When the Curtain Rises, So Does the Ghost Takashi Miike, Japan’s reigning mad scientist of cinema, doesn’t make movies so much as he summons them. In Over Your Dead Body (Kuime), he takes the venerable ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan—Japan’s Shakespearean tragedy of betrayal, murder, and supernatural payback—and performs surgery on it with a scalpel dipped … Read More “Over Your Dead Body (2014): Love, Death, and Method Acting Gone to Hell” »
When Soap Operas Try to Scare You (and Fail Spectacularly) There are bad sequels, and then there’s Nightmare 2: The Nightmare Continues—a film so devoid of terror, tension, or reason to exist that it should come with a complimentary sedative. Directed by Marko Äijö and based on the Finnish soap opera Salatut elämät, this cinematic … Read More “Nightmare 2: The Nightmare Continues (2014): Proof That Even Nightmares Get Bored Eventually” »
The Only Horror Film That Makes You Want to Call Your Mom and Your Therapist Ari Aster’s Munchausen is the kind of short film that sneaks up on you like a homemade casserole laced with maternal anxiety and cyanide. It’s elegant, disturbing, and—because it’s Aster—just a little bit funny in the “I can’t believe I’m … Read More “Munchausen (2014): A Mother’s Love Story… to Death” »
Big Brother Is Laughing His Head Off Remember the old saying, “Smile for the camera”? In Mockingbird (2014), that’s less advice and more of a death sentence. Bryan Bertino, the man who made you double-check your door locks in The Strangers, returns to remind us that found footage horror is not dead—it’s just watching you … Read More “Mockingbird (2014): Smile, You’re Dying on Camera” »
When Toy Story Meets The Exorcist (in Tagalog) Every country has its own version of childhood trauma dressed as entertainment. For Americans, it’s Chucky. For Japan, it’s Sadako crawling out of the TV. And for the Philippines, it’s Maria Leonora Teresa — a horror film where grief therapy involves taking home a talking doll that … Read More “Maria Leonora Teresa (2014): Three Dolls, Zero Chill, and 100% Filipino Catholic Guilt” »
Bigfoot, Blood, and a Whole Lotta Heart Let’s be honest—when you sit down to watch a movie called Love in the Time of Monsters, you don’t expect The English Patient. You expect chaos, carnage, and possibly a man in a rubber suit punching someone in the face. Thankfully, director Matt Jackson understands that perfectly. This … Read More “Love in the Time of Monsters (2014): When Sasquatch Met Slapstick and Cupid Lost His Mind” »
Sin, Fire, and the Joy of Watching Awful People Get Exactly What They Deserve If you’ve ever sat through a police procedural and thought, “This would be better if everyone in the precinct were a sociopath and Satan himself was doing the auditing,” then congratulations—you’ve basically described Let Us Prey. Brian O’Malley’s 2014 horror-thriller is … Read More “Let Us Prey (2014): Where the Devil Does Paperwork and Justice Bleeds Scottish Grit” »
When Urban Legends Take a Wrong Turn There’s an old saying: “Don’t speed down haunted roads.”After watching Lemon Tree Passage, I’d like to add, “And don’t make movies about them either.” David James Campbell’s 2014 debut is based on an Australian urban legend that claims if you drive fast enough down Lemon Tree Passage Road, … Read More “Lemon Tree Passage (2014): The Ghost That Should’ve Stayed in Neutral” »
The Moon is Full, the Patience is Not Late Phases is the kind of movie that makes you realize horror doesn’t always need a monster—sometimes, the real terror is watching a good idea die slowly over 90 minutes. Directed by Adrián García Bogliano, this werewolf drama thinks it’s delivering deep emotional commentary about aging, isolation, … Read More “Late Phases (2014): The Wolf of Retirement Lane” »
Welcome to the Station from Hell Some horror movies creep up on you. Others break into your psyche like a meth-addled raccoon at 3 a.m. Last Shift, directed by Anthony DiBlasi, firmly belongs in the latter category. It’s lean, mean, and terrifyingly effective—a claustrophobic descent into madness that somehow manages to be both a love … Read More “Last Shift (2014): A Graveyard Shift to Die For” »