Horror | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: My Bloody Valentine [1981]

2019/02/132020/03/30 Jared Mobarak

It can’t be happening again. Only Canada would let a holiday slasher film like My Bloody Valentine—known for having its most disturbing bits of gore chopped away for the ratings board—end with a folk ballad that gives its murderous psychopath Harry Warden an almost nostalgic lilt. With John McDermott‘s voice lending it credence, we’re pretty much given a full recap of the legend that George Mihalka reignites twenty years after those first deaths ravaged Valentine Bluffs’ sleepy little mining town. It was the community’s namesake party on February 14th, 1960…

REVIEW: Lords of Chaos [2019]

2019/02/042020/03/30 Jared Mobarak

One shot to the head and it’s all over. Talk to “true” Norwegian black metal fans and they’ll tell you Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind‘s book about the scene’s origins and criminality is a bunch of baloney (but in much harsher words). It’s interesting because the facts behind a series of church burnings, the suicide of a lead singer, and two subsequently high profile murders are indisputable. Those who were tried and found guilty before serving their time in prison don’t dispute the acts themselves, but merely the way in…

REVIEW: Christine [1983]

2019/01/192020/03/30 Jared Mobarak

You have nothing to lose but your virginity. It shouldn’t be surprising to see parallels between John Carpenter‘s Christine and today considering we live in an era where phrases like “boys will be boys” are used to full stop sanitize the increasingly deplorable actions of young white American men. Back in the 1970s when this film (and Stephen King‘s novel on which it is adapted) is set, we would laugh at the so-called “locker room” talk of teenage boys sexualizing their female classmates and knowingly chiding the nerdy kids chiming…

REVIEW: Braid [2019]

2019/01/172020/03/30 Jared Mobarak

Reality will never keep up with our dreams. Our lives consist of uncertainties. To progress forward is to confront each new possibility as the product of dream or nightmare—an open door to leap through and succeed or a closed window to surrender all hope of escape. We retreat within ourselves for the motivation to jump higher and rely on those we trust to help break our inevitable falls. One road leads to comfort until the shine wears off. The next winds its way towards rebirth until tragedy strikes or self-doubt…

REVIEW: Piercing [2019]

2019/01/032020/03/30 Jared Mobarak

The terror must be in English. A marriage between the gorgeously disturbing imagery Nicolas Pesce delivered via his debut The Eyes of My Mother and the surreally warped sensibilities of Audition author Ryû Murakami definitely piqued my interest as far as the former’s adaptation of the latter’s novel Piercing. This psycho-thriller concerns new father Reed’s (Christopher Abbott) need to briefly leave his wife (Laia Costa‘s Mona) and the baby he can’t stop himself from wanting to stab with an ice pick in order to find a prostitute with which to…

REVIEW: New Year, New You [2018]

2018/12/272020/10/02 Jared Mobarak

I control my own destiny. You cannot talk about Sophia Takal‘s New Year, New You (the fourth episode of Blumhouse Television’s holiday-themed Hulu series “Into the Dark”) without mentioning producer Jason Blum‘s reaction to a Twitter storm in October that stemmed from an interview wherein the low-budget financier relayed an erroneous statement that “there are not a lot of female directors period, and even less who are inclined to do horror.” Blum talked specifically about how he’s offered pre-packaged projects to women in the past who have turned him down—artists…

REVIEW: The Possession of Hannah Grace [2018]

2018/11/292020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

Green means go. Megan Reed (Shay Mitchell) is so intentionally drawn for the plot of The Possession of Hannah Grace that you can take bets before sitting down on whether she’ll prove the hero (itching for redemption as a former cop who froze when her partner was shot and killed in the field) or future host of the demon wreaking havoc in the morgue (her partner’s death has left her a shattered and anxious recovering addict who’s obviously susceptible to the darkness she hopes to shed). This duality is where…

REVIEW: The House That Jack Built [2018]

2018/11/282020/03/31 Jared Mobarak

The choice is entirely yours. I can’t wait to discover what’s next for Lars von Trier‘s oeuvre. He followed his Dogme 95 phase with a period steeped in depression and now that one has seemingly just ended with [the blatantly autobiographical] film The House That Jack Built. At its center is the personification of this latter phase’s creative genius—a projection of his aesthetically gorgeous vignettes of brutally depraved imagery. This serial killer (Matt Dillon‘s Jack) sees his trophies as art, his victims the material with which he’s created them from…

REVIEW: Suspiria [2018]

2018/11/022020/04/01 Jared Mobarak

Of what do you ask? I’m no big fan of Dario Argento‘s Suspiria. It’s a gorgeous film overflowing with mood and aesthetic that ultimately becomes the poster child for style over substance before gradually revealing more to offer upon subsequent viewings. In the end, however, it still doesn’t add up to much besides its place as a prototypical entry in the horror genre that’s inspired countless works in the four decades since release. So I got excited when a remake was announced. If ever a “classic” movie deserved a new…

REVIEW: Monster Party [2018]

2018/10/242020/04/01 Jared Mobarak

Simple as a pimple. I have to think writer/director Chris von Hoffmann saw The Purge and wondered what could be born from reversing the good guy and bad guy roles. Those are generic terms of course since both movies ultimately contain bad guys and worse guys, but for the sake of argument we’ll say that the characters we’re supposed to hope survive are “good.” Rather than fear an impending invasion, however, the “good” guys in Monster Party are the infiltrators. A trio of two-bit thieves, Casper (Sam Strike) talks accomplices…

REVIEW: Passengers [2008]

2018/10/012020/04/01 Jared Mobarak

Better now than later. An explosion, crash, confused man, and burning plane: this is the sequence of images as Rodrigo García‘s Passengers commences. It’s a pretty straightforward visual set-up for the incident everything else will surround before his lead (Anne Hathaway‘s Dr. Claire Summers) is introduced during the next scene. She’s a trauma counselor enlisted by her boss (Andre Braugher‘s Perry) to take point on helping the small group of people who survived process the event. They’re all in differing stages of psychological distress with one remembering a fire (Ryan…