Sundance ’22: ‘FRESH’ a Horrific Meat-Cute That Takes a Bites out of Modern Dating

January 21, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Daisy Edgar-Jones, Fresh, Horror, Mimi Cave, Reviews, Sebastian Stan, Sundance, Sundance 2022 Leave a comment

A one-of-a-kind allegorical delicacy, Fresh revels in taboo subjects to poke fun at the stomach-churning appetites of the modern dating world. A delirious mash-up of cheesy romance and body horror shlock, the debut film from Mimi Cave begins in deliciously grotesque fashion, showing flashes of both American Psycho and Martyrs as her devilish meat-cute puts a dark spin on the idea of “finding the right guy”. Overnight, chemistry and flirtation turns to imprisonment and cannibalism, giving new meaning to the phrase “eating butt.” Read More

‘SCREAM’ Takes a Stab at “Requels” with Deadly Precision

January 12, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Dylan Minnette, Horror, Jack Quaid, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Jenna Ortega, Kyle Gallner, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Melissa Barrera, Mikey Madison, Neve Campbell, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Scream, Tyler Gillett 1 Comment

Scream is back. And with a new Ghostface (or two) comes a biting deconstruction of not just the long-standing slasher franchise, or the nature of “requels” (a term coined in this very film), or the horror genre in general, but the movie industry writ large. Many films of recent years have tried to capture the imagination of audiences by commentating on their own storied legacy – most recently with both The Matrix: Resurrections and Spider-Man: No Way Home – but none have done it with quite as sharp a wit or a curvaceous a blade as the most recent Scream. Tapping into the meta repartee that franchise architect Wes Craven approached the material with from the very get go, this fifth installment of the 90s-born slasher whodunnit is as razor-sharp and bloody glorious as ever. Most importantly, it’s just a hell of a lot of fun. Read More

Horrifying ‘ANTLERS’ is the Bleakest American Horror Movie of the Century

October 26, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Antlers, Florian Hoffmeister, Guillermo del Toro, Horror, Javiar Navarrete, Jeremy T. Collins, Jesse Plemmons, Keri Russell, Nick Antosca, Sawyer Jones, Scott Cooper, Scott Haze 1 Comment

The American horror movie has a tradition of not crossing certain boundaries. There’s a reason that the most disturbing horror movies in the world are often born outside the borders of the United States, imported from counties like Serbia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, France, and Italy. Places with brutal histories (a commonality across all countries, unfortunately) wherein their countrymen acknowledge and grapple with their homeland’s wrongdoings through the medium of film. Something the American filmmaker, and the studio systems backing them, are oftentimes less comfortable with. The American appetite is just not as well-versed in particular extremities, like accepting the horrors of its own bloody past and desperate present. Read More

The Ghosts of Showbiz Past Haunt ‘LAST NIGHT IN SOHO’

October 25, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Anya Taylor-Joy, Diana Rigg, Edgar Wright, Horror, Matt Smith, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Synnove Karlsen, Thomasin McKenzie Leave a comment

Dashed dreams and grubby hands reveal themselves to be the stuff of Edgar Wright’s nightmares in the stylish throwback Last Night in Soho. A ghostly haunter with one foot in the modern zeitgeist and one squarely in raging 1960’s London, Wright’s first foray into the horror grapples between serious social horrors and pure genre thrills, delivering a thoroughly entertaining slice of Giallo exploitation that warns of the temptation of nostalgia. Read More

‘THE FOREVER PURGE’ Is Redundant, Already Behind the Times

July 1, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Ana de la Reguera, Everardo Gout, Horror, James DeMonaco, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tenoch Huerta, The Forever Purge, The Purge, Will Patton Leave a comment

Subtlety has never been the aim of James DeMonaco, the writer-director of the first trilogy of Purge flicks as well as screenwriter for the remaining sequels and all-around franchise figurehead, and that’s never been more clear than in The Forever Purge. Claiming to be the final film in the franchise that spawned four sequels and two seasons of a now-cancelled USA Network series, The Forever Purge puts our turbulent American politics front and center, creating a not-too-distant vision where MAGA-inspired insurrectionists continue the “legalized violence” at the film’s center beyond the allowed 12-hour window of the purge. A new dawn brings the continuation of violence as America enters a “forever purge”, a state of bullet-ridden eternal mayhem; a nightmarish ever after of racially-motivated violence. Read More

Franchise Fatigue Possesses ‘THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT’

June 1, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Horror, Julian Hilliard, Michael Chaves, Out in Theaters, Patrick Wilson, Reviews, Ruairi O’Connor, The Conjuring, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Vera Farmiga 1 Comment

The Conjuring extended universe is one of the – if not the most – preeminent examples of a modern horror franchise done correctly. Expansive, with spin-offs shooting off into this direction or that, and an absolute box office powerhouse (with almost two billion dollars in worldwide gross), The Conjuring’s terrifying rein is vast. And yet with three separate offshoots, including a full-fledged Annabelle trilogy, and more on the way, the haunting force of the series that began in 2013 comes sputtering to a decidedly indifferent halt with The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Read More

Even Quieter Sequel ‘A QUIET PLACE PART II’ Goes Places

May 18, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged A Quiet Place Part II, Cillian Murphy, Horror, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Out in Theaters, Reviews 1 Comment

John Krasinski’s Lee Abbott may have bit the dust in the actor-turned-filmmaker’s directorial debut but that doesn’t stop him from returning in the opening moments of A Quiet Place Part II. The scene is set as Marco Beltrami’s foreboding soundtrack creeps into our senses as a ‘Day 1’ title card slips into frame. The end is nigh but no one knows anything about the devastation barreling their way. In fact, it’s just another beautiful summer day in Small Town America. The Abbot family and their tight-knit community gather in blissful ignorance at a little league game. Marcus (Noah Jupe) is up to bat when the sky erupts in flaming streaks. Something is coming. Families break off into nuclear clusters, rushing to their vehicles, heading home to regroup. Before anyone has any sense of what’s happening, monsters reign down, killing anything that makes a sound. A quiet place is born, in flame and in blood. Read More

‘THE DJINN’ a Threadbare Supernatural Home Invasion Snooze

May 11, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged David Charbonier, Ezra Dewey, Horror, Julián Estrada, Justin Powell, Matthew James, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Rob Brownstein, The Djinn 2 Comments

Little more than a collection of audio-visual horror movie clichès stitched atop a daddy’s-gone-for-the-night campfire tale, David Charbonier and Justin Powell’s The Djinn feels like a short film puffed out to feature length without the content sufficient to support said feature status. The film follows Dylan (Ezra Dewey), mute son to a late-night DJ and single father (Rob Brownstein) who decides to mess around with a haunted book and ends up summoning a djinn, which for the purposes of this film is basically an evil genie. Read More

Geriatric Horror ’HONEYDEW’ Serves Hospitality With a Heaping Side of Hostility

April 5, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Barbara Kingsley, Devereux Milburn, Honeydew, Horror, Lena Dunham, Malin Barr, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sawyer Spielberg 1 Comment

In Devereux Milburn’s Honeydew, the window-dressings of dustbowl farmland hospitality flakes off to reveal a disturbing underbelly; one crusted with human sacrifice, religious devotion, and, more likely than not, a good-sized serving of man-meat. The flame has been long extinguished between Sam (Steven Spielberg’s son Sawyer Spielberg ) and Rylie (Malin Barr), a waiter/aspiring actor and botanist graduate student respectively, but the two head to rural Massachusetts with plans to camp out and do some research for Rylie’s thesis on a medieval wheat-based neurodegenerative disease. When they’re forced off the property of a grumpy old timer named Eulis in the middle of the night only to discover that their car will not start, they seek assistance at a nearby farmstead. You can probably guess where this goes next. Read More

SXSW 2021: ‘SOUND OF VIOLENCE’ Is the Ultra-Campy ASMR Slasher You Didn’t Know You Needed

March 18, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Alex Noyer, Horror, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Lili Simmons, Reviews, Sonya Munro, Sound of Violence, SXSW, SXSW 2021 Leave a comment

There is a scene early on in the absolutely bonkers horror camp-fest Sound of Violence where murderess-musician-mistress Alexis (Jasmin Savoy Brown) kidnaps a homeless man and rigs him up like an electric drum set. Part-hardware, part-flesh, done up as if Kevin Mcalester and Jigsaw were there to help perfect the evil mastermind mechanics. A meat tenderizer dangles above his skull, a mallet aimed at his kneecaps, scalpels bisecting his wrists like cello bows. Alexis nervously puts on her earphones and gets to work. Read More