A Film Studies graduate with a very healthy obsession with all things Kubrick, here I am surfing an internet awash with opinions to add mine to the ocean.
Those dastardly backwoods are calling again. Based on the well-received 2011 novel by Adam Nevill, David Bruckner’s film, The Ritual, is a competent British-made horror which, after a so-so opening act, gradually mutates into something quite watchable and intense. It starts as a group of old college buddies meet up to plan a reunion trip…
Christopher Lawrence Chapman’s debut feature, Inoperable, is a horror film about a 30-year-old woman struggling to escape from a half-deserted hospital while “the T-rex of hurricanes” sweeps overhead. The opening titles are like a scratchy throwback to David Fincher’s “Se7en,” and the end credits splash the screen with comic book text. Neither bookend is relevant…
The title, GoatSucker, may sound like a disturbingly niche adult movie, but it actually refers to the Puerto Rican myth of El Chupacabra, a bear-like carnivore believed to feed on livestock and humans. Made in 2009, this seminal monster movie is brought to the small screen by Steve Hudgins, who most recently authored the woeful…
Mahal (Kelly Lou Dennis, “Three Tutus and a Gun”) is an aswang, an ancient race of vampires derived from Philippine folklore. But that aspect of her being is deeply repressed, and her role in present-day San Francisco is to be a member of an elite vampire-hunter squad. Mahal’s mission is to track down and kill…
A sheep in wolf’s clothing — by which I mean a B-movie in Euro-arthouse clothing — The Unseen shoulders its way into the dynasty of slow-burn horror films about middle class parents escaping to some distant place to cope with the grief of losing a child. Writer-director Gary Sinyor has a history of lightweight rom-coms…
To describe what breed of horror movie Somebody’s Darling is would be a spoiler in itself. Suffice to say, it’s small-scale, slow-burning, strange and sometimes surreal. It’s also very good. The setting is Williamsburg University, in 2006. History student Sarah (Jessa Settle, “Accidentally Engaged”) and her bitchy buddies arrive at a frat party and find…
“Creepy Passion” might sound like a dating site for certain high-profile members of the movie industry, but in this unambitious found footage horrorer, The Follower, from feature debutant writer-director Kévin Mendiboure, it’s the name of a faux YouTube program specializing in all things scary. That’s why its presenter, David Baker (Nicolas Shake, “A Prayer Before…
