Writer-director Rose Glass’s debut Saint Maud is perhaps one of the most widely anticipated films affected by the COVID-19 scheduling pushbacks of 2020…

…Originally slated to release in April last year, it is finally arriving on the scene through the somewhat unconventional release combination of theaters and EPIX. Much to my delight, it has proven more than worth the wait.

Saint Maud follows a young home-care nurse ( Morfydd Clark) who has recently embarked on a spiritual commitment following a tragic accident at her previous job. She takes a job caring for the magnetic Amanda Kohl ( Jennifer Ehle), a…

“ There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” -Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.5…

…Humanity has been reckoning with how best to understand what it means to live in the world for, quite literally, as far back as any of us can remember, back and back to before the recording of history. When the world writ large seems too big to conceptualize, we narrow our focus to the one thing we all purport to understand on the deepest level-ourselves-and work our way outward. Entire schools of thought have been built on the backs of…

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?…

…If only one person hears the crashing, and everyone else around them stands by believing in silence, which experience is true? Only one? Both? Neither? Playing in the Midnight Selection of 2021’s virtual Sundance Film Festival, Knocking, written by Emma Broström and directed by Frida Kempff, confronts us with a similar conundrum of truth in its tale of a woman fighting to be believed when she begins to hear something in the walls of her apartment.

​Adapted from a short…

The 2000s were such a unique time in horror…

…Remakes were everywhere; any franchise, any material, any country’s stories were fair game. One of the most popular storytelling frames of the decade was that of the urban legend. The stories we tell each other to generate fear for fun may seem harmless in the light of day, but how many times have you gone into the bathroom, turned the lights off, and chanted Bloody Mary (or Candyman)? How many times have you checked your back seat before getting in your car? How often do you check the children when you…

2020 was an experience unlike any other in recent memory…

…It both felt like and revealed some of the world’s deepest horrors, part of which we’re still making our way through. In spite of the harrowing nature of our real-life circumstances, 2020 brought some powerhouse new films to the table. So many, in fact, that I’m still trying to catch up!

​Below are ten of my favorites, in alphabetical order, that got me through the year in one way or another. …

There’s a unique kind of terror to the intersection of disability and dependency that can sometimes feel hard to genuinely capture, particularly if it’s a situation you’re born into…

…Writer/director Aneesh Chaganty’s latest feature Run, written with Sev Ohanian, sets out to examine the thin and twisting lines of trust upon which such intersections need to function and what it takes to survive them when they go wrong.

Chloe Sherman (newcomer Keira Allen) has been living with various disabilities her whole life, from asthma to diabetes to paralysis. As a result, she’s been primarily cared for and homeschooled by her…

People have been disparaging film franchises as cash grabs since time immemorial, and sometimes they are right to do so…

…Horror in particular is notorious for taking well-loved figures and dragging them kicking and screaming across the cobbled streets of a series until they emerge, beaten and bloodied on the other side of an eighth entry. Sometimes, though, a beloved film’s journey into the world of franchises results in an unexpectedly fun and fulfilling addition to the foundational story. Such is the case, for me, when it comes to the entirety of Anthony Perkins’ run as Norman Bates in the…

It is that time of year again. The time for me to reemerge from the shadows to defend the honor of my most beloved Halloween candy, candy corn…

The debate rages every holiday season and this year I decided to take a closer look at how the film world feels about this most wronged of seasonal sweets. Turns out, they weren’t really on my side either. In fact, if anything, this harmless honey-sugar pyramid is horror’s harbinger of doom.

From Hitchcock’s Psycho to Josh Hasty’s 2019 offering Candy Corn, from kid-friendly horror to iconic slashers and possession films, the sweet…