horror – Page 22 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Written by Edward Albee & Ernest Lehman
Directed by Mike Nichols

I can’t imagine how shocked audiences were when they saw this movie in 1966. It doesn’t have gratuitous nudity or sex, barely any profanity, no violence or gore. However, it features such bitter, hateful characters that this is a complicated picture to get through even by today’s standards. It wouldn’t be until 1968 that married couples on television would be shown. However, film and theater have always been ahead of the curve in pushing content boundaries. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a couple like this before. The rancor that is already overflowing when the movie begins just explodes. We’re given some moments of reprieve, but they fade quickly when the ceasefire ends, and the games begin again.

Movie Review – Persona

Persona (1966)
Written & Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Persona is a fever dream. Literally. Writer-director Ingmar Bergman says he worked out the rough draft over nine weeks while recovering from pneumonia in the hospital. The film is tangled up in Bergman’s rather complicated personal life. At one point, Bergman was involved romantically with actress Bibi Andersson. A few years later, he ran into her in Stockholm, where he met Liv Ullman, who was friends with Andersson. The director says the friends’ resemblance to each other was uncanny, and the idea of this blending of identity came from that thought. Bergman, who was married to this third wife at the time, would eventually start an extramarital affair with Ullman and would have a child with her. Persona ends up being a film as complicated and entangled as the filmmaker’s own personal life.

Movie Review – Fresh

Fresh (2022)
Written by Lauryn Kahn
Directed by Mimi Cave

I got married in 2011, so I just missed the era of ubiquitous dating apps and how these programs have restructured dating in the 21st century. I remember the website OkCupid and Match.com, but apps like Tinder and Bumble are just beyond my dating experiences. The people who have engaged with these apps have gone on to pen stories by “Cat Person” or films like Promising Young Woman. While I have not seen that film, reviews I’ve read expressed some disappointment with how the premise was executed, not sure if it wanted to be serious or a dark comedy. Fresh is much more confident in its tone but still not perfect. This is comedic but has many moments where I couldn’t quite understand what the director was going for because it clashed with other moments.

Movie Review – The Empty Man

The Empty Man (2021)
Written & Directed by David Prior

If you were unaware of this film or saw the title in 2021 and kept walking, I wouldn’t think less of you. There has been a bizarre dichotomy in the horror of slow-burn art house fare and throwaway On-Demand garbage in recent years. The mid-tier horror film, much like mid-tier movies in general, feels somewhat lost. The recommendation of the Red Letter Media guys caused me to search out this picture and give it a view. I can honestly say I really enjoyed myself. This isn’t groundbreaking but does actually have a filmmaker thinking carefully about each scene resulting in some astounding cinematography and stylistic flourishes at moments. The story is also very unconventional, told in a manner that will have the audience wondering how the narrative will shift and change next.

Movie Review – Benny’s Video

Benny’s Video (1993)
Written & Directed by Michael Haneke

Reality in our current period has become a grotesquely malleable element. QAnon cultists talk about wild conspiracies with such confidence that it seems to come from an entirely different dimension. The State Department gins up war with Russia and China in parallels with the fabrication and lack of substantial evidence needed to justify such actions. Everywhere you go in America, you are bombarded by marketing attempting to warp your sensibilities to believe unnecessary consumption is the answer to your existential woes. The screen acts as a filter for your emotional response. You can pause, rewind, skip, and because of that, you never really have to reflect or engage. This is the world Michael Haneke saw in Austria all the way back in 1993, and it hasn’t gotten any better.

Movie Review – The Seventh Continent

The Seventh Continent (1989)
Written by Michael Haneke and Johanna Teicht
Directed by Michael Haneke

Human existence has clearly reached a terminus point. The current world order is ending, and it’s scary not knowing how things will shape up next. In the face of climate collapse, social disorder, and a nightmare pandemic, it’s near impossible to see anything substantively hopeful in the future. My personality is not often turning and burying myself in escapist fare. Yeah, I read comic books regularly and am not averse to a dopamine-inducing video game, but ultimately I need to look into the void and see what lies within. Michael Haneke has been a filmmaker that has never hesitated to show us the worst of humanity, particularly the comfortable aloof middle class. He views them as both perpetrators of horrendous evil and victims of their own cruelty. For Haneke, an exploration of modernity and the senseless violence that accompanies it links us to our history and points to a dark future should we remain on this path.

Movie Review – The Last Wave

The Last Wave (1977)
Written by Peter Weir, Tony Morphett, and Petru Popescu
Directed by Peter Weir

Australia has been a land profoundly defined by its colonialist nature. The divide between the descendants of European settlers and the indigenous people is the story at the continent’s core. The Last Wave attempts to examine how even “well-meaning” Australians are simply never going to fully understand the complexity of Aborigine society, and that is simply how it is. This is related to the cultural roots of the settlers in punitive, authoritarian religious movements while the Aborigines live under a much more esoteric system of beliefs. But, more importantly, the film is about how Aborigine spirituality prepares its people far better for the chaotic shifts of the universe than the dogmatic Christian religions.

Movie Review – Nightmare Alley (2021)

Nightmare Alley (2021)
Written by Guillermo del Toro and Kim Morgan
Directed by Guillermo del Toro

Having just watched the original Nightmare Alley a week ago, I was a little uncertain how I’d feel about this remake. Guillermo del Toro, like the Wachowskis, is a filmmaker I respect but don’t necessarily enjoy much of their work. It’s clear del Toro is presenting his vision without many studio-directed tweaks and cuts. I’ve begun to think of him as a more thoughtful Tim Burton, someone whose style is matched by the substance of his work. With Nightmare Alley, he comes to the table with a solid narrative to work with. He even manages to go with the novel’s original, bleaker conclusion than the 1947’s softened conclusion. However, the movie feels too sterile due to an over-reliance on modern digital cinematography.

Movie Review – Noroi: The Curse

Noroi: The Curse (2005)
Written by Kōji Shiraishi and Naoyuki Yokota
Directed by Kōji Shiraishi

By 2005, J-horror popularity in the United States was peaking. There were so many poorly made and poorly received adaptations that producers began looking elsewhere for something to exploit. That’s a shame because Noroi became a film criminally overlooked by audiences in the States. This is one of the best found-footage horror films I’ve ever seen, and I’m someone who typically hates this subgenre. Noroi works because it doesn’t just stick with the framing of seeing the movie through the eyes of someone walking around, holding a camera the whole time. Instead, it engages in mass media as part of its narrative, cleverly telling its story through complex structures that add up to a single disturbing whole.

Movie Review – Ringu

Ringu (1998)
Written by Hiroshi Takahashi
Directed by Hideo Nakata

The origin point for much of modern Japanese horror can be traced to Ringu. This horror film has all the elements I’ve previously talked about: techno-horror, child murder, investigation that reveals the truth behind the horror. These things speak to the existential fears of not just the Japanese but almost all people living in our neoliberal present, attempting to make sense of modernity and the collapse of myths. Technology is going to lift humanity out of suffering, we are told. But has it really? Or does it fix some problems while creating new ones or exacerbating existing troubles? There’s currently a fervent discourse around child murder/molestation/etc. in America right now, but it mostly feels like political factions using the concept as yet another cultural divide rather than genuinely attempting to protect young people. The great pit in your stomach moment of horror that is well-written is the realization that the forces you are up against cannot be stopped, and so the protagonist is often warped in some way for the rest of their lives.