Tag: thriller
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Hypnotic (2023)
I just saw Hypnotic, which I will henceforth refer to as “budget Inception”, and it was pretty dull. Director Robert Rodriguez always had a B-movie sensibility, of course, but how did the maker of El Mariachi (1992), Desperado (1995), and, erm, Spy Kids (2001) end up making something as generic and dull-witted as Hypnotic? Could…
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Saw II (2005)
Here’s a question: what city do the Saw films take place in? According to Google, it’s New Jersey, but I ask because, more than how he makes the traps, I’m wondering how The Jigsaw Killer finds the real estate necessary to enact his schemes while police never seem to be in the right place at…
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Saw (2004)
For a long time, the Saw franchise has been a large, bloody gap in my moviegoing experience. They started coming out when I was a teenager and although I was familiar with Roger Ebert’s review of the first, if only for his idea that a thriller could end with the killer getting crushed by a…
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Missing (2023)
I just saw Missing, the new “found footage” thriller, on a whim and it was pretty good. I was about to reflect that “found footage” is really an outdated term for this genre, since the footage isn’t really supposed to be “found” (a la “this was the campers’ video diary during their stay in the…
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Dark Glasses (2022)
Released both theatrically and to streaming in 2022, Dark Glasses is Italian horror maestro Dario Argento’s first directorial work in 10 years, preceded by 2012’s infamous Cannes Film Festival disaster Dracula 3D. It’s an improvement over some of his more recent work, which isn’t saying much. Dark Glasses is more what you’d expect from a…
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Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)
The giallo is a curious breed. Italian for “yellow”, the word refers to the colour used for paperback crime fiction that was sold in Italy and intended to be quick, exploitative, pulp entertainment. The term in its colloquial sense means murder mystery or horror thriller. Also known as Spaghetti Slashers (a la Spaghetti Westerns), the…
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Renfield (2023)
Vampires have had a long and storied history in fiction, but in recent years the Dracula mythos in particular has been used to explore the dynamics of relationships between these creatures of the night and those whose lives they touch. Since the Dracula story was always in part a metaphor for sexual predation, it’s perhaps…
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Prom Night (1980)
This is a slasher film to make you appreciate both the fine artistic craft of the original Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, and the crude efficiency of the Friday the 13th sequels. Heck, even the original Friday the 13th wasn’t this dull. I’d be interested to see the 2008 reboot of Prom Night…
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How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023)
I saw this one as part of my local cinema’s “screen unseen” programme, where they screen a mystery movie that hasn’t yet been given a wide release. I heard some groans from the audience when the title card appeared, though I don’t know what they were expecting and they seemed to enjoy it well enough.…
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The Pope’s Exorcist (2023)
I just saw The Pope’s Exorcist and it was really funny, which I guess is a shame as it wasn’t trying to be, I don’t think. It stars Russell Crowe as the real-life Father Amorth, who in the late 1980s visits a Spanish abbey being renovated by an American widow when a demon possesses one…
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