Horror is for Grrrls

                         A grizzled old man sitting by a campfire tells a spooky story to a circle of rapt kids. A hundred years ago, on a foggy night, a ship mistook a campfire for the lighthouse and crashed against the rocks. There were no survivors. Legend has it that, when the fog returns, so will those unfortunate sailors.             Do you need anything more than that?             John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s The Fog is campfire ghost story energy perfectly distilled and transferred to celluloid, a spooky rainy treat perfect for watching on a gloomy night under a layer of blankets. The best parts of Halloween are the moments where it feels like an urban legend, Laurie peeking into the Meyer’s house and kids whispering about the boogieman. That vibe pervades this whole ...

                                      Is this the most underrated film of all time??             Seriously, why isn’t this taught in film studies and feminist theory courses in every university ever? Why don’t we watch this movie every Halloween, and then again on Ash Wednesday? Why aren’t there memes of this? Why haven’t I seen this before? Does no one love this movie as much as me?             I expected this movie to be homework, a little bit of a slog, notable mainly because Romero directed. I had the sense that it would be slow, talky, and pretty sedate. And it definitely falls on the artsy, thinky end of horror. If you’re looking for wacky occult spectacle, this won’t do it for you. It’s talky, sure, but it never feels boring, and it certainly never feels normal. N...

                        What if Scream , but from the point-of-view of the killers? What if Heathers was on TV today ? What if phones, but too much ?             Ok, I’m being a smidge mean. The premise of Tragedy Girls is actually solid. McKayla and Sadie are best friends and morbid teens with a fascination for true crime and an appetite for gore. A serial killer has taken four victims in their quiet Midwestern town. The pair of aspiring influencers create a social media presence documenting and speculating on the crimes, but their following is mediocre at best. All this happens before the movie starts. We meet the girls as they take their scheme to the next level by capturing the killer and continuing the murder spree on their own. Their modus operandi: kill everyone who ever even kinda sorta wronged them, frame the original killer, and go viral.  ...

                         Two young teens spend a snowy week in Pennsylvania with their mom’s estranged parents. They’re curious about their mom’s childhood, eager to reconcile mom with her folks, and still grieving from their dad’s abandonment for his new family several years prior. It could be a Hallmark Christmas movie….or it could be The Visit.             The kids of The Visit give off big Hallmark vibes too. Becka is fifteen, precocious, and full of herself, but with a keen awareness of her mom’s grief over the estrangement. Tyler is thirteen, a dork, and loves, um, the screenwriter’s best approximation of what kids are into, so, rap and the word yolo I guess. And everyone manages to learn a nice lesson about the meaning of family and not holding onto anger even though Nana and Pop-Pop turn out to be, shall we say, a little off.     ...

But first, an announcement : As you may notice, it’s not May 6 th . Oops. Trying to watch a daily movie and also finish my finals turned out to not be the most feasible plan. But fortunately, finals are done, and not only do I now have all the time in the world to watch horror movies, I was literally asked to do so by my professor in preparation for my internship. So I’ll watch and write up two movies today to get caught up with my themed days, and then just keep watching through the first week of June (and maybe after, since there is plenty more to watch and what else am I going to do with my time). It’ll just be Spring into Horror , I guess. On with the post!             Horror fan confession incoming – zombie movies have never been my bag. I like my horror movies to have a tight, claustrophobic focus; zoom out too far into the postapocalyptic and it feels more like an action flick. And the cowboy prepper individualism...

                             Psstt, kid! Hey, kid! Yeah, you. Want to see something your parents will really hate? Want to see limbs ripped off, little bits of cartilage and gristle hanging out? Want to see human bodies endure more pain and lose more blood than you thought physically possible? Want to see blood on blood on blood on blood that makes the Italian maestros look modest. Then boy do I have the film for you!               It’s 2013, the last gasp of remake fever. Gritty, grimdark, torture-porn inspired flicks are on their way out, to be replaced by demonic possession, spooky dolls, and the meticulous mise-en-scene of prestige indie horror. The Conjuring and The Purge launch their respective franchises. Cabin in the Woods , which deconstructed the slasher once and for fucking all, is one year old. Li...

                           We’re all in a time warp now. Nothing is happening, the days are all the same, and it’s been this way for an eternity. Some people want to use this abyss of time to become better people, and others are just fed up, and some of us just want to watch a lot of horror movies. Times like these call for a good Groundhog Day story, or maybe a nice slasher film. Luckily, we can have both.               The time loop premise of Happy Death Day is cute and all, but the real substance comes from its character work. Slasher movies love a messy bitch, and boy how do they love to kill her (God rest yr soul, Barb from Black Christmas ). But hear me out, what if the messy bitch could also be the final girl. Sorority girl Tree is an asshole in a sea of assholes. She goes to your archetypal hard-partying college with the world’s creepiest...