When I browse social media I find a very common practice, which is also very curious. People ask about certain kind of movies to watch to suit a particular mood. Sometimes they want to cry themselves to sleep. Other times they want to be scared out of their wits. But if there’s a request that’s…
Familiar elements can be clichéd but also useful. Emphasize a particular trope too much and it becomes tired and tedious. Use a trope carefully, especially when connected to other tropes within a wider framework, and the various pieces can add up to a satisfying whole. The key aspect here is judicious treatment, ensuring that the…
For teenagers and storytellers alike, it is a cliché to say that high school is hell. The Dead Ones takes this concept rather literally, in the first of a series of clichés featured in this problematic and not very scary teen horror. A central quartet, who appear to hail from the same archetype roster as…
Simon West’s Skyfire is equal parts “Jurassic Park,” “Armageddon,” and, well, “Volcano”: A tireless, heart-pounding leap beyond such niceties as logic and character development into the well-trod terrain of super-duper action movie. And by that purple prose, I mean that it’s a damn fine movie to veg out to and just enjoy for what it…
On what appears to be just an average evening, a grinning pizza delivery man (David Harper, “The Clean Bones Gone”) walks through an alleyway carrying a pizza box, heading towards his next address. He’s dressed in a red polo shirt and a red visor, and we quickly discover he’s carrying a plastic bag — a…
Slasher movies have an effective formula. A killer murders victims, evades detection, has a final showdown, gets bested, maybe escapes. It’s an established formula and it has worked for decades. The film may feature absurd situations, narrative conveniences, stupid characters, gratuitous nudity and, of course, gory kills. None of this necessarily makes these films bad….
A zombie outbreak has hit the world pretty hard in Jeff Barnaby’s gnarly apocalyptic horror thriller Blood Quantum. Well, except for the isolated Mi’kmaq reservation, whose inhabitants appear to be immune the virus. As the Native peoples are beset by townies and tourists alike who stream to their lands seeking refuge and possibly a cure,…
