Alex Pagliuca

Deborah Ann Woll came to the attention of the horror community/crowd in True Blood as Jessica Hamby, a fledgling vampire trying to navigate the various dramas of it's multi-season run. The large ensemble cast introduced a number of new faces the mass audience of a prestige show on HBO. Woll's Hamby

In 1955, veteran actor of stage and screen, Charles Laughton, delivered his feature film directorial debut to movie screens. It would, unfortunately for those of us who love movies, the the only one Laughton would direct. Night of the Hunter was savaged by critics and was a box office failure. Laugh

We're now almost twenty years into the "comic book universe" coming to big screens. Marvel's Iron Man was delivered to theaters in 2008, kicking off the attempt of both Marvel and DC to create cinematic universes where each company would be able to create movies that used one of the strengths of the

If the consolidation of the media industry doesn't result in the erasure or false scarcity removing the film and television from the first quarter of this century from public access, it's very possible that people in the future will look back on Nathan Fielder as one the indispensable voices, an acc

Brian Duffield has amassed a career writing and directing films using genre conceits as the doorway to some of the most difficult of human emotional states and experiences, without them being grueling or punishing. Along with a lengthy resumé as a screenwriter, Duffield directed Spontaneous, and No

Josh Hartnett has had no fear of genre fare in his career, and its arguably his consistent return to horror that's helped keep his career on a solid footing. Introduced to audiences in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later in the same year he'd be among the ensemble of The Faculty, Hartnett solidified his p

Sean Cunningham had been producing soft core porn, commercials very low budget horror films. After one film he'd been trying to put together fell apart, the financing was still available, but he had no script and no film. In a discussion with then editor Wes Craven, Cunningham told him if he wrote a

The Carrie White in Mike Flanagan's new adaptation is not my Carrie White. This is not the Carrie White I grew up with. This is not the character of the novel I was introduced to as kid, and read multiple times since. She's not the Carrie White embodied so remarkably by Sissy Spacek in Brian De Palm

As with every new adaptation of a beloved novel or remake of a beloved film, the announcement that Mike Flanagan was going to be making a new adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie in series form was met with a chorus of "That's been done already, and one of them is great, so why do the same thing agai

We have been told, all of our lives, that the people who are in the positions of leadership in institutions like media are there because they are the most qualified, most experienced and most able. The inability to learn this very obvious lesson suggests otherwise.

Ah, 2015... Remember those halcyon days before we had experienced the cascading torrent of nightmares the last eleven years has been? It was also the year Karyn Kusama's The Invitation played film festivals. It would get a limited theatrical release and video on demand in April of 2016. Though it wa

I should be clear up front, I'm not a super fan of the Resident Evil game franchise. I'm a very casual gamer. I enjoy video games, but very rarely do they inspire the depth or intensity of interest/obsession in me that movies, reading and music have. I've played a few of the Resident Evil games, and

The reason I write about storytelling, and politics and culture, is because of how important narrative is to human existence, and we can see that in the kinds of mythologies we believe about the past.

One of the more rare experiences for those of us obsessed with storytelling, and maybe with on screen storytelling more than any other variety, is to be confronted with something genuinely new and different. There are some good reasons for this. Movies and television, and the audiences for them, hav

A necessary question about the efficacy of a system that needs to put the generation of economic activity ahead of human well being, and has no other way to absorb disruptions.

25 years... A quarter century. Half my life. Almost the entirety of the new millennium. It seems like a long time. It's about a third of the life expectancy of a human being in the US, though it's portion is growing as studies record the drop that's become the norm. Innocence. There is going to be s

Maybe the most shocking thing about what I’ve seen referred to as the Trumpocene is the degree of confrontation its caused with how many of my fellow Americans care incapable of identifying the difference between confidence, a thing that results from humility, and arrogance as a costume for insecuri

A short explanation of the important of low budget, independent film has to the horror genre, and a few recommendations. You can see where you can rent, buy or stream the titles I'm suggesting behind the links below. The Deeper You Dig Hellbender Where The Devil Roams Mother of Flies Lake Mungo The

Nostalgia can be a narcotic. If you've lived long enough to have a simulacrum of your childhood sold back you, it's better than being dead, but it's often kind of sad too. It's a sign you've aged into the most heavily marketed to age bracket, and as culture and art goes, the results vary wildly. Exp

This is the second installment of my ongoing Horror 101 series. It's meant for folks who have found horror in the last few years and are looking to get deeper into the genre or who might be under the impression it has only recently had something substantial to say about the world we live in. You can

"Is this the end of Marvel's place among the juggernauts of mass audience moviemaking?" It's become a question lingering in the air, every time a new film featuring one of their characters hits screens, big or small. The small screen outings have struggled, and been varied in quality. That Sony owns

I recorded this yesterday, and took some time to think about whether or not it belonged here, and came to the conclusion it does. I find it deeply disturbing that we treat half the people on the planet this way, and the way it plays out in the arts is part of why it keeps happening. As an audience,

I want to acknowledge that I didn't get a new Horror 101 entry up this past weekend. I am going to keep posting those weekly. I did not take into account how to fit this series in with the workload of my writing, getting both video and writing done that are up to a standard I feel comfortable with,

Laurie Strode has been a part of pop culture, and an icon within the section of that culture most interested in horror, for almost 50 years. As Halloween is seen as the film that introduces mass audiences to the slasher sub genre, popularizing it through it’s runaway success, Laurie is also consider

Christopher Nolan has been a filmmaker I have respect for, but whose work I haven't been able to summon unbridled enthusiasm for. To date The Prestige and The Dark Knight Trilogy have been the films of his I've most enjoyed. There's an emotional distance to his filmography, and though I recognize th

This is going to be a series of videos I'll be releasing weekly on Saturdays or Sundays, going through the symbolism, themes, and how to develop a read on what a number of older horror films have to say. With the popularity of horror growing in the last five or so years, I thought it might be useful

On October 14, 2007, Paranormal Activity ends a long, circuitous journey to theaters, dethroning the Saw franchise from the position of Halloween season box office champion. The Saw franchise had dominated the October box office for five previous installments, and generated mountains of money. A fil

I'm too old and have no younger people in my life to have the first clue whether this homage/cover/love letter to so many of the girl-centric comedies and horrors from the eighties to the aughts is going to land with people of the age the characters in the film are, but as a movie lover with an appr

Perplexed, and confused, so I figured I'd just ask.

Most people, including professional critics, don't seem to think much about the way the Hays Code effected the way we (critics and the public) think about movies, and we should be talking more about that.

The Evil Dead franchise is one of horror's most popular franchises. Like a number of other horror franchises, it has a strange, circuitous history. The first film was a straight forward, grab the audience by the throat horror film. The tagline on marketing material when it was released was, "The Ult

The small screen hasn’t ever really been as comfortable with the horror genre as the big screen. In some part due to broadcast standards for network television, and then even cable, which could be pressured by advertisers. The invention of the subscription exclusive channels, like HBO, Showtime and

Do me a favor and share this is if you see it. I know what with all the BS floating around about AI, the way celebrity culture and the internet works, there are going to be a fair number of people who don't realize just how much jeopardy they're putting themselves in by doing this, when they're just

“There is no place for violence,” on July 4, 2026.

In 2021, Shudder premiered a film by an unknown Irish filmmaker named Damian McCarthy. That film, Caveat, was met with a positive response from critics and audiences. A mixture of traditional ghost story, suggestions of folk horror and psychological thriller, Caveat demonstrated McCarthy had the ski

Part One: The Spoiler Free Review Of The Actual Movie I Watched Last year, James Gunn’s Superman reinvigorated the superhero genre at the box office. Gunn, having taken over as the ring leader of the DC film slate moving forward, had a formidable task. Could he restore the interest in DC’s output of

Curry Barker’s Obsession has now passed the $300 million mark at the box office. In these days of uncertainty for the movie theater business, a film made for under $1 million, bringing in over $300 million in ticket sales, is a big deal. Given this, it’s understandable how much discussion about the

Well, they've done it. They've managed to put Samara Weaving at the center of not one, but two films, I just don't like. They, in this case, being the film industry in general, though I can't say Weaving's business team and her taste in scripts are without responsibility, as much as I'd like to. Ove

“Horror – as an interest, passion, or profession – has fandoms and sub-fandoms; it has cliques; it has little fiefdoms. If horror is your business, you might have an audience, or followers, and hopefully customers (those three are not the same thing, by the way). It’s tempting, natural and even good

There's a whole lot of handwringing going on right now about what is happening with the business of movie theaters, horror's consistent success, and the number of people who were involved in sketch comedy and short films making the leap to feature films. 90% of what's being written and centered in t

In a nation that’s spent it’s 250 year existence telling itself it has a single standard of justice, in spite of the mountain of very clear evidence to the contrary, it’s not surprising a long history of romanticizing outlaws would also exist. Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Pretty Boy Floyd became

Having gone through John Marshall's sense of his masculinity, its foundations, and the personal issues it's causing him in Part 1 of this series, then the way the film presents the spectrum of masculinity in the town of Snow Hollow in Part 2, it's time to take a look at the way the film presents an

In Part 1 of this series, I went through the ways The Wolf of Snow Hollow depicts its protagonist, John Marshall, in how his inability to see beyond his conception of masculinity was creating havoc and conflict in every area of his life, including getting in the way of the murder investigation he's

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this over the last few days, and because it’s trying to derail what I’m writing, I thought it was worth making a video about. Let me know what you think? Am I any crazier than usual?

That’s exactly it. It’s this earnest, threatening urgency, of people who have a huge amount of testosterone as well as a desire to find justice and do the right thing. I’ve met a lot of law enforcement officials, and their favorite movies—you can ask any of them—are Batman, Superman, and “Fast & Fur

From the first time I saw it, the thing that impressed me most about The Wolf of Snow Hollow was the combination of incisiveness, honesty and accuracy with which it's protagonist John Marshall is portrayed. It is accurate and little too plain to say, The Wolf of Snow Hollow treats John Marshall as a

Horror television is hard to make effective. Sustaining tension, suspense, dread over the length of a season is very different from the ninety minutes to two hours of the average film. Additionally, the history of the medium, in relation to broadcast standards and censorship, meant it wasn't a desti

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas occupies an interesting place in the landscape of contemporary horror. She has been at the forefront of an academic movement treating horror and exploitation film as not just worthy of interrogation, but as important to interrogate as sociopolitical work. Moreover, she's ma

If you've seen the two pieces I posted last week, you know the first Ready or Not is a film I have a deep affection for. In that piece, I argued it is a perfect film. I also posted a spoiler free review for the new sequel that hit theaters last Friday, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. I wouldn't go so f

I got a good amount of writing done this week, so I promised myself I wouldn't work this weekend. I decided to make a video about this instead. I'm posting this on a few different platforms, so for subscribers, you can skip to 2:28, where I get past the introduction. In the never ending discussion a