The rare slasher film that’s not a sequel to or remake of a previous one, Hell Fest exploits the premise of a traveling Halloween carnival being infiltrated by an actual masked killer who avoids detection by blending in with the hired scarers. Directed by Gregory Plotkin (Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension) from a screenplay with five […]
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After last year’s bumpy edition of Fantastic Fest, roiled by revelations that its founder had continued working with employees and associates who’d been credibly accused of sexual assault, this year’s raucous genre celebration felt almost normal — well, “normal” for an event that includes a compilation of cinema’s best deaths-by-car, an eating contest (WHICH I […]
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The premise of Night School, an overlong, under-funny comedy starring Kevin Hart, is that a 35-year-old high school dropout named Teddy Walker has to get his GED in order to get a job. That scenario, while not inherently funny, allows for innumerable complications that could make it funny, but none of them are employed by […]
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Smallfoot is a light animated adventure set in a remote Himalayan village occupied by yetis, aka Abominable Snowmen (and Snowwomen), who have lived in isolation for generations. Though they have a complex societal hierarchy, the yetis are in many ways a primitive race. Their sacred stones tell them they are the only creatures in the world, […]
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(Screened at Fantastic Fest; now streaming on Netflix) Continuing the Wind River cycle of movies about outsiders going to cold, sad Indian reservations to investigate tragedies, here’s Hold the Dark, another brutally chilling drama from Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier. Adapted by Saulnier’s Blue Ruin star Macon Blair from William Giraldi’s novel, it stars Jeffrey Wright as Russell Core, […]
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David Lowery’s last movie, A Ghost Story, was about a ghost but wasn’t a horror film. His new one, The Old Man & the Gun, is about a career bank robber but isn’t a heist thriller. Lowery keeps you on your toes if you’re a judge-a-movie-by-its-title kind of person, and he upends expectations once you’re […]
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(Screened at Fantastic Fest; U.S. release TBA) We have Velvet Underground to thank for the title Strike, Dear Mistress, and Cure His Heart, but the movie of that name is from one Mickey Reece, an independent Oklahoma auteur who has made two dozen movies in the last 10 years that have been seen by almost […]
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(Screened at Fantastic Fest; U.S. release TBA; opens in France in January) Coming-of-age metaphors collide messily in Savage (Les Fauves), a weak-willed French drama by Vincent Mariette in which teenage Laura (Lily-Rose Depp), spending the summer with cousins at a campground, is intrigued by the rumor that there’s a leopard loose in the woods. The alleged feline […]
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Jeremy Saulnier knows violence. The director of Hold the Dark (arriving on Netflix this week) makes movies filled with brutal, intense fights and attacks. And they aren’t the sanitized action sequences of blockbuster superhero or sci-fi movies, nor are they the often cartoonish, over-the-top gory moments in horror movies, which can end up ridiculous and […]
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(On VOD.) Keep an Eye Out is the latest absurdist lark from Quentin Dupieux, whose Rubber — about a series of murders committed by a sentient automobile tire — is one of my favorite absurdist larks of the current century. Called Au Poste! in its native France, Keep an Eye Out takes place (apart from flashbacks) entirely in a […]
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Jack Black opted out of the Goosebumps sequel in order to make The House with a Clock in Its Walls, which is basically a Goosebumps movie but based on a different set of YA novels. Kids’ movies are a good place for the cartoonish, rubbery actor, doubly so if he’s not the main character (a little Jack […]
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Assassination Nation, based on the hashtags #woke and #metoo, is an in-your-face, self-consciously edgy satire about a town called Salem that goes witch-hunting after everyone’s online accounts are hacked and their secrets (and nude pics) are exposed. The primary target of everyone’s ire is Lily (Odessa Young), an above-it-all high-schooler who’s blamed for the hack, […]
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