Enys Men
It is springtime 1973, and the days are bright on a small island off the coast of Cornwall. A horticulturist (Mary Woodvine), known only as the volunteer, is the island’s sole inhabitant. Or is she?
I Walked with a Zombie
A nurse leads a catatonic through an expanse of moonlit cane. They pass displays of sacrificed animals before encountering the towering, shirtless, dead-eyed Black man who grants them entry to a private outdoor religious ceremony…
Skinamarink
We go to the movies to see ghosts, whether they be the likenesses of long-gone actors, objects, or edifices, or the suggestion of specters imprinted in the gloom of otherwise benign images.
Nr. 10
From its opening image of ocean waves stuttering slowly behind a sheet of steely rain to its final vista of human detritus turned into cosmic junk, Nr. 10 seems determined above all to enter and exit every scene in medias res.
Nanny
Nanny begins with Aisha (Anna Diop) asleep. Shadows, undulations, and a spreading dampness affect her bedclothes, while a spider makes an entrance just as Aisha wakes with a start.
Birth
The camera floats just a little behind and a little above the figure of a man running through Central Park. In this, Birth’s overture, we seem to observe the running man from the perspective of Death itself—a force as calm, steady, and inescapable as the pale-faced harbinger who appears in the opening scenes of The Seventh Seal.
Woman in the Dunes
The tale of an amateur entomologist (Eiji Okada) lured by seemingly amiable rural folk into a sand pit from which he is unable to escape, Woman in the Dunes would seem to generate its particular strain of terror from our primal fear of sequestration and austerity.
Speak No Evil
The English title of Christian Tafdrup’s third feature initially reads as a strategy to draw horror fans, a pleading form of genre assurance that the film’s anodyne original Danish title, Gæsterne, or The Guests, cannot offer.
What Josiah Saw
The enduring allure of Southern Gothic seems inextricable from the biblical entropy that haunts its storytelling, segregating it from the vagaries of time and culture wars like an oppressively protective porch mama.
It’s What’s Inside That Counts
Cronenberg hallmarks may ripple through Crimes of the Future, but the director’s transcendent return offers fresh flavors of food for thought.