Posted on December 1, 2009 by Darren
You know how interested I am in quirky interpretations of the deeper meanings of popular culture – like the discussion over whether Anton Chigurh of No Country For Old Men is actually an angel or whether this year’s Torchwood: Children of Earth miniseries was actually about the recession. So it should come as no surprise that when I read about how The Shining by Stanley Kubrick is supposedly about the genocide of the Native Americans, I was more than a little intrigued.
Even the baking powder is in on it…
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: allegory, film, genocide, holocaust, horror, indians, kubrick, metaphor, Movies, native americans, racism, shining, stanley kubrick, the shining | 2 Comments »
Posted on November 27, 2009 by Darren
My mum can’t watch horror films. She just can’t. Even if they aren’t that scary. Even if they are horror-comedies or versions of stories she’s heard before. She can’t even be in the same room when they’re on – even if nothing actually horrific is happening. It turns out that – in her youth, while an au pair in Belgium – one of her friends convinced her to see a movie playing in the local cinema. A film about a family in a hotel over the winter, starring Jack Nicholson. That movie scared her to death, and has arguably scared her ever since.
That movie is – if you haven’t gathered from the title of this post and the plot description – The Shining.
Baby, it's cold outside...
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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, ghosts, haunted, haunted hotel, horror, hotel, jack nicholson, Movie, non-review review, overlook hotel, review, stephen king, the shining | 4 Comments »
Posted on November 26, 2009 by Darren
What we’ve got here is a solid, old-fashioned ghost story with more restraint and grace than any number of Hollywood shockers. A slow, moody and intense look at the collapsing marital relationship between Claire and Norman Spencer after their daughter goes to college, it takes its time getting were it’s going, but manages to seem a classy flick.
I was also shivering a bit after watching the movie...
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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, ghosts, harrison ford, hitchcock, horror, michelle pfeiffer, Movie, non-review review, review, robert zemickis, what lies beneath | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 15, 2009 by Darren
Wes Craven is a very odd man. On one hand, you have the luminary who gave us the breathtakingly original slants on the horror movie which we saw in A Nightmare on Elm Street, New Nightmare and the Scream franchise, along with his talent as a straight-forward thriller director in Red Eye. On the other hand you have the king of schlock, the man behind pointless gore fests like the original Last House on the Left or The Hills Have Eyes or even Dracula 2000. And, on a third severed hand you’d probably find lying around his trailer somewhere, you have the Wes Craven who wholeheartedly approves and supports schlokier remakes of his schlokiest films. Like this, the remake of Last House on the Left.
The only thing to fear is the quality of the movie itself...
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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: brutalisation, feminism, film, horror, last house on the left, Movie, non-review review, remake, review, slasher, the last house on the left, victimisation, wes craven | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 30, 2009 by Darren
If there was one horror movie that was the centre of much focus and discussion this autumn, it was probably Paranormal Activity. If there was another one, it was Jennifer’s Body. Written by the Oscar-nominated writer of Juno and starring ‘it’ girl of the moment Megan Fox, the movie sparked a whole host of interesting debates from its initial conception through to its underwhelming box office debut. The centre concept was an intriguing gender reversal on the traditional slasher movie dynamic: a college girl randomly murders promiscuous boys. That, and the fact that she is a demon. So, is the movie a feminist slasher flick, and does that go someway towards explaining its somewhat poor box office figures?
Do you want to see more of Jennifer's Body?
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: diablo cody, feminist, femism, horror, jennifers body, megan fox, Movies, screen scare week, slasher | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 29, 2009 by Darren
Horror films are scary. And scary isn’t an emotion we’re intended to experience regularly. It’s evolutionary purpose is to tell us that something really bad is going down right now and we really need to cop ourselves on in order to deal with it. It’s meant to make our adrenaline flow, and our hair stand up – it’s meant to keep us on the edge and stop us feeling comfortable. So, why do we take such great joy in experiencing that abstract terror, the suspense and the horror of scary movies? Surely it’s contrary to our evolutionary logic, right?
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: emotions, fear, horror, horror films, movie genres, psychology, scared, screen scare week | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 28, 2009 by Darren
Seriously. John Carpenter pretty much invented the genre back in the 1970s, and it has been with us ever since. But why do we get so many really terrible variations on people doing bad and gruesome things to other people year-in and year-out. You’d magine that every possible object that exists for a killer to hide behind has been hidden behind and every possible note that could be reached by a high-pitched scream has been reached by a high-pitched scream. And yet here they are, again and again and again. What’s the dealio?
I'm not even sure he's the scariest Myers around...
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: films, halloween, horror, horror genre, jason, michael myers, Movies, slasher, slasher films | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 27, 2009 by Darren
They say that horror movies and (before that) ghost stories reflect the unconscious fears of the time. So, for example, vampires allayed the fear of burying members of the community alive – if there were scratch marks on the inside of their coffins, it was because they were monsters, not because your doctor made a mistake. Or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a cautionary tale for a society just on the cusp of the age of reason – a warning not to dive too far into that pool labelled ‘scientific progress’. Monster stories and ghost stories allow us to put aside our fears even for a moment by expressing them in their most ridiculous forms – I don’t think that facet of human nature has disappeared over the past century or so. If we accept this line of reasoning, are zombies the current expression of our deeply buried fears? And, if so, of what?
At least they are taking good care of their teeth...
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: cinema, fears, film, horror, horror movies, individuality, metaphor, monster movies, monsters, Movies, screen scare week, subconscious, zombie, zombieland, zombies | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 26, 2009 by Darren
In the lead up to Halloween, we’ll be taking a look at some the horror genre. Check back nightly at 3am (the witching hour!) for a new article each night on the weird and the wonderful of cinema, looking at:
Plus, check out some articles from earlier in the month, like:
Hopefully that’ll get you in the macabre mood for the freaky festivities next weekend…
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: cinema, film, halloween, horror, horror movies, screen scare week, the witching hour | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 3, 2009 by Darren
Legends of the Dark Knight was an interesting concept – tell self-contained stories using different creative teams set at various points during Batman’s crime-fighting career. As such, those stories would make the title easy to pick up, without tying it excessively to continuity. It’s a simple and an interesting premise, and it did produce all manner of intriguing Batman stories. Grant Morrison’s Gothicis perhaps one of the most intriguing of those stories, taking the character well outside what readers might have expected.
It’s all upside down…
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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, batman: gothic, Bruce, comic, dark knight, dark knight returns, dc comics, frank miller, gotham city, gothic, gothic horror, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, horror, klaus janson, legends of the dark knight, morrison, mr. whisper, review, the legends of the dark knight | 3 Comments »
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