STEVEN MEARS

is the copy editor for Field of Vision’s online journal Field Notes and for Film Comment magazine, as well as a frequent contributor to Film Comment, Metrograph’s Journal, and other publications. He wrote a thesis on depictions of old age in American cinema.

In the inaugural entry of a new column singling out enduringly creepy film characterizations, an American sweetheart cast against type emerges as one of cinema’s most unexpectedly chilling villains.

February 7, 2024

Jack Clayton’s masterpiece of narrative ambiguity The Innocents begins with a time-honored tableau: Deborah Kerr, hands clasped devoutly, imploring a higher power to make her useful...

October 31, 2022

This past March, X, Ti West’s gleefully raunchy hybrid of two late-’70s subgenres (farmhouse horror and farmer’s-daughter porn), overachieved in four meaningful ways.

September 19, 2022

Unfairly remembered more for his staggering innovations with makeup than for his equally staggering dramatic skills, Lon Chaney is the absent father of horror cinema.

July 15, 2022

When Bette Davis as Jane served Joan Crawford’s Blanche her pet bird for “din-din,” a new strain of horror was born. Either “Grande Dame Guignol” or “psycho-biddy cinema”...

April 19, 2022

There’s no crueler fate for an inventive, well-crafted film than being remembered solely for its twist ending, especially with said twist divulged through a line reading that oxidized...

March 1, 2022

Acclaimed stars’ forays into horror roles are always revealing, and sometimes revelatory.

October 31, 2021

Beast is a lot of movies in one package—fractured fairy tale, belated-coming-of-age story, psychological drama, regional horror film—but above all it’s a calling card for its leading lady, Jessie Buckley.

October 31, 2021

Acclaimed stars’ forays into horror roles are always revealing, and sometimes revelatory.

October 31, 2021

Katie Small

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