Oh! The Horror… | of a Silent Scream
I was raised on a healthy diet of classic film and television growing up, everything from It Happened One Night to My Three Sons and so on. Once I set my sights on horror as a genre, it would not be long until…
Oh! The Horror… | of Double Features, Vol. II
I am so pleased this week to be collaborating, once again, with my good friend, Joseph Nooft, who is a contributor for Mockingbird. We wanted to bring to you some more suggestions for double features—a non-horror film paired with a horror…
Review| Dunkirk
There is a quote that goes around attributed to François Truffaut about the incapability of making an anti-war film. This quote was used often by Roger Ebert, but is actually quite difficult to pin down its actual source. Truffaut does…
Oh! The Horror… | of Dissolution
Imagine for a second: an amorphous mass of gelatinous ooze engulfs a person and, just as they open their mouth to air their protests of fear, the pulsating form reaches out its bulbous tentacle and begins to slide down the…
Review| Baby Driver
If you expect your films to have narrative complexity, don’t go see this film. If you expect your films to break apart common cinematic tropes and characterizations, don’t go see this film. If you want your musicals to contain characters…
Oh! The Horror… | of 2040: The Year of the First Female Mechanic
The second episode of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace finds its comedic locus in the obliviousness to the privilege that men have in society. Liz (played by the superb Alice Lowe) came to Darkplace as a new hire straight out of “Harvard…
Review| It Comes At Night
There is no way to spoil this film, because the film never reveals the “it” of its title. “It” is shrouded in as much resistant mystery by the end of the film as it is in the first scene. Its…
Oh! The Horror… | of Slaughtered and Transformed Masculinity
Clearly Rambo (I refer to the general type) has his secure place in popular cinema. That place is not horror, however. If Rambo were to wander out of the action genre into a slasher film, he would end up dead.…
Oh! The Horror… | of Displacing God
James Whale brought to the screen what is considered the most dynamic film in the first cycle of Universal monster pictures of the 1930s, 1931’s Frankenstein. Though diverging from Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, in three significant ways–making…
Oh! The Horror… | of Listening to Other People
There have a been a couple of moments in my life where I have truly been frightened by an event that took place, which at the time and to this day, I have not been able to explain. There have…