Oscar Horrors: The Sixth Sense (1999)

Boo! It's time for "Oscar Horrors". Each night at 7 we'll look back on a horror-connected Oscar nomination until Halloween. Here's Deborah Lipp on Best Picture nominee The Sixth Sense.

In 1999, I started going to the movies by myself. My marriage had ended, and there were visitation weekends when my ex had the kid, I was alone, out of sorts, and determined to do something with that time that felt good. 

Going to the movies alone is great. You always get the seat you want, because there’s always a singleton somewhere, and you don’t have to engage in long discussions about what to see. You just…go.  That’s how I saw The Sixth Sense...

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Reviews: "Desierto" and "Under the Shadow"

by Nathaniel R

Jeffrey Dean Morgan & Gael García Bernal in "Desierto"

Two more Oscar submissions are now in limited release in the US: Mexico's Desierto and the UK's Tehran set film Under the Shadows. Both are what you might call horror films though one suspects only the latter would accept the label. 

Desierto
We'll go anywhere with Gael García Bernal, who has blessed us with a number of fine road trip / travel movies in his career like Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Motorcycle Diaries , and The Loneliest Planet. In short, he's the perfect choice as a protagonist if you want us to sign up for a gruelling journey...

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Thoughts and Questions about "American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare"

by Eric Blume

Despite five years of shifting locals and time frames and characters, American Horror Story remained essentially the same beast. Season 6 is shaking the formula up but I couldn't be more bewildered.  Here are three general questions. Perhaps we could work out the answers together?

01. What the hell is happening? 
We are meant to be watching a “true crime TV show” but what show like that looks like this?  When re-enactments are made in a show of this nature, they’re never dramatized at length like the extended scenes in My Roanoke Nightmare. Even if we grant them structural leeway...

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The Furniture: A Nightmare in Sleepy Hollow

"The Furniture" our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

Sleepy Hollow is an excellent October movie. It has well-placed jack-o-lanterns. Every frame shivers in the autumn chill. Washington Irving’s Hudson Valley falls under perpetually overcast skies, sapping the harvest season of its color. Rather than admire the changing leaves, Tim Burton emphasizes those aspects of fall that foreshadow the bitterness of winter. 

This harsh climate swept up three Oscar nominations, including a win for production design. It’s a testament to Burton’s fanatically specific vision. Location scouting began in Irving’s New York, but the perfect town wasn’t there. It wasn’t in New England, either, nor even in Old England. After all of that searching, the design team ended up building an entire 18th century village from scratch at Leavesden and Shepperton Studios in the UK.

The final product is an expressionistic, spooky riff on colonial life. The credit goes to production designer Rick Heinrichs, whose collaboration with Burton goes as far back as 1982’s Vincent. The set decorations were by Peter Young, who first worked with the director on Batman. Their version of Sleepy Hollow, New York is a clever blend of historical realism and nightmarish fantasy...

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Spooky Season

Trick or treat, trick or treat, give us something to make us shriek! When October rolls around inevitably film studios capitalise on Halloween fever to release a slate of horror movies… and often take the chance to dump them at a “critic-proof” opportunity. Let’s look what’s being carved up for us this October.

Ouija: Origin of Evil – 21 October

Prequel to the 2014 film Ouija that lots of people watched but far less people liked. This time young attractive people in the current era, have been replaced by family with creepy little girl in the 60’s, a far more in vogue horror trope of the moment. Lin Shaye is the only one appearing in both films, who was only added to the original in reshoots, and has curiously become a horror movie icon in the last few years. No reviews are out yet, but considering director Mike Flanagan’s unexpectedly sleeper hit on Netflix Hush kept horror simple but tight, it may fare better than the first. 

Three more Halloween-aimed films after the jump

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