a lot of stories about the post-apocalypse ask if humanity is innately good or evil enough to survive. too evil and they’ll destroy each other, fail to rebuild civilisation. too good and they’ll die, unable to carry on with cruel but practical necessities. Threads says it does not matter. the individual goodness and well-meaningness of people does not matter. we will all die, one way or the other.
the way you analyse media is so good, i've been binge reading all your movie reviews. you have such a fun style of writing that's really enjoyable to read and i can tell that you really understand what you're talking about, which is better than a lot of movie reviewers out there. you're also very funny. it's a shame you're not as popular as you should be; i look forward to seeing more of your content :)
aw thank you! this is really nice to hear
this was a film i saw a couple of times as a teen that inexplicably really stuck with me so i was hopeful on revisiting it that i’d get something out of it again. unfortunately i was disappointed. i can see the bones of what appealed to me as a teenager, but Pin is hurt deeply by its straight to tv budget and style, with its dull sets, uninteresting soundtrack and lack of directorial vision.
there’s some real drive there to make an interesting and deeply weird thriller but i strongly suspect the original ideas come from the novel and the film itself is a very watered down take on the concept. i mean the idea of a boy becoming psychotically fixated on his imagined friendship with an anatomical dummy is a pretty wildass fucking idea and the film relies heavily on you being creeped out enough by this core concept to hold together.
overall i think the film reminds me most of those awful lifetime movies you get about girls in horrible violent issue-of-the-day situations, but hailing from a reality where your twin brother being obsessively controlling via ventriloquism and a dummy is a serious threat. it has the same ropey acting, pop psychology and deeply uninteresting visuals.
it’s too bad this film isn’t as good as its fucked up premise wants it to be. i think you could make something genuinely great and weird and esoteric out of this, but not on a canadian made for tv movie budget.
Maniac Cop from the start is very clear about what it thinks of cops. they are liars who are willing to put the public in danger to protect their own, are violent and untrustworthy, are corrupt, racist and ineffectual. whether or not Maniac Cop thinks any of those things are bad is unclear. it’s aware of the corruption and the violent history of the police, doesn’t think the police have ever been good or useful, but also all of its characters are cops and none of them have a problem with it.
so Maniac Cop is a slasher movie about a cop. not just any cop, the biggest, toughest, meanest cop who killed a tonne of crooks and then died in prison. whether or not we’re really meant to believe officer matt cornell was a hero is not obvious. several of the other cops love him, decry the system for putting him away ( “he only killed bad guys”) but i don’t think we’re necessarily expected to agree with them; most of the characters in the film are fairly scummy and unlikeable. was officer cornell a good cop whose gone bad since his murder? or was he always bad and supported by other bad cops? the film doesn’t effectively prove either point, but i’d like to believe the latter is intended because of how often the film goes out of its way to tell us the cops are corrupt.
this film was kind of a lot like getting hit by a train. i was not anticipating the unbelievable break-neck pace of this film and by an hour in i was feeling completely flattened by the non-stop insanity of it all.
that’s not to say i didn’t enjoy it. i did. The Frighteners has the same black surreal comedy that makes me adore Beetlejuice, and it’s impossible to not get sucked into the energy of the film. but it’s a relentless force; halfway through the film i thought that there was no way the film couldn’t be headed towards an ending, only to find out that there was a lot more movie to go. this movie has more film per film than most movies could ever dream of.
there’s a particular kind of comedy -- Airplane is a good example -- where the film has so many jokes that it doesn’t matter if one falls flat because it’s already moved on. The Frighteners is kind of like this but instead of jokes it’s plot points in the movie. the film ricochets between ideas so frantically that looking away for even a second risks missing a major plot point.
the way things -- characters, jokes, plot points -- are crammed in means that it’s hard to let things sink in. this is fine for the jokes, a lot of which haven’t aged particularly well (there can be a real nasty bent to the humour i didn’t enjoy thought a lot of the rest of the film is genuinely very funny), but it hurts when the film is trying to go for actual emotional moments. the tone can’t settle long enough for things to have any affect. i didn’t really care about Michael J Fox’s dead wife because it’s walled in between wild characters and slapstick humour. but then again it’s hard to say that storyline is a drag because there’s so much else going on i don’t have time to think about it.
i think Frighteners is best watched for the experience. it’s wildly unique, packed to the brim with attention-grabbing nonsense, and offers more than enough to keep you very entertained. Michael J Fox’s character is kind of flat in the latter half of the film when he’s getting drowned out by the sheer amount of insanity surrounding him, but if he was more over the top the film might not have been watchable at all. the fact he holds his own is pretty admirable. there was a lot that i felt left something to be desired, mostly in the uninteresting romance and the questionable relationship between the villains, which felt like it was thrown in for no real reason other than yet another dramatic story beat, but The Frighteners is a runaway train ploughing through a circus and it has no time or interest in criticism.
a writer and his wife and son go to a new home where they’re living a short while in exchange for doing work on the house and land. as they stay there, the father’s behaviour begins to change, possibly because of the influence of the house itself, leading to a sudden and explosive climax. this is of course the sh... burnt offerings?!
Burnt Offerings, both the original novel and film, actually precede the shining by several years and the two share a good deal of ideas. i would be pretty shocked if this wasnt a film or novel Stevie King was familiar with. the similarities end after the general premise, though.
its been a long time since i draw vince and rudy! heres a ship meme :^)
Richie Tozier knows what happens to boys like him in Derry
read my fics on ao3!
not quite young
portrait of two boys in free fall, artist unknown
you heard it right folks, for the second year in a row i watched
it took around 18 hours. there are eleven movies now after all. next year there will be twelve, and next year i will throw myself into the river thames if i make myself watch Rob Zombie’s Halloween II again.
this time i wrote it out as a journal. it is a mess. i will not edit it. if you read the entire thing you dont get a prize. im very, very tired. i watched eleven movies today. i like five of them.
it is Mexico City. Estrella has not seen her mother in days. children who live wild on the rooftops of abandoned buildings tell stories about a tiger roaming the city that eats lost children, but amongst the fairy tales they tell stories of the truth; that a gang of human traffickers is spiriting people away, and no one is taking notice.
with no one to turn to, Estrella chases down another orphan, Shine, and joins his gang of homeless kids. armed with a stolen iphone filled with videos of victims of the gang, Shine knows who is leading them -- and the man in charge, politician Chino, knows they have evidence against him.
Tigers Are Not Afraid packs a surprising amount of plot into its 83 minute runtime, but never loses sight of what it is; a fairy tale, told by children. fantasy is mixed into the very real crime and violence that fill their lives, with little distinction between what is “real” and what is just their interpretation of the world. to the children, it is all real; the weight of responsibility Estrella feels towards the “three wishes” she carries -- sticks of chalk gifted to her by a teacher -- are as real as her desire to find her mother. the child-eating tiger who stalks the alleyways might as well be as real as the gangsters hunting them down. in this movie, magic and storytelling are ways of interpreting and understanding the world they’re in. that tiger is real because the idea of a big cat lurking in the shadows is just as plausible and just as absurd as the idea of a man whose political and criminal ties offer him the power over life or death.
some of the plot elements might seem a little tidy or predictable, but it’s impossible not to get swept up in the narrative of Tigers Are Not Afraid. over the time we spend with them, we become deeply involved in the lives of the kids, watching how they live, how they try to seek out a sense of routine and normalcy in the abandoned corners of the city. at times it can be magical by itself; there’s always something faintly unreal about seeing children completely wild, running free and discovering life for themselves.
but the harshness of reality is always hanging in the background of the story. rather than being a distraction or a separation from real life, the magic is used to enhance the stakes of real life. Estrella’s wishes are serious burdens she has to use responsibly; when she uses one to wish she wouldn’t have to kill a man she’s been ordered to, the granting of the wish doesn’t bring her relief because it doesn’t unmake the consequences of what’s happened. the few times she speaks to the dead doesn’t either; they are not there to provide her with magical answers or unsolved prophecies. she does not get to escape her reality.
Tigers Are Not Afraid is brutal; children or not, fairy tale or not, it doesn’t compromise on the tragedy or danger of this situation. despite this, it doesn’t feel like an exercise in melodrama. always, there remains a lingering sense of hope. the kids in the movie are too young to really worry about their futures and in that they are the eternally young and free lost boys of neverland. the film dots through enough moments happiness for you, and these kids, to cling onto in the midst of their intense, hectic lives.
a lot of the burden of carrying the movie falls on the performances of the kids, which are exemplary. Tigers Are Not Afraid keeps the performances lowkey and mature and becomes all the more intense and real for it. the cgi and special effects aren’t particularly up to the standards of its multi-million dollar contemporaries, but the film is powerful enough to stay emotionally gripping and never relies too much on the effects for it to be a deterrent. the film uses what it has exceptionally well.
the ending is bittersweet in the extreme; i found myself longing for some more definite note that maybe things would magically get better. and that is Tigers Are Not Afraid’s true power; you can’t watch it and not hope that just maybe the magic will solve everything, this time. you believe in it almost more than Estrella does.
Lake Mungo is a movie that is not so much truly frightening as it is soaked in dread. as a film it is truly haunting; what lingers with you after you watch it is the profound sense of loss and loneliness that is so pervasive in it.
after the sudden death of their teenage daughter Alice, the Palmer family begins experiencing strange happenings around their home. convinced they are being visited by Alice’s ghost, the Palmers start trying to work out what the ghost’s final wishes might be.
it’s incredibly hard to go into why this film is so effective without ruining the ending, so i’ll hold back from doing so. this is not a movie with sudden, predictable twists or stock villains. or any villains at all, actually. my impression of it was that it was almost more of a meditation on grief and what it means to be haunted; the narrative of the film tracks the family’s investigation into what Alice’s spirit wants, but the sensation that gathers over time is that this is catharsis for them more than it is appeasing her ghost.
in the minds of her family, Alice’s spirit is an opportunity to finally answer deeply buried secrets they had long suspected lurked under the surface; her presence might as well be a series of clues or a manifestation of their own guilt about the tragic death of their daughter.
the ending of this movie and the reveal of the true loop of the film is too good to be ruined, but as a film it effectively hammers home the true tragedy of what it is to be a ghost in a way a lot of louder, flashier films never will. as we see the quiet catharsis her family go through, we also see what remains of Alice.
Lake Mungo builds an enormous amount of empathy for a character we never really meet; we see Alice only in the reflections of what she means to other people, what people wanted and possessed her for. no one realises they’re doing it -- Alice is dead, after all, you can’t hurt the dead -- but there’s a feeling in the film that even in death, returning for a reason she is unable to communicate, Alice is a silent partner watching as others interpret her as a snapshot or reflection. we will never really know what Alice truly wanted or if she got it; in her life and in her death she is someone people only knew in fragments, believing they have the entire story. she tries to tell her own story, but only she knows if it is understood.
oh theres themes in this movie
Nell, after spending over ten years caring for her mother, joins a group of paranormal researchers who are spending time in the allegedly haunted Hill House to try to find proof of the paranormal. there, Nell is thrilled to finally find purpose with a group of people who want her to be a part of them, but finds herself becoming more and more drawn into the dark story of the house itself.
The Haunting is undeniably a ghost movie, but it’s a ghost story of a different stripe entirely. Nell is haunted by a dead person alright, but it’s the memory of her recently deceased mother that’s hanging over, not a spirit. her entire life she has never had friends, independence or freedom, and she is consumed by a need to take control over her own life and find a place she belongs.
the ghosts themselves are not the focus at all; if they exist at all, they’re not given any personality or persona for the audience to latch onto. what we are given instead is how Nell latches onto the house and her projection onto the former residents. The Haunting is a movie about the psychology of the people investigating. if the ghosts are there, they pose no threat we can really see. as the Dr Markway says, the ghost world is just another kind of science we don’t understand yet.
as a horror movie the intent is less to horrorify and more to express the feeling of absolute terror that Nell sinks into; we are in her POV entirely, watching her fall into the embrace of the house. she is fixated first on the idea of being embraced by a group of people, of being a part of something and having her own lived experiences, and the house becomes symbolic of that. Nell knows that outside the house she has nowhere to go and no one to be with, and that feeds into her fear of leaving. is she possessed by the ghosts of the house or have they become a metaphor for her desperation to belong?
there is no villain in The Haunting; Nell’s mother is long dead and her spirit never returns. the frightening stories of the house’s past reflect Nell’s life but they never return. the only enemy in the movie is her own internal voice filled with paranoia and vitriol against herself.
the other character of note is Theo; the film came out in 1963 but it’s obvious from the start that she’s a lesbian, and remains an interesting and nuanced character throughout the movie. she is sometimes cold and cryptic, but she is human and sympathetic and cares deeply about Nell from the get-go. it’s kind of remarkable she exists as a character all, especially as one as sympathetic as she is. Theo attempts to bond with Nell, but it’s Nell’s own fears and anger about her place in the group that forms a wedge between them.
everything in the film ties back into its central themes; it all loops back around to Nell’s own psychology and the breakdown she approaches. it’s also an extremely beautiful one; the usage of panning and tracking shots in the film and the photography involving the cramped, claustrophobic sets were revolutionary for the time. there’s an eternity’s worth of writing on the film already; it’s one of the most enduring ghost stories ever told, and it’s probably all down to the fact we never see a single ghost in it.
this is not a very easy movie to watch or talk about.
cut here for discussion of sexual assault and anti-indigenous racism and australian colonialism. this is a heavy movie.
in a world full of low-budget Halloween rip-offs, The Slumber Party Massacre is one in millions. originally intended as a parody, the studio decided that they wanted a serious film instead. what results is a bit of mess; while the film has its honestly funny moments, it lacks enough camp to truly be funny without having any of the tension or extremity to make it actually frightening.
it’s a tale as old as time; an escaped murderer breaks into a house full of teenage girls and starts murdering them one by one until they finally dispatch him. there are some other events in this, but the core story is the same.
what makes The Slumber Party Massacre interesting is that, at the time of writing, it’s the sole horror franchise to be solely directed by women. the original movie was written by feminist writer and critic Rita Mae Brown, also known as the author of Rubyfruit Jungle. her intention was, obviously, to critique and parody the slasher genre tropes popularised by films like Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
so like... does it? is this a feminist movie? does it even qualify as parody? was it girl power when Valerie cut the murderer’s hand off with a machete?
Ring has such a long and storied history in horror, its influence stretching so wide and its imagery so embedded in a global cultural knowledge of horror that we forget that it also very much fucking rules
for those who somehow dont know; Ring follows Reiko Asakawa, a reporter, who hears about the stories of a video tape that will kill you in seven days after it is linked to the death of her niece. Reiko seeks out and watches the tape, and finding it disturbing, decides to try and solve the mystery of the tape alongside her ex-husband Ryuji.
Ring is something that a lot of horror movies never really dare to be and this is precisely also why it works; it is quiet, methodical and thoughtful. the characters, a reporter and a university lecturer, approach the central mystery in the most logical way possible. they are handed the tape, a video that depicts mostly disconnected disturbing imagery and the now infamous well scene, and knowing the story behind it still choose to go out and research it, watching it frame by frame to try and find the truth.
its fascinating to me how calm a movie Ring is; within it persists a constant sense of dread, the time that the characters have left steadily ticking away. while Reiko is understandably terrified of her encroaching death, the film shows this in the way her fears steadily manifest more and more in her life. she watches her reflection in TV screens, sees things in the corner of her eyes. all the while she works steadily, not allowing the threat of what might be stop her work. when the tensions peak and tempers turn bad, both characters still continue.
and the horror in Ring is so pulled back. we are not shown Sadako in more than glimpses for the vast majority of the movie; she is a lurking threat, her shadow hanging over the characters as they work to find out who she is and what she might want. there is a very human element to Reiko’s pursuit of the truth; she is seeking to protect herself and her child, but she is filled with sympathy also for Sadako’s suffering.
women in the movie often relate and sympathise with each other’s suffering, seeking out each other’s stories and relaying the warnings. we are shown specifically young girls talking about the stories first, and Reiko is the one who takes them seriously, digging into the story herself. later, we are given information from a housekeeper who knew the story, while Sadako’s grandfather remains close-lipped. Ryuji’s student helps, and Sadako’s only ally was her mother. it’s women’s concern for each other that drives a lot of the narrative, and men’s selfishness that imposes a threat. without Sadako’s father, we would never have her rage.
we forget too easily how at the time Ring was a really fascinating convergence of the old -- the ghost stories of Japan -- and the new technology of VHS tapes and TVs. its funny that very few things have managed to pull this off to the same extent; the absolute glut of god awful “possessed phone” or “evil website” movies prove that very little has ever managed to replicate Ring’s success. but maybe that’s because Ring’s focus wasn’t on the evil of the medium itself, but on the power of human determination and storytelling. a more appropriate comparison would be Candyman perhaps, than Unfriended. as much as everyone knows about Ring, we forget what made it really such an iconic bit of cinema.
Benoit is a serial killer. Remy and Andre, along with some disposable sound guys, are making a fly on the wall documentary about his life. in a series of disconnected clips we watch Ben give monologues on his feelings about dating, architecture, recite poetry and commit acts of brutal violence.
less a narrative and more just a spectacle, Man Bites Dog is eerie in how real and unreal it feels. Benoit as a character veers from absurdly confident and charming, surrounded by people who adore him to frighteningly insecure, petty and bigoted. the closeness of the film means that over the run time, the layers to Benoit become more and more apparent; a brief observation would suggest he’s just cocky, intelligent but narcissistic, but a deeper observation reveals how much of him is a series of fronts and misdirections.
Benoit is worryingly real, but he lives in a mad world that slips in and out of reality, helped by the intentionally incoherent editing of the movie. scenes of his killings are spliced in with no build up or warning, the events of his day to day happen without explanation, the film jumping erratically between moments. one second Benoit is with his adoring mother and the next he is brutally strangling a postman; the next he is in a boxing match, the moment after that he is in a bar, dressed as a priest.
if Man Bites Dog is a convincing documentary, it’s notably not a very good one. Andre and Remy eagerly get themselves involved in Ben’s activities, not just glorifying his violence but partaking in it, aiding and abetting him until they become murderers themselves. the haphazard nature of the editing makes sense in light of their own preoccupation with what actually matters; they don’t care about the victims, the before or the aftermath, they just want to see the good bits.
the surreality of the film comes from the disjointedness of the images; lurching back and forth between entirely unrelated moments in Benoit’s life makes it impossible to follow the thread of what’s going on in the day to day. the freedom with which he conducts his activities, unbothered by consequence and surrounded by people who passively accept his deeds, creates a sensation that we’re looking into a disturbing other world where these things are acceptable and happening just out of the corner of our eye. it’s a sickeningly unsettling movie, the horror coming most typically in a creeping feeling of disgust.
as a film it’s very accomplished in what it sets out to do; Man Bites Dog is not a movie i enjoyed, but it’s something i appreciated the direction of. it’s a fascinating piece of cinema, even if it’s not necessarily something i would rush to watch again.
i fucking love slasher movies and it’s hard to think of a better argument for them than Stage Fright. this is a movie that says alright, if you’re going to say this genre is all style over substance then by god, we’re going to give you fucking style.
Stage Fright looks and sounds incredible. the rock and synth soundtrack is the kind of thing that plays in the dreams of the 80s nostalgist. the set, limited almost entirely to the rooms of a large theatre, is used to the peak of absolute drama in every occasion. you fucking bet there’s a chase scene through the catwalks -- multiple, actually. and you know someone creeps under the surface of the stage, desperate not to be seen. sneaky switching in the changing rooms? it’s all here.
the film is packed with incredible visuals; for a first movie, there’s an enormous amount of confidence in the strange, dream-like images that Michele Soavi creates. the fantastic final scene where the killer, Irving Wallace, arranges his stage of victims to create his perfect play is wonderfully strange and disturbing, the only time we really get to see the killer up close after he’s spent so much time in the shadows, and the only time we really get to question who he really is. it’s easily the film’s most memorable scene and holy shit; someone trying to pick up a key has never been more fraught with tension.
like i said, the story isn’t much to write home about. it keeps it very simple. a group of actors and their director become locked in the theatre they’re in by a killer who has just escaped from a mental hospital, and proceeds to pick them off one by one. it really doesn’t have anything much to say about anything, but it really sells the story it has to tell. the tension and the pace never lets up, and the characters themselves have a group of really surprisingly good actors behind them which helps sell the movie. the mistakes and stupid decisions in the movie feel less like bad writing and more like the characters taking selfish, cruel decisions to save their own hides. i thought play director Peter was particularly well-done, seemingly often deceptively heroic right up until the moment he’s needed most.
but the most important part of any slasher i’m pretty sure anyone would fucking agree, is the killer. in this case, we have Irving Wallace, a pretty clear Michael Myers duplicate that doesn’t really try to push any boundaries of what we understand a slasher to be. he was once an actor, but one day he snapped and killed many people before he was arrested. why? no one could say.
Irving Wallace is evil because he’s crazy, and he’s crazy because he’s evil, and it’s being evil and crazy that makes him do murder. all the backstory we get is that he was once an actor, then he snapped and started killing. he lacks the gothic mystery of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, the humour of Krueger or Ghostface, the cuteness of Leatherface, and even really the truly disturbing turns of Black Christmas’ Billy. Irving is a little lacking in personality compared to some of our most iconic, but he more than makes up for that with drama.
the second you see Irving’s mask he becomes unforgettable; the ostentatiousness of it, the sheer strangeness of the vast, feathery owl face. it’s disturbing just because of how weird it is. Irving himself sticks firmly to the shadows throughout the majority of the film, and he has no clear MO. no one knows exactly why Irving went on a killing rampage in the first place, and the film offers little explanation. the methods he kills with and the people he kills are varied; he shows little to no particular preference towards anyone. all Irving seems to want is a willing audience.
Stage Fright is a movie that really needs to be seen to be fully understood; it’s a fucking great time and a fantastic experience based just on how much the movie asserts its own style and imagery within a subgenre filled with look-alikes. it also can’t be overstated how much the soundtrack rules; the film sounds better than any slasher since Halloween and possibly until It Follows.
a special shoutout also goes to the character of Brett, a man so fantastically camp that he stole every second he was onscreen and whose memory should be treasured because of his dedication for living for gay pettiness
