Ich seh, Ich seh
Ask someone if they’ve seen 2014’s Goodnight Mommy, and if their immediate response is to shudder, you’ll know they have. The Austrian cult horror film combines so many tropes – psychological horror, body horror, paranoia, twins, creepy kids, creepy moms, etc. – that it seems like it should be an incoherent mess, but is instead a tightly paced, relentless assault on the nerves. Even the trailer is creepier than many mainstream horror films, while only showing a tiny bit of how bad things get in it. Continue Reading →
X
As the discourse rages over how tame the mainstream movie scene can be—with its sexless heroes and bloodless violence—it can be tempting to elevate any film that hearkens back to "the good old days" of sex and slashers just for the sake of its own supposed transgressiveness. But luckily, Ti West's X largely earns that title, a playful and idiosyncratic ode to both ends of the '70s sleaze cinema spectrum (hardcore porn and Wes Craven-esque slashers) alike. Not only that, it's blissfully literate towards its influences, with a nod to larger points about the aesthetics and politics of desire, the fetishization of youth, and so much more. Continue Reading →
Black as Night
The first two entries in the newest Welcome to the Blumhouse collection are a flawed pair of scary films.
Welcome to Welcome to the Blumhouse! This annual anthology collection of four new horror films from Get Out producers Blumhouse Productions, debuting on Amazon streaming, is back after its inaugural run in 2020. Conceptually, this seems like a nifty idea, a way to tackle bold new filmmaking concepts or styles that may not be as broadly accessible as theatrical Blumhouse fare like Fantasy Island. Unfortunately, titles like The Lie made the first iteration of Welcome to the Blumhouse feel like a grab-bag of movies that just weren’t good enough for the big screen.
This year, the four movies comprising the second edition of Welcome to the Blumhouse are all apparently fixated on institutionalized horror. The first two installments that have dropped (the other two films will premiere on October 9) are Bingo Hell and Black as Night, each tackling both a different strain of horror storytelling and a unique form of systemically ingrained injustice. A common trait across the pair of features, unfortunately, is a lack of consistently high-quality filmmaking. Here’s to hoping the next final two entries in this year’s collection wrap things up on a much stronger note. Continue Reading →