Chloe Okuno’s Watcher, which delighted lucky Sundance Festival-goers earlier this year, is a step forward for the horror genre and doubles as a neat entry point (for those curious) into the landscape of contemporary Romanian cinema and culture. Shot in Bucharest and featuring the amazing Maika Monroe alongside some of the most recognizable Romanian actors working
Tag: Psychological Horror
What should be a fresh start for Laura (Christina Ricci) and her son Cody (Santini Barnard) soon becomes a trap. With the past they are running from catching up, and a strange force emerging at night to torment them, there’s nowhere left to run in this tale of trauma and regrets. Monstrous is a disarming
After a hard day of work, 36-year-old Yuko Sawamatsu returns to her apartment for an evening to unwind. However, her memories of a recent affair with a married man keep coming back to her in the form of flashbacks. Although these memories are painful, Yuko is resolved in her choice to have ended the relationship.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Latest is Mediocre Old (2021) is an existential story about a beautifully secluded beach surrounded by rocks that will kill you, eventually. M. Night Shyamalan’s newest release features an ensemble cast vacationing at a tropical resort while sorting through personal issues and illnesses. Guy and Prisca Cappa (Gael Garcia Bernal and Vicky
KD Amond and Sarah Zanotti’s Faye might be the must-watch indie horror of the year. Shot on an iPhone with a total crew of five people, almost entirely built around Zanotti’s go-for-broke performance, Faye is a one-of-a-kind tale of grief, a masterclass in overcoming budgetary restrictions, a deeply terrifying psychological horror, and another confirmation of
It’s well hypothesised that the late 90s-early ’00s ‘J Horror’ boom was inspired thematically in parts by the country’s post-war advancements in technology and economic prowess that had gradually begun to stagnate by the 90s. A zeitgeist of fiscal depression and disappointment opened the door in which crept the eponymous genre, wrapping a slimy, cold
Things Heard and Seen is an unusual, psychological horror film where several tropes are turned on their heads, while the important beats are still captured. Domestic relationships, power dynamics, and identity are all explored in a way that respects the person as more than a victim and an archetype. A Manhattan artist relocates to the
When a colleague forwarded me the trailer for Night’s End with the note “I think this is up your alley,” he couldn’t have been more right…. by the trailer at least. As someone who suffers from insomnia, a hybrid insomnia spiral and ghost story has a lot of appeal. The framing of the trailer poses the
Atlus’s Persona series is a critically acclaimed video game franchise which depicts a group of high-school students battling creatures known as Shadows by using “Personas.” Personas in this context are a combination of Pokemon and Harry Potter’s Patronus, manifestations of the psyche which possess special abilities, taking inspiration from Jungian psychology and Tarot cards. The
Co-Author Lisa Lebel The term dissociation, coined by French psychologist Pierre Janet, is defined as an “involuntary escape from reality characterized by a disconnection between thoughts, identity, consciousness and memory.” It is now believed that any person, regardless of race, age, and gender can experience dissociation, but this was not always so. Janet argued that dissociation