Monster Scholar

Started by Hannah Neurotica and her gang of fearless females in every imaginable corner of the horror industry, Women in Horror Month is a salute to the feminine aspects of our favorite genre during the month of February. I celebrated the inaugural year of this event with a bevy of blog posts, but this year I want to take it to the next level. I'm thinking about making some special Monster Land tees to raise money for a film festival in February, showcasing original horror shorts and full length features by women. More details as this develops. Women in horror month is all about empowering fans of horror regardless of  gender to celebrate the women of horror that thrill us, chill us and fulfill us. The only question that remains is, what will you do? Leave your comments and feedback in the comment section below, including any ideas you might have for a T-shirt design. Stay spooky.

When I first heard about The Collector after reading a review from Freddy in Space, my expectations were lackluster at best. A fan of the Saw series, I had been disappointed with the declining quality of its sequels. Coming from the writers of the Saw sequels, I figured The Collector would be like that dreaded fruitcake you receive every Christmas only to repackage it and give it to your cousin. I was wrong. I absolutely loved this film. Though there are definite strains of the Saw series present (i.e. the traps) The Collector avoids the common pitfalls of its predecessor to produce an unsettling and moody horror flick. The film follows the progress of Arkin, a handyman working to make things better for his daughter and a wife who is in debt to some loan sharks. There’s one big problem: the honest money he makes working on some rich guy’s house won’t pay the bill. So what does he do? He decides the rip the guy off and steal a precious diamond he knows is locked away in the house sa

If you’ve been clicking around the internet lately, there is good chance that you have at least heard of A Serbian Film. Primed to be the next Antichrist or Cannibal Holocaust, this film has been described as the most ungodly, violating piece of work to ever splat onto the silver screen. Forget the psychological tortures of Saw or the bloody violence of Hostel, A Serbian Film blows them all away with the harrowing story of a former porn star who is drawn into an abyss of debauchery, incest and necrophilia. Milos is the aforesaid ex-porn star with the legendary ability to hold an erection in the most adverse circumstances. Though he quit the business long ago to start a family and embrace clean living, demented director Vukmir wants Milos and his amazing member to star in his art house porno. On the verge of poverty, Milos agrees to Vukmir’s terms: he will participate in the porno without any prior knowledge of the scenes he will be performing in. Thus begins Milos’ traumatic d

Ever since James Cameron’s rampant success with Avatar in 3-D, horror films have been falling in line to add a three dimensional aspect to their scares. From My Bloody Valentine and The Final Destination, to Saw 3D and Resident Evil: Afterlife the production of horror films in 3-D has gone viral in the hopes of upping sales in a slumping genre. But far from accentuating these films, 3-D has become a tired tactic that puts the focus on spectacle rather on the merits of the film itself. So how does 3-D work? For all its hype, it is an amazingly simple process. Because your eyes are spaced about 2 inches apart, they each see at slightly different angles. Your brain collects this data and compiles it to form one image. 3-D riffs off this natural phenomenon by projecting the same scene from two different angles in two different colors. Now is when those cool glasses come in handy. Each lens has a color filter so that each image only enters one eye. Your brain whips the two pictures ba

Check out my guest post on the Headless Horseman for The Vault of Horror's Shadow of Samhain series, chronicling the lore and mythos behind our most cherished halloween traditions.

Billed as “the most anticipated horror event of the year” by Dread Central, the follow up to 2007’s bare-bones horror hit comes to theaters packing the same punch as the original. Paranormal Activity 2 is a slow burn and, like the original, much time is spent getting to know the family at the center of the paranormal events. These include teenage daughter Ali, parents Daniel and Kristi with toddler Hunter and the family dog. Kristi is the sister of Paranormal Activity’s Katie and the events in Paranormal Activity 2 run parallel to those in the first film. Before we get to any actual paranormal-ness there are several red herrings, a potty freak out involving the daughter and a pool cleaner that rises from the depths, that lull us into safety before the real scares begin. After a series of break-ins, patriarch Daniel beefs up his home security, installing security cameras all over the house equipped with motion sensors. These cameras provide the lens through which we will see most o

Normally I avoid horror films with religious overtones, but something about the genre-bending action-adventure-Christian-mythology-horror hybrid Legion intrigued me. Set on the eve of the biblical apocalypse, it follows the struggle of a small band of survivors holed up in a diner in the middle of nowhere. Led by the fallen archangel Michael, they rally to protect a waitress whose unborn child is humanity’s last hope of survival. Legion’s unusual mix of action adventure with Christian mythos (Angels with submachine guns!) in addition to horror tells a story not just about the struggle between God and man, but about the rewards and pitfalls of being a parent. Legion is not only full of people possessed by angels sporting blackout eyes and shark teeth—it also abounds with unwanted children and reluctant parents. Charlie, the waitress and modern Mary is the most recognizable of these. Knocked up by a man who is “out of sight, out of mind” she forestalls her initial plan of getting abor

Cultural mores and traditions that inform the themes of films like Kairo or Ju-On are often re-contextualized for a Western audience in their remakes. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though some critics would argue it results in a simplification of often complex films. Ju-On for instance becomes a haunted house story, losing the non-linear narrative utilized by Shimizu as it adapts to a more Western understanding of haunted spaces. The same is true of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo, known stateside as “Pulse,” but whose title resonates more with the word “Circuit” Whereas Kairo is more about the fear of loneliness and an inability to connect, its remake is more about a threatening Other that seeks our destruction though the gateway of technology. Pulse is an very psychological film, a departure from the distance Kurosawa keeps us from the disconnected characters of Kairo. Mattie, our main protagonist is psych major who has several sessions with her professor-cum-therapist who tells he

I have the privilege  today of letting you know about a little gem of a film that might just change the way you see vampires in modern cinema. Despite its current popularly, the vampire has been on a recent down slope as evidenced by parodies like Vampires Suck or Transylmania, that take aim at the more sparkly members of the vampire race. But never fear vampire fans, Midnight Son is here to give vampires their bite back Looking at the trailer, the film follows the life of Jacob who works as a security guard by night because of a rare skin disease that prevents him from going out during the day. In addition to this solar sensitivity, Jacob has gotten a hankering for the red stuff. At first he is able to satisfy this unnatural thirst with animal blood, but then he moves on to a human vintage. Jacob meets a local bartender named Mary and is lovestruck, but his thirst for blood might keep them apart as authorities focus in on Jacob as the main suspect in a string of murders. Mary has

Wes Craven has always fascinated me as an academic and a filmmaker. He received his undergraduate degree in English and Psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois, and a masters degree in Philosophy and Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Craven continued to work on his Ph.D., but the restrictive traditions of academia prevented him from completing it and he went on to make films instead. To say all that schooling was for nothing would be a gross understatement. Craven is intelligent and this keen intellect is the source of many of his films’ biting commentary. Take the Scream films for instance. At the beginning of Scream 2, Craven makes a big statement about the horror industry and the audience’s seemingly endless appetite for blood. To do so, Craven implicates us all in the death of Maureen, the film's initial victim played by Jada Pinkett Smith. As the ghost-faced killer knifes her, Maureen spins around to a sea of ghost-faced masks, making it impossible to distinguis

Much to my surprise this blog was chosen as the internet pick of the week over at Guardian.co.uk . I feel so legit all of a sudden. Check out all the other fine people I was honored to be listed with. A big thanks to Pierre Fournier of Frankensteina who gave me the heads up.

Pontypool is the kind of film that gets me excited about the horror genre. It has been described by some as a zombie film, but Pontypool largely ignores many of the conventions of such films to bring something new and fresh to a movie about the “walking dead” It does this by challenging the zombie film’s stock and trade: guts and gore. Unlike the horde of flesh-eating dead made famous by Romero’s “_____ of the Dead” films, in Pontypool the enemy is unseen. For most of the film we are locked in the claustrophobic church basement where Grant Mazzy and his production team broadcast the news on Radio 660: The Beacon. That’s not to say the world outside the cold, dark basement of the world is any better. On Grant’s way to work, all we can see is a vast blackness swirled with flecks of snow, a desolate landscape devoid of human habitation or connection. This atmosphere heightens our connection to the characters that run the show, the charismatic Grant Mazzy, the voice of the Beacon; hi