Mārama (2025) Review: Beautiful Yet Blunt Gothic Reckoning
Taratoa Stappard’s Mārama brings Māori history into a beautifully designed Victorian Gothic manor, but slow pacing and overly obvious symbolism weaken its colonial reckoning.
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Shoplifters (2018) Review: A Family Made From Stolen Time
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters finds beauty, love, and lasting memories inside a makeshift family whose reckless and sometimes criminal life together was always destined to end.
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Black Box (2026) Review: Aliens on a Plane Can’t Escape the Formula
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.
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Hysteria (2025) Review: Representation, Suspense, and Self-Interest
Hysteria is at its best when everyone has a defensible version of the truth and a selfish reason for insisting
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Shutter Island Ending Explained: Guilt, Self-Deception, and the Choice to Forget
This essay contains major spoilers for Shutter Island (2010). I remember the first time I saw Shutter Island vividly. My
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Never Let Go (2024): When Abuse Becomes a Monster
There is a compelling idea at the center of Alexandre Aja’s Never Let Go (2024): abuse reproduces itself. Trauma doesn’t remain sealed
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Donnie Darko: Does Sacrifice Mean Anything Without Free Will?
Donnie Darko (2001) ends by killing the young man it has spent most of its running time keeping alive. A jet
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13 Films About the Meaning of Life
What makes a life worth living? Is it happiness, love, useful work, spiritual belief, artistic achievement, or simply the experience
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Blink Twice (2024), When Power Depends on Forgetting
This review contains major spoilers. Blink Twice (2024) is one of those films where I could feel the director enjoying how
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Review: Talk to Me (2022), When Grief Becomes an Addiction
Talk to Me (2022) understands that the most dangerous supernatural object isn’t necessarily one that forces itself on people. Sometimes it’s
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Between Boys: Friendship, Desire, and Violence in Super Dark Times
Near the end of Super Dark Times (2017), Zach tries to stop Josh with the one kind of speech the boys have
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Obsession (2026), Horrific Love Without Consent
I have a soft spot for horror films that clearly don’t have money to waste. When a filmmaker cannot rely
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Review: The Last House (2026) Climate Anxiety Turned Prepper Fantasy
The first half of The Last House (2026) brought back memories of the COVID lockdown for me. I was hunkered down in
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Faith, Control, and the Illusion of Choice in Heretic (2024)
This essay contains major spoilers. Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ Heretic (2024) begins as a theological debate before gradually revealing that no
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No Safe Place: Queer Space, Religious Violence, and Survival in Leviticus
Most horror films generate fear by violating the boundary between a dangerous world and a supposedly protected interior. The killer
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Passenger (2026), A Few Good Scares Lost in a Bad Story
Passenger (2026) starts well. In fact, it starts well enough to make the rest of the film feel even more disappointing.
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Review: The Werewolf of Washington (1973), A Political Satire Without a Point
Political satire does not have to be subtle. Dr. Strangelove (1964) doesn’t pull any punches about its stance on militarism and the men
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