Horror
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Five Questions with My Sucky Teen Romance Director Emily Hagins
In films about the teenage social scene, there is an inevitable disconnect between the adult director, and the youthful experience that he or she wants to portray. My Sucky Teen Romance is a rare exception, since the writer/director Emily Hagins happens to be 19 years old and a peer to her characters. Hagins began her exceptional career at the age of 12, when she created her first feature-length film, Pathogen, and became the youngest recipient of the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund grant, not to mention the youngest feature film director in the United States. The zombie movie was a group […]
by Mariel Falk on Sep 4, 2012 -
An Independent Filmmaker Confronts Piracy
Producer Matt Compton says he knew the feature he produced — a “thinking man’s horror film,” Midnight Son, directed by Scott Leberecht — would eventually be pirated. “I always knew the film would end up on the torrent sites,” he writes in an email, “and that there would be nothing I could do about it. If the major studios can’t stop piracy, surely an indie producer such as myself can do nothing.” But he wasn’t prepared for his film to show up three weeks before the film was commercially available, when whatever word-of-mouth to be gained by the filesharing couldn’t […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 6, 2012 -
The Oregonian — A Hammer to Nail Review
(The Oregonian world premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. It is being distributed by Cinemad Presents and opens theatrically in NYC at the reRun Gastropub on Friday, June 8, 2012. Factory 25 is releasing the DVD (and currently taking pre-orders for the Limited Edition DVD). It is also currently available for streaming on Netflix and Hulu. If you are not able to see it in the theater, just make sure you play it loud at home!) Calvin Lee Reeder’s The Oregonian is a horrifying film, if not what is commonly perceived as a “horror” film. It is deeply and fundamentally […]
by Alex Ross Perry on Jun 7, 2012 -
TRAILER WATCH: RIDLEY SCOTT’S “PROMETHEUS”
This is the Hollywood trailer of the moment. I particularly love the music fake-out — starting with the typically ostentatious “epic score” and, after a moment of silence, phasing into something more modern and frightening.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2012 -
Lady Vengeance: Trailer Happy, February 2012
Trailers have the ability to psyche us up, freak us out, turn us off, and lead us very, very astray, but the heightened anticipation (they don’t call them teasers for nothing) is part of the fun, regardless of how accurate a representation of the film that cleverly constructed little bugger ends up being in the end. Here’s a little commentary on a selection of recent genre trailers; let’s both judge a book by its cover and appraise the cover itself. THE SNOWTOWN MURDERS (Justin Kurzel, in theaters March 2nd) I always feel wary of trailers that start off […]
by Farihah Zaman on Feb 17, 2012 -
BLOODY DISGUSTING FOUNDER BRAD MISKA ON SUNDANCE HORROR PIC “V/H/S”
“When we started Bloody Disgusting back in 2002, we were the only ones doing it daily,” says Bradley Miska about the origins of his all-horror site. Sites like Ain’t It Cool News, Dark Horizons and Jo Blo were around too, but as its name would suggest, Bloody Disgusting hammered a wooden stake in the burgeoning field of online horror coverage and now, 10 years later, it is reaping the rewards. Management company The Collective “bought into” Bloody Disgusting five years ago, says Miska, and today the co-owned website is just one part of a gory mini-empire that also includes a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 22, 2012 -
CALVIN LEE REEDER AND LINDSAY PULSIPHER OF “THE OREGONIAN”
Calvin Reeder’s trippy art-horror film The Oregonian lands in New York today for one screening at Brooklyn’s Nitehawk Cinema. When we selected Reeder for our 25 New Faces series, Mike Plante wrote: “I’m not really sure” how he arrived at his alt-horror style, Reeder says. “Just sorta roll the dice. I do love Sleepaway Camp. I just like to make movies all bent up, I guess.” Originally from Portland, Ore., and living in Seattle up until this year, Reeder played extensively with the great art-punk bands the Popular Shapes and the Intelligence. But he got notoriety, for better or worse, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2011 -
GUILLERMO DEL TORO DEFENDS GENRE IN TORONTO
The king of Hollywood genre spent his Hallowe’en in Toronto where he held court at the TIFF Bell Lightbox to speak about his career and present five nights of some of his favourite horror films. Guillermo del Toro launched the series last Thursday when he introduced the 1996 Italian flick L’arcano incantatore (The Arcane Enchanter) and answered questions from TIFF’s Artistic Director Noah Cowan. Despite being a bigshot Hollywood director, del Toro remains a film geek, the kind of guy who can rap about Road Warrior for hours. After showing a montage of some of his favourite movies (including Mad Max and Planet of the […]
by Allan Tong on Nov 4, 2011 -
“A SERBIAN FILM”
With Halloween around the corner I thought it would be fitting to write about a movie that has kept me up nights (and I’m certain that’s the same for many who’ve seen the film since its premiere at SXSW last year), A Serbian Film. The debut film of Serbian filmmaker Srdjan Spasojevic, who co-wrote the screenplay with the country’s well-known horror critic, Aleksandar Radivojevic, A Serbian Film (which is available on DVD and Blu-ray today) is one of the most despicable movies I’ve seen in a long time and the images shown will likely stay embedded in my mind for […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Oct 25, 2011 -
Five Questions with You’re Next Director Adam Wingard
With his features Home Sick, Pop Skull and A Horrible Way to Die, Adam Wingard is carving out a reputation as one of the most imaginative and visually sophisticated directors working in modern horror. His films are mindful of genre conventions, finding ways to subvert them through unexpected characterizations that have real psychological depth. His latest movie reinvents the home invasion thriller. We spoke to Wingard about blood, style and directing other directors. Filmmaker: Your previous film, A Horrible Way to Die, tweaked the serial killer genre by setting it within the world of addiction and recovery, and exploring those […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 10, 2011
