Cocaine Bear
In 1985 a 175-pound (79-kilogram) American black bear overdosed on cocaine. It all began when a drug lord named Andrew C. Thornton II was trafficking narcotics from Colombia into the United States. He dropped a load of 40 plastic containers of cocaine over Georgia’s Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest. The cargo was too heavy for his light […]
Knock at the Cabin
Knock at the Cabin is director M. Night Shyamalan’s take on the home invasion thriller. But given the filmmaker’s modus operandi, you know this isn’t going to be a straightforward horror movie. Rest assured an existential conundrum will arise to imbue the account with perceived weight. Thankfully the story is efficient and gets started right […]
M3GAN
The killer doll story has been a subset of horror for decades. Early instances of the well-worn trope can be found in Dead of Night (1945) and TV’s The Twilight Zone (1959). The 1970s reintroduced the concept with Trilogy of Terror (1975), Magic (1978), and Tourist Trap (1979), but it popped up the most during […]
Bones and All
According to the press materials. Bones and All is a tender tale of first love. Maren is a young woman learning to survive on the margins of society. Lee is a disenfranchised drifter. An unforgiving world cannot accept them. These youths drive off together on a “liberating” odyssey where they come to terms with who […]
The Menu
“Eat the rich.” The expression is a rallying cry against capitalism and class inequality. It’s commonly attributed to Jean Jacques Rousseau, a political philosopher and leading figure in the late 18th century during the French Revolution. However, the idiom has been invoked many times since. The words are never uttered here, but that ethos is […]
Significant Other
It’s a shame that Significant Other is saddled with that title. It’s so generic; the name escapes me every time I try to recall it. The movie is substantially better than the label suggests. The production begins with a red meteor falling from the sky into the forest. Soon after, we see a deer unexpectedly […]
Halloween Ends
It all comes down to this. The film that started things back in 1978 is a classic celebrated by critics and audiences alike. There have been so many movies with various timelines in this series. Most are pretty disposable, but any franchise with crowds still demanding entries 44 years later incurs a certain level of […]
Barbarian
The element of surprise is crucial in horror. It’s all about creating a potent shock. Jump scares are an easy way to accomplish this. Even though the ploy is pervasive, it’s a cheap way to earn tension. More creative is when a film manages to surprise with a plot that upends the viewer’s expectations. Barbarian […]
Orphan: First Kill
In 2009, Orphan was the umpteenth offshoot of The Bad Seed. That 1956 movie started the “evil child genre,” which would inspire classics like Village of the Damned, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen. Orphan didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, so it certainly wasn’t something I thought would ever garner a sequel. I suspect it was largely forgotten save […]
Beast
Dr. Nate Samuels (Idris Elba) ) is a single father who takes his two young daughters, Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries ), to a wildlife preserve in South Africa. While there, they are confronted by a ferocious lion determined to kill everyone and everything in sight. I don’t want to dismiss Beast […]