Cliff Evans
@alidr.bsky.social
(he/him) I write about horror movies at https://alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com.
Kairo is a notable piece of Japanese horror, a bleak and chilly fable about urban malaise. Pulse, the American remake...isn't. It's basically I Know How You Screamed When You Took A Wrong Turn To Your Final Destination, but...cyber!
Compare & Contrast: Kairo/Pulse
I want to try something a little different this week, something I’ve been thinking about trying for awhile. If a foreign horror movie does w...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
October 31, 2024 at 7:54 PM
Kairo is a notable piece of Japanese horror, a bleak and chilly fable about urban malaise. Pulse, the American remake...isn't. It's basically I Know How You Screamed When You Took A Wrong Turn To Your Final Destination, but...cyber!
Andrzej Zulawski's When Harry Met Sally
James Wan's Home Alone
Tod Browning's Bringing Up Baby
October 31, 2024 at 7:14 PM
Andrzej Zulawski's When Harry Met Sally
Apart from length and pacing issues that threaten to bring it to a halt, Pulse is a chilly, supremely uneasy examination of modern loneliness.
Kairo: Alone In The Dark
I have a pretty ecumenical take on horror. I don’t want to limit it to specific forms or subject matter, because that’s boring and if you wa...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
October 17, 2024 at 2:42 PM
Apart from length and pacing issues that threaten to bring it to a halt, Pulse is a chilly, supremely uneasy examination of modern loneliness.
After being pleasantly surprised by Milk & Serial last month, I decided to watch a few more of Curry Barker's short films, and I gotta say, he's got chops. His film The Chair especially makes me want to see what he could do with more resources.
Three Short Films By Curry Barker: Between Life And Death
Last month, I watched a short film called Milk & Serial , and it was good enough to get me rethinking my general dismissiveness toward YouTu...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
October 9, 2024 at 11:08 PM
After being pleasantly surprised by Milk & Serial last month, I decided to watch a few more of Curry Barker's short films, and I gotta say, he's got chops. His film The Chair especially makes me want to see what he could do with more resources.
Post a banger that's not in English 🎧
September 21, 2024 at 10:53 PM
Post a banger that's not in English 🎧
Grave Torture takes the Indonesian "gory religious tract" formula and gives it a bit more of a contemporary spin. It's a bit uneven but it's a refreshing change of pace.
Siksa Kubur: Death Is Not The End
I made this observation a few weeks ago, but it continues to interest me how you can start to pick up on particular cultural touchstones onc...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
September 19, 2024 at 9:28 PM
Grave Torture takes the Indonesian "gory religious tract" formula and gives it a bit more of a contemporary spin. It's a bit uneven but it's a refreshing change of pace.
Holy crap I have to stop dismissing YouTube as a source for indie horror filmmaking because Milk & Serial is legit good, giving me Creep and Amateur Night vibes.
Milk & Serial: J/K Bro, It’s Just A Prank
I don’t think this is any kind of huge revelation or anything, but some of the best horror films being made right now are not coming out of ...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
September 12, 2024 at 7:47 PM
Holy crap I have to stop dismissing YouTube as a source for indie horror filmmaking because Milk & Serial is legit good, giving me Creep and Amateur Night vibes.
Jesus fuck, HBO's Chernobyl. That was the most comprehensively scary thing I've seen in awhile and it's not even horror. (It's horror.)
Chernobyl: Palatable Fictions
Nothing spices up the prospects of a horror movie like the phrase “based on a true story.” Of course, it’s total bullshit as often as not, b...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
September 4, 2024 at 11:34 PM
Jesus fuck, HBO's Chernobyl. That was the most comprehensively scary thing I've seen in awhile and it's not even horror. (It's horror.)
One Missed Call is in many ways a prototypical J-horror film, and that's both a strength and a weakness.
Chakushin Ari: Ghosts In The Machine
One of the things that I’ve really come to appreciate after writing this thing for so long is just how much any given horror film is informe...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
August 29, 2024 at 8:40 PM
One Missed Call is in many ways a prototypical J-horror film, and that's both a strength and a weakness.
Ouija: Origin Of Evil is way better than it has any right to be, and that's because @flanaganfilm.bsky.social can absolutely cook. Just knowing how to tell a story and that you don't need to shove screaming jump scares in the audience's face every three seconds goes a long way.
Ouija - Origin Of Evil: That Is One Tasty Burger
So just last week I was talking about how much I don’t like films made off the back of other films. Sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots, re-...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
August 16, 2024 at 4:13 PM
Ouija: Origin Of Evil is way better than it has any right to be, and that's because @flanaganfilm.bsky.social can absolutely cook. Just knowing how to tell a story and that you don't need to shove screaming jump scares in the audience's face every three seconds goes a long way.
The First Omen is better than any prequel has a right to be, but it would have been even better if it didn't have to bring all of the original's baggage along with it.
The First Omen: The Burden Of History
So much of what I don’t like about sequels, prequels, reboots, remakes, reimaginings, etc., is how they so often pale in comparison to the f...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
August 8, 2024 at 3:05 PM
The First Omen is better than any prequel has a right to be, but it would have been even better if it didn't have to bring all of the original's baggage along with it.
My biggest problem with Late Night With The Devil is that it's a film about illusion and the power of belief that ends up undermining its own power. Which is too bad because there's a lot to like here.
Late Night With The Devil: Illusionists
Not that anyone (I don’t think) actually believes that television and film are actually magic, but they get described in those terms often e...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
July 31, 2024 at 8:08 PM
My biggest problem with Late Night With The Devil is that it's a film about illusion and the power of belief that ends up undermining its own power. Which is too bad because there's a lot to like here.
I am pretty sure I'd pay an extra five bucks or so for a version of any given streaming horror movie that omits *all* of the different production companies involved because goddamn that adds about five minutes to the running time just by itself.
July 21, 2024 at 10:45 PM
I am pretty sure I'd pay an extra five bucks or so for a version of any given streaming horror movie that omits *all* of the different production companies involved because goddamn that adds about five minutes to the running time just by itself.
Longlegs isn't a perfect film, but it's easily one of the most unnerving things I've seen in a long time and now I'm really mad that we'll never get the Oz Perkins version of @paultremblay.bsky.social's A Head Full Of Ghosts.
Longlegs: Bad Vibes
What makes a horror film scary? I feel like this is a question that maybe isn’t wrestled with as much as it should be, given the amount of d...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
July 17, 2024 at 8:56 PM
Longlegs isn't a perfect film, but it's easily one of the most unnerving things I've seen in a long time and now I'm really mad that we'll never get the Oz Perkins version of @paultremblay.bsky.social's A Head Full Of Ghosts.
Lux Æterna is a short, dizzying blast of anxiety and sensory excess that uses the metaphor of witch trials and cinematography that can only be described as "aggro" to suggest that it sucks to be a woman in the film industry.
Lux Æterna: Film Horror
The process of making movies is sometimes referred to as “magic,” and that’s usually meant in a benevolent way, describing the process of su...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
July 10, 2024 at 6:44 PM
Lux Æterna is a short, dizzying blast of anxiety and sensory excess that uses the metaphor of witch trials and cinematography that can only be described as "aggro" to suggest that it sucks to be a woman in the film industry.
So I finally, FINALLY got around to watching Freaks, and as far as I'm concerned, all other "man is the REAL monster" films are superfluous in its presence.
Freaks: The Nature Of Monstrosity
Horror films are, largely, about monstrosity. That could be a literal monster, some kind of thing that should not be, but it can also be som...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
July 4, 2024 at 12:22 AM
So I finally, FINALLY got around to watching Freaks, and as far as I'm concerned, all other "man is the REAL monster" films are superfluous in its presence.
A Wounded Fawn is by no means the only "charming man invites a woman to spend the weekend with him for nefarious reasons" film I've watched but it surely is the strangest, a fusion of classical mythology and surrealism.
A Wounded Fawn: Hell Hath Plenty Of Fury
It’s tempting to say that the fables and fairytales we’re told as children have been sanitized (and there is some evidence that the original...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
May 16, 2024 at 1:35 AM
A Wounded Fawn is by no means the only "charming man invites a woman to spend the weekend with him for nefarious reasons" film I've watched but it surely is the strangest, a fusion of classical mythology and surrealism.
God Told Me To is classic Larry Cohen, which is to say it's a B-movie that actually traffics in some big questions before going totally apeshit.
God Told Me To: Deus Ex Machina
A deus ex machina is a plot device in which an improbable or unlikely occurrence resolves a difficult plot point, and is literally translat...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
May 16, 2024 at 1:28 AM
God Told Me To is classic Larry Cohen, which is to say it's a B-movie that actually traffics in some big questions before going totally apeshit.
We Need To Do Something is literally "It Was A Dark And Stormy Night: The Movie" and the association with the Bulwer-Lytton contest is, unfortunately, apt.
We Need To Do Something: It Was A Dark And Stormy Night
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is an annual competition to see who can write the worst opening sentence in fiction, named for the author...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
April 26, 2024 at 12:30 AM
We Need To Do Something is literally "It Was A Dark And Stormy Night: The Movie" and the association with the Bulwer-Lytton contest is, unfortunately, apt.
Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator was one of my favorite horror movies as a teenager, but his film From Beyond left me feeling uneasy and disturbed. I revisited it recently and dang, it's really good!
From Beyond: Pushing Boundaries
As a teenager, one of my favorite horror movies was Stuart Gordon’s adaptation (if you can call it that) of H.P. Lovecraft’s story “Herbert...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
April 18, 2024 at 8:40 PM
Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator was one of my favorite horror movies as a teenager, but his film From Beyond left me feeling uneasy and disturbed. I revisited it recently and dang, it's really good!
Be My Cat is a solid found-footage take on obsession and the blurring of lines between fiction and reality.
Be My Cat: Only Make-Believe
I’ve written (at length, possibly exhausting length) about the problems I have with most found-footage films. Long story short, it’s a style...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
April 12, 2024 at 2:18 PM
Be My Cat is a solid found-footage take on obsession and the blurring of lines between fiction and reality.
Fresh is not a subtle film, but it is a well-executed film. It's an examination of objectification with the force of a sharp slap.
Fresh: Men Only Want One Thing, And It’s (Really) Disgusting
Last month was full of varying flavors of cinematic disappointment at this here thing of mine, and it was starting to annoy me a little. I c...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
April 5, 2024 at 12:02 PM
Fresh is not a subtle film, but it is a well-executed film. It's an examination of objectification with the force of a sharp slap.
The Ghost Station is, perhaps reductively, a Korean take on J-horror. But reductive works, because it's pretty derivative. You've seen this film before.
Ogsuyeog Gwisin: Burying The Story
As much as I dislike the dismissal “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all,” I have to admit, every now and then I run across a movie that...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
March 28, 2024 at 1:10 AM
The Ghost Station is, perhaps reductively, a Korean take on J-horror. But reductive works, because it's pretty derivative. You've seen this film before.
The Burned Over District is less a film and more an assemblage of scenes that you might get if you took a garden-variety "small town with a dark secret" story and removed the story.
The Burned Over District: An Attempt Was Made
(I will probably get a little spoilery in this one, but the story doesn’t really have twists and turns, so it shouldn’t be too much of an i...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
March 20, 2024 at 11:55 PM
The Burned Over District is less a film and more an assemblage of scenes that you might get if you took a garden-variety "small town with a dark secret" story and removed the story.
Susuk is very much an Indonesian horror film, unconcerned with Western sensibilities, but it never really comes into focus.
Susuk - Kutukan Kecantikan: The Needle And The Damage Done
Criticism of foreign horror films are, in some ways, a very fine line for me to walk. On the one hand, I appreciate them for the opportunity...
alifetimeindarkrooms.blogspot.com
March 14, 2024 at 2:17 AM
Susuk is very much an Indonesian horror film, unconcerned with Western sensibilities, but it never really comes into focus.