TIFF REVIEW: The Predator [2018]

Did I say that out loud? Writer Shane Black had a good year in 1987. He burst onto the action screenwriting scene with Lethal Weapon. Co-wrote the cult classic children versus Universal monsters fantasy The Monster Squad with Fred Dekker. And landed a supporting role in the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring Predator as an exfil team member unwittingly embroiled in a fight against an alien hunter of unfathomable power. It’s therefore only fitting that he’d reunite with Dekker three decades later to direct a new installment in the latter’s oft-returned to franchise.…

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REVIEW: The Little Stranger [2018]

Well you’re forgiven now. Novelist Sarah Waters said her intent with The Little Stranger was never to write a ghost story, but instead speak about the rise of socialism in the United Kingdom and how those of affluent stature just below the nobility dealt with the decline of their legacies in its aftermath. I haven’t read the book myself, but this all rings true as far as Lenny Abrahamson‘s cinematic adaptation. Scripted by Lucinda Coxon, the result is more gothic romance than horror at first glance. While the marketing has…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Endzeit [Endzeit – Ever After] [2018]

Go out and bury what haunts you. What if humanity’s apocalypse wasn’t the world’s end? We’ve become so used to treating ourselves as rulers of this planet despite knowing so little about it and the surrounding universe while also doing our best to destroy everything we touch. So what are we truly besides another in a long line of species with no greater hold on Mother Nature than the last? Our demise doesn’t therefore have to be by our own hand and hubris. Perhaps those two things merely place our…

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VENICE18 REVIEW: Tumbbad [2018]

Wake her up and ask yourself. As the Hindu folktale at the start of Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad‘s Tumbbad states: while the Goddess of Plenty birthed 160 million deities from her womb (Earth), the one she loved most is also the one that’s been erased from memory. His name is Hastar and he was her first. As such, he saw the wealth and food she provided mankind and coveted it for himself. He reached for the gold and his brother and sisters allowed it for money was merely…

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REVIEW: Mandy [2018]

It’s all but a beautiful dream. At some point during Panos Cosmatos‘ acid trip of a phantasmagoric horror Mandy you will start to wonder if you’re the one tripping on LSD. It could be when oily ghouls on motorcycles arrive with the call of a stone horn’s whistle or perhaps when a severed jugular sprays blood all over our hero’s face as he screams in deranged delight. You’ll watch as the characters onscreen drink hallucinogens, prick others with the stinger of a giant insect, and snort cocaine—each new experience opening…

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REVIEW: Pappy’s World [2018]

Come on. Tickle me. A self-proclaimed “socially responsible Blaxpoitation” horror short from director Matt Wisniewski and co-writer Fred Polone, Pappy’s World arrives as though a music video for Buffalo-based art-rock project Smokin’ Black Tar with an opening guitar-led track against the silent movements of a young girl (Jaz Frazier) around Christmastime. While she eyeballs a stack of presents and wonders how to get the top-most package down without waking her grandfather (Polone in lo-fi elderly make-up), the camera highlights her deliberate, silent-era over-exaggerations to tell this tale with expressive gestures.…

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REVIEW: The Meg [2018]

Discover and then destroy. An adaptation of Steve Alten‘s Navy deep-sea diver/paleobiologist Jonas Taylor-led series of novels has been in the works pretty much since the first installment was published back in 1997. There have been six literary sequels written since then as the property changed hands from Disney to Warner Bros. and directors from Jan de Bont to Eli Roth to Jon Turteltaub. That second name is interesting because Alten’s book is described as a science-fiction horror. So to read that Roth left over “creative differences” can’t help but…

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REVIEW: Beau [2011]

“Well I’m horrified too” Just before he’s about to leave his apartment for a flight to visit his mother, Beau (Billy Mayo) realizes he’s forgotten his dental floss. What should be a quick jaunt upstairs to the bathroom becomes the biggest mistake of his life upon returning to see his keys—which he left in the lock—are gone. He has no choice but to cancel his plans and stay home. He can’t leave his possessions unguarded, but he can’t risk letting down his defenses in case whoever took his keys returns…

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REVIEW: The Ranger [2018]

Coming here was a really bad idea. With punk rock blasting from the stage of a hole-in-the-wall venue that’s probably not actually open to the public considering an eventual police raid shutting it all down, Chelsea (Chloe Levine) is introduced looking the part if not quite one hundred percent committed to this zero consequence, wild lifestyle those around her have embraced as their core identity. Her friends consider themselves a family who do everything together whether getting wasted, stealing drugs at knifepoint, or stabbing cops to get away. They protect…

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FANTASIA18 REVIEW: Cam [2018]

I literally love you. There’s a moment in director Daniel Goldhaber‘s Cam where Alice (Madeline Brewer) is talking to her younger brother Jordan (Devin Druid) about the previous evening’s performance on web-cam site Free Live Girls. She moved past sex gimmicks towards the dark world of snuff film aesthetics and it worked to move her up more leaderboard spots in one session than she ever had before. He gives her a congratulatory fist-bump and asks whether she’s told their mother (Melora Walters‘ Lynne) what her new lucrative job actually is…

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FANTASIA18 REVIEW: Pengabdi Setan [Satan’s Slaves] [2017]

Have pity on the children. It wasn’t until 2006 that cult Indonesian horror film Pengabdi Setan [Satan’s Slave] finally received a DVD pressing after accruing its mystique without subtitles courtesy of a Japanese VHS. The 1980 release from director Sisworo Gautama Putra has been called an unofficial remake of Don Coscarelli‘s Phantasm, its supernatural haunting steeped in Muslim beliefs and Indonesian folklore rather than the usual Christian trappings associated with the Devil. The pedigree it holds therefore made it unsurprising that Joko Anwar (who grew up on genre fare spanning…

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