Tag: horror
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The Exorcist (1973): 50th anniversary Director’s Cut
By way of what I suppose is full disclosure, The Exorcist happens to be my favourite film. I’ve seen it on the big screen twice now, the first time two or three years ago and latterly for its 50th anniversary. It remains an utterly compelling motion picture, about faith and guilt and love, told through…
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Saw X (2023)
“You people are f***ing sick…” You’re telling me. How did the Saw franchise end up spawning 10 films? Why, of all the films to come out of the dark days of “torture porn” in the early ‘00s, did this premise have such longevity? Well, a few reasons. The most important probably being Tobin Bell as…
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Jurassic Park (1993)
I watched Jurassic Park many times as a kid. It was the most thrilling and enthralling movie ever made when I was seven years old. As time’s gone by I’ve seen films that surpass it in my personal canon, but it remains an entertaining spectacle. It also remains the single unironically good film in the…
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A Haunting in Venice (2023)
I just saw A Haunting in Venice and it was first-class junk. I’m not sure what Kenneth Branagh’s motivation is to keep making these Poirot adaptations. He doesn’t seem to like the character much and from what I’ve read he’s not exactly making money hand over fist with them. His Murder on the Orient Express…
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Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Released seven years after the 1984 original, Terminator 2 famously makes a protagonist of the original villain, having Arnie sent back in time not to kill future resistance leader John Connor (Edward Furlong) but to protect him from another killing machine, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), a mass of liquid metal that can assume the shape…
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The Blackening (2023)
I just saw The Blackening and it was good. Based on a comedy sketch, it’s a satirical slasher film starring a black cast of actors playing former college friends who reunite at a cabin in the woods, but not before a couple of them make a rest stop at the proverbial rustic gas station run…
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Haunted Mansion (2023)
Based on a theme park ride, Disney’s Haunted Mansion is one of their few live-action films in a while to not be a bastardisation of one of their animated classics. It also has a lively sense of humour and real energy to its storytelling, harkening back to the first Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse…
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Talk to Me (2022)
Directed by YouTube stars the Philippou brothers, Talk to Me is a surprisingly clever twist on The Monkey’s Paw, the 1902 ghost story by WW Jacobs in which the titular mummified paw grants wishes with terrible consequences. This time the paw is an embalmed human hand covered in names like a plaster cast, and the…
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Blood Feast (1963)
Described as the worst horror film he’s ever seen by Stephen King, Blood Feast is a notorious 1963 splatter film by celebrated schlockmeister and “godfather of gore” Herschell Gordon Lewis. I say “celebrated”. He’s discussed and referenced fondly by artists who cut their teeth on the sort of pulp trash that Lewis made his name…
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The Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968)
It’s possible to interpret Curse of the Crimson Altar, on the surface another hoary old tale of black magic and fleeting nudity in the same vein as The Devil Rides Out (also ‘68) and The Skull (1965), as a transitional sort of swan song in British horror. It’s very much an old man’s film, the…
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