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Posted on July 16, 2019

Crawl: This Summer’s Must-See Naturalistic Creature Feature

Guest Post

For anyone who wished that last year’s shark movie The Meg had an R rating instead of a PG-13 rating, then Crawl won’t disappoint. Director Alexandre Aja’s alligator flick is a fun and gory romp, a nail-biting thriller with naturalistic undertones. While the film may not have as much to unpack as other horror hits this summer, namely Ari Aster’s Midsommar, it’s a wild ride that should titillate horror fans and make for a fun time at the movie theater.

The plot of Crawl, which is expertly written by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen, is straightforward. College swim star Haley (Kaya Scodelario) returns to her childhood home in Florida to locate her father, Dave (Barry Pepper), a recent divorcee who went missing after he was attacked by a gator while trying to fix a pipe in the basement, amidst a Category Five hurricane. It’s probably best not to question why he didn’t just evacuate instead of worrying about home repairs. The film includes some family drama and internal demons, but generally, the plot is straightforward without much subtext. Read more

Posted on July 14, 2019

Stranger Things Season 3 Provides More Gore, More Queer, and More Female Fierceness

Guest Post

Season three of the Duffer brothers’ mega-hit Stranger Things has the fizzy pop feel of a high school rom-com seasoned with heavy dashes of cold war paranoia and splatter-gore grossness of 80s era films. Bowl cuts, bi-levels, and rainbow bright attire are set amidst a sinister Russian operation housed beneath Hawkins’ flashy new Starcourt mall. Extending the series’ admixture of horror and sci-fi elements, the new season regales viewers with exploding rats, human bodies turned into melted piles of blood-tinged gloop, and a gigantic excrement-hued monster.

The season, like the previous two, nods extensively towards iconic horror and sci-fi films. This intertextual aspect of the series, which includes enough Easter Eggs to make even the most avid egg-hunter happy, is most extensively informed by works from Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and James Cameron. Yes, that’s right, all dudes.

Posted on May 26, 2019

The Perfection is Amazing – and Never What You Think

Dawn Keetley

As I am sure many people have done, I saw the preview for Richard Shepard’s The Perfection (2018) and started watching it with a certain set of expectations; I think I was imagining something along the lines of Single White Female (1992). I was wrong. Things took a turn—actually many turns—and I became completely unmoored, disoriented. The film twists violently several times, and there are at least two moments when what you think has just happened is literally overturned.

I’m not going to give anything away in this review. Everyone should just experience this crazy and disturbing film. And for those of you who, like me, may have thought The Perfection was not a “horror” film, rest assured that it unambiguously is. The fact that it is labeled “Drama, Mystery, Suspense” on the Rotten Tomatoes website is misleading. I was literally retching by around thirty minutes in and was transfixed and appalled when I was another thirty minutes in. And then was left gaping and deeply disturbed at the final scene—though it wasn’t like what came before wasn’t already plenty disturbing. Yes, The Perfection is a horror film. It’s got gore; it’s transgressive; it’s deeply unsettling; and it definitely has some social commentary, though the latter is subservient to complex storytelling, brilliant cinematography, and powerful performances.

Posted on April 28, 2019

Body at Brighton Rock – Excellent New Wilderness Horror

Dawn Keetley

Body at Brighton Rock (2019) is the first full-length feature film directed (and written) by Roxanne Benjamin, and it demonstrates that she is indeed a horror director to watch. Benjamin has also written and directed the “Don’t Fall” segment of the excellent all-female horror anthology XX (2017), which I review here. She also directed and co-wrote the “Siren” segment of Southbound (2015), reviewed here. Both of these provocative short films demonstrate what seem to be emerging themes of Benjamin’s work: a seamless blending of the supernatural and the psychological—especially when it comes to vulnerable (e.g., frightened, guilty) characters; and a preoccupation with landscape and the ways in which open, desolate land presses on characters’ weaknesses.

Posted on March 4, 2019

The Hole in the Ground: the Strangeness of What We Think We Know

Dawn Keetley

Written and directed by Lee Cronin (along with co-writer Stephen Shields), Irish horror film, The Hole in the Ground is a wonderful slow-burn film that relies on the formidable talents of its lead actors—Seána Kerslake as Sarah O’Neill and James Quinn Markey as her son Chris—as well as the beauty of the enveloping landscape. Cinematographer Tom Comerford and director Cronin make the most of their locations in Kildare and Wicklow, Ireland—and the forest, surrounding the hole at the center of the narrative—is itself as good as a character. The Hole in the Ground is an incredible entry in what seems to be a veritable renaissance in Irish horror.

The story follows Sarah as she moves with her son far from the city to begin a new life—away from the boy’s father who, as Chris put it, made her sad. (We learn very little else about Sarah’s relationship with Chris’s father, other than a large cut she has on her forehead.) One night, Chris disappears, appearing mysteriously back in the house after Sarah has searched everywhere for him. After his return, Chris seems different, alien. Sarah goes from uncertainty to certainty—finally becoming convinced that he’s an imposter. “He’s not my son,” she repeats. The film keeps us in some doubt, for a while, about whether Sarah is just imagining her son’s strangeness; she’s prescribed pills, and both her taking and then not taking them are suggestively linked to what might be her delusions. It’s also possible that Chris only seems like an imposter to her because her feelings toward him have changed: tellingly, things go wrong after Chris gets angry at Sarah for taking him away from his father.