Danny Anderson

The year is 1968 and two attractive young people find themselves seduced by a Devil-worshiping cult. The cult seeks the vitality of their youth and will stop at nothing in a plot to indoctrinate them as servants of Satan. This plot summary surely…

For the past several years, my family and I have made a tradition of watching through Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy in the Thanksgiving window. In all honesty, the tradition wasn’t born out of an intentional act of religious devotion.…

Let there be no doubt about my position. John Carpenter is a great artist. And critics, many of whom seemingly made careers out of missing this point, have largely come around to acknowledge this fact. If there was any remaining doubt about…

By Arthur Aghajanian AA: In the context of theology, we might note that film has a special ability to represent things that other art forms can’t. The hypnotic affects achieved through temporal dislocation, the camera’s ability to concentrate…

By Arthur Aghajanian Going to the movies may not seem like religious action, but it’s one of the most common ways we experience spiritual insight. Film impacts how we interpret life, and its mechanical apparatus is uniquely suited to provide glimpses…

By Danny Anderson Horror films are shapeshifters by nature. They emerge into the world at a given time and place and contort themselves to embody the anxieties, fears, and hopes of their moment. For those interested in religion, horror has been,…

Mike Flanagan’s new Netflix series, Midnight Mass, was always bound to be a focal point for one culture war or another. Flanagan has already established himself as a filmmaker that people talk about, and his horror films and shows consistently become…

The food was distributed around the table and, thoughtlessly hungry, I took a couple of bites. It was a kind of record-scratch moment I guess because everyone paused and looked at me in horror. The matron of the house sternly told me “we haven’t…

By Danny Anderson As a consumer of art, I generally agree with Franz Kafka when he wrote “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us.” I don’t take this to mean that we should avoid books we like. Rather, we should learn to…

By Danny Anderson [Spoilers (if that’s even still possible)]. Over the last two months, I was sucked into Wanda Maximoff’s hex like everyone else. Many other people have, or will, write about the gripping meditation on grief that WandaVision…

By Danny Anderson This semester, I taught Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, the story of young, Hasidic Jew, Danny Saunders, and his journey to an orthodoxy that still engages the world outside his Hasidic community. In an attempt to explain that dynamic to…

By Danny Anderson An Opening Salvo Though too few media outlets cover it, there is in fact a sober and intellectually serious strain of Christianity in America. Revenue imperatives will probably always drive the media to focus on what historian John…

By Danny Anderson Growing up a low-church Protestant, I had a tragically shallow liturgical education. When I moved to New York City in my mid 20s and first saw Catholics with ash on their foreheads on that particular Wednesday, I was utterly…

By Danny Anderson Is it going too far to call Pet Sematary an Easter movie? Hear me out. First, let’s admit up front that Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s 2019 adaptation of Pet Sematary doesn’t explore the depths of human grief that it’s source…

By Danny Anderson Ted Bundy is once again having a moment. The current interest in his story can be traced to two new productions: Netflix’s four-part documentary series Conversations with a Killer, and the film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and…

As Easter approaches, Christians all over the world prepare to mourn the death of Christ on Good Friday, and then to celebrate his resurrection three days later, on Easter. For most believers, these events mark the holiest days on the calendar.…

By Danny Anderson I wonder if any single idea has corroded American Christianity as much as “Family Values.” If you grew up in Evangelical circles in the past 30-40 years, then the squishy ethos of this concept has permeated most aspects of your…

By Danny Anderson Who is the protagonist of Todd Phillips’ Joker? Much of the controversy surrounding the film hinges on this question. Many of its detractors accuse the film of casting the maniacal arch villain as hero in a Batman-less world. Their…

By Danny Anderson The DC Universe series Titans is set to drop its second season on September 6th. The show, a very adult rendition of DC’s popular Teen Titans combo, conspicuously drops the “Teen” from its title. This dark move has been the main…

Godzilla: King of Monsters, the latest installment of Legendary Entertainment’s “MonsterVerse” franchise, is in the wind-down phase of its theatrical release, to a fairly mixed critical response. Now that the buzz has subsided, it’s a good time to…