How Culture Has Killed the Zombie: The Dead Don’t Die and the Death of Meaning
“[George Romero] turns the whole concept into something completely different. You can’t control the zombies. They are out of control. Generally, monsters — vampires, Frankenstein, Godzilla, whatever — they are outside the social structure. They are a danger to it, they are…
It’s Not About You: Godzilla: King of the Monsters and the Legacy of Toho
However, Godzilla: King of the Monsters maintains the legacy of the franchise in a way that the 1998 or 2014 do not because of their overtly Western narrative frameworks. It concentrates on the kaiju, first and foremost, while obscuring the human stories in order to broaden the thematic world beyond the human perspective, and it maintains the environmental critique that has been present since the first film. Within the legacy of Toho, the film is everything one could expect.
Review| Under The Silver Lake
I am sorry to start this review with a personal anecdote, but I’m white and male and we like talking about ourselves, so just bear with me. I, unfortunately, watched this film over two evenings because I wasn’t fortunate enough…
Of The 2000s
With this piece, we have come to the end of the Decade Series of “Oh! The Horror….” This has been a fruitful endeavor in trying to place horror within a wider context and I, myself, have learned quite a bit…
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…
of the 1990s
While the 80s might have had the shine and mythology of excess given to it from the rearview mirror of history, the 90s, by most appearances, lived in the full realization of that mythology. The thing that distinguished it from…
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…
of the 1980s
Oh, the 1980s. What a decade, what strange dichotomies befall us in digging into the film of this era. Read sites about film in the 1980s and you’ll see thinly disguised passive aggression towards the general cinematic output of the…
Review| Greta
Neil Jordan finally returns to the thriller and horror formula that he utilized 20 years ago with the Annette Benning vehicle In Dreams. This time he successfully brings one of the greatest actresses of our time out from the world…