Despite the brutal horror in Midsommar, the images that’ll stick with you after the credits roll are all close ups of Florence Pugh’s face. Pugh crying inconsolably. Pugh screaming in abject horror. And, in the closing moments, Pugh smiling beatifically.
When is a horror movie not a horror movie? Well, maybe when it’s so good that everyone, even non-genre critics, recognises that it’s great. Then it might be an “elevated genre” movie instead.
The author of the scariest haunted house novel ever written and the most controversial short story The New Yorker ever published was notorious in her lifetime but forgotten shortly after her death. Now, Shirley Jackson is beginning to receive the kind of acclaim she’s always deserved
Superheroes often end up playing detective, but can a detective become a superhero? That’s the question season two of Stan Lee’s Lucky Man has got to answer. Crime Scene tries its luck on set…
When even the star of a movie won’t stand up for it, you know something’s gone wrong. And when Mark Wahlberg ranted about what “a bad movie” The Happening was, he was only saying what many critics and viewers had already said about the film.
Controversial paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren get another cinematic outing in James Wan’s supernatural sequel, The Conjuring 2. Total Film goes on set to scare up the truth behind the ‘true story’…
Although Crimson Peak is a story with ghosts in it, it isn’t quite a ghost story. It’s a romance; a sumptuous Gothic romance where ghosts might be real, but they’re also just a metaphor.
What’s the difference between magic and science? Maybe, sometimes, there isn’t one. If you can measure a magic trick, if you can break it down to its constituent parts and analyse how it works, doesn’t it turn into science?
The most obvious, hackneyed set up for a horror movie goes something like this: a group of college kids heads out to the middle of nowhere, planning to get drunk and have fun in an isolated cabin near a lake. On the way, they meet a creepy old guy who warns them that something nasty’s lurking in them there hills, but they ignore him…