lorne dixon

In a year where every conceivable anxiety has played out on our streets and in our houses rather than on our screens, Relic manages to package a universal fear inside a wildly relatable narrative. Make no mistake, this is 2020's Hereditary... only more personal. And more dangerous. This is that rare smoldering slow burn with implications that will burdon your psyche.

This is it, slasher films, the starting point. While it's popular to point towards Black Christmas, Bay of Blood, or even Psycho as the tipping point between proto-slashers and the proper subgenre, Night of Terror is unmistakably the real article. And more than just a curiosity, its am ambitious and creative mad slasher tale that might not be scary, but it's endlessly fun. The "main" plot of an medical experiment that involves premature burial and resurrection is absurd and yet brilliant in its own lyrical way. And Lugosi brings his A game, playing a vaguely middle-eastern house servant who alternates between suspicious, sympathetic, and just plain bizarre. A trailblazer that sadly lacks its deserved recognition.

A brilliant nihilist conclusion to the Alien triology and one of the most underappreciated experiments in film history. Though the movie has no clear author- Fincher has disowned it, the studio barely acknowledge it- it carries a distinct narrative voice that none of the other Alien films, beside the original, ever mustered. Fans of feel-good action fantasies, like its predecessor, will recoil in distate, but more adventurous viewers will likely be awed by the unlikely courage of this entry in a major film franchise.

Friday the 13th (1980) is a fever dream of forboding atmosphere and sparce, unnerving sound design. Too often the critics have simply missed the point entirely, or worse, made a point to ignore the cinematic value of this seminal slasher flick. Too bad for them, because Friday will endure. Their review careers? Not so much.

About a third of the way through, I started to become nostalgic for the obnoxious Chevy ad that the theater ran before the movie. Just... don't.

Grew an appreciation for emergency dental visits, food poisoning, and telemarketing calls. Seriously overwrought and condescendingly free of nuance. Horror fans of every gender deserve better than this garish marketing plan pretending to be a film.

A meaningful rumination on grief and guilt in the form of a supernatural horror movie. Thankfully light on sentimentality and strong on atmosphere and mood. Too long, probably, but I didn't mind marinading in the world for even a moment. Jump scares do abound- but they're neither empty nor cheap. Recommended.

Successful genre films always have at least a toe over the line metaphorically into our real-life fears. The best horrors manage to be both viscerally effective and psychologically meaningful. GAME OVER, by that or any other standard, is a triumph. Utilizing the slasher subgenre as a framing device, director Ashwin Saravanan has crafted a deeply effective exploration of trauma, social guilt, and redemption-- all while simultaneously ticking off the necessary dramatic benchmarks of the field in spectacular fashion. It may bear surface-level similarities to a few other recent movies (-unnamed here to protect from spoilers-), but this is simply a superior motion picture. Bottom line: GAME OVER is among the best in many, many years.

Although dedicated to Hitchcock, the film is more of a celebration of the artists he influenced- particularly Dario Argento, but also Brian DePalma, Lucio Fulci, and Thomas Harris. Fansof the Italian "giallo" subgenre will be in awe. This Pyshco captures the raw,shambling,barely cohesive narrative style of movies like Bird with a Crystal Plumage, Don't Torture a Ducking, and Black Belly of the Tarantula will absurd acuracy. Layer this on top of some of the most astonishing cinematography that the genre has ever seen. It's not perfect- it's too long and some of the characters are just not fleshed out enough beyond indentifying quirks- but it would be a tragedy for horror fans not to seek this out.