Ah, it’s that magical time of year when all the scary things in the dark can finally show their face. A celebrated season of spooky fun and gruesome delights, where kids can dress up like monsters and their parents have full permission to scare the shit out of them.
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What to say about The Tribe? Let’s start with this: it’s a very difficult film to watch in every respect. It’s a Ukrainian film entirely cast with deaf-mutes, most of them non-actors. There is no speaking in the film and no soundtrack, only ambient noise, and no subtitles, only sign language. It’s also terribly grim and brutal, and it’s unlike any movie you will ever see.
First time Ukrainian feature writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s film seems daunting from description, a 2-hour and ten minute movie featuring only deaf-mutes with no names. However, the movie is transfixing from the opening scene, and somehow through actions and reactions, you know what is unfolding before you. After a few moments you’re so engrossed you don’t even miss what’s not there.
Read MoreEdan Lepucki was just minding her own writerly business when she was suddenly thrust into the center of a pop culture frenzy earlier this year. When her book, California, came up on the TV screen one evening, brought forth by the hands of none other than Stephen Colbert, her fate as a famed author was sealed. Since then, she’s had quite the ride.
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Micro budget films often have a great charm. They’re under lit, gritty and really ambitious at times. They’re made for and with love, and it often shows. But then there are those in this genre that are overly ambitious to a fault, and the whole package ends up suffering a great deal. You can’t make a great film without a great script, I don’t care how much money you have, or don’t have.
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Where to begin with Horns? The new movie has quite the pedigree: It’s directed by Alexandre Aja (of The Hills Have Eyes remake fame), based on a novel by Joe Hill (the famed author and son of horror titan Stephen King), and stars Daniel Radcliffe (the Harry Potter dude) in a performance removed from his acting legacy.
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There are few things as satisfying as a fresh and exciting new horror film. It’s rare these days to find one with a story that stands on its own, one that honors its influences without falling back on post-modern meta genre commentary, and one that genuinely gives you the creeps. With David Robert Mitchell‘s new indie horror flick, It Follows, we find such a rarity, with well-placed, jump-from-your-seat scares and bona fide unsettling chills that sink in and stay with you long after the credits have ended.
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Welcome back, Kevin Smith.
We just finished the Tusk screening at this year’s Fantastic Fest, and I’m filled with the warmth I can only liken to a lapsed Catholic being moved by mass. Once a die hard Kevin Smith fan (and, as such, a Kevin Smith apologist), I enthusiastically wore Jay and Silent Bob t-shirts every day, tracked down every international Chasing Amy movie poster I could find, attended every Vulgarthon film festival, and many, many other nerdy endeavors. Over the past decade that enthusiasm waned as Smith’s output declined in quality. When I heard he was retiring from filmmaking, my reaction was little more than a shrug.
Read MoreGorgon Video is one of the essential 80s producers of what’s dubbed “horror cheapies,” films that probably didn’t have much of an onset budget beyond craft services and cocaine. Described as a company “focusing on the sub-genre of extreme horror and dark documentaries,” they’re best known for their classic VHS clamshell cases and the Faces of Death series, an utterly delightful video taboo among teenagers of every decade since its release.
Read MoreAh, the 90s. A time of democracy, rock ‘n roll, hip hop, American wealth, and the carefree days of the early internet. We see those days now, looking back through rose-tinted lenses, as the last decade of true innocence. Death and destruction only existed on the 11 o’clock news. Our sitcoms and cartoons satiated us and kept us safe from the hideous dangers of the larger world.
But if we took off those rose-tinted glasses we’d probably see that our world wasn’t quite as pristine as we remembered. In a way, that’s exactly what artist Paul Ribera has done with his latest works, a series of beloved 1990s cartoon characters depicted as down-and-out drug addicts. With this, he’s sufficiently tuned many people’s childhoods, but has also given us a dose of reality some may not have experienced.
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Imagine you’re sending some personal emails between busy Monday meetings, casually describing to the recipient your recent and brutal knife murder of both a dog and a man. The ads generated in the subsequent email chain would likely be relevant to knife sharpening, or maybe animal care. However, if you use a racial slur, Google would serve you no ads at all.
This is what happened to Patrick Bateman, the infamous killer from Brett Easton Ellis’s much loved and hated anti-consumerist, 80s bloodbath, American Psycho. Well, it’s what would’ve happened had he been real and in 2014. Oh, and sending emails regarding his depravity.
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