Bed of the Dead (DIR. Jeff Maher) It’d be easy to call Bed of the Dead wooden, but that would only be a cheap dig. It is, however, hollow and unbelievably convoluted for a film that should be simple. It’s a killer bed, for crying out loud.
Train to Busan (DIR. Yeon Sang-ho) Sometimes, a film fails at everything – an abject failure. Sometimes, a film fails at the majority of its goals while succeeding in some, earning a designation of mediocrity. Then, there are the rare cases of films failing in a majority of ways with a few successes, wherein those successes manage to outshine the failure. Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan fits into that final example, a film that comes…
The Toronto After Dark Film Festival is one week away, but programmer Justin McConnell wants a head start in frightening you.
Nicolas Winding Refn makes something out of nothing with his subversive satire The Neon Demon. Most movies do the same, but Refn’s latest grabs ahold of seemingly vacuous source material and manages to build a world within it where decisions are outrageously vain and scary but oddly comprehensible.
Adam Wingard’s Blair Witch isn’t quite a franchise reboot as it is a do-over or a reworking of previous ideas used in the series’ much-hated sequel Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.
Reviewing films from the Legless Corpse collection is becoming a thankless task. How else do you describe these titles that are oh-so obviously made for the close-knit amateurs that make these low-budget indies?
The Blackout Experiments could be that “next big thing” for horror folks who avidly discuss the genre. Not only does it offer envelope-pushing originality, it also shows an underbelly that is generally out-of-bounds for a mainstream crowd. Some outsiders may find the doc’s humiliating and semi-exploitive nature to be too intense, but they won’t be able to take their eyes off the screen.
Making a mythology for a horror film is a complex concept. Filmmakers have to take into account narrative, visual and paratextual elements in order to create an iconic creature that can stand the test of time. The filmmaker may not realize this, but they are inherently forced into this routine when they make a film which involves the creation of an urban legend.
There’s not much that can be said about recurring themes in Nicolas Winding Refn’s films that hasn’t been said before, but here’s a recap: self-indulgent, hyper violent, misogynist, pretentious, shallow.
For a career that spans nearly 5 decades, Brian De Palma’s style and subject as a filmmaker remains strikingly consistent. Unlike his New Hollywood contemporaries (Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola), De Palma has never strayed far from his generic comfort zone.