Review: “Censor”

Censorship has played a role in film almost ever since the medium was invented. It takes different shapes and goes to varying extremes depending on the country and the time period. In Hollywood, for instance, the Production Code established to regulate content after the advent of the talking picture at the end of the 1920s […]

Review: “Werewolves Within”

“Werewolves Within” isn’t like any video game adaptation I’ve ever seen. In fact, I wasn’t even aware that it was based on a video game until delving into its production after watching it. The 2016 VR game from Red Storm Entertainment and Ubisoft is set in a medieval town, where the user has to figure […]

Review: “Gaia”

Like the best horror movies, “Gaia” is filled with imagery that is simultaneously horrifying and morbidly beautiful; disgusting, but impossible to tear your gaze from. I’m thinking primarily of a scene relatively early in director Jaco Bouwer’s feature film debut where the protagonist, a forest ranger named Gabi (Monique Rockman), finds a body slumped at […]

Review: “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It”

“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” opens with what is arguably the most chilling sequence of the entire series so far. It’s 1981, and paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) are at the home of David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard), an eight-year-old boy who is possibly possessed. As the […]

Review: “Spiral”

If you were to peek inside my brain while I was watching “Spiral,” my train of thought was likely running something like this: “I really regret watching this—oh actually maybe this isn’t bad—no wait I regret this.” To say that I’m not the target audience for the “Saw” franchise, of which prior to “Spiral” I […]

Review: “A Quiet Place Part II”

So many of my memories of movies are inextricably linked to watching them in the theater. I don’t necessarily believe that a movie is better or worse depending on where and how you watch it. But the experience around watching a movie at home, on your TV, on a computer, in crowded a theater, in […]

Streaming Movie Recap: October 2020, Part 3

Happy November everyone! I’m looking back on some October releases one more time with the last part of my streaming recap. Read on for mini reviews of the movies “Clouds,” “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” “The Witches,” “On the Rocks,” “Over the Moon,” “Yes God, Yes,” and “His House.” “CLOUDS” (Disney Plus) For a supposedly faith-based movie, […]

Spooktober: “Mystery of the Wax Museum” (1933)

A couple weeks ago I featured 1953’s “House of Wax” as one of my Spooktober picks, and today I’m going back to a previous version of the story, 1933’s “Mystery of the Wax Museum”. The plots of both films are quite similar, but while “House of Wax” plays up the horror elements, “Mystery of the […]

Streaming Movie Recap: October 2020, Part 2

Here’s the second part of my mini reviews for October! Six reviews follow, of the films “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” “American Murder: The Family Next Door,” “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” “A Baby-Sitter’s Guide to Monster-Hunting,” “The Mortuary Collection,” and “Rebecca.” All of these films are currently available on streaming services, so be sure to […]

Spooktober: “House on Haunted Hill” (1959)

“House on Haunted Hill” is famed horror director William Castle’s best movie. It’s got all the campiness of classic Castle, but with an intriguing, twisty plot that makes for a genuinely thrilling tale. Vincent Price, who also teamed up with Castle that year for the horror thriller “The Tingler”, stars as millionaire Frederick Loren, who […]