François Ozon reflects on the artistic and political choices behind his black-and-white adaptation of Albert Camus’ canon.
As the Paranormal Activity series prepares to return with a new installment next year, and the remake of the 1978 “Mondo” faux-documentary Faces of Death is set to drop in April, the found-footage genre seems to be having its moment now. At least 13 found-footage horror movies are lined up for 2026 and beyond. The found-footage horror genre began booming in the late 1990s with The Blair Witch Project (1999) and continued through the late 2000s, fueled by the success of Paranormal Activity (2007) and Cloverfield (2008). The first-person cinematography, with shaky camerawork and low-quality footage, might have looked amateurish, but it proved to have a massive fanbase, showing that nonlinear storytelling can succeed rather than fail. High-profile indie hits and hybrid films like Shelby…
How director François Ozon keeps changing, but stays remarkably modern.
We are two weekends away from the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans and the film has another update for us to share. First and foremost, The Crypt Keeper will be leading the Opening Night Second Line Parade. Then the voice of The Crypt Keeper, John Kassir, will participate in a panel discussion about the show’s legacy. Two more films have been added to this year’s lineup, while one, unfortunately, had to dropped from the schedule. Family Movie, the horror comedy starring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, along with their son and daughter, has been added, with Bacon and Sedgwick coming to town for the screening. Then there will be a live presentation of Museum of Home Video Presents with VJ Bret Berg. Berg…
German production designer Uli Hanisch examines production design as a narrative discipline, tracing how conceptual development, collaboration and logistical execution shape the construction of cinematic worlds.
In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week we look at selected music videos by Corin Hardy. Corin Hardy is best known as the director of The Nun, part of the Conjuring-universe, and the recent Whistle, a horror feature about an Aztec deathwhistle summoning death. Lesser known, but quite great is his earlier music video and short film output. Hardy started out as an animator with the excellent stop-motion short Butterfly, which straddles the line between early Tim Burton and the cinematic output of graphic novelist Dave McKean. This influence can also be seen in his early music videos, where the McKean influences are most overtly present in his music video for The Horrors’…
For Daniel Roher, the documentary filmmaker behind 2022’s essential Academy Award winner, Navalny, AI (Artificial Intelligence) isn’t just an abstract construct or the latest technological wonder endlessly hyped by Silicone Valley CEOs, the mainstream media, and tech influencers, to every other company, public institution, or government entity in the world. Instead, it’s deeply personal and idiosyncratic, driven by the anxiety surrounding parenthood, specifically the pregnancy of his filmmaker wife, Caroline Lindy (Your Monster), and the upcoming birth of their son. What future, Roher wonders, awaits his son? Luckily for Roher, his background in the documentary world, not to mention winning an Oscar, gave him more than enough credibility to connect with some of the best and brightest in the AI field, bring them…
In the very near-future of husband-and-wife filmmaking duo Miriam Louise Arens and Mitchell Arens’ impressively realized feature-length debut, Heartworm, it could be the day after tomorrow. A family of three, Avena (Amber Gray), Mark (Juan Riedinger), and Zamira (Ellie Reine), suddenly becomes a family of two, leaving Avena, a concert pianist from a family of concert pianists, and her husband, Mark, positively shatttered, lost, and unmoored. That same near-future, however, has led to a technological leap, NeuraLife, that allows for instant entry and departure into a fully realized virtual world resembling our own. It also allows both Avena and Mark an escape from the life-distorting grief that haunts their days and invades their dreams, turning them into nightmares of loss. But it’s also…
Our guide to genre fare opening this week in movie theaters includes a straight ahead horror thriller, a comic horror movie, a different type of thriller, and four strong indies. Read on for more information about each film. They Will Kill You The film is now playing, only in movie theaters, via Warner Bros. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes. Our review by J Hurtado: “Kirill Sokolov has stepped into the Hollywood spotlight and made a big statement here, and horror fans are definitely going to respond. They Will Kill You is a big, bloody blast of energy, and isn’t that the stuff big screen dreams are made of?” Official synopsis: “The film unleashes a blood-soaked, high-octane horror-action-comedy in which a young woman…