Logan Moreno Naoyuki Tomomatsu’s Ballads (1993) lingers in obscurity, as if its very circulation were shaped by the same quiet damage that defines the film itself. What is almost immediately striking about Ballads is how it folds J-horror’s fascination with bodies under pressure and the pinku subgenre’s obsession with desire-turned-dangerous into something emotionally fragile. The […]
James Staynings When my partner joked on our car ride home from the cinema about how Curry Barker’s Obsession (2026) is a metaphor for the patriarchy, the statement became a… fascination. We stumbled and analysed our way through the woods on a Bear hunt. We read, listened and discussed others’ observations. I noticed something in […]
The new power duo of Gen Z directors, Curry Barker and Kane Parsons, both seem to be influenced by an iconic horror film: Tobe Hooper’s 1974 Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Director of the record-shattering Obsession (2026), Barker is directing a reboot of the film for A24, which he plans to make “grounded, brutal, raw.” Kane […]
Valentina Ciarrocca Gifted by Apollo and cursed when she refused him, to never be believed, Cassandra spent the fall of Troy delivering true warnings to people who looked at her the way Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) looks at Wyck Crawford (Stephen Root) in Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay (Katie Dippold, 2026): as a lunatic. The […]
Grace Fuller Good Boy, directed by Ben Leonberg in 2025, initially appears to be a supernatural horror film from a dog’s perspective. However, upon closer examination, it reveals a deeper, unsettling meaning. Not only does it function as a haunted-house narrative, but it also serves as a metaphor for how dogs perceive human illness, both […]
Ian Haig Kane Parsons’ The Backrooms emerged on the internet. The creepy pasta backstory of the film is well known: like a piece of haunted media within the network, it began as a mysterious still image posted on 4chan, and later a short film on YouTube with over 60 million views, and now a Hollywood […]
Kevin Cooney Guiding the audience through a claustrophobic psychological and physical labyrinth in the pursuit of divine revenge, director Liam Gavin’s A Dark Song (2016) presents an overwhelmingly majestic yet equally terrifying vision of an angelic presence that defies rational explanation. The film’s climax, I contend, through elements of terror, beauty, and dread contingent on […]
Tomáš Erhart “There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape.” (Abbott, 2016: 13) This is originally a […]
Brandon West Reproductive rights are human rights, says Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s 2019 thriller film Swallow. This easily-overlooked English language film uses body horror to explore the myriad fetters with which modern American society aims to constrain the female body. The film follows a young woman, protagonist Hunter (Haley Bennett), who finds herself encircled on all sides. […]