Tag: film review
Despite being one of Japan’s biggest film studios throughout the late 40s and 50s during the golden age of Japanese cinema, Daiei was struggling by the mid-60s and had to slash budgets for their productions. This eventually led to a merger with Nikkatsu in 1970, followed by bankruptcy in 1971. Somewhat overlooked is Daiei’s
Although the first thing that comes to mind would be to honour the classic camp slashers or creature-feature flicks, I decided to welcome summer with Barry Levinson’s The Bay (2012) on Shudder. This found footage mockumentary portrays what we first may confuse with a viral outbreak, but is in fact a parasitic outbreak. If something
Eichi Sato, known better in the following years for his work on the live-action adaptations of Lychee Hikari Club (2016) and Miso Misou (2018), found his way to shock us from the very beginning with his debut movie. Let’s Make the Teacher Have a Miscarriage Club (2011) is a film with many flaws, but its
In the Fall of 2022, the horror movie community got a jolt when the trailer for director Gerard Johnstone’s and screenwriter Akela Cooper’s sci-fi/horror film, M3GAN, dropped. The trailer’s creepy, dancing doll, at once recognizable both as human-shaped and unhuman in its weird movements and affectless face, became a viral sensation. M3GAN is more
After File 01 went off with a bang, Koji Shiraishi’s Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi! File 02: Shivering Ghost (2012) tries something different and turns out unexpectedly good. The first episode of the mockumentary series didn’t disappoint in serving Koji’s found footage brands and Japanese myth goodness, showing how his knack for storytelling and genre
Life is a Train Wreck In the final days of 2022, most of us were looking toward 2023 with hearts full of hope, and faith that the moment those glittery balls dropped around the world, we would finally be free of the hellscape our lives have become. The new year couldn’t possibly be as
Audition (1999) is the scariest movie of all time. I say that without hesitation or hyperbole. No other director is as effective with their imagery as Takashi Miike is here, and no other film elicits fright as consistently on a tenth viewing as the first. The film is a delightful descent into madness executed nigh
“Yodel me this!” – Heidi Long before home media and even longer before video streaming, the only way to see original movies was to go to the theater. Most theaters concentrated on showing popular content, movies made for their wide box-office appeal from major film studios. Despite the rare “art house” cinemas, the other alternative
It’s understandable why Japanese filmmakers focus so often on the feudal era in their horror cinema. It’s a setting so naturally horrific in the plight and pain of the peasant class that few supernatural elements are necessary to invoke dread in audiences. The stark reality of daily life alone is enough to make the viewer
It has now been 24 hours since I watched Pulse (2001), and I still find myself at a loss. It was a movie that I desperately wanted to enjoy, a cardinal sin for a reviewer who should go in with a blank slate and little expectations. The weight of preconceived notions can hang about the