My Bloody Valentine
“There’s more than one way to lose your heart,” states the catchiest of the many taglines attached to the original, and best, Valentine’s-themed horror film. George Mihalka’s second feature, and still his most celebrated work, is holiday-specific in both its Valentine’s Day setting and its locale, a small made-up Canadian mining town called Valentine Bluffs.
Strange Darling
Everyone’s got their pet peeves. My biggest movie one happens to be the use of chapters. Films are not books, so they should be able to tell a story in a cinematic way, visually and sonically. Movie chapters always struck me as gimmicky distractions—until Strange Darling came along.
World’s Worst Movie Dads of 2024
The year in bad fathering, featuring Love Lies Bleeding, Cuckoo, Trap, and Abigail.
Anna and the Apocalypse
“Horror” and “musical” are two terms that don’t exactly go hand in hand. Aside from the everlasting midnight phenomenon The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the growing cult-favorite Phantom of the Paradise, there aren’t many movies mixing those genres to speak of.
The Legend of Hell House
Four brave souls accept the offer (and sizable amounts of cash) from its new owner to spend one week at Belasco House, the “Mount Everest” of haunted houses, in this “Mount Everest” of haunted-house movies.
You Are Not Me
General, rather mundane anxieties (and some more alarming pitfalls) that can accompany travel—luggage lost in transit, exhaustion, impending long-distance jet lag, a car colliding with a surprise creature on the road—set a mood of slow dread that grows increasingly sinister throughout You Are Not Me, writer/directors Marisa Crespo and Moisés Romera’s intriguing contribution to the terror-within-the-home and holiday-frights subgenres.
Murders in the Rue Morgue
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 torture porn by way of German Expressionism.
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud
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.
Nightmare Scenarios
Longlegs carries forward Osgood Perkins’s ethereal cinema of dark isolation.
Femme
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. The powerhouse Femme brings out the whole artillery of emotions.