Though the subgenre has its roots in decades-old cult cinema (or, if you;d like, all the way back to Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds in 1938), “found footage” horror is most probably still most strongly associated with a breakout 1999 flick called The Blair Witch Project, a microbudget thriller that wound up inspiring equal [...]
Few things are more fundamentally terrifying than knowing you’re prey to some unknown aquatic creature lurking in the depths, and Hollywood has fed well on our love of underwater terror. With scores of prehistoric man-eating predators on the loose in Piranha 3D, we decided to take a look at three movies that explore killer creatures [...]
The UK has always been known for distinctive genre fare, and this week we have a triple dose of British horror to try and prove it. First up is Jake West’s horror-comedy Doghouse, which pits a band of wronged men against a village-ful of killer women. Next, from Neil Marshall, director of The Descent and [...]
Fantasia, North America’s biggest and best genre film festival, is a unique experience. Nowhere else can you hold your wife’s hand through a lighthearted J-punk romantic romp in the afternoon, and spend the night jerking off to Josef Mengele’s version of scat porn. Tonight, Sordid Cinema brings you one of many tastes of Fantasia’s delicacies, [...]
It’s been roughly a year since we saw the first teaser trailers for UK director Christopher Nolan’s followup to The Dark Knight, the sci-fi/heist thriller that made its debut this past weekend. Now that it’s finally here, it’s been the source of some very hyperbolic debate: is it an elaborate con job or a Kubrickian [...]
Fantasia kicked off this past weekend, and it brought with it a remake of one of the most notorious exploitation flicks ever, the rape-revenge horror movie I Spit On Your Grave. We survived the screening and lived to let you know if either version is actually any good, or just more cheap trash. Also out [...]
Before director Vincenzo Natali, Canadian horror was perhaps best known for helping Corey Haim pay his rent and David Cronenberg funnel grant money into his latex and slime fetish. But then came 1997’s bloody low-budget sci-fi film Cube, an indie darling that proved that talent and perversion don’t always go hand in hand. Okay, maybe [...]
Director Jon Favreau returns this week with his second installment in the Iron Man series, which once again gives us the ever-laconic Robert Downey Jr. as arms magnate and superhero Tony Stark, this time pairing him up with the likes of Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, and the inimitable Mickey Rourke. We’ll also be talking about [...]
The dream – or nightmare – is a staple of the modern horror movie. After all, even as manipulative as the device is, it’s still a proven way to jolt an audience. Filmmaker Wes Craven understood this bit of cinematic psychology when he concocted the central idea behind A Nightmare on Elm Street, a title [...]
In today’s world of office jobs, income tax, and formal evening wear, it’s no wonder that audiences want to fantasize about a simpler time, a time when the day was spent not filing or typing, but dismembering enemies with broadswords and then using their skulls as mead chalices and their blood as lubricant while sodomizing [...]
Horror director George A. Romero has always been known for the social commentary of his films, the political subtext his fans claim transform his gore flicks into the equivalent of a Jackson Pollack painting made with intestines. The Crazies, from 1973, is just such a film; a story about a bioweapon that’s more a platform [...]
Studio patch-it man Joe Johnston returns to revive the beleaguered werewolf movie genre with the The Wolfman, which triumphed over a long and troubled production history to prowl multiplexes with its mediocrity. (Sorry, spoilers.) In…celebration?…Al, Mariko and Simon take a look at Johnston’s opus as well as the 1941 original, along with two more allegorically [...]
On the fifth edition of the special blend on Sound on Sight we like to call Sordid Cinema, it’s an hour of intercontinental experimental horror. Corey Feldman stars in Eugenio Mira’s impossible-to-find dark comedy/thriller hybrid The Birthday, Christopher Guest regular Bob Balaban (!) directs Randy Quaid in the grisly Parents, effects man Brian Yuzna runs [...]
As the dregs of January wear on, with our spirits low, sometimes it helps to pretend that there’s a higher power up above who as a place for us lowly movie reviewers in his divine plan. Unfortunately, if this week’s movies have it right. God is a petulant, fickle, bloodthirsty creep with a taste for [...]
Albert and Allen Hughes, better known simply as the Hughes Brothers, have been kicking around since the early nineties, but you’d be forgiven for a bit of confusion thanks to their schizophrenic filmography. After helming some music videos, the twins made an envious feature debut at Cannes in 1993 at only 21 years of age [...]
The American: Visions of damnation
A look back at “Wings Of Desire”
Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes)
8: The Mormon Proposition
This Movie is Broken
The Last Exorcism: A surprisingly invigorating horror film
A Look Back At Spielberg’s Masterpiece “Jaws”
Fausta: The Milk of Sorrow
MIFF2010: The Illusionist
Piranha 3d
The Switch
Afterschool
Rampage
Stonewall Uprising
Toronto After Dark 2010: Doghouse (Review #1)
The Expendables
Toronto After Dark 2010: Last Lovecraft (Review #1)
