Quentin Tarantino and the spaghetti western genre should be a perfect match. Spaghetti westerns are essentially a feature length excuse for a bunch of cool shit to happen, with the plot often obscured through half-heard snatches of dialogue and cryptic flashbacks. And Tarantino is a noted connoisseur of cool shit! The two should be incredible…
Severance is a good office comedy, a decent slasher, and an excellent, enjoyable film when those two halves mesh. An example of this: A motley collection of office workers from a weapon manufacturing company have gathered in a remote lodge for a team-building exercise. They’ve begun to share scary stories about the “true nature” of…
Black Christmas is one of the first slasher films. Like its contemporaries, it has a tame level of violence and gore by modern standards, though it lacks the gonzo realism of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the restrained artistry of Halloween. Instead, Black Christmas is content to rest on the laurels of its creepy premise,…
Detention is overstuffed and overwritten. Its screenplay reads like the masturbatory fantasies of a hyperactive high school boy, filled with self-referential jokes, broad satire and countless references to films as diverse as Scream, The Fly and Back to the Future. And I loved every minute of it. The opening features a teenager being murdered halfway…
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane could have been an average slasher film, but it doesn’t even reach that benchmark thanks to a lazy, ill-conceived twist. Sometimes twists can retroactively redeem a story, but in many cases a twist can actually harm the film that preceded it. That’s the case here. The twist isn’t entirely…
Composed with restraint, obvious talent and populated with believable characters, The Innkeepers is a minimalist version of The Shining. Like Kubrick’s eerie classic, it’s set in a near-abandoned hotel, but here it’s a small inn in a small town. The Yankee Pedlar Inn may not have the intimidating grandeur of The Overlook Hotel, but director…
When you go to see a kung fu hip-hop opera (hip-hopera!) directed, written, narrated by and starring the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, you have a clear expectation. You’re not looking for a sophisticated drama; what you’re after is bombastic kung fu battles scored with the best rap around. The Man with the Iron Fists delivers that…
The Pact is a classic example of wasted potential. It takes the scariest single concept I’ve come across and squanders it on clichéd haunted house scares. Warning: spoilers follow.
The Shaft, a straight-to-video release (that took a couple years to see the light of day in the States) is a slasher movie, except with a twist – the killer is…an elevator! Seriously. It’s an inherently silly premise which doesn’t have to prevent it from being an enjoyable B-movie. There’s a promising jokey tone early,…
Triangle is an atmospheric, unnerving puzzle-box of a film, chilling and cerebral. Enigmatic opening scenes scored with foreboding music establish a mood of dread, matched by Jess (Melissa George)’s deathly pallor and discomfiting vagueness. Flashes of dreams or flashbacks suggest a non-linear narrative. There are sinister mentions of Jess son’s…something’s off, and references to Sisyphus…
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