Found footage

‘The Visit,’ filmed on a modest budget, takes a ton of chances and offers, perhaps, the most unrestrained vision we’ve seen from M. Night Shyamalan.

This is a bit of an odd story. For years The Poughkeepsie Tapes, a 2007 mockumentary horror film directed by John Erick Dowdle (Quarantine, Devil, and the upcoming As Above, So Below), has been sitting on the shelf unreleased. Though it never officially came out (outside of a few film festivals), the film has had pirated …

The contest between scepticism and belief in the supernatural is a reliable means of drawing out a narrative before any sort of big reveal. It’s a dynamic through which the television classic The X-Files operated, featuring the passionate Fox Mulder, who worked to convince cohort Dana Scully of “the truth.” Around this back-and-forth between two audience surrogates situates the dubious involvement of man: how much do the higher-ups truly know about what is going on, and what are they keeping from us?

Supernatural, Season 8, Episode 4: “Bitten” Written by Robbie Thompson Directed by Thomas J. Wright Airs Wednesdays at 9pm (ET) on CW Supernatural is a show that has never shied away from acknowledging its horror trendsetters or contemporaries, with perhaps the most obvious example being Season 4’s homage to classic horror, “Monster Movie”. With nods …

V/H/S Directed by Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, and Radio Silence Written by Simon Barrett, David Bruckner, Nicholas Tecosky, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez, and Chad Villella USA, 2011 Imagine you went trick-or-treating. Knowing the area, you take a big empty bag. You go to …

I recently came across Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday writing about a screening several weeks ago at CinemaCon of 10 minutes from Peter Jackson’s (and Warner Bros.’) attempt to extend the Lord of the Rings franchise with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  The film is currently slated for release in December of this year. Some …