(1990) ***** Once again I’m going back into previous decades and watching material that, as much as any other reaction, astonishes me with how much time has passed—not just as evidenced by the old cars and clothes and haircuts and cell phones on the movie screen (that looked totally modern and up-to-date at the time; […]

[continued]

(1999) ***** From the moment the “Haxan Films” logo comes onto the screen, I’m hooked—I’m plunged back into an utterly unique cinematic mood; a blend of mundanity and dread, of ugly visual noise and fleeting, nearly transcendental beauty that can only mean one movie: The Blair Witch Project (1999). The “haxan” logo gets me because […]

[continued]

(2010) ** I don’t know what can be done about movies like Shutter Island, because there’s no getting rid of them—they occupy one corner of the horror movie game board as permanently as low-budget splatterfests occupy another. As long as people get involved in the intellectual implications of scare stories (like, on blogs for communal […]

[continued]