OK, class, get out your copies of Dracula and open them to Chapter Seven. Now, skim past the newspaper clipping from the Dailygraph that Mina Murray has pasted into her journal, the one about the storm off the coast of Whitby, and go directly to the part listed as “Log …
Read More »William Friedkin Did So Much More Than Invent the Horror Blockbuster
It’s not a movie chase scene so much as the movie chase scene: a breakneck race against time between a criminal on an elevated subway and a cop in a commandeered car, careening through the streets of Brooklyn at ridiculous speeds. The bad guy works for a European drug cartel, …
Read More »They Sold Porn Star Bathwater and Just Made the Year's Scariest Movie
There have been quite a few horror movies of late that center around influencers and YouTubers, and, with some exceptions, they mostly suck. Maybe it’s because the protagonist is always yelling in that trademark “YouTube” voice. Maybe it’s that the found footage oeuvre could use a serious overhaul. Or maybe …
Read More »Don't Sleep on 'Revenant,' a Masterful K-Horror Series on Disney+
Revenant, like so many horror stories, begins on a rainy night. Disney+’s latest South Korean drama opens as Professor Gu Kang-mo (Jin Seon-kyu) hurries through his front door, past shelves piled with books, and barricades himself in the study. “What went wrong?” he asks himself, flipping through his notes. Behind …
Read More »'Talk to Me' Is a Thrillingly Weird Horror-Movie Debut From A24
Teenagers — you can’t reason with them, you can’t get them off their phones, and you definitely can’t convince them that fucking around with a cursed mummified hand that allows them to speak to the dead is a bad idea, amirite? Talk to Me, the directorial debut from Australian twin …
Read More »'Final Cut' Is a French Zombie Comedy for Would-Be Tarantinos
Pop quiz: You’re a filmmaker. You’re making a zombie movie. The crew is … let’s be charitable and say “adequate.” The budget is somewhere in the high three-figure range at best. Your main actor is a pompous diva. Even worse, your lead actress isn’t giving you the amount of bone-chilling …
Read More »Patrick Wilson Says Goodbye to 'Insidious' From the Director's Chair
The horror genre —like any other — has its stock characters: the creepy child, the father-on-the-edge, the wise mystic. When done poorly, these archetypes are basically a vehicle for forgettable scream-in-the-dark fun. When done well, they’re flesh-and-blood people you worry about from film to film, hoping that someday their suffering …
Read More »Pop Queen Cyndi Lauper Is on the Hunt for a Cannibal Killer
Thirty years ago, Cyndi Lauper made her television acting debut in the hit comedy show Mad About You. Now, the pop queen behind hit tunes like “Time After Time” and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” is returning to acting in the new series The Horror of Dolores Roach, premiering …
Read More »'Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai' Is Enchanting and Terribly Cute
In 1984 a promising director named Joe Dante unleashed Gremlins. It was a horror-comedy that played like a polished-up version of something he might have worked on for his mentor, B-movie king Roger Corman, who shepherded Dante’s first solo feature, Piranha, in 1978. Dante already had The Howling to his …
Read More »Dianna Agron Has Come a Long Way From 'Glee'
Dianna Agron comes off as remarkably calm, cool, and collected. Now 37, she seems sure of herself in ways she perhaps wasn’t when she exploded onto the scene in 2009 as Quinn Fabray, the head cheerleader on Ryan Murphy’s culture-shifting musical-dramedy Glee. She isn’t interested in examining her past relationships …
Read More »