Sydney Film Festival: We Are Still Here (2015)

Modern horror is increasingly looking to the past for inspiration. There’re clever, nostalgic takes like You’re Next and It Follows. You’ve also got your remakes: the latest being the widely-derided Poltergeist. We Are Still Here shoots for the former category, but ends up missing the mark. Ted Geoghegan’s emulation of ‘70s haunted house films –…

The Top 20 Films of 2013

My Top 20 films of the year are listed below. For most them, clicking on the title will take you to my review of the film from earlier in the year. One qualifier before I begin: this doesn’t neatly fit into a “films of 2013” from a cinematic release perspective; thanks to film festivals and…

You're Next (2013)

Double Feature: Halloween (1978) and You’re Next (2013)

Halloween may not been the first masked killer movie (arriving four years after Leatherface), but the implacable Michael Myers’ shadow stretches long across the genre; establishing many significant tropes (the killer is invulnerable until he is unmasked. A perfunctory backstory that doesn’t disguise how the masked man – it’s always a man – stands in…