Review: A Quiet Place

by Chris Feil

Family tragedy strikes early in A Quiet Place, with the sudden violent loss of the youngest of three children dividing each remaining family member by their own griefs and grudges. With this, his third feature, actor John Krasinski has made a rather astute portrait of grief with shades of Spielberg that is both lean and unpretentious. But this emotional family drama is more than just that: it’s also nerve-fraying creature feature.

The family, led by Krasinski and Emily Blunt, is one of the remaining survivors of a world decimated by an unspecified (but probably extraterrestrial) species. These creatures hunt people by sound alone and with shocking speed, turning survival into a tense lifestyle of sanded pathways, technological ingenuity, and softened surfaces. That A Quiet Place functions equally well as drama and horror is its greatest strength. The silence that keeps them alive reflects the emotional blockage that is tearing them apart, and the undiscussed loss catalyzes the film effortlessly.

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Blueprints: "Psycho"

The April Showers series is back at The Film Experience, here's Jorge on how the most famous shower scene in cinema histor was written on the page.

One thing about iconic cinema sequences is that back when the script is written, before the movie is shot, released and gains critical acclaim (sometimes before it is even developed), they are not conceived to be iconic. They are simply a piece in a puzzle; one more segment in a longer story. 

But sometimes sequences transcend. Sometimes they become essential pieces of the cinema mosaic. And few scenes have stood the test of time better than the shower scene in Psycho. It has been recreated countless times, spun hundreds of homages and parodies, and changed the way horror scenes are shot, and what audiences should expect of the genre. Let’s take a look at how it looked in the page, before it acquired icon status, when it was merely three pages of a script…

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The Revenge of April Showers

Seán here, full of the joys of spring and delighted to be helming the reboot of a franchise we all love here at the Film Experience... April Showers! Kicking off the month is a healthy dose of heavy-handed homoerotic horror, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge - what else!

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Cry Baby Cry, Make the Devil Sigh

 By Salim Garami

What's good?

Yuasa Masaaki is going to have a really good 2018 year. Earlier last month, North American animation distributor GKIDS announced they had acquired distribution rights to his two works from 2017, Lu Over the Wall and The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl, as well as his 2004 cult hit Mind Game. The acquisitions can promise no less than a breakout in recognition in the U.S. for the 52-year-old animator and his studio Science Saru. And yet, it's only apparently going to be riding on the tail of Yuasa's latest release, the Netflix anime series Devilman Crybaby, inspired by Nagai Go's tragic action-horror manga series...

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"Hereditary" and Toni Collette Lurking

by Chris Feil

This year has made for a quiet Sundance Film Festival, no? While there seems to be less word on major deals and potential Oscar players in the year to come, one premiere that has quickly become must-see material is Ari Aster's horror debut Hereditary. Cryptic reviews have promised genuine genre scares and (much to our excitement) a worthy showcase for Toni Collette. Collette's co-stars include Ann Dowd and Gabriel Byrne.

The film centers on a family after the death of their not-so-beloved grandmother. Her artist daughter (played by Collette) deals with the increasingly spooky fallout...

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