A Self-Defeating Genre Mashup: On Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025)

By Thomas M. Puhr. Coogler’s strong character work in the film’s first half undercuts his efforts to embrace pure horror in its second.” Spoiler Alert Ryan Coogler’s knack for bringing a humanist touch to a variety of genres—starting with social realism (Fruitvale Station), transitioning to crowd-pleasing sports sagas (Creed), and […]

You Can’t Stop a Wave: Lorcan Finnegan’s The Surfer

By Jonathan Monovich. For its Australian setting and premise of a man’s descent into insanity, The Surfer unsurprisingly has similarities to the late Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright (1971), but the charm of The Surfer comes from its overt love for Frank Perry’s The Swimmer (1968)….” Though marketed as a […]

The Grotesque and the Sublime: Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight

By William Blick. Hysterical, soul-stirring, and bewildering…undefinable in the best sense of the word.” Occasionally, I will see a film wherein I do not know where it will lead me. It is at this time that there is often a leap of faith in putting my trust in the hands […]

An Auteur’s High Points – The Greatest Gangster Movie You’ve Never Seen: Abel Ferrara’s The Funeral

A Book Review by William Blick. A candid and insightful look into Ferrara’s creative process….” The Greatest Gangster Movie You’ve Never Seen (BearManor Media, 2025) includes a candid and insightful look into Ferrara’s creative process with behind-the-scenes access to Ferrara’s collaboration with Director of Photography, Ken Kelsch whom Stewart has […]

Now Available – Becoming Nosferatu: Stories Inspired by Silent German Horror

A new collection featuring stories and poems in the tradition of Nosferatu and other silent expressionist classics….” Becoming Nosferatu: Stories Inspired by Silent German Horror, edited by Matthew Sorrento (editor, FilmInt Online) and Gary D. Rhodes (contributing editor) is out now from BearManor Media, featuring stories and poems in the tradition of Nosferatu and other silent expressionist […]

“Pain Creates Character Distortion”: David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds

By Jonathan Monovich. Conspiracies brew throughout the film and their legitimacy, though probable, becomes increasingly unbelievable, mirroring the mind’s desperation for answers….” In Dead Ringers (1988), the troubled Dr. Beverly Mantle (Jeremy Irons) says that “pain creates character distortion.” This quote encapsulates the essence of David Cronenberg’s oeuvre. Cronenberg has […]

Global Relations Right Now: Berlin International Film Festival 2025

By Ali Moosavi. Hysteria also has something to say about some people’s preconceived ideas of others of different race and religion, something that is fueling Germany and a few other Western countries now….” The Berlin International Film Festival, also known as the Berlinale, like all other major film festivals, has […]

“I Try to Make Each Film Feel Like a Debut”: Can Evrenol on Saýara

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. The idea of making a truly dark revenge film at heart, in this day and age of global political-correctness-vs.-fascism, felt like the right thing to do (especially) if you are a true genre fan/filmmaker.” – Can Evrenol Going back at least to Metin Erksan’s classic The Well […]

It Lives! Andrew Repasky McElhinney on A Chronicle of Corpses at 25 Years

By William Blick. Aren’t all genre films structuralist in nature? Isn’t everyone either obeying or disobeying genre conventions?” –Andrew Repasky McElhinney At the turn of the millennium, the filmmaking industry was in flux. A wave of visionary film directors emerged to embrace new forms of cinematic expression. The horror film […]