Latest posts
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…
The Wailing Review: Four Explanations, No Answers
The Wailing review, in one sentence: Na Hong-jin’s 2016 Korean horror film gives you four separate, internally consistent explanations for a wave of family massacres in a rural village and then refuses, permanently, to confirm which one is true — and it deserves every bit of the acclaim it got at Cannes for doing exactly…
The Babadook Grief Metaphor Explained: The Real Meaning Behind Jennifer Kent’s Horror Masterpiece
The Babadook grief metaphor, in Jennifer Kent’s 2014 film, works like this: the top-hatted creature terrorizing single mother Amelia Vanek (Essie Davis) is grief itself, given a body, after years of being denied release. Kent has confirmed that reading herself, more than once, in interviews about the film. Somewhere between December 2016 and the summer…
Us (2019) Review: Jordan Peele’s Sophomore Horror, Explained
Us (2019) Review: Jordan Peele’s Sophomore Horror, Explained Us (2019) review, short version: Jordan Peele’s sophomore horror film is ambitious, formally daring, and carried by a Lupita Nyong’o performance that ranks among the best physical acting horror cinema has produced this decade. It’s held back by exactly one decision — a third-act monologue that…
The Witch (2015) Historical Accuracy: A Review of Robert Eggers’ Puritan Debut
The Witch (2015) historical accuracy is the reason this Robert Eggers debut still works a decade after a Sundance crowd first saw it, in January 2015, and didn’t know what to make of it. Eggers didn’t invent a Puritan family and dress them in scary language. He built the family, the farm, and most of…
Insidious (2010) Review: The One James Wan Film I Actually Believe
I watched The Shining alone in my college apartment in Austin, 2007, at two in the morning, on a cheap laptop with the sound too low and the room too dark. When it ended I left the light on. I never told anyone that. There wasn’t a reason to — nothing had happened, nobody had…
Is The Exorcist (1973) Still Scary in 2026? A Full Review
Is The Exorcist Still Scary in 2026? Is The Exorcist still scary in 2026? Yes — William Friedkin’s 1973 film, adapted by William Peter Blatty from his own novel, remains overwhelmingly effective more than fifty years after release. It is, technically, a possession horror movie — and it spends most of its runtime refusing…
Beau Is Afraid (2023) Review — Three Hours You Will Not Get Back, and I Mean That as a Compliment
Beau Is Afraid, Ari Aster’s 2023 surrealist odyssey starring Joaquin Phoenix, runs 179 minutes, cost roughly $35 million, and made about $12 million back — numbers that answer the question a lot of people type into a search bar before they’ve even finished watching it: is Beau Is Afraid too long. The short answer is…
