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 ...

Directed by Alexandre Aja and produced by the legendary Sam Raimi, Crawl  is the first movie to nearly give me a physical panic attack. Kaya Scodelario plays Haley, a swimmer who visits her estranged father (Barry Pepper) during a Category 5 hurricane to make sure he evacuates safely. Her rescue mission turns into the pair swimming, crawling, and climbing for their lives as they dodge the gaping maws of alligators which have made their way into the home's basement. Horror movies which spend the majority of their run-time in a single setting tend to grow old quickly, but Crawl chooses not to waste time (or scares). The CGI alligators have a real presence throughout the film, and with the movie's minimal soundtrack their every splash and snarl reverberates throughout the cavernous basement. I'm not claustrophobic, nor am I particularly scared of alligators (or at least I wasn't prior to seeing Crawl ), but Aja's sparing use of the camera flowing seamlessly unde...

The Paranormal Activity  series has become infamous for its routine of constant jumpscares and its title has become somewhat synonymous with lazy popular horror which people will line up to see year after year on opening night. Admittedly, I am not a big fan of the series in terms of its convoluted storyline and difficulty with upholding simple historical accuracy in films and sequences which flash back to previous decades. However, bearing all of that in mind, I do firmly believe that Paranormal Activity (particularly the first film in the series) is extremely important to the horror genre as a whole, even with its glaring flaws and reliance on jumpscares, simply due to the fact that it made horror films something that were easily accessible and easy to create for those who initially believed they might not have the budget for it. Prior to Paranormal Activity  perhaps the most notable cheap horror movie was The Blair Witch Project  a film which might be unnerving ...

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...

People often lapse into claims that horror has been reduced to a bloody and disgusting genre which lacks the depth and beauty of classics like those which were made by Alfred Hitchcock. However, this is hardly the case, and I encourage those of you who feel this way about horror to simply will yourself to dig a little deeper into the genre and truly explore how poignant and beautiful horror can be. Bearing that in mind, here are five modern horror movies which should inspire you to understand that horror is still so much more than blood and guts. 5. The Others A beautiful mood-driven film in which Nicole Kidman lives in an enormous home with her two children, who are both ill and will be harmed if allowed into the sunlight. Slowly, the claustrophobia of being locked away in the darkness begins to weigh on her, though the film refrains from any sort of outlandish responses and instead continues to slowly unravel as we witness a loving mother gradually lose her sanity while still...

Would You Rather (2012) Often times the most effective method of writing a story is to keep it simple, and Would You Rather  is perhaps the most simple yet effective horror movie I have seen in quite some time. As explained from the title, Would You Rather  centers around a group of people playing the popular game, in which they are made to choose between two unpleasant and difficult decisions in a brutal and horrific competition to win the fortune that will help them out of their own individual struggles. The film balances our sympathies between its protagonist, who is struggling to raise her younger brother who is dying of cancer, and the other competitors in the game who all have their own heartache and challenges which the money would help them overcome. Of course, only one person can win the game, and as it carries on it becomes doubtful that many people will leave the home in one piece. Typically when one imagines a horror movie centered around a game which can be...

Hush (2016) The slasher subgenre of horror has been around for ages, popularized by the release of revolutionary films such as Halloween , The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , and Friday the 13th . Since the popularization of the slasher subgenre one can sometimes feel as though the same tropes have been repeated time and time again, in which the characters who engage in acts stereotyped as "bad" (smoking, drinking, foul language, sexual promiscuity) are killed off one by one while a female survivor who is depicted as morally wholesome (at least, in comparison to her friends) lives to fulfill her destiny as "the final girl." Despite the seemingly never-ending loop of this old trope it seems as though the majority of slasher films have found a way to at least make themselves moderately interesting, by carrying the same formula with new and innovative ideas. Hush is, however, the most groundbreaking and unique slasher film to come out in a very long time. Centering ...

The Purge: Election Year (2016) It's been said that the worst thing a book can be is boring. Every word, every sentence, and every paragraph of a novel must serve some sort of purpose and never leave the reader bored. I believe that this theory applies to film as well, and unfortunately, The Purge: Election Year  is mind-numbingly boring from start to finish. Despite the fact that it rarely lapses into scenes where nothing happens it's difficult to feel anything for any of the characters on screen or to care when the fourth action sequence rolls around. The novelty of the idea from the first film, which introduces the concept of one day where all crime is legal, has worn off by now and is instead muddled by an attempt at introducing politics to the Purge  universe. Our hero is a politician who is determined to put an end to the purge after witnessing the murder of her family when she was young one purge night, for some reason the notion of a politician putting an end to a...

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) In case you've forgotten, or like me have the habit of purposefully neglecting any and all films in the found-footage genre, in 2008 there was a film called Cloverfield . Cloverfield  was a mediocre found-footage film which focused on a party in New York city that is interrupted by an enormous monster destroying the city. It wasn't anything special, though it wasn't particularly bad either. Naturally, it fell victim to the traditional flaws that are inherent in the found-footage genre: shaky camera bad enough to cause nausea, sounds obviously added in post-production, awkward acting, and the implied spoiler that every character within the movie is probably going to die because that's why the footage was found  and not willingly released by the imagined filmmaker. It's been quite some time since I watched Cloverfield , because it isn't really the sort of movie that warrants a second watch due to the fact that its popularity stemm...

The Witch (2016) From the trailer alone I knew that The Witch  (sometimes written as The VVitch  for the sake of style) would be an absolutely horrifying experience, and I was not wrong. First and foremost, allow me to ramble momentarily about how phenomenal this film is and the fact that it is not only a fantastic horror film but a wonderful historical movie as well. It centers around a small family living out in the woods where they attempt to start a farm of their own after fleeing their colony due to the father's unorthodox religious beliefs (which, admittedly, must have been pretty horrifying and legalistic if they were severe enough to frighten pilgrims). The film's score is haunting, atmospheric, experimental, and composed using nothing but instruments available in the time period the story takes place in, creating a strange and surreal sort of immersive experience for the audience. All outdoor scenes were filmed with only natural lighting (not unlike another fanta...