Film diary

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films to watch, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. The schedule, a mix of theatrical screenings and home viewings, is published for posterity and for the sake of anyone who might like to join me.

This year I seem to be nostalgic for the age of Satanic panic, as I’ll be doing concurrent, chronological deep dives on The Exorcist and The Omen, two… See more →

Terry O’Quinn’s socially regressive Reaganite dad is pitch-perfect, and the opening scene—showing him calmly strolling through the house, past the family he just slaughtered, en route to his new identity—is a doozy. But pretty much everything else in this, including the plot, characters, and color palette, is weirdly bland. Maybe that’s meant to be its own comment on the insipidity of the 1980s’ dominant conservative nostalgia, but a better movie would have just let its… See more →

Like Fargeat’s debut, this is more successful as pulp than polemic, and its inevitably bombastic finale is a dud, but I can’t deny I enjoyed the ride, especially with an audience.

I don’t think I had seen this since the ’90s, at which time I scarcely noticed how deliriously over the top it is, with uniformly histrionic performances (including demented cameos from Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, and Martin Balsam, stars of the original 1962 Cape Fear) and spastic cinematography (courtesy of frequent David Lynch collaborator Freddie Francis). It’s very nearly a parody of its domestic thriller contemporaries (e.g. Fatal Attraction), ever teetering on the edge of… See more →

New favorite Saulnier joint. If Aaron Pierre isn’t the next Idris Elba, we will have failed as a civilization.

Sometimes stupid is fun and sometimes stupid is just stupid.

The joke here is that this is a Lifetime movie written by longtime SNL head writer Harper Steele and starring Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig. Importantly, it’s not a parody of a Lifetime movie, or at least it’s not any more self-parody than any other entry in the well-worn genre. It does slightly tip its hand in a few places (especially the final scene), but mostly all involved do a surprisingly good job of playing… See more →

As I recall, you couldn’t walk into a video store in the mid-90s without tripping over multiple copies of Rumpelstiltskin, so I’m not sure how I never saw it before, apart from the fact that the period’s glut of cheap fairy tale horror never really interested me. I would not have guessed it was essentially a remake of The Terminator! I spent most of the runtime trying to figure out why the lead, Kim Johnston… See more →

Marc Bolan doesn’t deserve this.

When it’s not succumbing to self-consciously unhinged improv exercise, this is something like a feature-length maximalist update of Bruce Nauman’s Clown Torture for the reality TV age. The editor is unquestionably the MVP.

Not sure I’ve seen this since its original theatrical run, and the extra 30 minutes Tarantino added really weigh it down, but there’s still no arguing with that finale.

Nice youth culture time capsule with lots of great music, muddled by the curious inclusion of a superfluous murder mystery.

Maybe the most unpleasant thing I’ve ever seen. Pair with Come and See for the most upsetting double feature imaginable.