Hounds of Love movie review: serial-killer porn
Lurid, pointless thriller teases us with a teenaged girl’s sexual and mortal peril, creating awful suspense around her abuse. Her terror is your titillation.
horror
Wish Upon movie review: be careful what movies you see about wishes you should be careful about
Simple, yet stupid. A magic box grants a teen wishes… that don’t come free. Apparently they’re not making eighth graders read “The Monkey’s Paw” anymore.
The Bad Batch movie review: a girl walks into dystopia alone
Filmmaker-to-watch Ana Lily Amirpour again shakes up a familiar genre — here, the postapocalyptic adventure — in unexpected ways, but stumbles a bit in the process.
Alien: Covenant movie review: game over, man
A rote disappointment. There is nothing shocking or even mildly unexpected here. But there is an ironic weakening of the power of the xenomorphs to terrify.
Raw movie review: girly gory allegory
Cinema as a punch in the gut and not for the squeamish, casting female desire as ravenously predatory in a way that few films have ever had the audacity to do.
The Belko Experiment movie review: team-killing exercise
A one-note scenario that never ups the ante on itself, and never even bothers to use its extreme situation to send up office politics or corporate policies.
The Void movie review: retro monsters, alien mystery
It’s Lovecraft by way of The Thing and Alien in this satisfyingly schlocky 80s throwback, complete with practical FX. A genuinely eerie experience.
Dig Two Graves movie review: and bury this deep
Muddy and muddled 70s-style backwoods gothic Americana only comes to life when it rises to the accidentally silly. Little more than an incoherent showreel.
Get Out movie review: yes all white people
Shattering and deep-down bone-chilling. A viciously unsettling nightmare of race and privilege that carves out a much-needed paradigm shift for genre film.
The Chamber movie review: hell and high water
A wonder of low-budget suspense, this is a horror movie with no monsters, only people in an impossible situation. Intense, claustrophobic, totally gripping.
