SXSW: Probing Identity in "Bloody Hell"

by Abe Friedtanzer

From the sound of its title, you might think that Bloody Hell is a violent horror film. But in fact it’s a mostly (and significantly) blood-free exploration of what it’s like to be a teenager that doesn’t quite fit in. It’s described as a “traumedy” about a sixteen-year-old girl shaken by the news of a reproductive condition that will play heavily into both her sex life and her potential to become a future mother... 

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Sundance review: Judy Reyes and Marin Ireland give the pregnancy horror 'birth/rebirth' its juice

by Jason Adams

Let me just stop you right here, at the start, and admit that I am going to be terribly biased in this review of writer-director Laura Moss’ horror film birth/rebirth. Why? Do I know the director? Have I played ping pong with the cinematographer? Did the boom mic operator donate a kidney to my mum? No no nothing like that – it’s just the entirely sane fact that I love love love the actress Judy Reyes with all of my being and seeing her be given a leading role in a movie is too much for me to bear, qualitatively speaking. 

Here at The Film Experience, within this safe space of actressexuals, I know I can admit this freely. But I just feel an upfront warning is due...

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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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