Horror movies are beset with misconceptions, the greatest being: "How can you watch those things!? They're all fatuous violence and gratuitous boobs!" Which is kindof like saying, "How can you read those feminist blogs?! They're all alluvial deposits of man-hating penis envy!" READ MORE

When you’re making a horror movie, the hard part is always human diversity—you have to trigger fear for the largest number of people, which is tough since we’re all a slightly different brand of crazy. Sometimes filmmakers go too specific—targeting agoraphobics, or those random people with papaphobia (uncontrollable fear of the Pope) or even the weirdos who shriek at the sight of wet bread. This tactic always fails. The trick is to find an element of the human psyche that’s ALWAYS ready to be freaked out. Which is what the Paranormal Activity series has done so effectively. No matter who you are, you have a bed that you go home to at night, and when you sleep you’re completely vulnerable to molestation by demons. READ MORE

Monsters aren’t inherently interesting. Sure, by virtue of their being strange and menacing and outside the periphery of normal existence, they’ll usually hold our attention for 90 minutes or so. But their scariness is all in the context and presentation. And just as it’s possible to take a transcendent ensemble cast and putrefy it by adding Eli Roth (yes, I’m still pissed about that), so is it possible to make an utter yawn-fest monster flick. Case in point: The Thing, which opens today. READ MORE

Whenever men have described to me what it's like to be male, it sounds friggin' awful—a nonstop blitzkrieg of Hobbesian brutality. Your life, as they depict it, is a war on two fronts: the front that wants to get laid, and will do whatever it takes to do so, and the front that must fight off other men. Both require totally different skill sets, and a loss on either shore is devastating. A friend told me that when he walks down the sidewalk, other (usually larger) men will step in his path to launch a game of Chicken, and they’ll slam into him unless he pulls away. (A guy did that to me once on Hudson Street—I shrieked like a cat in thumbscrews, called him an asshole, and two cops arrived in seconds.) Years of watching agro movies have only reinforced my view that it's dreadful to be a guy. Dress him up in fancy clothes, give him a few Ivy League degrees and a gold AmEx, and the struggle to find his inner Thor only becomes more compelling. 

Which brings us to Straw Dogs. READ MORE

Some horror movies want to turn your stomach into fermented battery acid. Some want to slap you with political/gender/socio-cultural statements. And some are just there to bring the awesome (and shower you with ironic gore). Which brings us to Fright Night, opening today. READ MORE

We don't do much with death in media. While pop culture is packed with anal sex jokes and headlines likening the Dow to a high-class hooker, the actual mechanics of death are one of the few things we bypass. Call it the last taboo. 

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Once you decide to have a wedding, there are many, many things to read: etiquette guides, Dos and Don'ts, planning checklists, vendor guides, “inspiration boards,” disaster stories, angry bridesmaid rants ("bitch made me wear PURPLE SHOES!"), even socio-political screeds about the cultural irrelevance of the whole thing. All of these are nice, and all of them are utterly useless. READ MORE

What do you say about the first Israeli horror film… besides the fact that it's the first Israeli horror film? And that, with that distinction comes a frenetic array of cultural, religious and political associations that may as well serve as a Rorschach test for anyone watching it? Israel as the setting for a horror film (Rabies, or Kalevet in Hebrew, which just debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival) is a manifesto in and of itself—particularly when the directors, Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, have been touting the movie as an allegory on the state of Israel (though honestly, they have plenty of incentive to spew jargon like this—it hands their film cultural significance on a platter).

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Scre4m’s task was never easy. Not only was it rebooting the first "self-aware horror franchise" and hauling the institutional weight of a generation, it was also selling its shtick to a new batch of teens so savvy they can plug their tongues directly into iPads to sync their brains. Remember the halcyon innocence of 1996? How tickled we were that a horror movie was listing slasher-flick rules and mocking Richard Gere? Yeah, kids now consider that about as edgy as a Nu Shooz reunion tour. READ MORE

What happens when James Wan, the Sultan of Saw (which, let us never forget, is the most important film series ever made) makes an old-school ghost movie? READ MORE