A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night was written and directed by Iranian-American Ana Lily Amirpour and is based on her graphic novel of the same name. Filmed in California but set in a surreal, industrial Iranian town called “Bad City,” it follows a vampire (Sheila Vand) who wanders the streets looking for . . . .well, it’s never quite clear what she’s looking for, or what she wants, or what she’s doing.
If you were at all tempted to spend money on The Pyramid, now available on video on demand (and coming out on DVD on May 5, 2015), don’t! Directed by Grégory Levasseur (who directed the 2006 re-make of The Hills Have Eyes), written by Daniel Meersand and Nick Simon, and produced by Alexandre Aja, The Pyramid is valuable mostly as an exercise in how not to make a horror film. The writing is bad; the plot is utterly predictable, the acting is shocking flat; and the film is, quite simply, tedious.
Review: It Follows and Unfriended offer a much needed return to social commentary.
I think the release dates of It Follows and Unfriended are quite serendipitous. Let me explain why. I wholeheartedly agree with Dawn’s assessment that It Follows expounds upon one of horror’s greatest standing rules that if you have sex, you die. However, I feel that the movie speaks to a broader subject matter which includes age old gossip as well as the current digital age.
Yes, those who died in It Follows had sex. The horror however, lies in what follows from having sex. It speaks directly to reputation, image, self-worth, and literal images that follow the act. For decades prior to the cyber era, women especially feared for and guarded their reputation.
Unfriended (2015)
R | 83min | 2015 | USA | Levan Gabriadze
Synopsis: On the one-year anniversary of the death of a fellow classmate, six friends are forced to remain online and answer to her spirit.
Review: Horror fans will find better acting and more thrills in an episode of ABC’s Pretty Little Liars.
Unfriended takes a staple of the horror tradition—teens getting killed one at a time—and gives it an innovative twist: the entire film is “set” (if that’s the right word) on the desktop of the main character, Blaire Lily (Shelley Hennig). Through the course of the film, Blaire skypes with her boyfriend and friends, messages on Facebook, watches YouTube videos, and Googles a few things. The film immerses us in a wholly cyber world in which people connect entirely through social media.
taking horror seriously so you don't have to
