The Substance There’s a certain kind of film fan that reacts positively when they hear that an upcoming movie is “outrageous” or “over-the-top.” The idea that something “goes too far” does not dissuade; there is no ‘too far.” The boundaries exist to be pushed, please show us something new. I am one of those film…

ODDITY – Writer/director Damian McCarthy’s film is a more straightforward entertainment than his previous movie, Caveat, but they both share his own distinctive, off-kilter style. One night, while alone in the country house she and her husband Ted are renovating, Dani is murdered. One of Ted’s psychiatric patients is blamed for it and is later…

Writer/director Christopher Smith’s 2009 film Triangle hurts my head with the complexity of its plot, but I love it anyway. I’ve seen it three or four times in the past fifteen years, and it never fails to impress me with its combination of intellectual gamesmanship and emotional impact. Thus the fact that it seems relatively…

Almost sixty years before the publication of Dracula, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (second cousin to Leo Tolstoy) wrote a novella entitled The Family of the Vourdalak. The story concerned a specific vampire variant from Eastern European folklore which preferred to dine upon its family or its beloved in general. The most famous adaptation of this tale…

Osgood Perkins’ fourth directorial effort, Longlegs, debuted to critical acclaim and box office success, due in part to an incredibly creative and savvy marketing campaign that created a “want to see” factor that pulled people off their couches and into theaters. That’s notable in and of itself, but that would simply be a quickly forgotten…