As the great John Carpenter once said, horror is a universal language. We are all born afraid. Fear can be attributed to a lot of every day actions. We get to work on time in fear of being late. We attend social events in fear of missing out. Even those who have supposedly mastered fear still feel afraid. Batman fights criminals in fear of letting down the memory of his parents and his city. But what is it that people generally fear the most? What is it that keeps us up at night looking at that dark corner of our bedrooms? The unknown.
Continue readingCategory: Film reviews (2022) (Page 1 of 3)
Horror films rarely call for a sequel. Inevitably, the obligation for at least a relatively firm conclusion is embedded in the genre’s DNA. Of course there are many famous horror franchises, and as Ti West himself declared you simply “can’t make a slasher movie without a bunch of sequels”.
But despite this, I cannot think of a single time that a second instalment was actually necessary for the sake of the plot. How can there be loose ends to tie up when the haunted family, the vacationing school-friends, or the blushing newly weds have already met a grim fate? Likewise Pearl, the follow-up prequel to last years 70s inspired witty gore flick X, is a film that is, at its core, entirely unneeded. But this certainly doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a watch.
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Have you ever seen a film or TV show that you just can’t quite pin down? Something that feels fresh and unique but also tried and tested. Something that doesn’t conform to typical genre conventions but also knows when to use tropes and clichés effectively. Something that once you’ve seen it, your mind races trying to generalise what you’ve just seen. Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All is the epitome of a film that you can’t ‘pin down’.
Bones and All tells the story of two young soul-mates whose dark secret means they must live on the outskirts of society, travelling the American Midwest, discovering themselves and coming to terms with their traumatic past.
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Mentioning Darren Aronofsky’s name in a cluster of film critics is a lot like unpinning a grenade on a battlefield where sharp wit and scathing reviews are typically favoured over weaponry. To say the least, he is a man who generates debate.
Over 5 years later I can still pinpoint the exact moment I realised I well and truly, through to the last fibre of my being, hated his pseudo-biblical, pseudo-environmentally-conscious, profanely indulgent 2017 gore fest Mother!
If his latest A24 flick hadn’t been met with a standing ovation at several film festivals, I doubt I could’ve stomached to do more than glance in its direction if I spotted it decades down the line in a thrift market. And yet, The Whale absolutely surprised me in a way that Aronofsky has not been able to before.
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Damien Chazelle’s Babylon begins with a rip-roaring 20s Hollywood party. An extravagant set-piece that ultimately sums up Chazelle’s sprawling epic.
Think of it like this – The party starts at an electric pace. You’re so caught up in everything that time absolutely flies by with one memorable moment after another. Until, things are dying down a little. People are leaving, the music’s getting slower and so is the party.
Then with only the last dregs of party goers left, you’re cornered by that one guy that is so off-their-nut that they believe everything they’re saying is so profound, deep and meaningful, when in fact it’s just pretentious nonsense! After all is said and done, you have a terrible hangover the next day but you can’t stop reliving memories from the night before.
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How do you follow up the biggest film of all time? Good question isn’t it? And it’s clear that it’s a question director James Cameron has been asking himself hundreds of times.
You see, Avatar was released way back in 2009, and it also happened to be my first ever review on this site (ignore the rusty writing back then). It’s taken 13 years for Cameron to release The Way of Water. But is it any good? And more importantly, are people going to be at all interested in it?
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Good Luck to You, Leo Grande stars the legendary actress Emma Thompson and up-and-comer Daryl McCormack (who plays Isaiah Jesus in Peaky Blinders). Sophia Hyde directs the film. Hyde started her career focusing on short documentary films and made her full-length feature debut with 52 Tuesdays in 2014.
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There’s few directors that ‘burst on to the scene’ like Jordan Peele did back in 2017 with the Oscar-winning horror/thriller/satire Get Out. In his first feature film, Peele tackled the racial divide in a way audiences never saw coming and has continued to surprise audiences in unexpected ways. Two years later Peele made Us (2019), while a competent and intriguing horror/thriller with similar themes and allegory, it didn’t quite reach the narrative tightness and unexpected brilliance of Get Out. Now the former funny-man turned horror-auteur presents audiences with his latest ‘spectacle’, Nope.
The question everyone will be asking is “is it as good as Get Out?”. Honestly, that might not be achievable based on how Peele seemed to ‘catch lightning in a bottle’ with his first feature, however with Nope Jordan Peele has brought an entertaining cinematic experience to the big screen that in terms of size, scope and filmmaking in general, surpasses the achievements of Get Out and Us, fully cementing him as one of cinema’s most interesting horror filmmakers.
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For anyone that saw the last Predator film, I think I speak for most when I say that expectations for a new instalment were rock bottom. The Predator franchise has had its ups and downs, with most sequels failing to capture what made the original so memorable.
Enter Prey, the latest film in the Predator canon that is the first to not be released in cinemas, instead going straight to Disney + or Hulu in the US. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg of 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) fame, Prey is a back-to-its-roots prequel to the original 1987 film, set 300 years in the past following Naru (Amber Midthunder) a Native American who attempts to prove herself a hunter only to find that she and her tribe are being hunted themselves by the predator on what’s assumed to be its first hunt on earth.
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With Angus MacLane (BURN-E, Toy Story of Terror!, Toy Story Toons: Small Fry) at the helm and Chris Evans (Knives Out, Snowpiercer, Avengers: Endgame) starring as the titular space ranger, this expansion was all set to be an out of this world experience for fans and newcomers alike. While this is initially the case, a retcon appears towards the film’s third act which prevents the story from reaching hyperspace.
The story as a whole is well written, with the exception being the aforementioned franchise retcon which has been a major turn off for some fans. In addition, the bizarre choice is made to have the, in universe, merchandising for the film be based off the suits and star ship from the closing minutes of the film.
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