So I’ve got a theory about horror films. They’re at their best when they’re subversive—celebrations of nihilism from hustlers working the film industry’s fringes, just trying to make a quick buck. Think Craven’s “Last House…

If you’ve been reading my reviews, you’ve noticed I tend to focus my keen and critical eye on crime and horror films. As such, “Luce,“ a drama set around issues of race and class might…

What are young people in 80s horror movies supposed to do with themselves? All they wanna do is have sex, drink copious amounts of alcohol, and generally party-hearty. Yet there’s always somebody trying to kill…

I bet it would be a lot of fun to make one of these low-rent cheese ball horror films that populate the metaphorical bins of Amazon Video. You get some buddies together, track down a…

File this novella under: skin-crawling psycho-sexual thriller The protagonist, Dale, is your garden-variety passive creep. He’s a flop with the ladies and is pushed around by his hoity-toity family. But he’s got one thing going…

OK, for the first half of it, I was hating this movie. For starters, it has an utterly confusing introductory sequence that tries to cram about an hour’s worth of backstory in ten minutes. Then…

So here’s the funny thing about “Burnt Offerings.” I have a very distinct memory of being a young kid and watching the film on a relative’s television set. (My mom and I didn’t have a…

In my review of “Kafka,” I mentioned how the movement of postmodernism came out of the historical condition referred to as the modern era (ironically, it’s an era now antique as it ran from about…

I’m not wild about possession horror. For some reason, the idea of oddly named demons taking control of someone’s body and making them vomit pea soup just seems kind of dopey. (I did love the…

I have several thoughts about this one. Let me first give the broad strokes of the plot. Several Europeans, some bound by familial ties, go to visit the Kinnitty Pyramid, a reconstruction of an Egyptian…

I’m not quite sure what to make of “Cobweb.“ On the one hand, it’s creepy and evocative. While it never produces any real jump scares, it maintains a sense of unease throughout its entirety. On…

The imaginary friend has a long lineage in Hollywood. I’m reminded of “Harvey,“ which featured a Jimmy Stewart character who claimed to rub shoulders with a giant talking rabbit. There’s a lesser-known comedy from the…

This one could’ve been worse. A lot of these cheeseball 1970s/80s slashers tend to feel more like an episode of Quincy M.E. or The A-Team, than anything with genuine tension or drama. (Note for young…

When I was growing up in Honolulu in the 1970s, my mom often took me to strange movies that my young brain really had little chance of comprehending. Orson Welles’ version of the Franz Kafka…

Hmmm…. how do I say this nicely? This movie was a bag of crap balls. Let’s peruse the setup. Teenage Ellie lives with her parents and younger sister in a suburban planned community, presumably somewhere…