There are those who, growing up in the seventies, didn’t realize that Michael Jackson’s chart-topping single “Ben” was about a rat. In 1971 one of the most successful films at the box office was Willard. Apart from a remake in 2003, the movie fell from public consciousness despite its box-office success. Ben (1972) was, of course, the sequel to Willard, […]
Johanna Isaacson In The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein describes the process of “disaster capitalism.” To simplify greatly, she notes that the neoliberal free market has evolved to take advantage of national crises and seemingly “natural” disasters, using these moments of collective distraction and general freak-out to stealthily implement intensifying exploitative policies and social arrangements. The […]
*The following article contains massive spoilers for Scream (2022)* Here’s a review without spoilers if you’re interested!
From The Body Snatcher (1945) to Black Christmas (1974, 2019), from Suspiria (1977, 2018) to The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015), the academy serves as a common setting in the horror genre. But less frequent is the use of the academy not as a site of horror, but as a source of horror, particularly for those whose […]
“Once upon a time, there was a girl, and the girl had a shadow.” -Red (Lupita Nyong’o), Us (2019) We live in a haunted house. The founding of the American nation began with a moment of sweeping amnesia about its defining structure—settler colonialism, a form of colonization that replaces the original population of the colonized […]
Class hierarchy is the critical focus of Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s dystopic horror The Platform, but it should not obscure the film’s intrinsic exploration of interlocking existential and ethical instability. The brutal boost in social injustice in our own pandemic prison has given all the more relevance to The Platform’s sardonic scrutiny of human susceptibility to rationalized […]
Content Warning: This article discusses heavy spoilers for Midnight Mass, manipulation, and emotional and spiritual abuse. Horror holds a mirror up to your psyche and dares you to look at your own risk: it’s a realization of your worst fears. Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass (streaming on Netflix) is no different. And for me, a devoutly […]
Krampus events are springing up around the US – raising the question of why? What draws Americans to this figure indigenous to the Alpine regions of Austria, Bavaria, and southern Germany? The answer lies most obviously in the human need for ritual – that is, events organized on a calendrical or ‘natural’ rhythm that thus […]
The phrase “directed by Tony Scott” likely brings to mind images of slickly constructed action movies populated by A-list talent. Before his death in 2012, Scott directed a murderer’s row of stand-out blockbusters that include Top Gun (1986), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Enemy of the State (1998), and my personal favorite, Unstoppable (2010). Therefore, […]