Vampires and their attendant mythologies have permeated pop culture for what seems like centuries; they have, at least, been a part of cinema since the…
It’s incredibly rare in our super-connected, social media-fueled media ecosystem for a new film to arrive with no notice, no awareness of which to speak,…
The murder mystery has proven conducive, in recent years, for mashing up tired genre formulae. It has also provided a studded launching pad, marketing and…
Maybe more than any of its brethren of subgenre monsters, the exorcism film The Exorcist (1973) looms large over its brood of descendants. There are…
“The physical world relies on a much more complex universe. Like fish who cannot see the water they are in, we are immersed in something…
Sadly, the title of Ariane Louis-Seize’s debut feature tells you virtually everything you need to know about the film itself. The Quebecois horror-comedy Humanist Vampire…
From VR to AI and NFT, from Metaverse to cutting-edge computer games and interface technologies, it’s quite clear that both our existential and psychological states…
Director Jang Jae-hyun’s new supernatural thriller Exhuma covers a lot of ground during its two-plus hour runtime; what begins as a detailed procedural gradually gives…
In Tiger Stripes, Amanda Nell Eu’s debut feature, a trio of twelve-year-old girls contend with the sudden and inexplicable physical changes that occur inside one…
Co-opting traditions as metaphors for the struggles of everyday life has always been cinema’s staple, either because these traditions romanticize the world or because they…
There’s an immediate insecurity to The Watchers, the directorial debut from Ishana Night Shyamalan. Mina (Dakota Fanning), a flatly cynical American decamping in a dead-end…
In his seminal 1978 film Dawn of the Dead, George Romero takes a few minutes to detail the final gasps of a television station trying…
There is perhaps no genre more worked over, commented upon, or deconstructed than the slasher; that most basic of horror staples has engendered all manner…
Jean-Claude Van Damme, it’s been a minute, buddy. Van Damme’s last starring vehicle, the not-particularly-exciting but still charming The Last Mercenary, mostly survived on JCVD’s…
The story of The Strangers (2008) is simple: a couple (or family, in the case of 2018’s The Strangers: Prey at Night) will be approached…
The first onscreen image in Faceless After Dark (2023), is, perhaps in deliberate tension with the film’s title, a human face. It is bloodied, or…
In light of the ongoing SAG strikes, this year’s TIFF featured a bevy of actor-directors, (generationally) ranging from Michael Keaton to Finn Wolfhard — allowing…
Unfortunately, the current cinema landscape doesn’t allow for many straightforward genre films to slip through the cracks. Most that do are bogged down by political…
It’s been an extremely productive year for director Jesse V. Johnson. Our premier DTV auteur has churned out three films in the last 13 or…
A tale of desperation and shared fates, of people hanging on to a life that is slipping away from them: two women, Elsa Gray (Sonya…