Care has been taken to avoid spoilers in this review but please proceed with caution if you have not seen the film. An innovative and aggressive marketing campaign may have prepared audiences for Longlegs’ nightmarish visual elements and unsettling tone but it certainly didn’t signal the film’s complex and deeply intimate take on motherhood and […]
The Invisible Man and the Paradox of Invisibility (2020)
Most people who have had lived experience as a woman could attest to the occasional fantasy of invisibility. Being seen, particularly under the harsh lights of the male gaze, begins to erode girls’ self-esteem and sense of security from the time they’re in primary school. In order to counteract the vulnerability that comes with being […]
Pumpkinhead and Viewing Trauma Through a Patriarchal Lens
This review contains spoilers. Keep away from Pumpkinhead,Unless you’re tired of living So begins a schoolyard rhyme recited about the titular character during an early scene in VXF artist Stan Winston’s directorial debut, Pumpkinhead. Over the next 70 minutes, the movie proves this adage true, in a way that we may not have foreseen. While […]
Bliss (2019)
Young filmmaker Joe Begos has a tough sell on his hands with Bliss, his new psychedelic, drug-fuelled horror. Though only 80 minutes long, it’s hard to tell where in that runtime you are in any given moment, or to remember when you started. The film seems to play with the concept of time itself, making […]