Category: Nightmother

Still Looking Out For Us: Shyamalan’s Split & Mental Illness

Still Looking Out For Us: Shyamalan’s Split & Mental Illness

Posted by | Dec 6, 2017 | ,

Originally published on February 6, 2017. I knew what we were in for the moment I saw the first trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s new film Split. Critics have long had it out for Shyamalan. Before the release of The Visit in 2015, I wrote about how the cultural consensus has consistently and willfully misunderstood him as an auteur. The Visit ended up opening to the sort of widespread acclaim that had evaded his work for over a decade. But when I saw Split’s trailer, I was sure it was about to come crashing down again, buckling under the...

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Emily Blunt and John Krasinski Find A Quiet Place in New Trailer

Emily Blunt and John Krasinski Find A Quiet Place in New Trailer

Posted by | Nov 16, 2017 | , |

Here’s the first trailer for the John Krasinski directed horrror film, A Quiet Place. There’s a real challenge to the art of horror movies that can effetively use sound to generate the majority of their scares and tension. If this trailer is any indication, A Quiet Place is up to the challenge, and is going to provide quite the sensory ride. The decision to hide the supernatural element is a good marketing move, and certainly adds an desired element of mystery. I have a feeling that this could end up being the kind of movie so many of us...

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The Strangers Take Us Outside in Prey at Night Teaser

The Strangers Take Us Outside in Prey at Night Teaser

Posted by | Nov 16, 2017 | , |

Here’s the first teaser for the sequel a decade in the making, The Strangers: Prey at Night! Johannes Roberts’ takes over from the prior entry’s director, Bryan Bertino, and looks to expand the Strangers reign of terror to open spaces. Bertino, who co-write the script, has been discussing sequel plans since the original’s release nearly 10 years ago, and while this sequel looks like a departure from some of the quiet eeriness and clausterphobia of the first one, it certainly has the potential to be equally effective, especially given Roberts’ talent for creating clever jump scares. We’re definitely keeping...

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UPDATED: The 100 Best Horror Movies of the 2000s

UPDATED: The 100 Best Horror Movies of the 2000s

Posted by | Oct 31, 2017 | , |

One of the questions we asked multiple subjects in our Horrortown interview series (which you can read here) is, “How would you respond to those people who say there are no good horror movies right now?” This question was inspired by our shared belief that “right now” is an exceptional moment to be a horror fan. More quality horror films are premiering at festivals, being made available On Demand, and opening in limited and wide-release than ever before. The 2000s have seen some of the best working filmmakers experimenting with the form, altering and enforcing the storytelling genre, opening...

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Halloween: The True Classic

Halloween: The True Classic

Posted by | Oct 31, 2017 | , |

Some movies are just special. There is really no rhyme or reason as to why. But some movies just trigger us. They ignite a love for film, a love for genre, a love of emotion and experience. And it is different for all of us. For my wife, it is seeing Debbie Reynolds dance and sing in Singin’ in the Rain. For a close friend of mine, it is the romance of Cary Elwes and Robin Wright in The Princess Bride. My love for film is just a little bit darker, and I can remember it as soon as...

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Small Screen Horror: Black Mirror

Small Screen Horror: Black Mirror

Posted by | Oct 31, 2017 |

Charlie Brooker was scaring us in the U.K. long before he created  Black Mirror. Both in his column for The Guardian and on the TV shows Screenwipe and How TV Ruined Your Life, he regularly argued that the world was on fire and that rather than putting out the flames, we were burying our heads in I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! and documentaries about the world’s fattest family. Dead Set, one of his forays into fictional satire, was a zombie mini-series set in the Big Brother house with prima donna celebrities, arsehole producers, and airhead reality TV ‘stars’...

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Is It Still Fun?: Casper (1995)

Is It Still Fun?: Casper (1995)

Posted by | Oct 30, 2017 | ,

It’s the spring of 1995. I am almost 10 years old, and I love my cat, stories about cats, Anne of Green Gables, and Casper. These things have held up over the years—I still love my cat (may he rest in peace), I still love stories about cats (see the “Cat Who” mysteries), and Anne of Green Gables is inarguably one of the better things to come out of Canada. But what about Casper? Does what I loved about it back then still make it enjoyable now? What I loved then: As a pre-teen, I identified with Kat (Christina...

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Horror Comics You Should be Reading for #hAElloween 2017

Horror Comics You Should be Reading for #hAElloween 2017

Posted by | Oct 27, 2017 | , |

There’s nothing quite like good horror comics. The dark marriage of words and art that give shape to nightmares, planting seeds for future ones. The chill in your bones as the work’s intention takes on clarity, and the revelations that leave a pit in your stomach. The feel of the pages, sweat-slicked by fingers that can’t turn to the next one quick enough. Many of the earliest comic books were horror centric, and it is a medium that invites ghastly tales that shift with our cultural fears and reach our hands more quickly than any other storytelling medium. We’ve...

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Lost Legends: Tobe Hooper

Lost Legends: Tobe Hooper

Posted by | Oct 26, 2017 |

For our final Lost Legend, we turn to Tobe Hooper, a wonderful horror voice who passed away in 2017. Hooper will be forever remembered for writing and directing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a horror movie to which a whole genre of horror movies owes its thanks. Following Massacre, Hooper had varying degrees of success with indies and studio pictures, but everything he made was infused with the Hooper DNA meaning that it would be fun, well-made, and with a whole heap of gross stuff to look at. Eaten Alive (1976) Overview: In the rural East Texas, a man kills...

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The Saving Power of Nostalgia, Nerdism, and Stranger Things

The Saving Power of Nostalgia, Nerdism, and Stranger Things

Posted by | Oct 26, 2017 | , |

*Originally published on July 20th, 2016. We first meet the boys playing Dungeons & Dragons in a basement. Later, we see a poster for John Carpenter’s The Thing tacked to a wall in a bedroom upstairs in the same house. A flashback sequence shows Will (Noah Schnapp) bonding with his older brother Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) over the music of The Clash, and we catch a poster for Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead hanging on Jonathan’s bedroom wall. When their circumstances are imposed upon with undeniable supernatural influence, the group of social outcasts return to their D&D texts for guidance and understanding....

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A Collection of Regional Cryptid Horror

A Collection of Regional Cryptid Horror

Posted by | Oct 25, 2017 | , , |

The world is still a big and scary place. There’s much we haven’t answered or catalogued. And folklore is full of stories of culturally specific cryptids, legends and stories which can be mined for our viewing pleasure. Some stories have been told so long nobody remembers their origin, and new ones are popping up every decade. In a world that struggles to come up with new content, it makes sense that we’d turn to our oldest most fantastical unexplained stories to inspire our imaginations and give them a facelift. So to shake up a little extra creepy Halloween spirit,...

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Halloween Movies for Kids and Cowards: Part IV

Halloween Movies for Kids and Cowards: Part IV

Posted by | Oct 24, 2017 | , |

Not everyone who faces horrific scenarios can be an Ellen Ripley or an R.J. MacReady. Most people are likely akin to the Loser’s Club of Stephen King’s It. Most people get scared, and rightly so. However, we here at Audiences Everywhere think it’d be healthy if you expanded your fear limit this Halloween, by checking out a few of these movies that, as the title suggests, we’ve selected just for you. Don’t worry, none of these are scary. They’re just a few Halloween-themed films that could at least be appreciated for their humor and/or artistic merit. Corpse Bride The...

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VIFF: Tragedy Girls is Destined for Sleepover Stardom

VIFF: Tragedy Girls is Destined for Sleepover Stardom

Posted by | Oct 19, 2017 | , , |

Vancouver International Film Festival runs from September 28 – October 13, 2017. Screening films from more than 70 countries on nine screens, VIFF’s program includes the pick of the world’s top film fests and many undiscovered gems.  Overview: Two girls bent on becoming horror legends use the work of a serial killer to project their burgeoning hobby into a career. It’s The Comeback Kids; 2017; Rated R; 98 minutes. Get Off My Lawn: Back in the ’90s and early-aughts sleepover classics like Heathers, Jawbreaker, and Idle Hands reigned supreme. These dark horror-comedies played perfectly for angsty, giggly teens the...

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Lost Legends: William Castle

Lost Legends: William Castle

Posted by | Oct 19, 2017 |

Though we didn’t lose him as recently as Craven, Romero, or Hooper, there has never been a director and horror maestro quite like the likes of William Castle. He died in 1977 after a career spanning five decades and dozens of movies. He is best-known for his gimmicks like putting buzzers in theatre seats, parking hearses outside the cinema doors, or giving film-goers certificates for $1000 life insurance policies lest they die of fright. Castle was a true showman and we have not yet to see his like again. House on Haunted Hill (1959) Overview: A group of strangers...

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The Blair Witch Project Is So Perfect, It Can Only Happen Once

The Blair Witch Project Is So Perfect, It Can Only Happen Once

Posted by | Oct 18, 2017 | , |

Originally published on September 12, 2016. They say that part of the problem with addiction to the harder, more dangerous drugs is that no high feels better than the first one. The Blair Witch Project got me. I have told the story a million times, the way one does with first loves. I watched it on opening night in a small town in my home state of West Virginia, thirty minutes from my house in the woods. Where I lived, there was no internet access (there wouldn’t be for a little while). My family had only had cable just...

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