Certified Forgotten
Only the forgotten are truly dead.
Against a black backdrop, wind howls. Leaves rustle. Twigs rattle and snap. Welcome to André Øvredal’s The Autopsy of Jane Doe. A vacuous suck on the background score drains the film’s title card, giving way to a blurred shot which itself needs to be rotated right side up for the image to come into focus. A tree. A house. A […]
Upon its release in 1995, Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation was lambasted by critics. It received a D grade from Entertainment Weekly, while Roger Ebert infamously gave the film a zero-star rating. Since then, it has become a cult classic, championed for its surreal production design, iconic costumes, and killer soundtrack. The Doom Generation influenced my burgeoning queer identity when […]
In 1997, Gregg Araki’s Nowhere unleashed a loud contemporary soundtrack and rowdy teenage behavior on unsuspecting video stores across the country. Its minimalistic cover didn’t tell you much about the film; in fact, one might think it just another Soderbergh-esque indie about taboo subjects. Instead, the film is a hybrid genre weirdo, a mix of Angel (1984) and Fire in […]
When you think of the prototypical Certified Forgotten film, you probably don’t think of a movie like Crimson Rivers 2: Angels of the Apocalypse. The big-budget sequel to an international success, Angels of the Apocalypse featured a stellar cast, a high-profile screenwriter, and Jean Reno, an actor almost as popular in the United States as he is in his native […]
Forget Freddy Krueger. The Funny Man is the wisecracking supernatural killer we need. Making a glove out of razor blades and invading people’s dreams is all well and good, but dressing up as a duck hunter to kill Velma from Scooby-Doo? Constructing an entire strip club just to entrap your next victim? Now that’s commitment. But it’s not just the […]
This post on the Friday the 13th lawsuit was updated on January 29, 2021, to reflect the current status of the Horror Inc. v Miller case. It also now includes information on the 2021 Cunningham v Paramount lawsuit. Before Pamela Voorhees and a version of Jason that might have been an apparition graced our silver screens, writers and studios exchanged […]
One of horror’s most taboo subgenres is cannibalism. It was a subgenre for the exploitive, often taking cultural traditions and grotesquely displaying them on screen, fueling xenophobia. But with the incredible success of The Silence Of The Lambs, cannibalism seemed to morph into something else in film. It became less of an exploitive subgenre and more of a tool for high brow […]
Here’s to the endless streaming menu scroll. Some nights, I choose to forgo critical consensus, or even word-of-mouth, and instead opt to enter the wild west of thumbnail images and two-sentence summaries in the “horror” category. Sometimes I stumble upon unexpected scares. More often, I find total duds. And sometimes, if I’m really lucky, I uncover something like The Silenced […]
Recent releases like Happy Death Day, The Strangers: Prey at Night, and Hell Fest have prompted the horror faithful to wonder if we’re due for another slasher resurgence. Given how resilient the subgenre has been over the years, it wouldn’t be a surprise. Long synonymous with unkillable madmen and plucky final girls—and the occasional final boy—slashers consistently take their licks […]
The popularity of The Babadook, The VVitch, and Midsommar in the past five years tells us that folk horror films still interest both creators and consumers. I say still because this horror subgenre dates back to the industry’s dawn with The Phantom Carriage and Nosferatu. It has cropped up in every decade since then, and horror fans recognize the previous examples […]
In a genre typically considered “for the guys,” it’s time to give a nod to the ladies. Uterus Horror is a subgenre of horror films that focuses on the uniquely female experience of puberty and the act of coming into their sexuality, using horror elements to emphasize and/or act as a metaphor for that experience. These films are often ignored in theaters, […]
Summer camp slashers are a staple of the horror genre. From Friday the 13th to Sleepaway Camp to The Burning, choosing this adult-free setting for your bloodbath is so ubiquitous that it’s become almost too predictable. What if you introduced elements—emotional stakes, character growth, heart—that are often sorely missing from the hack-and-slash classics of the 1980s? Well, you’d end up […]
Once upon a time there was a house at 112 Ocean Avenue, in Amityville, New York. The house looked evil—those front windows looked almost like eyes—and sure enough, evil things happened there. Horrific things, murderous things, threatened that most beloved of Western institutions: the nuclear family. People wrote books about that house, and about the demonic patriarchs of the families […]
Whenever international horror has a backyard party, Vietnam misses out. There’s no restriction or bad blood. With sparse-to-no official home media release and tough-to-tougher hoops regarding exhibition beyond local borders, measures from my birth country to protect intellectual properties are also a guarantee for genre titles to not discover global mainstream recognition. We make it harder on ourselves. Such is […]
In a genre typically considered “for the guys,” it’s time to give a nod to the ladies. Uterus Horror is a subgenre of horror films that focuses on the uniquely female experience of puberty and the act of coming into their sexuality, using horror elements to emphasize and/or act as a metaphor for that experience. These films are often ignored in theaters, […]
There was a time in my life when I ate, slept, and breathed K-pop. A friend I met in high school introduced me to these infectious songs and the irresistible idols behind them. While our mutual infatuation eventually faded as so many adolescent interests do, I can’t help but think back on those years as a new age of K-pop […]