horror – Page 35 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Greener Grass

Greener Grass (2019)
Written and Directed by Jocelyn DeBoer & Dawn Luebbe

In the 21st century, there has been an influx of a new kind of anti-comedy with the work of comedians like Tim & Eric being one of many beginning touchpoints. This is humor that blends social satire and grotesque imagery, not intending to demean some other figure but often as a way for the artist to examine their own anxieties and insecurities. Much like how David Lynch explores his fears of parenthood in Eraserhead, so too do these films and television programs feature creators wanting to jump headfirst into neuroses. Greener Grass is two women’s look at a particular type of femininity and way of life that they have intense fears about.

Movie Review – Day of the Locust

Day of the Locust (1975)
Written by Waldo Salt
Directed by John Schlesinger

There’s an exhausting sunbaked feeling surrounding Day of the Locust. The music and the soft lighting make conflicting claims, but if you pay close attention, you notice the rotten smell wafting up from underneath. You see it in the cracks in Tod Hackett’s apartment, hidden by a framed quote claiming the presence of God is protecting the people within. This is shown as the landlady tells Tod about the earthquake of 1932, where she and her tenants were spared while others died across the city. Tod ends up covering the crack with his artwork, slowly building a fresco of Hollywood in flames, hollow, empty faces screaming out.

My Favorite Books I Read in 2019

Friday Black: Stories by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Ever since I read Civilwarland in Bad Decline and Pastoralia, both by George Saunders, I have been searching for that sort of literary voice, and I think I’ve found it in Adjei-Brenyah. The most obvious connection is the short “Zimmer Land,” a theme park where people come to act out their aggressive fantasies while mostly ethnic minority employees (wearing high tech protective gear) become human punching bags. “The Finkelstein Five” continues that exploration of contemporary race conflict as the narrator becomes caught up in the reaction to the acquittal of a child murderer who took the lives of four black children with a chainsaw. There’s a duo of stories about the Thunderdome like conditions of a future shopping mall, where customers kill each other over insulated parkas. My favorite was the closing story, “Through the Flash” and it brought me to tears while reading it. That tale features a teenage girl caught in a dystopian time loop where she and her neighbors have lived the same days for thousands of years. It was an oddly hopeful and heartbreaking story. Of all the fiction I’ve read this year Friday Black gets my most enthusiastic recommendation.

Best of the 2010s – My Favorite Television Part 3

Over the Garden Wall (2014)
Born out of the inspiration that Adventure Time brought to Cartoon Network, Over the Garden Wall is a mini-series following two brothers wandering through a mysterious forest and encountering strange people. The series was created by Patrick McCale, who had previously worked on Adventure Time and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. Over the Garden Wall is a deep dive into the Americana aesthetic of the 19th & early 20th centuries. Many musical numbers consist of pre-1950s phonograph recordings. You’ll be reminded of early animation from the 1920s & 30s in many of these episodes. There’s such a remarkable charm to this show that few animated series possess. It’s funny while being genuinely terrifying at moments, enigmatic and wistful. It’s a program that understands what nostalgia actually is and how that feeling is different from reality. Our protagonists drift through abstract forest landscapes emerging into the dreams and fantasies of others, interacting for a while before being pulled into another story.

Movie Review – Starfish

Starfish (2018)
Written & Directed by A.T. White

One of the best ways to bring people into a fantastical story, such as in the science fiction or horror genre, is to ground that narrative in human conflict and emotions. We can’t relate to being in the middle of a world-ending cosmic event or being chased by otherworldly monsters. However, the audience can connect to feelings like loss, guilt, the list goes on. Starfish, despite being a sometimes surreal movie, keeps its feet firmly planted in the realm of the human psyche. Now, if it succeeds in conveying a compelling narrative to the audience is another question entirely.

TV Review – Castle Rock Season 2

Castle Rock Season 2 (Hulu)
Written by Dustin Thomason, K’naan Warsame, Scott Brown, Obehi Janice, Guy Busick, R. Christopher Murray, Vince Calandra, Daria Polatin, Michael Olsen, K. Corrine Van Vliet, and Scott Brown
Directed by Greg Yaitanes, Phil Abraham, Anne Sewitsky, Mark Tonderai-Hodges, Loni Peristere, Craig William Macneill, and Lisa Bruhlmann

This season of Castle Rock has brought me through a series of varied emotions but ultimately ended with a stunning finale that did justice to the character of Annie Wilkes. Along the way went through a middle section that I drifted away from. There was definitely a good story there, but it didn’t always feel like progress was being made in character arcs every episode. Often Annie felt like she was going in circles to fill out the episode order. The evil force at work in the series was kept in the background just a little too long, but when they were revealed, the episodes shined.

Movie Review – Hagazussa

Hagazussa (2017)
Written & Directed by Lukas Feigelfeld

The first film most viewers will compare Hagazussa to is Robert Eggers’ The Witch. While both pictures do tell period stories about witches, they are very different when it comes to their tone & pacing. The Witch is a tightly structured film with clear character development and themes about family. Hagasuzza is more akin to the work of Panos Cosmatos (Beyond the Black Rainbow, Mandy) with its creeping crawl and slow psychedelic horror burn. Ultimately, I found myself often frustrated with Hagazussa because its narrative is so fluid and ill-defined. It’s all mood without a compelling main character with a clear arc.

Movie Review – Possum

Possum (2018)
Written & Directed by Matthew Holness

Horror is not a monster wanting to eat you or a masked killer wielding a knife. Horror is the inability to trust your own mind, the lines between reality and subconscious terror blending so that your waking hours are swallowed up by fear. What adds to that is the inability to express what is happening inside your mind so that these traumatic experiences become a mire, in which you drown alone, unheard & unseen. This is the horror writer-director Matthew Holness brings us in Possum. Holness is best known for his comedy series Garth Merenghi which offered a silly take on retro-horror. Here there is no humor to cut through the darkness, we must bear witness to it.

TV Review – American Horror Story: 1984

American Horror Story: 1984 (FX)
Written by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Tim Minear, James Wong, Jay Beattie, Dan Dworkin, John J. Gray, Adam Penn, and Crystal Lieu
Directed by Bradley Buecker, John J. Gray, Mary Wigmore, Jennifer Lynch, Gwyenth Horder-Payton, Loni Peristere, and Liz Friedlander

Every year I brace myself for the new season of American Horror Story. These days the feelings associated with this event are annoyance and disappointment. 1984 proved to be no exception to the norm. Once again, Ryan Murphy gave us a mercifully shortened season (nine episodes) that felt so ill-planned and sloppy it made me question why he still even makes this show. Apparently, his preferred method for AHS is to throw a bunch of crap at the wall, pull in actors who he can get for a couple of days without thought to their actual characters, and see if anything works. Regardless of the quality, he releases it on television to the public.

Movie Review – The Nightingale

The Nightingale (2018)
Written & Directed by Jennifer Kent

There are moments so harrowing and emotional that occur in The Nightingale that I felt like I might break down in tears. This is a rarity for me to find in a film, having watched so many and become aware of so many tropes and plot formulas. This isn’t to say that the inciting premise of The Nightingale will seem novel to other viewers, it isn’t. This is a revenge film centered around a female protagonist, the type of story told many times before and one that is particularly popular in our time. This isn’t a film about the catharsis of revenge; the final shot makes it clear that our main character is not redeemed in any manner. Instead, this is a story about the seemingly innate drive to seek bloody justice and the tremendous toll that takes on a human being.