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 »
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 »
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’m thrilled to be launching movie 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 Halloween Ends, which is in cinemas and on Peacock now.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: david gordon green, escapist, halloween, halloween ends, michael myers, Movie, nightmare, review, slasher, universal | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the upcoming release of Halloween Ends, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the last entry in the horror franchise.
Halloween Kills is a divisive addition to the slasher movie canon, a grubby and nihilistic horror movie that completely lacks a central ordering principle. Halloween Kills is a movie without a hero. Instead, it is just a monster and his victims. The result is a surprisingly brutaly and bloody slasher movie from a major studio, at a point in time where these films are becoming increasingly homogenised by the logic of intellectual property brand management. Halloween Kills is a film in which there is no reason or logic for the horror that unfolds, and that only serves to make it more scary.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: brutality, escapist, halloween kills, Hero, horror, horror franchises, in the frame, laurie strode, meaninglessness, michael myers, murder, nihilism, slasher, slasher movies, studio horror | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. I’ve been watching the Child’s Play and Chucky franchise, and so it seemed like a good opportunity to delve into one of the more distinctive major horror franchises.
There’s an interesting tension to the Chucky franchise, one that plays out across the various entries. This is a horror series about a mass-produced piece of children’s entertainment, controlled by the demented soul of a monstrous serial killer. Much of the franchise is about the contrast between those two ideas: the factory-assembled doll and the distinctive spirit inside of it. It works well as a metaphor for the larger Chucky franchise as a whole, which has changed form repeatedly across its various incarnations, but somehow managed to retain a unique and consistent identity.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: Brad Dourif, child's play, chucky, fiona dourif, franchise, horror, jennifer tilly, postmodern, self-aware, slasher | Leave a comment »
Last Night in Soho is a fascinating snapshot of the siren lure of nostalgia, and how it is so often filtered through a presumptive male gaze.
Last Night in Soho follows a young student named Eloise who moves to London for the first time to follow her dream of becoming a fashion designer. After some tensions with her roommate, Eloise moves out of her apartment into a small bedsit, with warnings that past tenants have had some strange experiences in the flat – disappearing in the dead of night, as if fleeing from something that shares the space. Eloise has always been sensitive to otherworldly presences, and it is no surprise when she seems to connect with the memories imprinted in her new bedroom.
Who nose?
Night after night, Eloise is seduced by memories of a young woman named Sandy, who came to London to pursue her own ambitions of becoming a singer. Sandy met a handsome talent agent named Jack, who promises that he can make all of her dreams come true. As Eloise sinks deeper into this nostalgic fantasies of the swinging sixties, she notices that the lines are begin blur – between her waking moments and her sleeping thoughts, between herself and the girl who visits her at night, between dreams and nightmares.
At its core, Last Night in Soho is a meditation on the idea that it is not always so easy to escape the past.
Bad romance.
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: anya taylor-joy, edgar wright, film, giallo, last night in soho, London, male gaze, matt smith, Movie, nightmare, non-review, nostalgia, review, sixties, slasher, thomasin mckenzie, violence | 2 Comments »
So, as I have mentioned before, I am launching a new video series as a companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch with every second Monday’s article, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel the following week. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film content – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.
With the release of Halloween Kills, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the larger Halloween franchise. In particular, the enduring and lasting appeal of Michael Myers as a character. What is it that makes Michael Myers such an icon of horror cinema?
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: halloween, horror, in the frame, John Carpenter, michael myers, omar ahmed, rob zombie, serial killers, slasher | Leave a comment »
the m0vie blog 
New Escapist Column! In the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” Franchise…
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist earlier this week. With the release of Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Netflix, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the larger franchise spawned from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the defining horror movies of the seventies, an innovative and influential low-budget indie that demonstrated what was possible outside the mainstream production machine. However, few horror classics have been as poorly served by the sequels that followed as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. While most other major horror franchises can boast a genuine (or even just cult) classic among their sequels, the sequels to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre have been a slow and brutal slog into generic horror nonsense. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is just the latest stop on that journey.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: commentary, escapist, gore, horror, in the frame, leatherface, slasher, texas chain saw massacre, the escapist, the texas chainsaw massacre, violence | Leave a comment »