Does outrageous entertainment made by the LGBTQ community always have to be “campy”? That’s a question that I asked myself between laughs during Summoning Sylvia, a wacky horror-comedy that serves as a directorial debut for Broadway actors Wesley Taylor and Alex Wyse.
By: Jeff Ching ReBroken is an ambitious and unique exploration of grief that qualifies as a thriller, drama, horror and a mystery. It’s an unpredictable puzzle that the audience slowly pieces together. But despite that selling point, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend Rebroken. I will always applaud a filmmaker for taking risks over playing it safe. However, I didn’t enjoy this experience, which could’ve been fixed had the film built an essential emotional connection to the material.
By: Jeff Ching I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a horror movie more relatable than Abie Sidell’s Cram. I also really don’t know if there will be a better horror movie this year. Cram was made for nerds with severe procrastination issues. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re one of those freaks that study for your exams a month in advance, watch this movie and understand the pain of being a procrastinator – this is in…
By: Jeff Ching Walking into Cocaine Bear, I was expecting the movie to be the latest inductee to the “so bad, it’s good” list. Something along the lines of Snakes on a Plane or the Sharknado franchise: movies that are not good, but fun to laugh at. Cocaine Bear, however, is not “so bad, it’s good” – it’s “so good, it’s umm….…the best movie of 2023 so far”. Look, it’s only late February, and I don’t expect…
In a plot that would make any vacationer anxious, and in the “not too distant future”, novelist James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) and his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) are suckered into a crime that develops into an additional crime during a getaway at a luxurious resort. James, who becomes the most guilty, is given the choice to opt out of his execution if he pays a lump sum of cash for a clone to be made…
“Found footage” horrors often receive a bad rap because it’s presumed that they’re “easy” movies to make: scrounge together a couple thousand dollars, a consumer video camera, some amateur actors, and a loose lore around something eerie that can guarantee jump scares. Yes, the “found footage” sub-genre is one of the more resourceful outlets for DIY filmmakers, but there’s an art to it. They may not trick audiences anymore into thinking the stories are non-fictitious…
I can’t quite place my finger on when audiences last received an experimental horror like Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink, and I think that’s because a lot of filmmakers would be too intimidated to take a crack at it. Making a movie like Skinamarink requires a filmmaker to be brave, insane, self-aware yet purposely reject what qualifies as entertainment nowadays, and completely commit to the film’s static presentation. Ball has all of these traits, which is…
A “found footage” horror anthology gets a seasonal spin in The Christmas Tapes, but it’s only further proof as to why these projects are a tough task to pull off.
Alex Phillips’ feature debut All Jacked Up and Full of Worms plays out like a never-ending string of hallucinations. It’s never clear what’s actually rooted in reality and the movie becomes so surreal, it’s impossible for it to return to normalcy.
By: Liam Parker Scary movies are supposed to keep us up at night. Things that go bump in the night and lurk beyond the shadows rob us of our ability for a good night’s sleep. John Farrelly’s The Sleep Experiment, however, has the opposite effect: it leaves you begging to close your eyes. But wait, the movie isn’t bad! You’ll feel the need to escape to slumberland in order to feel safe again.