I’m thrilled to be launching movie and television reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a five-minute film review of Scream VI, which was released in cinemas this weekend.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: escapist, franchise, high-concept, horror, Randy, review, Scream, scream vi, sequel, slasher, the escapist | Leave a comment »
We’re launching a new column at The Escapist, called Out of Focus. It will publish every Wednesday, and the plan is to use it to look at some film and television that would maybe fall outside the remit of In the Frame, more marginal titles or objects of cult interest. With the upcoming release of Scream VI, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the criminally underrated Scream 4.
The last film in the franchise to be written by Kevin Williamson or directed by Wes Craven, Scream 4 exists in a weird space. It is separated from the two film either side of it by more than a decade, the only point in time where the franchise wasn’t coming out on a regular basis. However, it’s a movie that feels very firmly ahead of its time. It was released years before Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens and David Gordon Green’s Halloween, but it feels in conversation with a wider culture caught in a feedback loop of Gen X nostalgia.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: 1990s, Emma Roberts, franchise, gen x, horror, Kevin Williamson, meta, nineties, nostalgia, out of focus, Scream, self-awareness, slasher, wes craven | Leave a comment »
We’re launching a new column at The Escapist, called Out of Focus. It will publish every Wednesday, and the plan is to use it to look at some film and television that would maybe fall outside the remit of In the Frame, more marginal titles or objects of cult interest. This week, with the release of Knock at the Cabin, it seemed wothing taking a look at the films of M. Night Shyamalan.
Shyamalan is a filmmaker with a unique perspective, and many of his films circle around the same sets of themes concerned with family and horror. However, Shyamalan is also a director fascinated by faith and belief. He’s often horrified by characters who hold firmly to seemingly irrational beliefs. More than that, though, Shyamalan’s films often mine a sense of dread and horror from something even more fundamental: the fear that, against all odds, these irrational understandings of the universe might be correct.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: agnosticism, Atheism, belief, faith, fear, horror, insanity, knock at the cabin, m. nigth shyamalan, rationality, uncertainty | Leave a comment »
I published a new piece at The Escapist during the week. With the release of Knock at the Cabin this weekend, it seemed worth taking a look at the latest movie from M. Night Shyamalan.
Knock at the Cabin is by turns fascinating and frustrating. It is a movie that works really well as a claustrophic and ambiguous thriller, a home invasion movie that is essentially a battle of wills over belief. However, it suffers somewhat from the fact that Shyamalan can’t stay within the cabin. At various points, the narrative has to become bigger and more epic, and in doing so, it unravels the tension that makes the best scenes in the movie so compelling.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: belief, faith, horror, knock at the cabin, M. Night Shyamalan, review, suspense, tension, the escapist | Leave a comment »
I am doing weekly reviews of The Last of Us at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Sunday evening while the show is on, looking at the video game adaptation as the show progresses. This week, the show’s second episode.
The Last of Us is an interesting piece of adaptation. It comes with a weight of expectation. There’s a sense in which the show needs to proves its adaptational bona fides to fans, by proving that it can faithfully adapt both the world and the internal logic of the source material. So the show’s second episode is an interesting fusion, a clear attempt to directly translate the experience of playing the source video game to a television series.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: adaptation, horror, infected, logic, story, the escapist, the last of us, Video game | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the looming release of Scream VI, it seemed like as good a time as any to consider the state of the modern horror franchise.
When Scream premiered, it was a radical deconstruction of classic slasher movie tropes that breathed new life into the genre. It even helped to resurrect troubled slasher franchises like Halloween or Child’s Play. So it’s interesting that, as the series has progressed, it has become more and more like the kinds of movies that it was originally a reaction against. It’s a fascinating illustration of how these franchises evolve over the decades since their original release.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: deconstruction, franchise, horror, in the frame, Movie, Scream, scream 6, slasher, trailer | Leave a comment »
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, this week joined by special guests Grace Duffy and Charlene Lydon, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.
This time, to mark the 20th anniversary of its release, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
The Fellowship of the Ring has been shattered. Its membership has fragmented into three smaller groups. Each of these parties – and many more beside – will find themselves playing a major role in the War of the Ring. The battle for Middle Earth has truly begun, and flames threaten to consume the continent, and any innocent caught in their path.
At time of recording, it was ranked 13th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: aragorn, conflict, Darkness, elves, environmentalism, epic, frodo, Gandalf, gollum, horror, humanity, industry, jrr tolkien, legolis, orcs, podcast, ptsd, rohan, Sam, The 250, the lord of the rings, the lord of the rings: the tower towers, the two towers, tolkien, violence, war, wormtongue | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist last week. With the film’s 25th anniversary approaching and Halloween coming up, it seemed like a good time to talk about Scream 2, Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven’s underrated slasher sequel.
Scream 2 is in many ways the perfect sequel to a smash success like the original Scream, despite its rushed and troubled production. Scream 2 is a movie that manages to both double-down on what made Scream so compelling, while also honing in on the emotional heart of the story being told. It’s the rare sequel that manages to heighten an already heightened premise, without ever losing sight of the characters within the story. It’s clever, it’s funny, but it’s also very sharply observed.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: academic, escapist, film criticism, halloween, horror, in the frame, meta, Scream, Scream 2, self-aware, slasher, tragedy, trauma, wes craven | Leave a comment »
I was thrilled to be invited to join the great Dan Owen and Hugh McStay for an episode of their new podcast, Vampire Videos.
It was a thrill to get to talk about, and revisit, Shadow of the Vampire. It was the first time I had watched the meta horror commentary in decades, so it was fascinating to return to it with new eyes and a deeper understanding of the film’s historical context. It’s a movie that ties together the history of the vampire and origins of cinema as a medium, constructing a pitch black horror comedy about the paradox of the movie camera as an instrument that both steals life and grants immortality.
You can listen directly to the episode below or by clicking here.
Filed under: Movies, Podcasts! | Tagged: comedy, Filmmaking, horror, Movies, Nosferatu, podcast, shadow of the vampire, vampire videos, willem dafoe | Leave a comment »
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, with special guest Diamanda Hagan, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.
This time, William Malone’s feardotcom.
Detective Mike Reilly has spent the past few years in pursuit of the online serial killer who goes by the name of “the Doctor”, a murderer who streams his crimes on the internet for all to watch. Reassigned after failure to show any results, Reilly finds himself investigating a seemingly unrelated case of contagion that is spreading through New York City. However, Reilly soon discovers that the two cases are more closely linked than he could have imagined.
At time of recording, it was ranked 67th on the list of the worst movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Filed under: The Bottom 100 | Tagged: diamanda hagan, feardotcom, film, Found footage, franchsie pictures, frankenstein, halloween, horror, internet, Jeffrey Combs, luxemberg, Moral panic, Movie, Natascha McElhone, podcast, prurient, puritanical, review, se7en, serial killer, stephen dorff, Stephen Rea, The 250, The Bottom 100, torture porn, Udo Kier, william malone | Leave a comment »
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