As provocation, it’s hard to deny the success of Tom Six’s Human Centipede series (which awaits its final segment’s release next year). In a genre defined by mimicry and repetition, the horror concept that launched these films has clearly resonated as a fresh, frightening notion. The idea of a “human centipede,” human victims grafted together…
Piranha, an undisguised Jaws ripoff from the late ‘70s, is no match for the Spielberg’s blockbuster phenomenon (which makes a cameo appearance as a video game). This Roger Corman creature feature, helmed by Joe Dante (of Gremlins fame) is nonetheless a surprisingly good B-movie. It contains all the B-movie trappings: skinny dipping teenagers, unconvincing special…
I can remember the Beltway sniper attacks of 2002, but the memories are vague. It’s perhaps harsh, but it seems that every few months there’s yet another senseless mass shooting in America. Of course, these shootings were different – no apparent motive, without obvious culrpits, the sense of all-pervading fear they must have created is…
I’ll give Texas Chainsaw this – it’s a very different take on remaking a classic horror film. The 2003 remake of Tobe Hooper’s classic was essentially a repackage of the main plot points (basically: Leatherface kills people), modernized with a higher budget and more attractive cast but none of the twisted charm of the original…
If you’ve seen the trailer for Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring, you already know the plot: Rich kids steal from richer celebrities, get caught. This kind of plot-certainty isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it frees up the filmmaker to focus on tone and character rather than story. The Bling Ring portrays its protagonists’ crime…
It feels misleading to describe Gravity as a “simple” film. It’s a survival tale, a story built not on character drama and plot twists but on the fundamental, bloody-minded human need to fight for life. The minimalist storyline is at odds with the wide expanse of outer space that is the film’s setting. Gravity’s dizzyingly…
Cannibal Holocaust is advertised as “the most controversial film ever made,” and the claim is not without justification. Its director was arrested upon release under suspicion of making a snuff film, and the film features real animal mutilation. It uses the characteristics of the found footage genre better than the majority of its successors; despite…
The opening titles of John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, created by the inimitable Saul Bass, turn normality into grotesquery. Extreme close-ups of the human face warp and distort, taking the ordinary – a human mouth, a human eye – and rendering it horrifyingly unfamiliar. The mutability of human appearance is at the core of the science-fiction conceit…
Last night I went to a preview screening of Tim Winton’s The Turning, presented by director and producer Robert Connolly. The book it’s based on is a collection of seventeen short stories from one of the Australia’s greatest authors, stories set on or around the Western coast of Australia; stories about childhood and parents and…
Side Effects is cinematic sleight of hand. It’s a beguiling performance from the movie magician; the great Steven Soderbergh. It feints at being a story about the questionable practices of the pharmaceutical industry; it’s not. Early scenes drift elliptically through Emily (Rooney Mara)’s life; she seems depressed, and she seems to be the film’s protagonist.…
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