Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: What better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising?
This week, we see what Simon Rex is up to, declare “Just Like Heaven” a national treasure, get hip to a different kind of talk show, get lost in good design, and then lose our senses altogether. Read More »
How do you adapt an unadaptable Stephen King novel into a movie? The answer, apparently, is to hire Mike Flanagan.
Flanagan may not be the type of household name horror director the way John Carpenter, Wes Craven and George Romero once and still are, but over the last several years, he’s been quietly rising to prominence as one of the most efficient craftsmen in the horror genre. As a horror filmmaker, Flanagan seems to have a knack for taking unlikely, or unworkable, concepts and finding the humanity in them. Gerald’s Game, Flanagan’s adaptation of a seemingly unfilmable King novel, has already earned high praise from early screenings and hits Netflix today, possibly launching the filmmaker to even greater prominence. The film is exemplary, but it’s just another piece in the greater puzzle that is Flanagan’s growing filmography.
Read More »
If you grab an average person off the street and ask them how they feel about the recently departed 2016, they’d probably give you a detached thousand yard stare. Or burst into tears. It was, for the world as a whole, not a great time to be alive. However, it was a great year for horror movies. And that makes a twisted sort of sense. As we discover new ways to fear and despair, the movies will react accordingly. Whether by accident or design, horror cinema represented everything we dread in 2016. How it will react to the actual events of this past year has me fascinated…and terrified.
Looking back at the past twelve months, it’s astonishing just how good horror cinema has been. It was there when we needed it, offering an avenue of escape and, when necessary, a dark mirror to examine our inner demons.
Read More »
