Neasa Hardiman’s Sea Fever is in a very similar vein as The Thing (1982), Deep Star Six (1989), Leviathan (1989) and Harbinger Down (2015) but is novel enough that it’s it own thing. It’s a very beautiful, thoughtful movie about what happens when good intentions go horribly awry and there’re no villains – monsters, Yes, […]
Brad Peyton’s Incarnate is not your typical possession story in that you have a scientist (?) Dr. Ember (Aaron Eckhart) who’s life has been touched – more like being caught in a car wreck – by the supernatural and devoted his life to freeing people who’ve been effected by the lingering touch of evil. He […]
All I need to say about Ant Timpson’s Come To Daddy is that it co-stars the brilliant Stephen McHattie, Hollywood’s go-to actor when you want a vaguely sinister older white person in your movie. With a face like a worn leather saddle and a voice like rusty hinges, he has to rank among the best […]
Women directors aren’t exactly a known quantity as far as action movies go, and I suspect that that’s less a commentary on their ability to do the job than preconceived notions about what they as women can and cannot do. And that’s a shame though it’s also a trend that’s beginning to change. And speaking […]
Have you heard of the idea of “the magical negro?” The phrase revolves around the idea that oftentimes – less so now, I think – black people in movies are treated as almost magical beings, like leprechauns, dispensing folksy knowledge, wisdom and little else. It’s a dehumanizing way of depicting black people for directors that […]
I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic when I say that Mike Flanagan is among the best – if not the best – directors currently working in horror. And you likely noticed that “Mike Flanagan” isn’t either Guillermo Del Toro, James Wan or Andy Muschietti. And that’s because Del Toro – while never far from the […]
It’s the best thing when you stumble upon a pleasant surprise where one wasn’t expected, which was how I felt about Paul Soter’s Dark Circles (currently streaming on Tubi). The movie is a horror/thriler about a couple (Johnathon Schaech and Pell James) who move to a new house in the country. Part of the reason […]
Boots Riley’s Sorry To Bother You is an ambitious movie, way more ambitions that anything a first-time director has any right to tackle (prior Riley co-directed a short with Chris Wroubel). Lakeith – or is that “LaKeith? – Stanfield (Knives Out) is Cassius Green, a guy who’s moving through life in a perpetual state of […]
Matt Stuertz’s Tonight She Comes is a remarkable movie that to my reckoning feels like the sequel to The Evil Dead (1981) we should’ve got, yet somehow begins as a homage to It Follows (2014) and still manages to not only be cohesive, but it’s own thing. I did I mention that’s it’s gory, but […]
I’ve recall reading reviews of Greg McLean’s The Darkness at the time it was released in theaters and got the impression that it wasn’t worth seeing though it turned up on Netflix recently, and I gave it a watch. And almost immediately realized that I and the critics were sorta right-in the sense that it’s […]
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