Picture this: It’s 1984. You’re a movie fan despairing over the fact that the horror genre is dying. Sure, Halloween was great and all but you’ve seen nothing but copycats since then. Slasher movies with obnoxious and obvious titles like Don’t Answer the Phone and When a Stranger Calls have become the norm. You sort of enjoy the Friday the...
Horror
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Like every child of the 90’s, I grew up on a steady diet of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. I think I saw Terminator 2–edited for TV of course–before I could even walk. I wasn’t old enough to think about what a strange movie star he was, with his absurdly long name and thick accent. I just...
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“The problem is the tone”, is something I frequently say when speaking negatively about a movie. A movie can have everything going for it, a great cast, good director, and solid premise but if it gets the tone wrong, everything falls apart (see Maps to the Stars). In that regard, Justin Benson and Aaron...
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It Follows is the best kind of horror movie, one with an ingeniously simple premise that allows the director to create scenes of such tension and suspense that you sit in total dread of what is going to happen next. The characters are well written and believable, the soundtrack is oppressive and threatening, and...
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Netflix is both a wonderful and maddening service. It’s wonderful because there are so many options, so many categories—many of them oddly specific—that it always seems like you’ll be able to find something interesting to watch. You know the truth though. Nine out of ten times, you just sit there, scrolling through titles in...
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Christmas is almost here and for most of us that means empty bank accounts, an endless barrage of Holiday music, family parties with people we don’t like, and screenings of flicks we’ve seen ten thousand times yet feel obligated to watch every December. I’m sorry, did that sound cynical? Forgive me, the Holiday spirit...
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Sometimes I wish I had been alive when The Twilight Zone was first airing on TV. Sure, many people my age spent more than a few holiday weekends marathoning episodes of Rod Serling’s groundbreaking program but can you imagine what it actually would have been like to have that show as a weekly event? To not...
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I’ve been referred to by more than a few of my friends as a ‘King apologist’. I’m the guy who defends his weaker stories, the guy who insists that Under the Dome had no narrative problems, that Rose Madder makes perfect sense, that Doctor Sleep was a perfect sequel to The Shining, and that UR, his novella about a haunted kindle, was...
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Everything about Horns is broad: the comedy, the horror, the acting, the suspense, the romance, and the gore. It works far too hard to please, playing to the rafters when it should be more focused on the people in the front row. All the elements are in place for a great genre bending movie but each element...
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I love horror anthologies for the same reason I love horror short story collections: they provide a quick fix for a junkie. Horror fans like me have sat through so many movies, read so many novels, and sat through so many TV episodes that it’s nice to have a film that gives you five...
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