Two beautiful people in a beautiful setting confess the beauty they see in each other, before creating something beautiful between them. There’s a lot of beauty in this scene, a scene that could happen in any number of films, but here it takes place in an entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Its presence…
Some genres are easily identified by tropes. Science fiction can be identified by spacecraft, time travel, extra-terrestrial life, artificial intelligence. Horror can be identified by an initial journey, a focus on victimhood and suffering, unsafe environments, a loss of control. While reductive and far from the whole story of these genres, tropes such as these…
Point Pleasant is a sleepy little town straight out of a Steven King novel. Set within the sprawling forests of West Virginia and with a population of just 4,000, not much goes on around these parts. Except, that is, for repeated sightings of a terrifying demon — a seven-foot tall, half-man, half-bird creature with red…
If Charlie Steeds’ The Barge People had been released in the 1980s or 1990s, it would have been released by Full Moon or Troma. That’s certainly no slight on those two companies, but rather a nod to two true-blue schlock producers of recent times. The plot is uncomplicated, the performances not overly nuanced, and the…
When it comes to creating horror, a key aspect is the surrounding environment. From Gothic castles to creepy houses to underground caverns to spaceships, if the characters are in a threatening environment the audience can feel unnerved. Thus, part of the work is done and you can develop further tension with set pieces and jump…
Onward, the latest animated adventure from the studio that seemingly can do no wrong, Pixar, kinda does. It is a mediocre effort overall, but still a further reminder of the studio’s status as a master heartstring-tugger. In the end, that’s where the studio excels and the way Dan Scanlon, Jason Headley and Keith Bunin’s story…
A group of students entering into the shady confines of the woods is a familiar horror premise that we all recognize, not least of all in what has become the very embodiment of the idea; “The Blair Witch Project.” However, Peter Callow’s The Circle manages to keep its own sense of originality whilst drawing from…
