Sundance: 'Talk to Me' is a handshake with Hell itself

by Jason Adams

See one horror movie about grief and you've seen every horror movie, or so it feels sometimes. Dead children, siblings, parents, spouses -- the genre is littered with beloved corpses winking back at us from the other side of oblivion. I'm writing this on day one of virtual Sundance and I've already seen three movies of this sort! But we keep coming back to the Babadook Special because it works. It's what we fear the most. Death for ourselves is one thing, but seeing the people we love the most slip away is something tangible; something that we'll all experience and then be expected to exist on the other side of. When I was little it was losing my parents that I feared the most of all.

For teenager Mia (newcomer Sophie Wilde), the lead in the Philippou brothers' unsettling new horror flick Talk To Me (playing Sundance 2023's Midnight program), it is her Mom that she's grieving...

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Review: Say hello to 'M3GAN' our new favorite Horror Princess

by Jason Adams

If you look at the episodes of Shudder’s documentary series “Behind the Monsters” – each of which was devoted to its own Horror Icon – one thing became painfully clear right up front: Where the hell are our female horror icons? I don’t mean the survivors – we all know our Final Girls, they are legion. I mean the villains. Where is our Jasine Voorhees? Our Frederica Krueger? Why does nothing happen if I say “Candygal” five times in the mirror??? 

Well the past couple of years have finally begun to right that gendered wrong, bringing us the return of Isabella Fuhrman’s Esther in her Orphan franchise (hopefully TBC, as the second film was a total hoot) as well as Mia Goth’s ax-welding and Oscar-worthy turn in Pearl (in both the titular prequel as well as X). Finally some iconic Halloween costumes for the Lizzie Borden lovers among us! And now this weekend makes for three with M3GAN, director Gerard Johnstone’s riotously entertaining new slasher, which merges Chucky with Mean Girls to gift us with an insta-icon for the horror ages.

M3GAN stands for “Model 3 Generative Android”... 

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Veronica Lake Centennial "Flesh Feast"

for Veronica Lake's centennial we're revisiting a few of her films...

by Jason Adams

Veronica Lake’s final words on film are “Heil Hitler.” 

Nothing in the first sixty-five minutes of first-time director Brad F. Grinter’s schlocky 1970 mad scientist flick Flesh Feast will really prepare you for the final five minutes when a plot twist makes that line of dialogue possible, so I don’t feel particularly guilty spoiling the film’s ending up front – its ending is all it really has going for it...

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Dragula: Titans S1. E3 "Science Fiction (Horror) Double Feature"

by Nick Taylor

Alaska, Dracmorda, Swanthula, and David Dastmalchian on the judge's panel
Dragula: Titans gives us the first of the series’ traditional floorshows, allowing its creatures to strut their stuff on the main stage with smoke and strobe lights dancing in their ears as the horror-techno score plays on. Asking the queens for their interpretation of science fiction horror results is a wildly broad prompt, and the results range from cosmic horror to space aliens to robot monstrosities. There’s no lip syncing, no acting, no other requirement but owning that stage the way only they can. And boy, did they deliver...

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Review: 'Soft & Quiet' is anything but

by Matt St Clair

Soft & Quiet, the feature directorial debut from Beth de Araújo (a newly minted Gotham Award nominee), is the most anxiety-inducing experience you’ll have watching a movie this year. Taking place over the course of one stressful afternoon, this depiction of a group of like-minded women involved in a harrowing chain of events is bound to leave viewers squirming in various ways. 

When the women first meet up, it seems like a casual get-together. But, as they’re taking out refreshments, group leader Emily (Stefanie Estes) unwraps her pie with a swastika carved in the middle. It's a sudden revelation that this gathering is a meeting for their group called the Daughters for Aryan Unity...

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