Category Archives: Horror

Nope review — Jordan Peele delivers another thoughtful, impressive movie

July 25, 2022 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Jordan Peele | 130 min | ▲▲▲▲▲ | Crave This is the blockbuster we've been waiting for in the summer of 2022. It's an impressively original story unrelated to a franchise or a sequel or prequel, the new horror from Jordan Peele — the filmmaker behind Get Out and Us —…Read More

Slash/Back review — Arctic aliens get stomped by badass girls

June 24, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Nyla Innuksuk | Written by Innuksuk and Ryan Cavan | 87 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Crave Welcome to Pangnirtung, Nunavut — a small town just beneath the Arctic Circle. It's the summer solstice, a day that sees no night and all the adults are partying. That leaves teenagers Maika (Tasiana Shirley) and her…Read More

Crimes of the Future review — Long Live the New Sex

June 14, 2022 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by David Cronenberg | 107 min | ▲▲▲▲▲ | Crave Can we say now, while he's still with us and making movies at this standard, that David Cronenberg is the greatest filmmaker our national cinema has ever produced? I mean, the mountain of evidence is towering. If you go back more than…Read More

Morbius review — Predictably batty, but not the worst

June 13, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Daniel Espinosa | Written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless | 104 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Amazon Prime It still surprises me this movie exists. Due to the weird rules dictating Marvel Comics character licensing, Sony has the rights to a host of villains from the pantheon of Spider-Man comics around which they've…Read More

The Righteous review — Gothic horror counts the wages of sin

June 10, 2022 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Mark O'Brien | 97 min | ▲▲▲△△ | VOD First off, let me say how much I enjoyed the gorgeous black and white cinematography in The Righteous from DP Scott McClellan. His lighting design frequently evokes classic Hollywood noir, a compelling choice of texture for a drama that makes a troubled…Read More

HIFF is back!

June 9, 2022 flawintheiris

In a town where we're blessed by a number of quality film festivals, the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival has earned a reputation for being one of the scrappiest, offering a consistently avant garde and experimental cinematic program. The 2022 edition looks to meet that expectation with a slate of films screening over four days in-person…Read More

Tin Can review — Homegrown sci-fi horror chills to the core

March 18, 2022 flawintheiris

Tin Can | Directed by Seth A Smith | Written by Smith and Darcy Spidle | 99 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | VOD A version of this review appeared during my coverage of the FIN Atlantic International Film Festival in September 2021. Tin Can is a compelling, claustrophobic sci-fi thriller from Smith, whose South Shore-set ghost…Read More

Violation review — An empty effort at art house horror

January 25, 2022 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer | 107 min | Shudder and VOD | ▲△△△△ I had a discussion and disagreement with a fellow film reviewer recently. They admitted to not being a fan of high-brow scares, the arthouse-invading "elevated horror" pictures like The Babadook or Hereditary or Saint Maud. Instead, they…Read More

Scream (2022) review — The good, the bad, and the bloody

January 21, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett | Written by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick | 114 min |▲▲▲△△ | VOD There's something to be admired in a franchise that starts as a tight trilogy over four years, goes on hiatus for a decade, returns for a better-than-it-needed-to-be fourth entry, and then takes another decade…Read More

Scream series 1-4 review

January 17, 2022 flawintheiris

I saw the original Scream when it first showed in cinemas 25 years ago and I thought it was... fine. At the time I recognized what master horrormeister Wes Craven and his collaborators were doing — a clever and ironic take on all the horror tropes and cliches Craven indulged in and exploited in earlier films…Read More