Robtober

Many a movie sports a protagonist who sucks at life, and you’re like, “Hey, I suck at life, too! I am invested in seeing this character succeed, for truly their success is a success for us all.” In The Void, however, it’s more like, “This guy doesn’t seem to have any good excuse for sucking as much as he does, and this warmed-over Lovecraft nonsense is exactly the dull fate he deserves.”

A serviceable (if blandly presented) documentary with about a zillion variously-credentialed talking heads discussing Psycho’s iconic shower scene. The scene’s cultural context and lasting influence are 101 stuff, but 78/52 is at its best when it digs into the minutiae of the storyboards, staging, cinematography, sound design—casaba!—editing, symbolism, etc. Even the most dedicated Hitchcock scholar will probably learn something new. The interviews’ steady fawning tone gets a bit grating (only one person… See more →

One of my favorite takedowns of all time is a single sentence in the San Diego Union-Tribune, in which David Elliott refers to Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream as “less filmed than assembled by an MTV task force committed to the final obliteration of subtlety.” Seventeen years later, subtlety continues to elude Aronofsky, and Mother!’s environmentalist/biblical allegory may be his most heavy-handed work yet.

That’s fine, as far as it goes; subtext doesn’t always… See more →

Though my feelings on the subject are unambiguous, I have a curious habit of seeking out reminders that I don’t ever want to be a teenage boy again, and Super Dark Times is an effective one. Its backwards gaze is largely unvarnished (apart from Ben Frost’s overly atmospheric score), but many moments are richly observed—I could practically smell the dead leaves that decorate those short, aimless hours in late autumn between the school day’s final… See more →

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films, most of which I haven’t seen before. Films, dates, and times (all subject to change) are listed for any friends who want to join me, and ticket links are included for public screenings. The schedule is also available as a handy Google calendar and as a Letterboxd list.

Below the schedule you can find a bit about how it’s curated as well as a roundup… See more →

Though it’s not the masterpiece that John Carpenter would make 30 years later (which is apparently more faithful to the source material), The Thing from Another World is smart and tightly wound. The titular Thing is scarier in the imagination than on the screen, but its appearances, wisely, are few and brief. Tension is instead generated mainly by the conflict over whether the Thing should be studied or destroyed, and these scenes – dense with… See more →

Empty and ugly, The New York Ripper is content to have its inscrutable serial killer revel in the seediest corners of early-’80s NYC without the benefit of a remotely compelling narrative. It’s all cheap and no thrills, but I’ll give it some credit for being extremely skeevy, which I took to be its lone goal.

Exquisitely overdone in every respect, and entirely a product – and rebuke – of its time. This was clearly a lot of fun to make, is in turn a lot of fun to watch, and its theme song will get stuck in your head for weeks.

Opening with a newspaper headline about a murderous orgy, I thought this pre-Code thriller might be a bit more scandalous. Luckily, what it lacks in shocks it makes up for in unintentional farce.

If Hitchcock had a predilection for the supernatural, it might have looked something like Cat People. The suspense it creates in a few keys scenes – both in terms of their staging and the psychosexual premise that drives them – is among the boldest I’ve seen from 1940s-era horror.

The gags fly fast and furious in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, but not nearly enough of them land. Compared to the duo’s electric “Who’s on First?” routine, the humor here is stilted.

Lon Chaney Jr, who embodies few of the characteristics of the traditional leading man, creates a character so apparently charismatic that his love interest is unfazed to learn he is an unapologetic peeping tom. But the real star of the show here is the cinematography, whose mist and moonlight cloak the misadventures of Chaney’s otherwise fairly silly werewolf in artful dread.

The initial appearance of Boris Karloff’s mummy is properly arresting, but most of what follows is a snooze.

Every aspect of Two Thousand Maniacs! exhibits a bare minimum of competence, and yet it is oddly unnerving, perhaps owing to how exuberantly its Grand Guignol spirit hurdles the boundaries of its era.

A group of estranged friends reunites at a dinner party hosted by Eden, who, since everyone last saw her, has joined a New Age cult with her new husband. As the evening wears on, Eden’s ex-husband, Will, grows increasingly paranoid that the cult means the group harm. Is he right, or is his judgement impaired by the overwhelming grief triggered by revisiting the house where his son died two years before? I was eager to… See more →

For the second time, I’ve failed to be mindful of which version of a Mario Bava film I’m watching, this time with Evil Eye, the apparently inferior English-language recut of The Girl Who Knew Too Much. Fool me twice, shame on me. Evil Eye’s sumptuous black and white cinematography is a joy to behold, but its murder mystery is muddled by clumsy tonal shifts and an overbearing score.

The trouble with I Saw the Devil is that its cartoon characters do not inflict cartoon violence. The level of brutality on display might be affecting if accompanied by actual gravitas, but it’s impossible to feel deeply for any of the characters because there is so little to them.

It’s not hard to understand a man’s desire for revenge after his wife is murdered by a remorseless, barbaric killer, but the extreme shape his revenge… See more →

In Jaws: The Revenge, Ellen Brody becomes convinced that the various, oversized sharks that have tormented her family over the last twelve years are somehow associated, or organized, or something. Whether Brody is wrong or right, there’s some fun potential in the concept. However, despite going so far as to hint that she may even have some kind of psychic connection with the shark du jour, Jaws: The Revenge doesn’t commit to its lunacy, and… See more →

Jaws 3 boasts the hokiest special effects of the entire series. Since those effects are apparently its reason for being (its original title was Jaws 3-D), and relatively little effort was exerted elsewhere in the production, this one is probably best viewed in 3-D with expectations kept low.

Jaws 2 may be the best of the superfluous Jaws sequels, but it’s arguably the most boring. In its attempt to maintain the setting and tone of the flawless original, it’s mostly an unremarkable retread that seems resignedly cognizant of its own disposability.

For the second feature of a 28-year-old filmmaker, Jaws is an incredibly assured effort, and still every bit as terrifying as it was 40 years ago.

M Night Shyamalan is many things, but he is not a hack. His movies are dumb, but they are entirely his own, worlds that are not so richly imagined as they are distinctively contrived. Every character has an overwritten variation of Shyamalan’s own voice, rendering all dialogue conspicuously flat. Ludicrous premises and moments are carefully engineered with the bewildering expectation of generating pathos, shock, or delight. Even mainstream audiences seem to be confused as to… See more →

Recalling the confined paranoia of Roman Polanski’s apartment trilogy, and, more recently, The Babadook’s exploration of grief and maternal anxiety, Under the Shadow is an effective chiller set in Tehran during the Iran–Iraq war of the 1980s. When her husband is drafted by the military, Shideh (Narges Rashidi) is left alone to care for her daughter as bombs fall on Tehran and her neighbors flee the city. Still stinging from a medical school rejection… See more →

House is the Japanese tween fever dream I never knew I needed to experience. Virtually every shot is highly stylized in a different way, each scene is more bonkers than the last, and there is very little sense to be made of any of it. It’s an exhausting but worthwhile investment.

Not the worst of the crowded early ’80s slasher field, but an artless entry all the same, straying from the playbook in all the wrong ways. Bloody Birthday is so enamored of its premise (essentially The Bad Seed cubed) that it can’t take its eyes off its pint-sized villains, which means we know exactly what they’re up to at all times. Some of their murderous mischief is for revenge, and some is indiscriminate, but absolutely… See more →

Every October, I put together a sizable schedule of horror/thriller/exploitation films, most of which I haven’t seen before. Dates and times (subject to change) are listed for any friends who want to join me. Also available as a handy Google calendar!

Don't Breathe

Fede Álvarez (USA, Hungary, 2016)

Three delinquents break into the house of a war veteran who is blind to steal his money. However, they discover that the man is not as defenseless as… See more →

Hesher gorehounds will enjoy Deathgasm’s gleeful synthesis of metal lore and maximal carnage, but its blood-soaked slapstick lacks the imagination of the Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson classics that inspired it.

For a very silly mockumentary about vampire roommates, What We Do in the Shadows packs a lot of heart, even as said vampires are violently devouring the blood of their innocent victims. Their benign malevolence (and that of their werewolf nemeses) – bolstered by impressively committed special effects – is a rare and delightful alchemy, and one that generates a lot of laughs.

In 1967, Terence Young, director of several 007 movies, gave us Wait Until Dark, in which a blind woman is terrorized in her home by criminals who believe their contraband is hidden there. Its title, a command, refers both to its villains’ nocturnal scheming and to its heroine finding empowerment in her disability.

In 2016, Mike Flanagan, whose Oculus was a modest horror hit, gave us Hush, in which a deaf woman is terrorized in… See more →