Review: PEARL, Style Meets Substance in Ti West's Stellar Slasher Prequel
After rededicating himself to horror with this spring’s marvelous sexy slasher X, Ti West is already back with Pearl, exploring the origin of the previous film’s deadly romantic killer. Where X reveled in the slasher aesthetic made so popular in...
Review: SPEAK NO EVIL, Politeness Can Often Backfire
Some people -- your humble critic included -- can find it very difficult to say no in social situations. Extricating oneself from uncomfortable circumstances can be a challenge, especially when it seems like the end of the unease is in...
Review: CLERKS III, A Requiem For The Askewniverse
It’s been a long road for Kevin Smith. His 1994 low-budget slacker comedy Clerks made him an immediate star in the indie film world, status that he would harness to spend a decade making bigger and more ambitious projects. But...
Trailer: CAPTAIN, A Rollicking Alien Invasion In The Indian Forest
There's strangeness afoot in the forest of Northeast India. Today the trailer for Tamil language sci-fi actioner Captain dropped, and it's pretty sweet. Directed by Shakti Soundar Rajan who brought us the first Tamil zombie comedy musical in 2016 with...
Review: ORPHAN: FIRST KILL, It's Julia Stiles Vs. Isabelle Fuhrman In This Appropriately Bonkers Horror Prequel
Thirteen years ago, a mid-budget horror film caused an outsized stir among genre film fans stemming from its delightfully absurd third act twist. That film was Jaume Collet-Serra’s Orphan, a film that starts out as an updated riff on The...
Review: BODIES BODIES BODIES, Funny, Surprising, Occasionally Even Scary
The storm raging outside is the least of their worries when a group of Gen Z friends turn on each other in Halina Reijn’s cocaine-fueled paranoid nightmare, Bodies Bodies Bodies. With a hurricane bearing down on them in less than...
Fantasia 2022 Review: SPECIAL DELIVERY, Park So-dam Slays The Streets Of Seoul In This Action Thriller
There’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned car chase, and director Park Dae-min’s Special Delivery is chock full of them. Borrowing liberally from Hollywood bangers like The Transporter series, Baby Driver, and Drive; Special Delivery is the familiar story of a...
Fantasia 2022 Review: OUT IN THE RING, The History & Future Of Pro Wrestling From A Queer Perspective
A compelling documentary about the history of LGBTQIA+ wrestlers prowling the squared circle, Ry Levey’s Out in the Ring is solid enough to engage even those unfamiliar or even uninterested in professional wrestling. For over one hundred years, professional wrestling...
Fantasia 2022 Review: RELAX, I'M FROM THE FUTURE, Rhys Darby Charms In Time Travel Comedy
A casual time traveler unintentionally makes a mess of the future when his latest trip winds up having potentially catastrophic consequences in director Luke Higginson’s feature debut, Relax, I’m From the Future. Based on Higginson’s 2013 short of the same...
Review: HYPOCHONDRIAC, Confronting the Horror of Trauma
A thirtysomething man’s traumatic past won’t let him move on in first-time director Addison Heimann’s Hypochondriac. Heimann’s own mental and physical breakdowns inspired this story of an otherwise happy potter descending into paranoia as a result of long-term familial pressures...
Fantasia 2022 Review: THE BREACH, Squishy Lovecraftian Horror In The Woods
A police captain in his last days on the job gets sent on a mind-bending journey when a boat carrying a horrendously mutilated corpse ruins a family picnic in Rodrigo Gudiño’s latest horror story, The Breach. Based on the Audible...
Fantasia 2022 Review: MY GRANDFATHER'S DEMONS, Portugal's First Stop Motion Feature Is A Heartfelt Winner
It’s always exciting when a director breaks new ground, whether it is on an international level or even local. Nuno Beato’s My Grandfather’s Demons is Portugal’s first stop motion animated feature, which would be a feat to be proud of...
Fantasia 2022 Review: ON THE LINE, A Voice Phishing Action Thriller From Korea
As the world gets smaller and technology gets more advanced, scamming has become big business for industrious criminals around the world. Director Kim Gok’s On the Line takes dissects and attacks the growing voice phishing schemes that have destroyed so...
Fantasia 2022 Review: THE HARBINGER, Don't Sleep On This Novel Pandemic Horror
If there’s one thing that has shown the interconnectedness of humanity in the last few years, it is the global Covid-19 pandemic. While responses may have been different in different regions, virtually every person on the planet was forced to...
Fantasia 2022 Review: Franklin Ritch's THE ARTIFICE GIRL, A Bold New Voice In Science Fiction Is Here
The popular image of science fiction or speculative fiction is often one filled with whiz-bang gadgets, flying cars, futuristic shapes, and neon lights illuminating a dystopian world-yet-to-be. However, when you get down to the nitty gritty of it all, that’s...
Fantasia 2022 Review: DETECTIVE VS. SLEUTHS, An Over-The-Top Action Packed Return For Wai Ka-Fai
After a very long hiatus from the big screen, Wai Ka-Fai is back with Detective Vs. Sleuths, a wildly over the top revenge thriller that reminds of the bad old days of Hong Kong genre cinema while frequently tipping into...
Fantasia 2022 Review: LA PIETÀ, A Stunningly Vulgar Triumph In Puke Pink Pastels
Storming out of the gate like a harrowing, hilarious crossbreed of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Dogtooth, with the sensibilities of John Waters at his most acerbic and the aesthetics of a deranged Wes Anderson, Eduardo Casanova’s sophomore...
Fantasia 2022 Review: GLORIOUS, This Rest Stop Is A Special Cosmic Hell
There is a certain level of hell that can only be reached by the most heinous of hangovers. For those of us who’ve been there – maybe more than once – it feels like you’re going to die, you’re going...
Review: NOPE, Contemplative Sci-FI Extravaganza
Nope, director Jordan Peele's latest science-fiction/horror offering, finds the filmmaker attempting to balance his trademark penchant for social commentary with a much grander visual spectacle than he's ever attempted. While he's pretty solidly successful in the latter, the former is...
Fantasia 2022 Review: ALL JACKED UP AND FULL OF WORMS, A Lo-Fi Gross-Out For Weirdos
The pantheon of films about imagined illicit substances is varied and wide. First time feature director Alex Phillips throws his hat into the ring with his avant horror buddy trip, All Jacked Up and Full of Worms. This story...
