Report from Beyond Fest 2018

Los Angeles’s biggest genre festival, Beyond Fest, just wrapped its sixth and most ambitious program. Fifty films played at Hollywood’s historic Egyptian Theater, with ancillary showings in Downtown L.A. and Santa Monica, with a range of cinematic madness on display — from the West Coast premieres of forthcoming major releases (Halloween, Widows, Bad Times at the […]

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REVIEW: Supernatural Horror Terrified

(Streaming on Shudder.) Buenos Aires is rife with supernatural activity in Demian Rugna’s Terrified (Aterrados), much of it centralized to a particular street (perhaps because of zoning?). The manifestations are frequently chilling, as when a man who hears a recurring “thump” sound investigates and finds his wife being flung repeatedly by an unseen force against the […]

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Internalized Fear: 50 Years of Night of the Living Dead

In 2018, social media fragility and the internalization of fears keep people trapped, much like the subjects of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) are trapped as they sift through media information while the unthinkable threatens their safety. Even though Night of the Living Dead’s characters can’t fully understand why they’re being […]

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REVIEW: Spider-Man Spinoff Venom

Iron Man, Captain America, and the others in the Marvel Cinematic Universe would probably like to make it clear that Venom isn’t part of their program (though it’s better than at least one of the Thor movies). The Spider-Man villain, seen briefly in Spider-Man 3 played by Topher Grace, gets a messy spinoff, directed by Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”), […]

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