Ready or Not was one of the highlights of London’s horror film festival FrightFest. Wonderful in its balance of scares and laughs, it brings together a fine cast with a viciously vibrant script and highly inventive direction. Much of the film’s genius comes from its central device of games, a device that structures both the…
Haunt was written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, writers on “A Quiet Place”; and while this is similarly high concept, it couldn’t be more different in tone. It aims for brisk, bloody and blackly comedic, and on those terms it delivers. The conflict in “A Quiet Place” was as much psychological as…
With one co-directing credit under his belt (“Smoke Filled Lungs”), writer/director Jason Cabell begins his sophomore film with a surprising amount of confidence. Leading with intriguing, juxtaposing images of torture and partying aided by a smooth soundtrack-driven flow, the opening scene of his first solo-directed feature Running with the Devil teases a style generally uncommon…
After a night of nookie and a passive-aggressive argument, Adam (Alex Breaux, “Bushwick”) leaves his girlfriend’s apartment and heads into the night. He is promptly stabbed to death. The end. Just kidding. Adam awakens on an operating table, in a theater belonging to a young, rogue surgeon. Dr. Henry (David Call, “Dark Was the Night”)…
A high school student’s essay discussing radical philosopher Frantz Fanon’s belief in the necessity of violence by oppressed people raises certain eyebrows in Nigerian director Julius Onah’s (“The Cloverfield Paradox”) thought-provoking but over-determined Luce, a drama about race that challenges us to impose our own expectations on the main character. Onah says that, “Every other…
“Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.” — Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings While his reporting sometimes comes across as performance art, journalist Mads Brügger (“The Saint Bernard Syndicate”) has gone beyond satire in his searing documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld. Winner of the best directing award at…
Mike Gan’s Burn joins all those movies that exist solely in one location, movies like “Panic Room,” “Phone Booth” and “Grand Piano.” The greatest challenge with movies like this is that much of its success depends on the main protagonist. They need to carry the movie and compel our attention, since cinematography doesn’t play much…
