Tag Archive: Horror
Season of Life (Jeff Janoda, 2022)
"Hancock at Gettysburg" by Thure de Thulstrup, showing Pickett's Charge
Jeff Janoda is a Canadian teacher, historian and writer whose ability to research and vitalise historical events disparate in time and space is admirable. His terrific 2005 novel Saga takes us into the world of old Nordic stories. Sundog (2019) is a gripping yarn set in the last days of World War Two. His third novel, Season of Life pulls the reader into the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. The American Civil War was known to The Varnished Culture through that historical textbook, Gone With the Wind and a few episodes of an interminable, sepia-coloured documentary tv series. Now…
Continue Reading →Heretic
"The wife is shy, but the pie is nigh!"
(Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Wood, 2024) We who do not live in horror-film-land know that no young woman should ever go into the isolated, charming house at the bottom of a wind-strewn garden during a rainstorm. Unfortunately for them, LDS missionaries Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) do live in that land and did not get the memo. In non-horror-film-land the missionaries would be young men but of course, women are the proper victims of imprisonment, slashings and creepy things in horror-film-land so there it is. Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) lives in that house and…
Continue Reading →Barbarian (2022)
(Director – not to be mentioned. He is not to be encouraged.) [Zach Cregger directed, his first, possibly last, effort, although the film made good money apparently – Facts matter- ED.] “Barbarian” is not rateable on the “Babadook Scale“. It’s not that sort of horror movie. It’s the sort on which even fewer pesky script meetings are wasted. You can determine whether you have seen this film by casting yourself in the lead role and answering the following questions. You are a young woman who arrives in the rainy dead of night to find that your B & B is…
Continue Reading →Hereditary
Toni Overdoes It.
(dir. Ari Aster) (2018) Aster’s first feature performs well on The Babadook Horror Movie Scale. There’s a large, unnaturally dark house, the topography of which is unclear, with curtains, a basement and lamp-lit corners; an insect invasion or two; a cute shaggy pet dog (not long for this world), and a creepy kid. Hereditary reminds us though, to add to the list – a medium, a séance, lights which might be ectoplasm, reflections of faces, a room which must not be entered until The Big Reveal, books which no-one opens until The Big Reveal, and old photographs which are just lying about, un-examined, until The…
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