Black Box has a convincing airplane set and one energetic alien attack, but its stock passengers, awkward writing, inconsistent creature rules, and overreaching effects leave the high-concept premise grounded.
Read More
A terrible but occasionally funny SNL film, It’s Pat reveals how gender anxiety and the need to categorize can turn curiosity into obsession.
Read More
Hysteria is at its best when everyone has a defensible version of the truth and a selfish reason for insisting
Read More
This article contains major spoilers. Dystopian films are often treated as a collection of recognizable images: surveillance cameras, brutalist architecture,
Read More
This essay contains major spoilers for Shutter Island (2010). I remember the first time I saw Shutter Island vividly. My
Read More
Sweetheart (2019) gets a lot of mileage out of a simple fear: the ocean is scary as hell. J. D.
Read More
Opus works best before it explains anything. For much of writer-director Mark Anthony Green’s feature debut, the film traps its
Read More
Most horror films give fear a recognizable shape. The killer wants revenge. The ghost remains attached to a particular place.
Read More
There is something deeply unpleasant about watching an inanimate “object” suddenly appearing in a different spot. Oddity works with this kind
Read More
There is a compelling idea at the center of Alexandre Aja’s Never Let Go (2024): abuse reproduces itself. Trauma doesn’t remain sealed
Read More
Donnie Darko (2001) ends by killing the young man it has spent most of its running time keeping alive. A jet
Read More
This essay contains major spoilers. In Concrete Utopia, an earthquake destroys Seoul but leaves one piece of the old world remarkably
Read More
What makes a life worth living? Is it happiness, love, useful work, spiritual belief, artistic achievement, or simply the experience
Read More
I’m surprised that The Scandalous Lady W didn’t attract more attention. It has Natalie Dormer at the height of her Game
Read More
This review contains major spoilers. Blink Twice (2024) is one of those films where I could feel the director enjoying how
Read More
Talk to Me (2022) understands that the most dangerous supernatural object isn’t necessarily one that forces itself on people. Sometimes it’s
Read More
Near the end of Super Dark Times (2017), Zach tries to stop Josh with the one kind of speech the boys have
Read More