I watched 2001’s “The Pledge“ starring Jack Nicholson and directed by Sean Penn a few years after it came out. At the time, I proclaimed the neo-noir the greatest film ever made. (The world, committed as it is to ignoring my sage proclamations, took little notice.) I was, in particular, in awe of Penn’s directing,…

Evil kid movies have a long history going back to “The Bad Seed,” first shown on screens in 1956. That lineage runs straight through 1976’s “The Omen,” where the trope goes biblical. I fondly recall Macaulay Culkin’s turn as the archetype in 1993’s “The Good Son.” And there’s what is possibly my favorite film, “Orphan.”…

You might be familiar with director Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 film “Straw Dogs“ in which a nebbish character played by Dustin Hoffman faces off with thugs in rural England who want to invade his house and violate his wife. 1986’s “Bullies“ is like “Straw Dogs“ idiot younger brother. It’s the same setup, though the family arrangement…

About 20 minutes into 2025’s “Bring Her Back“ I was worried it was one of these modern movies where nothing is ever explained, and the mystery just kind of festers until the end. And I wasn’t really in the mood for such a movie on that particular evening. I’m glad I kept going, because it…

1981’s “Delusion” (also known as “The House Where Death Lives” and boy does it ever) is an absolute gem of a movie. If you’re a fan of slow-burn psychological horror with sexual tension and psychological layering, you’ll love it. Our story begins with young Meredith (Patricia Pearcy), a home nurse who gets a gig caring…

I should watch more sci-fi horror. The genre has so many great films: “Forbidden Planet”, the “Aliens” franchise, “Blade Runner”, “Event Horizon”, “Strange Days”. And the genre isn’t overdone the way a lot of supernatural or slasher-themed movies are. (Looking at you “Conjuring“ films.) Yeah, sci-fi horror has a lot of standouts. “Death Machine,” however,…

There’s a particular kind of horror that is excessively bleak. “Last House on the Left” comes to mind, as do “Deliverance” and many of the Texas Chainsaw films. The horror in these films is man-made; they argue we don’t need to fear demons or witches, but our fellow humans. When I was younger, I enjoyed…

A little known fact about me is that I did some work for a film production company in the 2000s, mostly trying and failing to get horror films made. I did get the chance to meet big directors like John Carpenter and Stuart Gordon. At one point, the company was in conversation with famed Director…

I’d never heard of “The Black Room” until I saw it on a list of Amazon recommendations. I figured, “Why the hell not?” and gave it a try. The film starts with an attractive couple having sex. They get killed, then the scene switches to another attractive couple having sex. I thought, “OK, it’s gonna…

I never finished the screenwriting advice book “Save the Cat,“ but what I did read contained a useful insight. The author advised that all great stories contain an element of irony. For instance, the Bruce Willis film “Die Hard“ could be thought of with the following question: what if a man cop dreading a meeting…

I have a love-hate thing with the work of Wes Craven. I think “Nightmare on Elm Street” is the greatest horror film ever made, and I came around on the “Scream” series after disliking it at first, but he’s made some stinkers. It might seem weird that I would dig deep enough into his ouvre…

I’ve mentioned “apartment horror” recently, the sub-genre where a protagonist tackles the strange modern isolation that comes with living in what are basically cells stacked upon each other. Usually, a mystery connected to the building appears, and the protagonist asserts their autonomy and individuality by getting to the bottom of it. Examples would include Roman…

I loved the 2021 horror film “Malignant” so much that I noted the name of the screenwriter who’d written such a terrific and twisty script. Thus, when I found out Akela Cooper had written the 2022 killer doll movie “M3GAN” I eagerly anticipated it. However, I was disappointed. Compared to “Malignant”, it was relatively bloodless…

Well, this is a little weird. I recently watched the film “House of Darkness“ which I’d berated for being an hour of people talking about modern sexual mores, followed by a big reveal and then violence. Then, the next day, I watched “Bone Lake” (I’ve got a cold, so I’m watching a lot of movies)…

Sometimes it seems the main beneficiaries of #metoo in Hollywood were white male actors. Why? Because the villain is always the best role, and since 2015 or so, there have been numerous films that flip the script of the previous 100 years. Instead of presenting a good lucking, charming white dude as the hero, he’s…