Posts

Joe's College Road Trip: A Squandered Teachable Moment That Is Still Better Than It Has Any Right to B

Image
I promised myself I would not do it again. And then, because I love Black people and I want to see Black people win, I did it again. I watched a Tyler Perry film. So here we are. If you are unfamiliar with Tyler Perry, the short version is this: he got his start on the church play circuit in the late 1990s and early 2000s, building an audience out of working-class Black churchgoers who finally felt seen on a stage. I watched nearly every one of those plays in college. My church community gathered around them the way other communities gather around sporting events. There was solidarity in it. When Perry eventually made his transition to cinema, a lot of us were genuinely rooting for him, because he was the rare example of someone who had built something entirely from nothing, sleeping in his car, educating himself, pulling himself up without a roadmap. That goodwill has been wearing thin for a while now, but it has not entirely evaporated, which is probably why I keep coming back. Jo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Crimson Peak Review - A Sleepy Gothic Horror from the mind of Guillermo Del Toro

Image
I have a confession to make: this is the movie that kicked off my I Love Horror challenge , and it took me a decade to get here. Crimson Peak came out in 2015, and I missed it entirely, because at the time I was still nursing a self-imposed horror ban after Eli Roth's Hostel left me traumatized in a way I clearly hadn't recovered from. It took a full-blown challenge, and a genuine love for Guillermo del Toro, to finally get me into this house. Directed by del Toro, whose Pan's Labyrinth sits comfortably in my top 100 films of all time, Crimson Peak follows Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), an aspiring writer with a taste for ghost stories, who falls for Sir Thomas Sharp (Tom Hiddleston), a charming but cash-strapped baronet trying to secure investors to unearth the red clay beneath his crumbling family estate. Edith marries him, leaves her father and her other suitor, Dr. McMichael (Charlie Hunnam), behind, and moves into Allerdale Hall: a house that is, quite literally, f...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Black Phone: Better Late Than Never, and Worth Every Minute

Image
I have a bone to pick with all of you. Somehow you let me go this long without watching The Black Phone , and I am genuinely disappointed in us both. But here we are, and I have since corrected that mistake, so let's get into it. I finally sat down with this one on a day off while nursing a sick kid, which tells you everything about my current season of life. What I expected was something I would have to turn off halfway through. What I got was one of the more quietly affecting horror films I have seen in a long time. Directed by Scott Derrickson and based on a short story by Joe Hill, The Black Phone follows Finney Blake, a young boy growing up in a small town already weighed down by bullying, an alcoholic and abusive father, and the grief of losing his mother. The town itself is living under a shadow: a child serial killer known as the Grabber has been snatching kids, and Finney eventually becomes one of his victims. What unfolds from there is part supernatural thriller, part...
Post a Comment
Read more

Primate Is a Creature Feature That Earns Its Gore and Not Much Else

Image
Review Disclaimer: "The review is late but the thoughts are worth it, so let's get into it." (Watched & written in Jan 2026)  If you have been following horror in 2026, you have probably heard that Johannes Roberts, the director behind The Strangers: Prey at Night , has a new film out. Primate is not a film I sought out with any particular urgency. I was simply looking for something to catch at the theater, leaning further into my horror era, and figured this was as good a reason as any. I had seen maybe two trailers. That was enough. What I can tell you upfront is this: Primate is a fun moviegoing experience, but it is not a film that will ask much of you intellectually. If you go in expecting something in the vein of Get Out or Nope , you will leave disappointed. If you go in understanding that this is a creature feature paying loving homage to the horror films that came before it, you will likely walk out satisfied. The audience at my matinee showing seemed to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Cast of 'Strung' is Gorgeous. The Script? Not So Much. (Review of Strung 2026)

Image
Strung (2026) Review Dir. Malcolm Lee 2/5 ⭐ I hate giving reviews like this to movies I genuinely wanted to love, but I have some real issues with this film, starting with the marketing. The trailers positioned this as a horror film, largely due to the little girl who's in the mask (it's giving Us or Them ) , but instead, the movie is more like an erotic, psychological thriller. That distinction matters, and the mismatch in expectations didn't help. Strung is a 2026 movie streaming on Peacock, directed by Malcolm Lee, who is probably most famous for his The Best Man franchise. It is a Blumhouse and Tyler Perry collaboration in production, and it was written by Alan McElroy. The film stars Chlöe Bailey as Layla, a promising young violinist who gets a job working as a musical tutor slash nanny for an affluent Black family led by matriarch Lynn Whitfield, and her cold and detached daughter, Imani, played by Anna Diop. The first scenes of the film are actually quite haunting...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Yellow Wallpaper & A24's Backrooms

Image
Everyone is talking about A24's Backrooms, a new movie directed by Kane Parsons. If you have never heard of Kane Parsons, perhaps you have heard of Kane Pixels. That was the name the director went by on YouTube about four years ago when he released his short film Backrooms and then dived into several other shorts related to this concept of liminal spaces—spaces that exist in perhaps some parallel dimension and seem to go on forever. They are made up of things like abandoned department stores, office buildings, and warehouses that have been abandoned to time and memory, exploring the idea of what lies beneath these areas and what realms exist in our memory. He toyed with this idea four years ago and it went viral—so much so that he ended up getting a deal. There has been a whole lot of debate online as to whether or not this 20-year-old filmmaker actually directed this film. I think it revolves around the concept of whether he could really give acting direction to such acting jugge...
Post a Comment
Read more

Now You See Me Now You Don’t — Full Review (No Spoilers)

Image
Picture of Review Thumbnail featuring the cast of the film.  Every once in a while, a franchise returns after years of silence and reminds you exactly why you enjoyed it in the first place—not because it reinvented cinema, but because it made you smile. Now You See Me Now You Don’t is that kind of movie. After nine long years, I took myself out on a movie date to see it, and honestly, it felt like stepping back into a familiar magic trick where you already know the setup, but you still enjoy watching it unfold. Before anyone asks: yes, the world is buzzing about Wicked for Good , and no, this isn’t that review. That one is coming later. But while everyone is distracted by flying houses and emerald-green lighting, this little heist-magic-film slipped into theaters—and I’m glad I didn’t miss it. One thing I appreciate about this series is the cast chemistry. We’ve had three different directors across the franchise, yet somehow it all still feels cohesive. That’s the cast. That’s ...
Post a Comment
Read more