LAURA KERN

is a writer, editor, and horror programmer based in New York. She is the editor of Bloodvine and her writing has appeared in publications such as The New York TimesFilm Comment, and Rolling Stone.

One of the most unheralded of Universal’s 1930s horror films, though perhaps the purest example of the form during that era, Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) comes off as early-Hollywood...

November 13, 2024

Sometimes, when feelings of déjà vu extend beyond a fleeting moment, it’s enough to make a nonbeliever consider the possibilities of other, more metaphysical powers at play.

November 6, 2024

One of the grimiest movies ever made, Isolation is the ultimate in contained, farm-set horror, perfect from its attention-grabbing opening titles to its chillingly bleak finale.

November 1, 2024

The shadowy figure of Rondo Hatton creeps appropriately over the opening-credits sequences of both House of Horrors and The Brute Man, the two official films in which...

 October 27, 2024

“This is a living nightmare!” archaeologist Michael Radin (Martin Lavut) frantically spills to his shrink, Dr. Allen Barnes (Paul Stevens), explaining that his dreams have become all too real...

October 21, 2024

Longlegs carries forward Osgood Perkins’s ethereal cinema of dark isolation.

July 12, 2024

Every so often, an actual reputable film materializes from Troma’s output of zero-budget shlock. Despite its nonsensical title, 1990’s Def by Temptation is one such example.

June 19, 2024

Done right, a movie can conjure feelings you typically wouldn’t have—or, in the case of many dark genre works, ones you absolutely don’t want.

 March 29, 2024

With their numbing sameness, dystopian or end-of-world movie scenarios tend to grow tiresome, and even intolerable now that we have a four-year reference point for how true...

March 15, 2024

Writer/director David Koepp paid the ultimate tribute to an author he reveres, the oft-adapted Richard Matheson, with a top-notch screen...

January 24, 2024

When we were in our late teens, my best friend had a random VHS collection consisting of just three titles: Night of the Living Dead...

January 19, 2024

A rare case of a film striking the perfect horror-comedy balance, The Day of the Beast is also an extremely rare example of a buddy flick...

December 30, 2023

The first edition of a reanimated column rounds up the best in this year’s horror, sci-fi, thrillers, and bloody action.

December 22, 2023

Much folk horror pivots on the sacrifices that must be made for sacred, usually cursed land. And in the case of J. Lee Thompson’s wildly...

October 31, 2021

It’s been regularly cautioned that The Golden Glove isn’t for the faint of heart, and while that might be a fair assessment, such warnings...

November 23, 2023

An interesting piece of Australian horror history is that one of the first examples of the genre wasn’t meant to be a feature film at all. 

November 23, 2023

Sébastien Marnier’s second feature may be cursed with a generic English title, but the film immediately dispels any semblance of...

October 8, 2023

The influence of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on motion pictures can be traced back to the early years of cinema, and reanimating...

August 18, 2023

The word alone induces twinges of dread and disgust: “influencer,” along with its evil siblings “vlogger,” “social media personality”...

May 25, 2023

Quentin Dupieux’s singular brand of outlandish humor reaches gory new heights with Smoking Causes Coughing.

March 31, 2023

A stalker situation gone berserk; a cursed trailer home situated in the flat vastness of chilly, rural New Mexico; a provocative, post-coital...

January 13, 2023

The Harbinger, the latest of Andy Mitton’s exquisitely heady—and horrifying—otherworldly explorations, is the only quarantine film we need.

December 5, 2022

With his cold, enigmatic handsomeness and piercing blue eyes, Ralph Fiennes was meant for villainy. His magnetic portrayal of the execrable...

November 18, 2022

Suckers for crazy-ass voodoo curses that travel down female family bloodlines should delight in The Kiss, a film that got lost among the wealth...

October 31, 2022

Legendary Amicus anthologies like Freddie Francis’s Tales from the Crypt (not to mention TV shows like The Twilight Zone, adopting the same style) owe everything to Dead of Night...

October 31, 2022

After four canonical films and two offshoots, the indomitable series returns to glory with Prey.

August 17, 2022

Not just a key figure in the emergence of the J-horror movement, Kiyoshi Kurosawa is also a contender for the most important filmmaker in all of Japanese horror history.

July 15, 2022

Looking back on the experience of Darren Aronofsky’s divisive masterwork and questions of misogyny in horror from a world more surreal than the one we inhabited five years ago.

June 7, 2022

As The Innocents opens, a family of four are in the car headed to a new home. In the back seat sit two sisters: the lightly freckled Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum), her intense stare much older...

May 13, 2022

Audiences and filmmakers alike can’t seem to get enough of body horror. The Soskas went for it full-throttle with their 2019 remake of Cronenberg’s Rabid...

April 19, 2022

After a curiously cutesy opening-credits sequence featuring Murders in the Zoo’s cast members mirrored with similarly posed animals, a quick tonal shift occurs...

April 19, 2022

Coulrophobia—the fear of clowns—is no joke. Pennywise, that damn clown hiding under the bed in Poltergeist, and just good old trips to the local circus paired with a child’s dark...

April 19, 2022

Like the best fairy tales, which often portray darkness through the lens of childhood innocence, Laurín tells a dreamily surreal story of hardened youth.

March 17, 2022

Marriage and remarriage have forever been prominent motifs in the comedy genre. But with matrimonial success rates not exactly encouraging in much of the world...

March 14, 2022

While 1981’s My Bloody Valentine may rightfully be the go-to Valentine’s Day slasher for anti-romantics who prefer their gooeyness blood-soaked and sugar-free, Cannon Films...

February 14, 2022

In what could be the fastest-resulting rape-revenge scenario in horror-movie history, a drunken lout brutally forces himself on a young woman, Ida (Shay Garner)...

October 31, 2021

This rarity by the director of Logan’s Run and Orca may be one of the silliest slasher films ever made, but it’s also irresistible fun, both well-executed and rapidly paced.

October 31, 2021

With its theatrical origins—Piotr Rowicki’s play AdherenceDemon might be stagey in its limited setting, but there’s so much festering within that you’re hardly aware...

October 31, 2021

The close of the ’80s brought a consummate entry in that decade’s trash-horror cinema. Nightmare Beach takes a sex-comedy setting—spring break at Miami Beach...

October 31, 2021

Katie Small

is a writer, photographer, videographer, and cinephile living in Portland, Oregon.