Joseph Ruben

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 →