Director Oz Perkins is still trying to feel out his signature style (is he the master of creepiness? or slow burn? or that weird 'x' factor?). But in the meantime, he delivers a standout if straight-forward horror-comedy in THE MONKEY and also manages to nail its more serious themes.
As an adaptation of Stephen King's short story, THE MONKEY is not as dutiful as something you might see from Mike Flanagan. Perkins has taken the general gist of the tale…
HEART EYES ultimately earns its slasher cred, but I can't help but feel that I got tricked into watching a Gen Z rom-com without informed consent.
A deliriously gory cold open introduces us to Heart Eyes, a masked serial killer who slaughters young lovers on Valentine's Day in different U.S. cities, and who's now bloodying up Seattle. Enter Ally (Olivia Holt, definitely channeling Julia Stiles and thinking too much about her lipstick), a romantic and professional mess who meets the…
The first failed film of the SAW series is number four, a manic exercise in stunt editing and ret-conning that doesn't so much open up new avenues for the series as it does muddle its entire ethos.
SAW IV knows that you wouldn't be watching it unless you'd seen the first three installments, and so it launches us right back into the middle of SAW III to pick up some loose threads. (Has Detective Kerry been hanging there the whole…
Bergman gives me everything I want in art cinema that I've tried, in vain, to get from David Lynch: a serious, talkie film that leans to the surreal but still rings true about how human beings are and what they talk about.
That's PERSONA in a nutshell: a stripped-down, dialogue-heavy affair about identity and madness. The bonus is that our two primary characters are both women: nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) and her mute-by-choice celebrity patient Elisabet (Liv Ullmann). Most of…
The biggest letdown of 2024 so far. IN A VIOLENT NATURE--billed as a revolutionary take on the classic backwoods slasher format by following the point of view of the killer, not the victims--is a bare concept masquerading as a film. Blown up to 90 minutes and peppered with out of context mega-gore, it's both boring and vile.
The disappointments start mounting immediately. First, the film isn't really shot from the killer's POV, but rather from an objective camera hovering near…
Oh, David Lynch. I keep trying to catch a glimpse of his alleged brilliance but come up empty, nearly every time.
FIRE WALK WITH ME is Lynch's TWIN PEAKS do-over--practically an apology--that fills in the spaces of the story of Laura Palmer and her teenage torment by the infamous spirit "Bob." Taken strictly as a prequel to the TV series, there is some value to the film. Lynch finally allows Laura's personality and subjectivity to be expressed, rather than leaving…
