Audition 1999

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

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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

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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

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If Ugetsu is what kickstarted the Japanese tradition of Edo Gothic, Kaneto Shindo may have perfected it with Onibaba (1964). It’s a horror film that doesn’t resort to horror, a ghost story with no ghosts. Its evils reside in all too familiar sources: resentment, human nature, and religious hypocrisy, all woven seamlessly through its narrative

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Christmas Bloody Christmas

Christmas Bloody Christmas is an over-the-top slay ride of holiday cheer fear! Writer and director Joe Begos (VFW, Bliss) always delivers a combination of good storytelling and delirious, gory violence to audiences.  Digging deep into genres like horror, science fiction, and heavy metal music, each one of his films is unique in content.  Viewers can

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Aspiring millennials and their first-world problems are inherently absurd, particularly when their bourgeois existence is challenged, or at least that’s what Who Invited Them relies upon as it attempts to mix comedy and horror in the affluent L.A hills. Writer/director Duncan Birmingham’s first full-length feature was shown during the 2022 FrightFest, arriving on Shudder shortly

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Shocktoberfest 2022

Final Edition The scariest movie I saw this week was the HBO documentary Four Hours at the Capitol. The powerful documentary shows what happened when an angry group of protesters attempted to disrupt the certification of the presidential election by storming the Capitol on January 6, 2022. Horror movies provide a safe space for viewers

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Shocktoberfest 2022

Week Two Nineteenth-century American author Edgar Allan Poe was my introduction to horror. Literary scholars consider him to be a key foundational block of the genre and his works are ubiquitous, certain to be found in any library or bookstore.  Even my elementary school had a copy of Tales of Mystery and Imagination that I

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Shocktoberfest 2022

Week One Welcome to Shocktoberfest 2022, the only horror movie festival curated by me! This is a list of movies I watched to prepare for Halloween, plus a thought or two. Week One is pretty long.  I wish I could watch ten horror movies a week, but work and a non-horror movie-loving wife need attention.

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Hellraiser fans rejoiced when the news broke out that Clive Barker would be regaining the U.S. rights to his novella The Hellbound Heart and the film it spawned in December of 2021. This meant that any upcoming Hellraiser projects would need his stamp of approval before going forward after the specified date. After a series

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