Don’t Look Now (1973), Nicolas Roeg’s mosaic of a thriller, remains a mystery to the end. Set largely in Venice, where the labyrinth of canals and tunnels creates a claustrophobic maze, it’s less about the elliptical story (adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s short tale) than the texture of loss, obsession, and emotional remove. Donald Sutherland […]
Bates Motel: Season 3 continues the story of Norman Bates: the early years. The “prequel” story to Psycho, about the teenage Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) and his mother Norma (Vera Farmiga), takes Norman from awkward high school boy to psychologically troubled kid with murderous blackouts and hallucinations that blossoms into a full-blown split personality. Along […]
Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1 (2015), the prequel series to AMC’s hit zombie apocalypse drama, begins at ground zero, or at least time zero. Set in Los Angeles at the moment of the outbreak of the zombie plague, it launched with a brief six-episode debut season in late 2015. Kim Dickens is a high […]
Mario Bava essentially created the genre of baroque horror known as “giallo,” a distinctly Italian twist on stalk and kill horror film. Under his direction, Grand Guignol gore is transformed into lush, visually elegant cinematic spectacle, a waking nightmare with the poetic grace of a musical and a demented edge of sexual perversity. After rising […]
iZombie: Season One, developed by Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas from the comic book by Mike Allred, is a comic mystery series with an undead heroine playing detective. Rose McIver is Olivia, a medical student in Seattle who awakens after a yacht party gone disastrous and finds out that the reason she has no heartbeat […]
Trouble Every Day (2001), Claire Denis’ wigged-out take on the vampire film, is one of the strangest variations on the vampire movie, itself a genre with a history of unusual takes. Béatrice Dalle (Betty Blue) stars as a madwoman who is locked in the basement of a Paris home by a scientist (Alex Descas) because […]
Vincent Price starred in all of Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations but one. Ray Milland took the lead in Premature Burial (1962), playing Guy Carrell, an aristocrat with crippling fear that he will be buried alive due to a family history of catalepsy. Corman brings the fear home in the opening scene: an exhumation of an […]
