latter parodying the shoehorning of sketch comedy characters into a feature length cinematic world. Others, like Scream, come at a time when a genre or subgenre has reached something of a low point, as was happening in 1996 when the only slashers were either franchise sequels of diminishing quality and direct-to-video shlock. These metafictional films act almost like a friend sitting next to you in the theater, questioning the logic of what’s onscreen and saying things like, “haven’t we seen all this before?”

The temptation with meta-horror films is to assign a starting point- which was the first? Scream is commonly given the credit for starting the trend in mainstream cinema, while films like There’s Nothing Out There (1991) and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) are often cited as predecessors to Scream’s particular brand of metafiction. Additionally, one can point to 1980s classics like Friday The 13th Part 6: Jason Lives (1986) and Fright Night (1985) as paving the way for Scream by embracing and subverting horror tropes. One pivotal film that is often left out of the conversation, however, is George Romero’s classic 1978 vampire film Martin.

Posted on February 24, 2018

What do Bruckner’s The Ritual and Kusama’s The Invitation Have in Common?

Dawn Keetley

David Bruckner’s The Ritual is a wonderful film, which I review here, and which combines rich allusions to other horror films while also doing something quite distinctive. In my review, I mention some of the more obvious references of the film, but here’s a less obvious one: Karyn Kusama’s 2015 film, The Invitation.

Posted on December 14, 2017

The Doll: Horror and the Human Barbie

Dawn Keetley

The Doll, which was released in December 2017, is the second horror film written and directed by Susannah O’Brien, president of Sahara Vision Productions. O’Brien’s first horror film, Encounter, was released in May 2016, and she has a third film, Hallucinogen, due for release imminently.

The Doll is set in motion when two men, Andy (Anthony Del Negro) and his roommate Chris (Christopher Lenk) order a Russian escort from a distinctly shady website. This brilliant maneuver is supposed to make Andy’s girlfriend Shannon (Isabella Racco) jealous so she’ll come back to him. (The fact that Shannon walked out on Andy because he was making out with two women in their pool doesn’t seem to occur to Andy and Chris, who are immediately revealed as not the smartest tools in the toolbox.) Anyway, the Russian woman knocks at the door and Chris and Andy are suitably impressed by the looks of Natasha, played by the so-called “human Barbie,” Valeria Lukyano. Natasha doesn’t just look like a Barbie, she acts like one too, engaging in strictly minimal communication. And even though they supposedly think she is an actual human, Chris and Andy treat Natasha disconcertingly like a doll. “Where shall we put her?” asks Andy. And they proceed to put her in the attic–over and over. Happily (for this viewer at least), Natasha may not talk much, but she is handy with a knife. The plot thus follows her killing spree (which she engages in for reasons which are entirely obscure), intertwined with the much less interesting drama of Andy and Shannon’s love life.