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You know how professional athletes will post their training regimens? I'd like to talk a little bit about each of my favorite horror movies, the architecture of my taste and of my beliefs about art.
1 Like = 1 Favorite Horror Movie
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1 Like = 1 Favorite Horror Movie
patreon.com/scumbelievable
Hellraiser
The nasty, sticky special effects, the candy-red blood, that nightmarish kitchen where insects swarm over rotting food; Barker's first outing behind a camera is anchored by its incredible leading women, one fiery and tough, the other prickly, delicate, and vicious.
The nasty, sticky special effects, the candy-red blood, that nightmarish kitchen where insects swarm over rotting food; Barker's first outing behind a camera is anchored by its incredible leading women, one fiery and tough, the other prickly, delicate, and vicious.
Jaws
One of the great creature features, Jaws succeeds not just on the power of its primally terrifying ocean setting but on the rock-solid characterization and tight, spare camera work that makes its final act feel like watching high-tension wires snap in quick succession.
One of the great creature features, Jaws succeeds not just on the power of its primally terrifying ocean setting but on the rock-solid characterization and tight, spare camera work that makes its final act feel like watching high-tension wires snap in quick succession.
Aliens
You could bounce a penny off this movie, which makes two and a half hours feel like ninety minutes. Every character is flawlessly sketched, every action sequence and scare given its own distinct emotional hook and feel, every monster a new grisly psychosexual horror.
You could bounce a penny off this movie, which makes two and a half hours feel like ninety minutes. Every character is flawlessly sketched, every action sequence and scare given its own distinct emotional hook and feel, every monster a new grisly psychosexual horror.
Excision
Watching deeply unwell and abused teenager Pauline navigate her sexual awakening goes quickly from darkly quirky coming of age comedy to nail-biting, nearly unwatchable horror about the nastiness and vulnerability of girlhood and the agony of being unloved as a child.
Watching deeply unwell and abused teenager Pauline navigate her sexual awakening goes quickly from darkly quirky coming of age comedy to nail-biting, nearly unwatchable horror about the nastiness and vulnerability of girlhood and the agony of being unloved as a child.
Under the Skin
One of the greatest movies ever made, period. Its uncomfortable oscillation between emotionless coldness to ineffable regret and confusion is among the most fascinating spectacles in horror and its eerie, alien score lingers long after the credits are done.
One of the greatest movies ever made, period. Its uncomfortable oscillation between emotionless coldness to ineffable regret and confusion is among the most fascinating spectacles in horror and its eerie, alien score lingers long after the credits are done.
It Follows
A movie about what it's like to live in the aftermath of being raped. Perpetually aware of your own vulnerability, believed by no one, jumping at shadows. It invokes sexual coming of age not as a rite of passage but as a revelation that nothing is safe.
A movie about what it's like to live in the aftermath of being raped. Perpetually aware of your own vulnerability, believed by no one, jumping at shadows. It invokes sexual coming of age not as a rite of passage but as a revelation that nothing is safe.
The Silence of the Lambs
Its monsters are alluring and excitingly icky, its sets beautifully cluttered, its camera fantastically low to the ground and vulnerable, but it's the movie's laser focus on Clarice Starling's experiences of sexism that make it so immersive.
Its monsters are alluring and excitingly icky, its sets beautifully cluttered, its camera fantastically low to the ground and vulnerable, but it's the movie's laser focus on Clarice Starling's experiences of sexism that make it so immersive.
The Shining
The way the Torrance family's dysfunction bloats and bulges in the absence of restriction or observation is one of cinema's most riveting pictures of the ways in which domestic abuse festers in the heart of America, drawing its power from secrecy and isolation.
The way the Torrance family's dysfunction bloats and bulges in the absence of restriction or observation is one of cinema's most riveting pictures of the ways in which domestic abuse festers in the heart of America, drawing its power from secrecy and isolation.
The Witch
The rare horror movie to remember that in order to hurt us by breaking something it must first give us something we can't bear to see broken. A shatteringly bleak and darkly cathartic film.
The rare horror movie to remember that in order to hurt us by breaking something it must first give us something we can't bear to see broken. A shatteringly bleak and darkly cathartic film.
Apocalypse Now
A sustained scream modulated through the reasonable-sounding voices of a thousand, thousand men. This movie is a thunderous, rattling, flare-lit nightmare held up on the backs of numberless dead, its carnage alternately mythologized and blandly smoothed over.
A sustained scream modulated through the reasonable-sounding voices of a thousand, thousand men. This movie is a thunderous, rattling, flare-lit nightmare held up on the backs of numberless dead, its carnage alternately mythologized and blandly smoothed over.
The Wicker Man
A richly imagined movie about the blindness and contradictory stupidity of belief as well as its power to bind and unite. The Wicker Man gives us faith at its most desperate and its most terrifying and forces us to sit with the knowledge that both are empty.
A richly imagined movie about the blindness and contradictory stupidity of belief as well as its power to bind and unite. The Wicker Man gives us faith at its most desperate and its most terrifying and forces us to sit with the knowledge that both are empty.
Black Death
A solid B movie about an inquisitor hurling himself endlessly against the threat of heresy, battering his body and sanity apart in a quest to bludgeon the British Isles into conformity to the will of the Church. Nicely nasty and drippy.
A solid B movie about an inquisitor hurling himself endlessly against the threat of heresy, battering his body and sanity apart in a quest to bludgeon the British Isles into conformity to the will of the Church. Nicely nasty and drippy.
Eyes Wide Shut
A movie about fantasies, about why we fuck and how little it often has to do with desire or sex, about the suffocating banality of the rich. Its cold rituals lay bare humanity's inability to function with empathy once sufficient monetary power and custom exists.
A movie about fantasies, about why we fuck and how little it often has to do with desire or sex, about the suffocating banality of the rich. Its cold rituals lay bare humanity's inability to function with empathy once sufficient monetary power and custom exists.
The Loved Ones
In its garishly vicious parade of sublimated male anxieties about commitment and emotional intimacy with women The Loved Ones finds both painful insight and one of horror film's all-time great sadistic brats.
In its garishly vicious parade of sublimated male anxieties about commitment and emotional intimacy with women The Loved Ones finds both painful insight and one of horror film's all-time great sadistic brats.
The Babadook
A heartbreaking and exhausting dive into what it feels like to live with chronic exhaustion, paralyzing grief, and the weight of a child's needs and emotions. One of the most insightful movies there is on how mothers are treated and judged.
A heartbreaking and exhausting dive into what it feels like to live with chronic exhaustion, paralyzing grief, and the weight of a child's needs and emotions. One of the most insightful movies there is on how mothers are treated and judged.
The Thing
Flesh ebbs and flows like water. Bones form and dissolve. New limbs unfold from hollows in bodies that melt and sag and bulge and change. The Thing says more with its special effects than many movies do with their entire scripts.
Flesh ebbs and flows like water. Bones form and dissolve. New limbs unfold from hollows in bodies that melt and sag and bulge and change. The Thing says more with its special effects than many movies do with their entire scripts.
Rebecca
A ghost story in which the ghost doesn't plague the living but instead is kept alive by their obsessive remembrance, the negative space of her life continually pawed at and penetrated, her shadow continually invoked as both curse and prayer.
A ghost story in which the ghost doesn't plague the living but instead is kept alive by their obsessive remembrance, the negative space of her life continually pawed at and penetrated, her shadow continually invoked as both curse and prayer.
Rosemary's Baby
A vicious look at what happens to a woman once she's carrying a child. Rosemary's transformation from lanky, grinning nymph to infantilized and uncertain public property is a heartbreaking and nastily resonant one.
A vicious look at what happens to a woman once she's carrying a child. Rosemary's transformation from lanky, grinning nymph to infantilized and uncertain public property is a heartbreaking and nastily resonant one.
The Neon Demon
A *mean* movie in a way few other things so much as try being mean. It's about mediocrity, about beauty as a feral contest between women who've lost just by participating, about desire as an irrevocably one-sided experience. Cruel. Stupid. Gorgeous.
A *mean* movie in a way few other things so much as try being mean. It's about mediocrity, about beauty as a feral contest between women who've lost just by participating, about desire as an irrevocably one-sided experience. Cruel. Stupid. Gorgeous.
Audition
Men want women to absorb and reflect their fantasies and desires, but at the same time they are filled with terror by the idea of women's inner lives. Audition channels this anxiety beautifully and with radical, nauseating empathy.
Men want women to absorb and reflect their fantasies and desires, but at the same time they are filled with terror by the idea of women's inner lives. Audition channels this anxiety beautifully and with radical, nauseating empathy.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Somehow this movie manages to convey the desperation of people who know that their feelings toward each other are things being felt for the last time, that everything they think and say is bleeding away like smoke into an alien wind.
Somehow this movie manages to convey the desperation of people who know that their feelings toward each other are things being felt for the last time, that everything they think and say is bleeding away like smoke into an alien wind.
Nosferatu (Herzog)
A vision of vampirism not as sexual seduction or contamination but as a bottomless pit of boredom and isolation, a place where humanity writhes and burns until nothing but ash drifting through an endless void remains.
A vision of vampirism not as sexual seduction or contamination but as a bottomless pit of boredom and isolation, a place where humanity writhes and burns until nothing but ash drifting through an endless void remains.
The Exorcist
A confrontation between stunted, heartbroken masculinity and the unclean emergent feminine, its emotional dynamic hopelessly tangled and complex, its demonic antagonist playing on human weaknesses and anxieties with ruthless precision.
A confrontation between stunted, heartbroken masculinity and the unclean emergent feminine, its emotional dynamic hopelessly tangled and complex, its demonic antagonist playing on human weaknesses and anxieties with ruthless precision.
The Devils
A discordant, abrasive nightmare birthed out of a repressed and isolated woman's pain and then, finally, reabsorbed into her broken body in a pitiful masturbatory act of surrender.
A discordant, abrasive nightmare birthed out of a repressed and isolated woman's pain and then, finally, reabsorbed into her broken body in a pitiful masturbatory act of surrender.
Possession
If people could boil over like cream left unattended on the stove, Possession is what would happen. A woman's explosive frustration and self-alienation ripping through male infantilism and the suffocating coils of domestic living.
If people could boil over like cream left unattended on the stove, Possession is what would happen. A woman's explosive frustration and self-alienation ripping through male infantilism and the suffocating coils of domestic living.
The Eyes of My Mother
A movie about lifelong isolation and the ways in which it lives in our bodies and our homes. The protagonist's disordered relationship to others and guilelessly violent attempts to connect with them take a long, strange road to a heartbreaking conclusion.
A movie about lifelong isolation and the ways in which it lives in our bodies and our homes. The protagonist's disordered relationship to others and guilelessly violent attempts to connect with them take a long, strange road to a heartbreaking conclusion.
Misery
It's about the vicious entitlement of fandom, about taking by force what life won't give you, about hating yourself so intensely that you shatter other bodies to act out the destruction of your own.
It's about the vicious entitlement of fandom, about taking by force what life won't give you, about hating yourself so intensely that you shatter other bodies to act out the destruction of your own.
Hellbound: Hellraiser II
To off-quote @thorazos, two young mentally ill women outwit the entirety of hell. A gorgeously nasty and exciting movie.
To off-quote @thorazos, two young mentally ill women outwit the entirety of hell. A gorgeously nasty and exciting movie.
Alien
A wire-taut movie about the universal threat of rape and what it feels like to live with the knowledge of your body's permeable vulnerability. Its titular menace permanently changed the way creature design is done.
A wire-taut movie about the universal threat of rape and what it feels like to live with the knowledge of your body's permeable vulnerability. Its titular menace permanently changed the way creature design is done.
Nightbreed
A richly imagined examination of what it feels like to find family with other freaks and of the hypocritical, hopelessly lonely viciousness with which the establishment despises that community and belonging.
A richly imagined examination of what it feels like to find family with other freaks and of the hypocritical, hopelessly lonely viciousness with which the establishment despises that community and belonging.
Lost Highway
At the heart of America is an empty place, sterile and dead. Lost Highway is one of the most monumentally hollow things I've seen, a dark spell cast in images and sound, a curse written in dust on bare floorboards.
At the heart of America is an empty place, sterile and dead. Lost Highway is one of the most monumentally hollow things I've seen, a dark spell cast in images and sound, a curse written in dust on bare floorboards.
The Brood
Not so much about the perversely covetous aversion with which society treats women's bodies as it is about the way we train women to live apart from their own emotions, to cut from themselves their bloodiest, loudest, most vulnerable thoughts and feelings.
Not so much about the perversely covetous aversion with which society treats women's bodies as it is about the way we train women to live apart from their own emotions, to cut from themselves their bloodiest, loudest, most vulnerable thoughts and feelings.
The Haunting
As an adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel and as a richly envisioned horror movie all its own, The Haunting is an unqualified success. Repressed lesbianism and self-loathing wrestle in the darkness, the sound of their bodies thrashing echoing down empty halls.
As an adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel and as a richly envisioned horror movie all its own, The Haunting is an unqualified success. Repressed lesbianism and self-loathing wrestle in the darkness, the sound of their bodies thrashing echoing down empty halls.
Hangover Square
A quietly despairing movie about art and the creative process as replacements for human connection. Its blazing set pieces are true horrors, one a childish refusal to accept the consequences of an act, the other an adult's resigned surrender to cruel fate.
A quietly despairing movie about art and the creative process as replacements for human connection. Its blazing set pieces are true horrors, one a childish refusal to accept the consequences of an act, the other an adult's resigned surrender to cruel fate.
Antichrist
An unrelenting exploration of the ways in which men demand women act and at the disdain with which they treat them when they do so. It delves so deep into feminine pain that it's like you can feel it waking something down there in the primal, battered dark.
An unrelenting exploration of the ways in which men demand women act and at the disdain with which they treat them when they do so. It delves so deep into feminine pain that it's like you can feel it waking something down there in the primal, battered dark.
Dead Ringers
Jeremy Irons is magnificent as both the cocksure Elliott and the passive, needy Beverley, twin gynecologists whose pseudo-incestuous life is ripped apart by their inability to cope with the outside world.
Jeremy Irons is magnificent as both the cocksure Elliott and the passive, needy Beverley, twin gynecologists whose pseudo-incestuous life is ripped apart by their inability to cope with the outside world.
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Blood, lace, silk, and spit drape this movie in billowing folds and dripping rivulets. It's a singular creation, wild and debauched, longingly romantic, brutally obscene. It's sixty-nining in a coffin. It's making out with a corpse. It's Dracula, baby.
Blood, lace, silk, and spit drape this movie in billowing folds and dripping rivulets. It's a singular creation, wild and debauched, longingly romantic, brutally obscene. It's sixty-nining in a coffin. It's making out with a corpse. It's Dracula, baby.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
A hole in a door through which we feel compelled to stare, hoping against hope that some sign of the cause of our terrible heartbreak will be revealed, that our feelings will at last resolve, that we'll know anything but this dreadful, endless waiting.
A hole in a door through which we feel compelled to stare, hoping against hope that some sign of the cause of our terrible heartbreak will be revealed, that our feelings will at last resolve, that we'll know anything but this dreadful, endless waiting.
Hagazussa
The story of an abused and ostracized young woman who spends her entire life reeling from one trauma to the next. She boils alive in the hot venom of her own pain and terror. Relentlessly degrading.
The story of an abused and ostracized young woman who spends her entire life reeling from one trauma to the next. She boils alive in the hot venom of her own pain and terror. Relentlessly degrading.
Perfect Blue
The self isn't something you own but something you're forced into and shut up in, a coffin made of flesh in which, for a little while, you can draw praise, be loved, and float numb and mindless in the bliss of belonging. Then it's gone.
The self isn't something you own but something you're forced into and shut up in, a coffin made of flesh in which, for a little while, you can draw praise, be loved, and float numb and mindless in the bliss of belonging. Then it's gone.
They Look Like People
It's not a perfect movie, but its minimal effects are terrifying, just subtle and unadorned enough to cross over into plausibility, and its material about living with psychosis and loving those who do is white hot and genuinely moving.
It's not a perfect movie, but its minimal effects are terrifying, just subtle and unadorned enough to cross over into plausibility, and its material about living with psychosis and loving those who do is white hot and genuinely moving.
Lake Mungo
A family's quiet disintegration in the wake of a young woman's death. That they never admit they're broken, that perhaps they never even realize it, is more chilling than anything else.
A family's quiet disintegration in the wake of a young woman's death. That they never admit they're broken, that perhaps they never even realize it, is more chilling than anything else.
The Birds
The whole world, without explanation or warning, becomes viciously hostile as birds turn against human beings in destructive mobs, bashing themselves to death against windows and walls. A horrifically messy movie, quiet and desperate, its emotional core subtly brutal.
The whole world, without explanation or warning, becomes viciously hostile as birds turn against human beings in destructive mobs, bashing themselves to death against windows and walls. A horrifically messy movie, quiet and desperate, its emotional core subtly brutal.
Wolf Creek
An upsettingly authentic road trip gone wrong where the Australian outback swallows two young women alive. Its narrative structure is fascinating, following both women in succession as they flag and rally in their contest against a sadistic outdoorsman serial killer.
An upsettingly authentic road trip gone wrong where the Australian outback swallows two young women alive. Its narrative structure is fascinating, following both women in succession as they flag and rally in their contest against a sadistic outdoorsman serial killer.
Single White Female
A fantastically icky piece of queer horror, its monstrous lesbian antagonist believably damaged and desperate for companionship. Her pitiful "I don't want to be alone" as she stalks the protagonist through a labyrinthine basement resonates even today.
A fantastically icky piece of queer horror, its monstrous lesbian antagonist believably damaged and desperate for companionship. Her pitiful "I don't want to be alone" as she stalks the protagonist through a labyrinthine basement resonates even today.
Gothic
A wild psychosexual scramble through the filthy ratholes and clogged gutters of the dreaming mind. Through sheer revolting momentum it pushes through gross-out shock and into something beautiful, brave, and desperately frail.
A wild psychosexual scramble through the filthy ratholes and clogged gutters of the dreaming mind. Through sheer revolting momentum it pushes through gross-out shock and into something beautiful, brave, and desperately frail.
Cube
I love to watch these idiots die in bizarre ways.
I love to watch these idiots die in bizarre ways.
The Ring
This movie is fucking scary, man. It's upsetting and ugly and it peels back the skin of our idyllic cultural idea of mother-child bliss to expose the dark, knotted innards festering beneath.
This movie is fucking scary, man. It's upsetting and ugly and it peels back the skin of our idyllic cultural idea of mother-child bliss to expose the dark, knotted innards festering beneath.
US
Jordan Peele's second movie is a slippery, unsettling look at class climbing and cultural assimilation, and while it pulls a few punches it still finds something uniquely terrible to say about our selfish, hateful nation and the things it does to us, the people living in it.
Jordan Peele's second movie is a slippery, unsettling look at class climbing and cultural assimilation, and while it pulls a few punches it still finds something uniquely terrible to say about our selfish, hateful nation and the things it does to us, the people living in it.
Burnt Offerings
A family rents a country house and dissolves into the versions of themselves which they most fear. Its parental violence is some of the most upsetting to be found anywhere, its remorseless brutalization of the idea of family as violent as its actual killing.
A family rents a country house and dissolves into the versions of themselves which they most fear. Its parental violence is some of the most upsetting to be found anywhere, its remorseless brutalization of the idea of family as violent as its actual killing.
Prince of Darkness
Carpenter's supernatural thriller is animated as much by its ingenious special effects -- the hazy aquatic hell of its mirror world stands out in particular -- as by its charismatic cast and gloomily impersonal setting.
Carpenter's supernatural thriller is animated as much by its ingenious special effects -- the hazy aquatic hell of its mirror world stands out in particular -- as by its charismatic cast and gloomily impersonal setting.
The Invitation
An ugly look at the human urge to forget and deny. The Invitation gets its teeth into the New Age's snake oil practice of selling an escape from the past and then never lets go, biting down harder and harder until you want to scream in sympathy.
An ugly look at the human urge to forget and deny. The Invitation gets its teeth into the New Age's snake oil practice of selling an escape from the past and then never lets go, biting down harder and harder until you want to scream in sympathy.
Ravenous
Cannibalism as a metaphor for westward expansion and the bloody madness of the Civil War, as a metaphor for the driving force at the heart of America itself. Its score is bizarre and compelling, its gory conceit a delight.
Cannibalism as a metaphor for westward expansion and the bloody madness of the Civil War, as a metaphor for the driving force at the heart of America itself. Its score is bizarre and compelling, its gory conceit a delight.
Ghostwatch
A mock BBC news special so convincing in its look at the difficult, put upon lives of single mothers and their emotionally starved children that it duped the isles into a panic. Ghostwatch gives the rare thrill of watching horror pour into real life.
A mock BBC news special so convincing in its look at the difficult, put upon lives of single mothers and their emotionally starved children that it duped the isles into a panic. Ghostwatch gives the rare thrill of watching horror pour into real life.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Like having your skin ripped off and sandpaper rubbed against your twitching, bleeding flesh. Like seeing your father jerk off to forced-vomit fellatio. Like touching a shard of bone protruding from your own broken, twisted leg. It's unholy.
Like having your skin ripped off and sandpaper rubbed against your twitching, bleeding flesh. Like seeing your father jerk off to forced-vomit fellatio. Like touching a shard of bone protruding from your own broken, twisted leg. It's unholy.
30 Days of Night
The office team-building retreat from hell.
The office team-building retreat from hell.
Event Horizon
Gorgeously baroque set design and brilliant wound makeup elevate this unremarkable space slasher into something truly unsettling and ugly.
Gorgeously baroque set design and brilliant wound makeup elevate this unremarkable space slasher into something truly unsettling and ugly.
28 Days Later
The zombies are fucking terrifying, sure, and it's wall to wall great performances here, but it's the putrid ugliness of the movie's look at culturally enforced gender roles and sexual violence that make it memorable.
The zombies are fucking terrifying, sure, and it's wall to wall great performances here, but it's the putrid ugliness of the movie's look at culturally enforced gender roles and sexual violence that make it memorable.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
It locates in the relationships that bind families together, in the substance of the home and the lives it contains, a kind of horror at one screechingly banal and untouchably alien, a thing all the worse for the familiarity with it we all repress.
It locates in the relationships that bind families together, in the substance of the home and the lives it contains, a kind of horror at one screechingly banal and untouchably alien, a thing all the worse for the familiarity with it we all repress.
American Psycho
A dizzying drop into the bottomless nothingness of an upper-class white man's violent, hatefully misogynistic and classist fantasies and narcissistic anxieties. It textures Bateman's blandly horrible nature until you feel like you're the one touching him.
A dizzying drop into the bottomless nothingness of an upper-class white man's violent, hatefully misogynistic and classist fantasies and narcissistic anxieties. It textures Bateman's blandly horrible nature until you feel like you're the one touching him.
We Are What We Are
The rare remake to overtake its source material, this movie delves into the brittle tension of father-daughter relationships and the stifling misery of family tradition while investigating how we form bonds of empathy and learn to value others.
The rare remake to overtake its source material, this movie delves into the brittle tension of father-daughter relationships and the stifling misery of family tradition while investigating how we form bonds of empathy and learn to value others.
Psycho
A vision of the hollow people that abuse leaves in its wake and of the things they conjure to occupy the empty spaces in their hearts. Psycho's infamous score and vulnerable, almost birdlike killer make it a strangely tender movie even as it accelerates toward mayhem.
A vision of the hollow people that abuse leaves in its wake and of the things they conjure to occupy the empty spaces in their hearts. Psycho's infamous score and vulnerable, almost birdlike killer make it a strangely tender movie even as it accelerates toward mayhem.
Crash
Cronenberg's stickily erotic look at the smeared line between retraumatization and sexual catharsis is as unbearably tender as it is vicious and destructive, the hurtling metal and fire of its cars inseparable from the scarred and mutilated bodies of its characters.
Cronenberg's stickily erotic look at the smeared line between retraumatization and sexual catharsis is as unbearably tender as it is vicious and destructive, the hurtling metal and fire of its cars inseparable from the scarred and mutilated bodies of its characters.
Cape Fear
Scorsese at his most Hitchcockian, his camera dollying and swooping in a pantomime of the characters' shock, arousal, and anxiety as a grinning former victim of their prosperity insinuates himself into their lives and wraps his hands around their throats.
Scorsese at his most Hitchcockian, his camera dollying and swooping in a pantomime of the characters' shock, arousal, and anxiety as a grinning former victim of their prosperity insinuates himself into their lives and wraps his hands around their throats.
The Fog
Carpenter's most beautiful film, its gorgeous images of the rugged California coast belying its deeper ideas about the cruelty inherent in community and our disdain for the abject and suffering. Its ghostly antagonists are as sad as they are frightening.
Carpenter's most beautiful film, its gorgeous images of the rugged California coast belying its deeper ideas about the cruelty inherent in community and our disdain for the abject and suffering. Its ghostly antagonists are as sad as they are frightening.
Mulholland Drive
The greatest movie about self-loathing, resentment, longing, and identity ever made. In its endless permutations of reality it flits in circles around an essential human fear, a primal terror of rejection and of being forced to live inside our failures.
The greatest movie about self-loathing, resentment, longing, and identity ever made. In its endless permutations of reality it flits in circles around an essential human fear, a primal terror of rejection and of being forced to live inside our failures.
Under the Shadow
A frustrated mother struggles to bond with her troubled and restless daughter under the stifling religious strictures in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The film makes a believable throat-tightening horror out of an old bed sheet and some low-tier CGI.
A frustrated mother struggles to bond with her troubled and restless daughter under the stifling religious strictures in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The film makes a believable throat-tightening horror out of an old bed sheet and some low-tier CGI.
Barton Fink
An entitled, blinkered big city playwright pursues the dream of his own illusory talent down a rabbit hole of domestic violence, artistic failure, murder, and annihilation. John Goodman as a corn-fed good old boy constantly dripping with sweat is mesmerizing.
An entitled, blinkered big city playwright pursues the dream of his own illusory talent down a rabbit hole of domestic violence, artistic failure, murder, and annihilation. John Goodman as a corn-fed good old boy constantly dripping with sweat is mesmerizing.
Silent Hill
It's not a good movie, but its recreations of its video game source material's infamously psychosexually explicit monsters are gut-churning. On that alone it succeeds as pure gross-out horror which with nothing more than design punches deep into visceral discomfort.
It's not a good movie, but its recreations of its video game source material's infamously psychosexually explicit monsters are gut-churning. On that alone it succeeds as pure gross-out horror which with nothing more than design punches deep into visceral discomfort.
Let the Right One In
A bleak vampire romance which digs both hands into the helplessness and terror of childhood and the hollowing experience of neglect. Death comes to an unhappy boy in the guise of young love.
A bleak vampire romance which digs both hands into the helplessness and terror of childhood and the hollowing experience of neglect. Death comes to an unhappy boy in the guise of young love.
The Sixth Sense
An unforgettably sad movie about love and loss. The cracks in Shyamalan's writing that would later tank his career still hadn't begun to open, and his idiosyncratic style made The Sixth Sense feel lived in and genuine, as tender as a child's hand in yours.
An unforgettably sad movie about love and loss. The cracks in Shyamalan's writing that would later tank his career still hadn't begun to open, and his idiosyncratic style made The Sixth Sense feel lived in and genuine, as tender as a child's hand in yours.
Poltergeist
A special effects extravaganza anchored by drippy amniotic imagery and the ingenious scramble for connection between kidnapped child and panicked mother. Much symbolically richer than the many things which have since co-opted its defining images.
A special effects extravaganza anchored by drippy amniotic imagery and the ingenious scramble for connection between kidnapped child and panicked mother. Much symbolically richer than the many things which have since co-opted its defining images.
