Twitter Review: Repulsion
Polanski’s obtuse ‘Repulsion’ mines fear of rape, men, abandonment. 1 great shock & effective spatial horror, but male POV leers and muddles
Tagged: Horror, Repulsion, Reviews, Roman Polanksi, Twitter, Twitter Reviews
Horror
Twitter Review: A Tale of Two Sisters
‘A Tale of 2 Sisters’ undermines reality to the extent that it’s hard to care. Creepy and full of potent symbolism, I’m baffled not scared.
Apple of My I
She dreams of them. She fills her computer screen with digital drawings of them. One is left on a swing at her house. Snow White is poisoned by one in her daughter’s play just before the abduction. In her kitchen are dozens of them that she chucks into the kitchen sink, which then explodes with brown muck. She cannot escape them, but she also surrounds herself with them. Claire is torturing herself with the fucking apples. Overripe and finally fetid, Neil Jordan’s In Dreams goes very, very wrong as a thriller in its final act (and even wronger in its epilogue), but if you fall asleep the first time you see Robert Downey Jr.’s face, you might think you’ve seen something weirdly special. Actually, it is pretty special, but you need to dive below the silly surface.
Tagged: Annette Bening, Folklore, Horror, In Dreams, Neil Jordan, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Reviews
Twitter Review: Let the Right One in
‘Let the Right One in’ – Tonally coy, it expands on Romero’s ‘Martin,’ crosses it with Poe’s ‘William Wilson,’ and haunts retrospectively.
Box Office Power Rankings: February 6-16, 2009
What could possible explain Friday the 13th’s $43.6-million holiday-weekend take? Let’s be honest: The first one sucked – yes, I have seen it as an adult – and the movies didn’t exactly improve as the franchise progressed. The series proper (1980’s first installment through 2002’s Jason in Space [I know, I know]) has gotten less popular as it’s gone on, with its domestic gross shrinking in spite of inflation. I’m generally not bothered by remakes/reboots/re-imaginings, and I certainly believe fresh eyes and contexts can find new uses for recycled material. But Friday the 13th was a threadbare knock-off of a movie that skated by (quite well, admittedly) on technique over originality.
Tagged: Box Office, Coraline, Friday the 13th, Henry Selick, Horror, Monkeybone
Twitter Review: The Strangers
‘The Strangers’ – Expert, brutal, pointless, and a good student of its elders. 77 minutes, and 70 pass before the creeps commit bodily harm.
Tagged: Bryan Bertino, Horror, Reviews, The Strangers, Twitter, Twitter Reviews
Twitter Review: Planet Terror
‘Planet Terror’ – Not nearly bad enough to be a true homage; despite the charming scratches etc., it’s far too polished and winking to work.
Tagged: Comedies, Grindhouse, Horror, Planet Terror, Reviews, Robert Rodriguez, Twitter, Twitter Reviews, Zombies
Separation Anxiety (Or: Say Goodbye to Your Little Friend)
Dawn is afraid of her body, but it’s the boys who are in trouble. She is a star in a local abstinence program – a heartfelt, eloquent advocate for preserving virginity – but she’s not immune to the temptations of the flesh. One night, while fantasizing about the cute boy she just met, her hand creeps down … but she can’t do it. Perhaps she knows instinctively what a handful of boys and men are about to discover in Teeth: She has a bloodthirsty vagina.
Tagged: Bodily Emissions, Horror, Mitchell Lichtenstein, Reviews, Sex, Teeth, Vagina Dentata
Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things
The Orphanage has one indelible image, and that’s plenty. It also has a sly current of grief and healing that hits home mostly on reflection, after cold recognitions and resonances sink in.
Burnt Toast
The turning point in The Shining comes when Jack Torrance encounters a woman in Room 237. Naked, lithe, and beautiful, she gets out of the bathtub and wordlessly approaches Jack. They kiss, but when Jack looks in the mirror, his arms are embracing a decaying old woman, flabby and with patches of her skin missing. It’s not your typical turning point. A heretofore pedestrian movie doesn’t begin to redeem itself, and a previously engaging work doesn’t go off the rails. Instead, things start to get muddled.
Tagged: Books Into Film, Horror, Reviews, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen King, The Shining
