Category Archives: Horror

#AIFF2017 Day 2: The Child Remains, Mary Shelley, plus The Crescent

September 16, 2017 flawintheiris

The comfortably full Cinema 8 at Park Lane was the site of the gala premiere of Michael Melski's The Child Remains, his long-gestating supernatural thriller, on Friday evening. It was clearly an emotional event for the writer-director, and he had many kind things to say about his crew and cast. Unfortunately, we also had to put…Read More

It Comes At Night review — Fighting the vague plague

June 15, 2017 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Trey Edward Shults | 91 min | On Demand It's rare, but every once in awhile a movie comes along that frustrates not because it's poorly made or awkwardly realized, but because it's thematically so bleak the film leaves you feeling pummelled. It Comes At Night is one of those films.…Read More

Alien: Covenant review — Mostly very familiar territory. Mostly.

May 21, 2017 flawintheiris

Directed by Ridley Scott | Written by John Logan, Dante Harper, Jack Paglen, and Michael Green | 122 min | Disney + The Alien series, which bloodily thrust its way into existence in 1979 with Ridley Scott's original, is very much its own genre—described narrowly as somewhere between a haunted house in space and a slasher movie…Read More

Life (2017) review — Deeply derivative yet credibly creepy space horror

April 1, 2017 flawintheiris

Directed by Daniel Espinosa | Written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick | 104 min A trusted cinepanion who watched Life before me suggested it's best to think of it as a Roger Corman movie with a massive budget. It certainly could be—it aspires to Alien, to Gravity, while punching at a level somewhere beneath Event Horizon.…Read More

Get Out review — Fear of a White Planet

March 2, 2017 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Jordan Peele | 103 min | Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crave A cunning amalgam of horror and satire, comedian Peele has delivered an especially satisfying debut feature film. It manages to poke at a lot of the cliches of white liberal America—that some may call unacknowledged truths, especially the barely repressed racism…Read More

The Girl With All The Gifts review — The next, if not last, word in zombies

February 27, 2017 flawintheiris

Directed by Colm McCarthy | Written by Mike Carey adapting his novel | 111 min | On Demand The Girl With All The Gifts is a zombie picture that delivers on all fronts while advancing its genre into fresh new hard science fiction territory. In other words, a very early and surprising contender for one…Read More

Split review — Form returns for suspense thriller filmmaker

February 11, 2017 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan | 117 min | Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crave Shyamalan is one of the few directors who has a brand, and one who's seen that brand dragged through the mud. For awhile now, the name M. Night Shyamalan has been shorthand for shlocky genre pictures, his go-to favourite storytelling crutch—a…Read More

LENS ME YOUR EARS: The Occult, Alien Invasions, and Roger Ebert’s Great Movies

January 30, 2017 flawintheiris

Movie maestro Stephen Cooke and I got together in November and December at the CKDU studios in Halifax to record a few new episodes of our podcast Lens Me Your Ears. They air on every second Tuesday at 5:30pm, or you can listen to them here on iTunes and on Stitcher. On the episode on…Read More

Top 10 Under-The-Radar films of 2016

January 17, 2017 flawintheiris

As per usual, plenty of the year’s best cinema found their way to us on platforms other than the Cineplex screens, or if they did show at the multiplex, they often came and went relatively unheralded. It’s the fact of Halifax being a small market: Many quality features won’t find distribution in theatres. Here are…Read More

LENS ME YOUR EARS: Tim Burton, Modern Westerns, and Animation

November 8, 2016 flawintheiris

Hello podcast fans! Stephen Cooke and I have been busy recording new episodes of our little show, Lens Me Your Ears, during which we watch new films in cinemas and connect them via genre or creative crew to the films of the past, ones you may not have seen. Up now on iTunes <- THIS IS…Read More