A Deluge of Dark Water(s): The Dark Waters of Dark Waters (1944), Dark Waters (1993), Dark Water (2002), and Dark Waters (2019)
When I was a child, I thought I was surrounded by bad guys. This is not a metaphor. I had the creeping suspicion that everyone I knew—my grandma, the dentist, the children’s pastor at my church, my pre-school teachers, everybody—was…
The Bright Abysses of The Lighthouse (2019) & Sunshine (2007)
“And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.” Exodus 3:6 (NKJV) The story of Moses and the burning bush has rattled my being since I was old enough to understand its nuances. An all-consuming fire…
Saying Farewell to a Decade of Farewells with The Farewell
For Verona Lou Collier “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” -1 Corinthians 15:32 Lulu Wang’s The Farewell (2019) opens with a joke about how to tell a woman that her cat…
My Top Ten 2019: Blake I. Collier
#10: Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror I read Robin Means Coleman’s history of African American representation in horror a few years ago so when I heard it was going to be made into a full-on documentary, I was…
Whose Playground Is This?: The Florida Project (2017) & The Beach Bum (2019)
Florida was a meme long before the internet. A vacation destination, a retirement home, a place where dreams came true—all the manufactured joy money can buy. For all of Florida’s appealing façade, it often seems that common sense gets trapped…
Review| Skin (2019)
What are the factors and events that must happen in order to shift a person away from a violent and dangerous system of thought? Most of the answers given to this question are understandably abstract, because no singular process of…
Review| Impossible Monsters
The concept of sleep paralysis is terrifying on the very surface: one’s mind/consciousness rises from sleep before one’s body does and, in most cases, hallucinations accompany the experience. I had two occasions of sleep paralysis in a one week period…
Review| Pet Sematary (2019)
Filmic adaptations of books are tricky, and they will never be universally loved by all because of the various subjective attachments we have to the books. Yet, from the birth of cinema, that has never stopped Hollywood from making them.…
The Unearthing of Class in a “Class-less” Society: The Red Scare of Jordan Peele’s Us
“And the Lord said to me, ‘A conspiracy has been found among the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They have turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers who refused to hear My words, and they have gone after other gods to…
The Second Day of the Rest of Your Life: Happy Death Day 2U (2019)
“If we were vampires and death was a joke We’d go out on the sidewalk and smoke And laugh at all the lovers and their plans I wouldn’t feel the need to hold your hand Maybe time running out is…