daily scream: when ghosts of the past still haunt the present
2019’s Doctor Sleep is on Hulu in the US, Prime in the UK (and many other services, too).
Stephen King
Knock at the Cabin movie review: there appears to be an apocalypse happening
There is only one thing worse than an M. Night Shyamalan movie with a twist ending. And that is one without a twist ending. Feels like a faith-based movie trying to sneak in under a disingenuous wire.
weekend watchlist: a movie worth paying premium VOD prices for
Plus horrors fantastical, hellish, alien… and all too down to Earth. (First published May 14th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Doctor Sleep movie review: a reckoning with the ghosts of the past
A wonderfully unexpected sort of horror movie, beautiful and delicate, but unsettling, too, with an authentic plausibility to the dichotomy between the invented uncanny and the human response to it.
It: Chapter Two movie review: it doesn’t float
A bigger misfire than its predecessor, and a waste of a great cast. Unsupportably overlong, with a feel-good self-care denouement that’s almost dangerous. The only terrifying thing here is the tedium.
Pet Sematary (2019) movie review: bad things happen when you leave the city
A lazy adaptation of the Stephen King novel, manipulatively cheap when it isn’t provoking eye-rolls at its genre banalities. Why can’t someone find the right role for the charismatic Jason Clarke?
It movie review: a series of unfortunate events
The Goonies, Stand by Me, and Poltergeist went into a blender with a pinch of E.T. and John Hughes to smush into a mess of retro 80s mush.
Carrie review: women who hate women
I’m struck by the perversity of a story four decades old about religious misogyny and basic feminism and the perniciousness of bullying that still feels fresh and relevant…
final video production diary for the first Hobbit film (and other adventures in social networking)
Stuff my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw today…
Great Expectations (London Film Festival review)
I love it when a film that is “supposed” to be all stuffy and classic turns out to be this electric and alive…
