Detention (2011)

Imagine if, in the early 1980s, nascent film directors John Hughes and Wes Craven met up with venerable science fiction author Ray Bradbury at a Northern California artist’s retreat. There, between the backdrop of the Santa Cruz mountains and the turbulent Pacific Ocean, perhaps over a fine Merlot and maybe some clandestine psychotropic herbs, the

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My attraction to horror movies goes deeper than enjoying the dopamine rush that comes from a well-made, scary film. Horror movies can broaden our horizons by introducing audiences to new people and places, inspiring us to learn and grow as individuals. Therefore, the work of Alice Maio Mackay, a teenage writer and director, is worth

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Screenwriter Teresa Sutherland (The Wind, Midnight Mass) invites viewers to explore the beauty of our national parks in her directorial debut, Lovely, Dark and Deep (2023). The movie takes place in one of America’s beautiful National Forests and Grasslands. Because of their size and remoteness, these natural spaces can be dangerous, even fatal for hikers

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Is there such a thing as a good war?  After World War I, the Allies left Germany in a state of defeat and despair. Consequently, one man used the disheartened people to build a nation of fanatics. They followed him into another war that would throw the world into chaos. As the Germans struggled to

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The Legacy of Paul Naschy

As a fan of European horror, I own nearly 30 films starring Spanish horror icon Paul Naschy. They cover his career from his early, lavish monster movies of the 1960s and 1970s to the cheap, direct-to-video exploitation films of the 2000s. Because his movies often reflected the changes he went through in life, it is

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Canadian director and writer Brandon Cronenberg’s third film, Infinity Pool, is a critically well-received, bewildering film that lends itself to widespread interpretation. Many reviewers discuss its timely, global topics such as criticism of class systems and wealth inequality, the negative consequences of tourism, and the risks of self-indulgence. On a smaller, personal scale, Infinity Pool

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Vampires, the mythical beings that exist between the living and the dead, serve as versatile and useful metaphors for examining the puzzling concerns of life. Themes of dysfunctional families, suppressed sexuality, and addiction course through the veins of many vampiric narratives. Perhaps because they exist in the liminal space between the two spheres of existence,

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Dead Bride

Francesco Picone’s Dead Bride (2022) is not a live-action version of Corpse Bride, Tim Burton’s animated, family-friendly necrophilic tale. Although it borrows many elements from beloved horror films, such as a murdered bride seeking vengeance, this movie copies but fails to reach the same qualities as the films it emulates. As with many supernatural stories,

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Candy Land (2022) is a religious-horror-themed slasher film that upends established genre conventions in unexpected and gripping ways. Writer-director John Swab (Let Me Make You a Martyr) tells the gritty story of a group of prostitutes that live and work in a rural and isolated truck stop. Tension mounts as a killer stalk them and

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Orchestrator of Storms

Jean Rollin was a French director of fantastique films whose films remained obscure throughout most of his career. Thanks to longtime admirers, his haunting and poetic visions are seducing a new generation of fans with their somnolent worlds of spectacle and melancholy. The documentary Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin (2022) explores

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