I never intended to write about Get Out, Jordan Peele’s whip smart takedown of institutional racism packaged up in one of the best horror films of recent memory. While empathy building in horror isn’t all that new, Get Out approaches its subject matter in such a wildly innovative way that I initially left the theatre […]
Young girls in middle-of-nowhere European villages used to be told that if they were beautiful enough a Prince would find them, take them back to his castle, and they would live happily ever after. Change Europe for America, the stories for magazines, the Prince for an agent, the castle for Los Angeles. You now have […]
After watching Case 39, I started mulling over one of those nature vs. nurture conundrums: are children in horror films born innocent and made evil or are they born evil and we suppress their natural tendencies. So often, children in horror films serve as cautionary tales where parental missteps lead to baby Beelzebubs. Freudian analysis […]
I have a very broad definition of horror, which is why this (very short) list about the 2016 Oscars exists at all. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, true to form, ignored the many exceptional horror films of 2016, most egregiously The Witch (Robert Eggers), Don’t Breathe (Fede Alvarez), Under the Shadow (Babak […]
The highly successful Insidious (James Wan, 2011) seems to prove the claim that the horror film is notoriously white. Hence I’m writing this in great anticipation of the release on Friday February 24 of Jordan Peele’s Get Out–a serious horror film that directly confronts racial difference and division. Peele has said that the idea for his […]
The tortured artist, in which an artist or performer seems willing to sacrifice almost anything to achieve perfection, is a common trope in film. Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky, and The Neon Demon, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, are two films of the past decade that capture the horrors of attempting to achieve perfection […]
The Interstate Highways Act of 1956 may not automatically sound like the most fascinating topic in the world, but the unprecedented act of road building that followed its passage actually had a much bigger impact upon the American horror film than one might think. What I’ve called the “Highway Horror” tradition encompasses a range of […]
In a world of jump-scaring sequels the discerning horror fan has long since embraced intense foreign imports. European, Japanese, and Korean films have all hit the mainstream while Australia remains overlooked. The Loved Ones (2009), directed by Sean Byrne, has had little recognition outside its country of origin. But we should pay attention to it. […]
I finally got around to watching two films that kept turning up on the best horror of 2016 lists—and while I could not agree more that Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe belongs at the top of that list, James Wan’s The Conjuring 2 shouldn’t even be up for consideration. The only things that really excited me […]