The Foxy Film Fan

Ready Or Not  is your traditional wedding story. A woman marries a rich man, and she has to survive until daylight while her new in-laws hunt her down with guns and crossbows. You know, it's just like every other wedding you've been to. There's a lot to say about this movie and it's commentary made on the wealthy privileged elites of society, and there's also a lot to say about Samara Weaving's performance as the bride who just can't seem to catch a break. Class warfare is the most blatant theme throughout Ready Or Not , and it's sort of a play on those stories of the wealthy hunting humans for fun. The family's dysfunction leads to her new husband, Alex, having complicated feelings about the role he's forced to play. Like the wealthy who contemplate whether the role they play in society is truly beneficial or actually actively harms the poor, he sways back and forth from longing to protect his wife and feeling certain that he has a duty to...

This review contains spoilers for the movie Midsommar. Midsommar is a film which I have complicated feelings toward. In some aspects it's perfect. Visually, it's stunning, and the bright flower specked landscapes linger through the horror. I love the concept of a horror movie where daylight is not safer than the darkness, and I love the strange visual effects which make the plants and flowers breathe and pulse slowly. In other ways it feels restrained. The run-time was cut drastically, and it leaves certain aspects feeling underdeveloped (such as the "unclouded" who frantically scribble the community's holy texts). The film was intended to be a full half-hour longer, and I imagine losing that footage is the reason the movie feels rather incomplete. Don't get me wrong, Midsommar is good, but it doesn't feel fully realized. Our protagonist Dani is desperately clinging to a failing relationship after the loss of her family. Her uninterested boyfriend ...

I, like so many others, was skeptical when I heard news of the new M. Night Shyamalan film. For years he’s been disappointing film goers of all kinds, and with the release of the likes of The Last Airbender it became questionable who his target audience even was anymore. It almost began to seem as though he had lost sight of who he was, as though he wasn’t even the same director responsible for classics like The Sixth Sense . The announcement of Split failed to excite me, and though the premise seemed fascinating I refused to get my hopes up, especially with a trailer that provided enough room for one to imagine the film hastily devolving into another laughably bad mess like The Visit did. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. In fact, Split was so good that there were many instances in which I had to remind myself that I was in fact watching a film by the same man who made After Earth and The Happening . The premise to Split is simple and not unlike that of an episode of...

In a genre filled with quick cuts and constant jump scares, The Babadook offers the exact opposite. Focusing on a grieving widow who is struggling to raise her son alone after the loss of her husband, The Babadook  gives a more sincere and heartfelt look into the horror genre than most other films. In fact, one might even say that it offers love and empathy and is straining to comfort its viewers despite the horrific themes and occurrences which take place in its one hour and thirty-five minute runtime. Of course, that isn't to say that the film isn't absolutely terrifying in the instances that it needs to be, while viewers watch the son and mother duo screech and dodge attacks from the terrifying Babadook, a twitching eerie tophat wearing monster lifted from the pages of a horrific children's book which has decided to latch on to and torture this particular family. The film is decent, and I'll admit that the main reason I am so attached to it and adore it so muc...

Starry Eyes (2014) The subject of fame is one often tackled in cinema, partially due to the fact that filmmakers and screenwriters are encouraged to write about subjects which they feel they have a decent understanding of. This leads to a wide variety of films all tackling the subject of fame in some way, but rarely do they aim to do so in a horror setting. Typically, audiences are rooting for someone's quest for fame in a comedy, romance, or drama. In the case of Starry Eyes, audience members are left conflicted as our protagonist goes to increasingly dangerous and drastic lengths as the promise of stardom is dangled in front of her face, forever pushing her to go further and further beyond her moral limits in some vain effort at achieving her dreams. Its a premise we've seen time and time again, typically under the guise of romantic comedies or a heart wrenching drama. Unfortunately for our protagonist, she's not in a comedy where she'll meet up with her future ...

Horror is a genre I hold near and dear to my heart. It's a genre of filmmaking which I believe is extraordinarily deep and explores parts of the human psyche which other genres of art refuse to delve into. Fear is one of humanity's most primitive and instinctual responses, and horror aims to tap into that sensation. However, keeping that in mind I cannot simply neglect to even acknowledge the ugly aspects of horror which people tend to think of when the genre is mentioned; the Hostels, Saw Vs, and Human Centipedes of the genre. After all, there's no smoke without fire, and if the hideous "torture porn" subgenre of horror can't be described as a raging dumpster fire, then I'm not sure what can be. I would, however, like to briefly condemn the use of phrases such as "torture porn." While there are quite a few movies in the horror genre which spend a sickening amount of time focusing on gore and torture, to compare them to pornography demean...