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The Lost Boys Addiction Metaphor: A 1987 Review
The Lost Boys is a 1987 vampire film directed by Joel Schumacher, written by Jeffrey Boam, Janice Fischer, and James Jeremias, built on a screenplay that everything else in the production, the photography, the cast, the soundtrack, works hard enough to cover for. Underneath the neon and the motorcycles, what’s become known as the Lost…
Thirst 2009 Review: A Priest, a Vaccine Trial, and an Appetite That Never Stops
This Thirst 2009 review answers the obvious question first: Park Chan-wook’s Korean vampire film, about a Catholic priest turned vampire by a failed vaccine trial, is a colder, more appetite-driven film than horror’s gentler entries like Let the Right One In, built on restraint that eventually runs out. Park Chan-wook’s Thirst (2009) is a vampire…
Let the Right One In (2008) Review: Colder Than Its Reputation
This Let the Right One In 2008 review starts with the direct answer: Tomas Alfredson’s Swedish vampire film, about a bullied twelve-year-old boy and the centuries-old vampire who moves in next door, is often described as horror’s gentlest, most tender love story — but it’s actually colder and more transactional than that reputation suggests, even…
Interview with the Vampire 1994 Review: A Gothic Melodrama Smarter Than Its Own Casting Scandal
This Interview with the Vampire 1994 review makes the case for a film that’s better than its own casting scandal and smaller than its reputation as a horror landmark: an overwrought, gorgeously mounted gothic melodrama, directed by Neil Jordan from Anne Rice’s own script for her 1976 novel, that earns its most memorable moments and…
Nosferatu 2024 Review: Robert Eggers Finally Gives Count Orlok His Rot Back
Nosferatu (2024), directed by Robert Eggers and starring Bill Skarsgård and Lily-Rose Depp, is the best studio horror film in a decade — this Nosferatu 2024 review makes that case in full, department by department, starting with why the ending still hasn’t let me go. I watched Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu three times before writing a…
Weapons (2025) Review: Zach Cregger’s Structure of Withheld Answers
Seventeen third-graders leave their houses at 2:17 in the morning, arms out at their sides like they’re holding their balance on a beam that isn’t there, and none of them ever explains why. That’s the image Zach Cregger’s Weapons opens on and the one it keeps circling back to, and by the time the film…
The Witch (2015) Review: Sound & Silence
The Witch (2015) review that follows makes one argument the site hasn’t made yet: that Kate Dickie’s Katherine, sound designer Adam Stein’s scripted silence, and the film’s folk-horror lineage are the real reasons this Robert Eggers film still holds up a decade later. The Witch (2015), directed by Robert Eggers, is a Puritan folk…
Barbarian (2022) Review: Ethan’s Verdict
This Barbarian (2022) review starts with a confession: Zach Cregger built the film out of a self-help book, and I mean that as the highest compliment I’ve paid a horror film in the last five years. Somewhere in the writing process he was reading Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear, the 1997 book that…
Terrifier (2016) Review: Ethan’s Verdict
Short version of this Terrifier (2016) review: the practical effects and David Howard Thornton’s performance are worth the eighty-four minutes. The screenplay is not, and Damien Leone has never pretended otherwise. The film premiered at the Telluride Horror Show in October 2016, took until March 2018 to get a limited theatrical release, and made $421,798…
Talk to Me Review: The 2023 Horror That Uses Your Own Phone Against You
Short answer, for anyone weighing a Talk to Me review before committing two hours: yes, absolutely, and here’s exactly why. Talk to Me (2023), the feature debut of Australian twin directors Danny and Michael Philippou, is the best use of a horror premise in years, because the premise and the theme are built from the…
