It’s hard to find a title more straightforward than the manhwa (a Korean comic) Killing Stalking. The story opens on withdrawn, isolated Yoon Bum breaking into the house of the man he’d admired from afar for coincidentally saving him in the past – stalking. Bum makes his way […]
Hand in hand with the human fascination with death comes the desire to defang it – to make it bearable and understandable. And yet, horror comedies are perilously difficult to pull off with much success, often veering toward one or the other or coming off with a unpleasantly […]
This post was commissioned by Frank Hecker. You can find out more about commissions here. Back in 2010, a certain segment of anime fandom was abuzz with arguments over whether Black Swan was a rip-off of Satoshi Kon’s 1997 film Perfect Blue – think the Battle Royale/Hunger Games […]
Last week we talked about The Witch, a decidedly strange and mostly effective film that inhabits that wonderful horror subgenre known as “everything’s a metaphor.” But as much as that film defied analysis by modern standards, against all odds demanding to be taken by its own internal logic, […]
Horror is the most of-the-moment genre out there: by its nature it makes itself a time capsule, simultaneously responding to gut-level fears in its surrounding culture and almost always reinforcing an Other vs. status quo arrangement. You can tell a culture’s history in no small part by the […]
It’s so rare to see Mad Scientist stories starring women: that particular breed of ambition and cold calculation, discovery and ultimate downfall, seems to go almost exclusively to men, in spite of the fact that the genre’s great progenitor came from Mary Shelley’s own pen. Women are allowed […]
It can be difficult to recommend OFF in a post-Undertale world. After all, it would seem that everything Mortis Ghost’s 2008 indie darling had to offer was revisited and built upon by Toby Fox’s recent masterpiece. OFF, in broad strokes, is basically equivalent to being locked into a […]
Dr. Herbert West’s longevity is something of a marvel. Lovecraft nerds love to turn up their noses at the Herbert West – Reanimator” stories, declaring them the weakest point in the author’s body of work. Lovecraft himself didn’t even think much of them – by which I mean […]
It’s something of a custom around here to use this week of American Turkey Day to shine a spotlight on underappreciated artists. To that end, let’s talk about Let’s Players: folks who record themselves playing video games in whole or in part for the enjoyment of others. It’s […]
Few words are as dirty as the phrase “focus testing,” the process in which bewildered strangers representing various marketing demographics are ushered into the screening of an unreleased film and then battered with questions about their feelings. Alright, it’s a bit more involved than that, but it’s […]
Fashionable Tinfoil Accessories 