The Hellraiser franchise has always been a bit of a dichotomy – the profane and the beautiful, the elegant and the crass, the sexuality and the agony all go hand in bloody hand. Some entries are better than others, but this has always been a series where the point is the extreme nature of it….
Bones and All, the new film by director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name), wastes no time in establishing itself. Young Maren (Taylor Russell), at a sleepover, suddenly attacks her host, nearly biting off her finger and escaping in the night. Maren feels a compulsion to consume human flesh. Whether this is a physical…
While Smile is a horror film that plays for a crowd and gives us jumps and intense moments, it’s also a story about trauma and how our past can torment and haunt us just as much as any movie monster. At Fantastic Fest, I was fortunate to speak with director Parker Finn and star Sosie…
Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges is a distinct kind of hitman movie, one with a lot on its mind, moral clarity in a world of nefarious criminals, and terrific performances by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. All three return for The Banshees of Inisherin, but while many of the components are the same, Banshees has a…
Simultaneously explorative and deeply reductive, Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of Blonde delves as deeply into Marilyn Monroe’s (Ana de Armas) battle between her public and private personae as anyone ever has, but the film only manages to find tired Freudian pop answers beneath the sediment. Joyce Carol Oates’ semi-biographical novel (Order Now) provides a moderate starting point, turning…
It should come as no surprise to learn, once audiences see the movie, that The Menu was produced by Adam McKay and directed by Mark Mylod. The Menu could easily take place in some back corner of the Succession universe – I imagine that Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) would probably move heaven and earth to…
There’s a trend going on in horror cinema that’s been happening for several years now – the exploration of past traumas and how they inform the present, often done metaphorically. That movie monster or thing that creeps in the shadows of the room isn’t just a monster – it’s something horrific from the past that…
Alice Chambers (Florence Pugh) is happily married to Jack Chambers (Harry Styles). Every day, she wakes up, sends Jack to work at the enigmatic Victory Project, cleans house, cooks Jack dinner, welcomes him home with a glass of liquor and a loving embrace, goes to bed, often after making passionate love, wakes up the next…
Thirteen years have passed since James Cameron’s groundbreaking visual masterpiece, Avatar, flew into theaters. Do you feel old yet? Now, the Na’vi are rising once more to be introduced to a new generation of viewers in a newly remastered 4K re-release of Avatar in theaters on September 23, 2022, for a limited time. The timing…
Tom George’s See How They Run is a fun, albeit predictable affair. The film tells you exactly what it is from the very start and luxuriates in its ribbing approach to the genre. Clearly reverent of the murder mystery genre, everyone, from cast to crew, seems game in their commitment to carry out this Agatha…
As a Generation X’er, Kevin Smith and I have something of a tempestuous relationship. I saw Clerks at a special early screening when no one knew who this guy from New Jersey was, and I sat down to it, having no idea what the movie was about. When it was over, it felt like I…
The first thing to be said about Zach Cregger’s Barbarian is that you can’t really talk about it; to say too much about it is not just to spoil its inherent surprises but to reduce its actual power. It’s a cinematic version of Fight Club, less of an actual narrative and more akin to a…
One of the most hotly-anticipated horror titles of 2022 has quickly become this weekend’s Barbarian, a modestly-budgeted contained thriller that has built up the kind of advanced word-of-mouth most films can only dream to get. Part of the appeal has been early viewers imploring audiences to go into the film as cold as possible, and…
Like the moral of a fable, filmmakers have been trying to capture the ephemeral fantasy of the fairy tale on screen for as long as motion pictures have been an art, and for just as long, they’ve turned good stories bad in the attempt. The stylized and heightened reality fairy tales naturally attract the visual…
This Friday, August 26, we will see a cinematic event that only comes around once in a blue moon: A new film from George Miller. The Oscar-winning Australian helmer best known for the Mad Max, Babe, and Happy Feet franchises has made less than a dozen feature films since his debut in 1979 with Mad…
Perhaps a better title for Beast would be Prey, but that one’s already taken this year. When a group of African poachers kills off a lion’s pride for their pelts, the one remaining survivor goes after the rest of the humans in the area. When a doctor, his two children, and the local game warden…
Ladybug is a freelance “snatch and grab” man who has extraordinary bad luck in Bullet Train. But after going away and reassessing his life, he finds himself re-energized and ready to get back in the game. He accepts a new job from his handler, Maria. Ladybug is to get on a bullet train in Japan…
Pretty, lighthearted, charming, and as fleeting as its namesake, Bullet Train is also a pointless exercise in action filmmaking from 25 years ago but has little to offer today. Filled with nameless, unformed characters thrown back in and forth in time in a constant struggle to provide both context and surprise, Bullet Train‘s inability to…
Prey is the best Predator movie since… well, Predator. It deepens and enriches the mythology of the franchise but is also unique and stands on its own as a movie. You can enjoy the callbacks, or you can appreciate a ripping good adventure yarn well told without all the baggage. This will probably be in…
Vital Thrills got a chance to talk to the cast and crew of the highly-anticipated new Prey movie, the newest entry in the Predator franchise coming to Hulu. The film will be available to stream on August 5 as a Hulu Original in the U.S., Star+ in Latin America, and Disney+ under the Star banner in all other…