[Abridged transcription of the video essay Angst Through the Ages: Nate Roscoe on the Chokehold of the Serial Killer on 20th Century Cinema, featured on Umbrella Entertainment’s UHD/Blu-ray C…

[Relax. Ye shall find no major spoilers here.] Hype. What a devil it can be. As a moviegoer, few experiences sting like exiting a screening room afflicted with the burn of disappointment, your medi…

Thick clouds of cold, obsidian dread permeate The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Sky’s six-part reworking of the multi-million bestseller by Heather Morris: they loom disquietingly in the first frames and…

[Meg 2: The Trench is currently playing in cinemas worldwide.] Holy megalodon! Just when you thought it was safe to give this floundering franchise a wide berth, along swims Meg 2: The Trench: a fo…

Todd Solondz knows how to write women. Years before the film industry came to its senses and realised the value in putting ladies of all colours, body types, age brackets, and degrees of distinctio…

July 27th, 2007: twenty-five days after her milestone 21st birthday, Lindsay Lohan’s latest star vehicle—the intriguingly titled, mid-budget brainfuck I Know Who Killed Me—was laid bare upon 1…

Very few performers nail neurosis like Julianne Moore. Between her stupefying embodiment of a housewife on the brink in Todd Haynes’ terrific Safe (1995), tightly-wound turns in a sprawling pair of…

[Candy is currently available to stream on Hulu in the U.S. Other territories to be confirmed.] The notion of a “perfect crime” might well be best suited to the lurid pages of hard-boiled pulp fict…

[The screenplay excerpts contained herein are my own creation; it was not my intent to imitate the work of Brian De Palma/Robert J. Avrech—I have not read their script for Body Double.] A great set…

If there’s a mentality to which every single one of us can relate, it is that of not having accomplished enough in our adult lives. There appears to be a customary juncture, somewhere around the ag…

(Spoilers for X follow.)

The relationship between psychiatry and the movies has long been fraught with failure. For every well-intentioned dive into the catacombs of mental illness, there are countless cinematic tales that…

If there was one thing that hounded me in the weeks and months following the miseries I endured whilst in the ensnarement of a manipulative abuser, it was the fear of not being believed. A fear so …

For those who subscribe to such theories, the 1st of November marks the advent of the Feast of All Saints: a day upon which Roman Catholics commemorate the saints and martyrs who, throughout Christ…

“Mu-uum! Pur-leaaase!” I remember it like it was yesterday: our local independent video shop, its sharp fluorescent ceiling lights flooding down over twelve-year-old me and mother dearest, wh…

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, the brilliant Oscar Wilde once affirmed. An irrefutable game changer for big-screen scares, it’s no real surprise to spot the narrat…

Hagsploitation. Not the most flattering of terms, is it? For this writer at least, it conjures up a very specific set of images—antiquated wigs, smudged lipstick and eyeliner; maybe a facial wart a…

[An abridged version of the following piece appeared in 88 Films’ Limited Edition Blu-ray release of Christmas Evil (1980), issued December 2019.] I’m willing to bet that you’ve never s…

[An abridged version of the following piece appeared in 88 Films’ Limited Edition Blu-ray release of Terror Train (1980), issued November 2019.] My love affair with locomotives began around t…

There’s a key development in Phil Morrison’s forlorn 2005 dramedy, Junebug, that is so subtle it could almost go unnoticed. It comes during a parish get-together, where George (Alessand…