“It’s going to get ugly.” If I were to describe Session 9 to you, it would sound like the most insipid montage of cliches: a horror movie set in a derelict mental institution, which...
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5 Minutes
5 Minutes
31 Days of Fright: Castle Freak
“There’s somebody in the castle!” Even for a Stuart Gordon film, Castle Freak is a tough watch. Gordon was a director renowned for his unhinged excess – look no further than the hot pink...
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4 Minutes
31 Days of Fright: Emelie
“Sometimes it’s okay to destroy something for fun.” Emelie, like its title character, is a nasty, insidious thing. At its best, Michael Thelin’s film is unsettling and deeply uncomfortable, producing the kinds of chills...
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6 Minutes
31 Days of Fright: Suspiria (2018)
“I am she.” There are some movies that are generally considered too sacrosanct to remake. This is why we’re never getting a Casablanca with Zac Efron, and why The Social Network is the closest...
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5 Minutes
31 Days of Fright: Suspiria
“Hell is behind that door!” A few years back, when reviewing the wretched, incompetent Friday the 13th, I wondered if a movie can be considered a classic if it isn’t any good. Suspiria made...
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5 Minutes
31 Days of Fright: Frozen
“You’re gonna be okay, baby. You’re gonna be okay.” The setup for Adam Green’s Frozen is a horror lover’s dream: two snowboarders and one skier, trying to fit in one last run before they...
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6 Minutes
31 Days of Fright: Phantasm
“You play a good game, boy, but the game is over. Now you die.” Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm is a lot of things. It’s incoherently plotted, poorly edited, the acting is wooden across the board...
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1 Minute
31 Days of Fright starts tomorrow!
I know, I know. I’ve screwed this up the past couple times I’ve tried to do it. But thanks to this stupid pandemic, I got laid off, so now I’ve got plenty of time,...
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5 Minutes
Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways is a puzzling, captivating masterwork
By age 79, most musicians are either dead, retired, or content to just play the hits. Most musicians are not Bob Dylan. Not only is he still producing new material, but he’s actually getting...
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3 Minutes
The Quarantine Playlist: Apocalypto
Every criticism of Mel Gibson as a person is valid. He’s racist, homophobic, sexist, and anti-Semitic. By any conceivable metric, he is a piece of shit. This isn’t the place to litigate Gibson. That...
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3 Minutes
The Quarantine Playlist: Anatomy of a Murder
There’s something so inherently American about the legal drama. It’s the idea that our institutions work the way they’re supposed to, the idea that fairness and right will win out in the end. It’s...
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5 Minutes
The Quarantine Playlist: Amistad
When you found your own film studio, you can do whatever the hell you want. It’s common knowledge. That’s not quite what Steven Spielberg did after co-founding Dreamworks, but it’s close. He wanted to...
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