Since I already railed against X’s title, I feel like I should expand my commentary to this year’s glut of horror movies with minimal, evocative titles. Many of my favorite horror movies this year — Nope, Barbarian, Prey, Morbius (just kidding) — have one word titles. Yet all of them convey much more meaning than that. “Nope” tells you this is going to be a story about a situation you don’t want anything to do with, and that it’s a story about people making mistakes, and it even plays on that trope about characters acting the opposite way audiences believe they would. But no title this year does as much work as Alex Garland’s Men. All it takes is three letters and we all know that this movie wants to say something about our times.

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I’m not sure that it has been mentioned yet, but I believe the main reason we ended up going with all 2022 movies for this year’s Shocktober is that it has been a uniquely solid year for horror movies. Not only in terms of the quality of horror films that have been released this year, but also in terms of their viability at the box office in a year when big studio movies are often making a fraction of what it took to make them. The Black Phone very much embodied this, as it made about eight times its budget despite the fact that it doesn’t have a ton to offer that’s groundbreaking or new to its genre. Still, it got decent reviews and it’s a horror movie, which apparently is all it takes to be a hit these days. Fortunately, it’s still a solid little psychological horror film that shakes out to be distinctive and well-made enough to stand out in a fairly crowded year in its genre. Continue reading →

Every year (usually in September) Sean, Colin, and I make our picks for Shocktober. This year’s theme was “2022 New Releases.” I picked: The Munsters, Flux Gourmet, Hatching, Pearl and… God, I can’t even remember the last one. My point is apart from Munsters and Pearl I’ve switched up every single selection I started with. My reason is that even newer films keep coming out and replacing my original choices, and it’s just too hard to ignore something shiny and new. In this case, a shiny new pair of dark glasses…

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First and foremost, I’m not a fan of titling your movie just “X.” It’s been done. Hell, even making a “X” out of a woman’s crossed legs on the poster has been done. It’s a title that’s not really evocative of anything, since you didn’t even have the confidence to go for a full “XXX.” And it makes your movie harder to search for, especially on older platforms that have character minimums. Won’t somebody think of the SEO optimization! You end up having to google “X (2022)” or “X Ti West” or “X A24” and while those work and are still very few characters to type, it feels sub-optimal in a way that grinds my gears. Anyway, X is all right.

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Ok, I promise that next time I’ll actually review a horror movie since it seems all three of my movies so far have been either horror-hybrids or in the case of today’s movie, not a horror movie at all. Still, there is something to be said for movies that scratch that spooky itch this time of year, but are scary enough to be suitable for people that “don’t do scary movies”. The Hotel Transylvania series has been a pretty reliable presence in this genre for the past decade or so, as it’s not quite as lazy as you would think an Adam Sandler animated franchise would be. While this latest installment still has the same playful animation style established by Genndy Tartakovsky that has made these movies great leisurely watches, the fact that the Sandman is missing and the lack of doing much new with these characters (not to mention its streaming-only release) can’t help but feel like these movies might be on their last legs. Continue reading →

Some might see the three star rating sitting atop this review and think, “Oh, I guess he didn’t like it that much.” But I want to be clear, I have a lot of admiration for this film. The scares are effective, Parker Finn is a good director, and this film’s success is good for the industry. When a movie like Smile tops the box office in multiple weeks, that opens the door for more original projects from new voices. All that being said, I can’t help but feel Smile isn’t living up to its full potential.

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