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Halloween Kills by Jonny Numb
Halloween Kills: The Specter of Looming Expectation (This review contains SPOILERS) The real boogeyman hanging over 2018’s Halloween was not Michael Myers, but the specter of looming expectation. After all, this was the film that wiped the prior sequel-slate clean to deliver what was thought to be the definitive sequel to 1978’s Halloween. Director David…
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Ghosts of Mars: An Appreciation by Jonny Numb
Ghosts of Mars: Love for the Red Planet Not too long ago, Billy Crash christened Ghosts of Mars John Carpenter’s worst movie. Rapper-turned-actor Ice Cube had similarly negative feelings toward it. Even Carpenter himself went into self-imposed exile for 9 years after the film’s release (and subsequent box-office failure). Out of 108 tallied reviews on…
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The Night House by Jonny Numb
The Night House: Specifics of Emotion The symbiotic relationship between grief and fear is undeniable, but for all the horror efforts that hit this tricky bullseye, just as many screw it up. Thankfully, The Night House gets the tone just right. It’s one thing to craft a film that depicts the loss of a loved…
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Raw by Jonny Numb
Raw: The Future is Fucked The MPA ratings descriptor for Raw is an instance of the anonymous panel making a moral judgment on a film. “Aberrant behavior” leads the lengthy list of material supposedly unsuitable for those under 17. Jennifer Lynch’s Surveillance earned an R rating, at least in part, due to “a scene of…
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Werewolves Within by Jonny Numb
Werewolves Within: Solution to Snow Hollow Horror-comedy is a grand balancing act: when it works, it works beautifully. When it fails, it’s like a person stepping on a banana peel and not falling ass-over-head. And then there are films that strike an imbalance between genres, becoming identity crises that have no idea what they want…
