A few nights ago, I fired up Brian De Palma’s 1976 thriller “Obsession” on the old Amazon Prime. At the opening shot, I was struck by a thought. “I’ve seen this before.” And I had. Or at least I think so. At various points, an ethereal sense of déjà vu percolated, as did suspicions as…

A fertile concept for dramatic tension is a group of women locked together in some in environment. “Girl, Interrupted” (about a female psyche ward) is perhaps the most famous recent success with this premise, but I also think of director Lucky McKee’s “The Woods” (about a secluded girls school) or even the recent reviewed “The…

Sigh… What do we do with M. Night Shyamalan? How should we assess his legacy? I was blown away by “The Sixth Sense” when it came out in 1999. The eerie mood and shocking twist seemed to indicate a filmmaker who would deliver decades of fantastic cinema. As a result, I tried to enjoy what…

I was excited at the opportunity to see Gaslight, the gothic melodrama from which the term “gaslighting” is derived. Just so we’re all on the same page, let’s ask ChatGPT what the term means. (Surely AI would never lie!) “Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation where one person or group deliberately makes someone question…

There are certain movies I watch expecting to hate. I click the play button with part of my psyche screaming, “why are you doing this? You know it’s going to be a hot mess of bad acting and insipid plot devices. Stop. STOP!” Yet I never stop. “Tarot” was one of these movies. But here’s…

Maybe there’s something seriously wrong with me, but I really enjoyed this movie. It’s another one of those early eighties high school/college horror schlockfests, similar to “Prom Night” or “The Prowler.” The girls of a sorority house do something bad and are subsequently stalked and slaughtered by a cane wielding maniac. I like horror with…

So I have a love/hate thing with Wes Craven. I think “Nightmare on Elm Street” is the greatest horror film ever made and maybe one of the greatest conceits in horror. I also liked Craven’s “Last House on the Left.” But he’s been involved with some real stinkers: “Red Eye”, “They”, and as I have…

A lot of horror builds off the question of “what if the thing that can fulfill your dreams demands too high a price?” The classic short story “The Monkey’s Paw” did it. So did Stephen King’s Pet “Semetery.” And so does “Night Swim”, a little unpolished gem that popped up on my Amazon feed. In…

I tend to review horror films. 1964’s “The Visit” is more of a drama, but sometimes dramas, which hew closer to reality, are the most horrifying stories of all, right? HAWHAWHAWHAW! (Evil laughter fades to silence.) The plot is an extended Twilight Zone episode. Ingrid Bergman’s Karla inherits  vast wealth when her husband dies (it’s…

Wes Craven’s name has lured me to watch bad films before. “They” was intriguing and suspenseful until it ended right at (what felt like) the start of the third act. And he had a few other clunkers like “Red Eye” and “Dracula 2000”. (That said, I love “Nightmare on Elm Street”, and both versions of…

Here’s the thing: it’s tough to mix horror and comedy. The two modes are so opposed that you really have to lean into one over the other. When I think of films in this hybrid genre that succeeded, I think of “House” and “Homebound” (mostly humor), or “Return of the Living Dead” and “The Reanimator”…

That it was my third viewing of Martin Scorsese’s remake of the film noir classic that prompted this review tells you everything you need to know. I don’t watch crappy films three times. But even on repeat, Cape Fear is a magnificent film. The plot drives forward, the tension simmers before exploding into a violent…

I was recently drawn to watch “Brain Dead”, a 1990 offering that includes both Bills e.g. Pullman and Paxton. (Together at last!) It was billed as a thriller, but I could tell from the promo material that was like calling “Natural Born Killers” a romcom. I was immediately guarded when the intro credits were rendered…

I recently reviewed “Nightwish.” Now I turn to another movie with a nocturnally themed title, this one a film noir feature from the 50s. “Nightfall” is quite entertaining. Aldo Ray, an actor I was unfamiliar with (a quick wiki search reveals he was an incorrigible drunk), plays the classic noir loner who wanders the streets…

The two big questions I had while watching 1989’s Nightwish were “where is the night” (it’s one of those rare horror films that mostly takes place during the day) and “where is the wish”. The night eventually comes, but I never understood what the wish was. The movie starts with an elaborate horror sequence which…