There is a wide range of physical sensations from the frustrating to the debilitating with which most of us are familiar. We've all stubbed a toe. We've all had a nosebleed, a hangnail, a cut in an...
2019-10-11 14:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Perhaps the most elementally upsetting concept in horror film is one human doing terrible things to another. Demons, zombies, vampires, and other creatures of the night prey on the living by nature...
2019-10-10 14:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Where does tension come from? How do movies manufacture it? As with most atmospheric effects the answer stems from no single source. Score, storytelling, acting, editing, blocking, and camera work ...
2019-10-09 14:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Heike watched the countryside go by outside the window of her compartment while i...
2019-10-09 00:02:56 +0000 UTC View Post
In horror a film's events and images unfold outward from a structuring violation. The death of a loved one. Domestic abuse. The mounting violence and/or wrongness of a horror film is in a way an ex...
2019-10-08 14:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
There are deeper truths than understanding a character's motivations, deducing what an object means, or tracking a story's progression from A to B. There are more elemental ways of understandi...
2019-10-07 15:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Imagine if Terrence Malick had exactly the same level of ambition but no imagination whatsoever and you've got a pretty good idea what to expect from James Gray's Ad Astra, a movie about a...
2019-10-07 02:37:44 +0000 UTC View Post
It's rare that one can look at a man and know beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt that he has done material damage to the psychological functioning of an entire nation. Aaron Sorkin is that man. ...
2019-10-04 15:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Manhunter is a movie about looking deep into the putrid innards of the worst humanity has to offer and examining that welter of gore and bile not with disgust, but with empathy. It's perha...
2019-10-04 14:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER ONE: A SPECIES OF WOOD TICK
"You found him like this?" asked Doctor Clarkson, making a note in his little leather-bound book as he stood beside the sickbed of Mr. Carson in the former...
2019-10-03 21:37:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Carnival of Souls theatrical poster, artist unknown
A primary way in which horror differs from other genres in that its characters are typically less able to resist or change the wor...
2019-10-03 15:38:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Downton Abbey is, like the show of which it is a continuation, best as a strictly sensual pleasure. The camera work seldom inspires, but the costuming and set dressing are beautiful and wi...
2019-10-03 04:17:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Poster art for Jaws by Roger Kastel
Spielberg's Jaws, as ruthlessly streamlined as its ocean-going antagonist, is the perfect entry point into the world of horror film. It i...
2019-10-02 16:07:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Cover art to Alien: The Motion Picture Soundtrack, N.C. Winters
The purpose of horror as a genre is to elicit a physical response of revulsion from its audience. There are many ways ...
2019-10-01 12:51:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear Gretchen,
Horror - particularly body horror - has always had a peculiarly healing effect on me. I have never truly understood why; I simply know that watching the protagonist of Reve...
2019-09-27 22:15:50 +0000 UTC View Post
There are things to like about Donnie Darko. Much of the camera work is solid and patient. The science fiction plot is small and neatly executed, if conceptually thin. Jena Malone is there...
2019-09-27 07:41:46 +0000 UTC View Post
First Blood, the 1982 action-thriller based on David Morrell's novel of the same name and directed by Ted Kotcheff (Wake in Fright, Weekend at Bernie's), is the definitiv...
2019-09-25 15:48:47 +0000 UTC View Post
I hate The Office with a pure frustration usually reserved for pop-up ads and those smug door-to-door evangelists who are just so insufferably certain they've got all the answers....
2019-09-20 17:18:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Like his earlier film Gladiator, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven is a period piece firmly entrenched in the values of the present. The film's characters are sharply divided betwe...
2019-09-13 21:06:09 +0000 UTC View Post
If you'd told me in 2000 that Unbreakable would have two sequels constituting its own little bizarro-world MCU, I'd have told you to get your head examined. Yet for better or for worse, he...
2019-09-08 19:37:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Art by @horstmannart for an upcoming zine of short illustrated ghost stories.
2019-09-08 17:02:22 +0000 UTC View Post
This movie prominently features digitally de-aged fifteen-year-olds, which should give you an idea of how much thought its creators put into the process of adapting and filming Stephen King's garga...
2019-09-08 07:25:40 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear Gretchen,
Are there any movies you consider morally irredeemable? If so, do you still think that there’s something to be gained from watching them?
-Christian
_______...
2019-09-03 23:25:11 +0000 UTC View PostA complete directory of every Thanks, I Hate It for the reader's convenience.
2019
January 6th: 2019-08-31 17:56:32 +0000 UTC View Post
2014's Godzilla, directed by Gareth Edwards and written by Max Borenstein, is a disaster movie. There's nothing inherently wrong with this. Titanic is a good disaster movie. So's ...
2019-08-30 19:39:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Vampires, Saskia forced herself to remember as she stood by the mountain road’s drainage d...
2019-08-23 22:07:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's Goodnight Mommy owes a lot to the new French extremity, a school of film making primarily occupied with the boundaries of the human body and their violat...
2019-08-23 15:40:06 +0000 UTC View Post
He ran through the forest with the other boys close behind him. The boughs were greening. Th...
2019-08-21 21:02:17 +0000 UTC View PostI compiled every D&D snippet I've ever written on twitter over the past three years into a single document! Download it 2019-08-20 17:21:45 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear Gretchen,
Given your penchant for generating D&D characters for people, I presume you have some affinity or affection for the game. What are your thoughts on D&D's surging popula...
2019-08-19 17:28:08 +0000 UTC View Post