Horror | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Ready or Not [2019]

2019/08/222020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

You picked the one bad card. All Grace (Samara Weaving) has ever wanted since bouncing around foster homes during her adolescence was a permanent family to call her own. With Alex Le Domas (Mark O’Brien) that dream has become a reality. He wasn’t interested in a big wedding since he’d been estranged from those back home who lived in the lap of astronomical wealth’s luxury due to a gaming empire begun by his great-grandfather, but he relented to fulfill her wish. Alex could see it as one solitary evening of…

REVIEW: Tone-Deaf [2019]

2019/08/132020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

Maybe you should get out of the city for a bit. The kids just aren’t the same anymore and it’s slowly making Harvey (Robert Patrick) go insane. His son (Ronnie Gene Blevins‘ David) thinks it’s dementia and wants to put him in an assisted living institute, but that’s merely another example of America’s youth forgetting their responsibilities. In his day family took care of itself. When Harvey’s wife died, he did everything to give his son a good life. And this is his reward? Abandonment? He’s sacrificed blood, sweat, tears,…

REVIEW: Un couteau dans le coeur [Knife+Heart] [2018]

2019/08/032020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

She’s playing with real life. Anne Parèze (Vanessa Paradis) has ruined her love. What she’s done to push Loïs (Kate Moran) away is unknown, but her desperation ensures we know she was dumped and not the dumper. Whatever happened hasn’t soured their relationship completely, however. Loïs still cares enough about Anne as a person and especially as an artist to remain editor on her cheaply produced gay porn films utilizing the same loyal troupe of actors—her eye forever lingering on Anne’s smile whenever it’s caught on-camera before François (Bertrand Mandico)…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: 8 [2019]

2019/08/012020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

I am the wanderer and you are mine forever. It’s a chicken and egg conundrum. Does a demon named Utuli roam the earth in search of souls to consume, feeding on the weakness of those who’ve endured lost to serve as its host? Or does it create turmoil and tragedy precisely to enlist those willing to give themselves over to its quest for satiation—causing the pain it feeds on rather than opportunistically finding the pain we create for ourselves? No matter which choice proves to be correct, we are left…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: Sator [2021]

2019/07/302020/12/14 Jared Mobarak

He will make you pure. Writer/director (and pretty much every other behind the scenes position a feature-length film demands) Jordan Graham‘s grandmother used to hear voices and write the words being spoken down as though they were messages she needed to both understand and follow. She called the orator Sator, “his” name scrawled upon the pieces of paper that ultimately gave these trances permanence through physical form. I can’t imagine how it must have felt for Graham to experience the phenomenon—especially considering June Peterson wasn’t the only one in his…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: Homewrecker [2019]

2019/07/272020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

I love drama. Leaving your home always risks an encounter with someone too pleasant and boundary-averse to rebuke. You want to point to the headphones in your ears that aren’t actually playing anything as a means to avoid conversation, but they don’t get the hint because you’ve unwittingly enamored them. Or maybe you accidentally engaged them first in some desperate need for a favor—turning an anonymous acquaintance into a potential friendship you simply don’t have time to foster. What then are your choices when he/she seizes upon that brief window…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: The Wretched [2019]

2019/07/182020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

Poked the bear. A witch that feeds on forgotten children has taken hold of a sleepy lakeside village in Michigan. It’s because its victims are “forgotten,” however, that nobody ever seems to notice. Not only do the adults assist it by either providing themselves as vessel (it steps into the skin of women) or servant (men are turned to drones with a whisper), they have no reason to fight back since what they would be fighting for no longer exists to them. Maybe this “dark mother” will infiltrate a target’s…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: The Deeper You Dig [2019]

2019/07/162020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Every gift is its own twisted curse. It’s funny where the mind can go when you only know a few details at first. That John Adams and Toby Poser‘s latest family-fueled film The Deeper You Dig is horror was enough to convince me that a line spoken by Ivy’s (Poser) daughter Echo (the filmmakers’ own child and co-director, Zelda Adams) about going hunting meant their game was humans. Was it a wild leap of my imagination? Sure. But here’s a woman dabbling in the occult who tells her goth kid…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: DreadOut [2019]

2019/07/152020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

Don’t you dare say those words. Malignant forces within Catholic tales of evil generally seek to create Hell on Earth by finding a host willing to read the ancient words serving as their key. It’s therefore rare to receive scenes of demonic possession wherein a writhing body with black fluid spewing from its mouth screams for a portal not to be opened. But that’s exactly how writer/director Kimo Stamboel opens his cinematic adaptation of DreadOut—an indie survival horror videogame from Indonesia. He introduces a group of men holding the demon…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: Jade’s Asylum [2019]

2019/07/112020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

You’re the one who brought sand to the beach. We don’t get our bearings as far as locale and characters go until a little ways into Alexandre Carrière‘s Jade’s Asylum. While we’ve already met Jade (Morgan Kohan) and her boyfriend Toby (Kjartan Hewitt) in the midst of a fight wherein he blames his infidelity on her need for a therapist (if his infidelity can be believed along with anything that occurs on-screen), it’s two police officers engaged in an illicit affair (Mauricio Morales‘ Alvares and Diana Marcela Aguilar Chavez‘s Vasquez)…

FANTASIA19 REVIEW: Sadako [2019]

2019/07/082020/03/26 Jared Mobarak

That new girl is creepy. Director Hideo Nakata brought novelist Kôji Suzuki‘s Ring series to the big screen two decades ago and spawned a laundry list of sequels, American remakes (one of which he helmed), comics, and television remakes that each put their own unique spin on central “monster” Sadako Yamamura’s history until fluidity of mythology became a veritable franchise hallmark. Things got muddled fast too as the initial follow-up to Ringu fared so poorly (with a different creative team at the lead to release the same year) that it…