Comrade Courant Culture Critic

The First Omen (2024): A Feminist Horror That Demands Bodily Autonomy “Not every miracle is divine—and not every institution deserves your trust.” — 4/5 Stars In the post-Roe era, horror has become a vital space for reckoning with the erosion of bodily autonomy. The First Omen (2024) doesn’t just participate in that conversation—it weaponizes it. This is not a haunted house story. It’s a procedural thriller about institutional gaslighting, reproductive control, and the quiet violence of faith used as a tool of patriarchal power. Set in 1971 Rome, the film follows Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free), a young American novitiate sent to the prestigious Mater Lachrymarum Convent to prove her devotion. But from the moment she arrives, something is wrong. The nuns are cold, the priests evasive, and the orphanage next door houses girls who vanish without explanation. When a series of “miracles” begin to unfold—...

Immaculate (2024): A Missed Opportunity in Religious Horror “Not every intervention is divine.” — And not every horror film with a great premise deserves your time. — 2/5 Stars Immaculate (2024) arrives with a premise ripe for horror: a devout American nun, Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney), joins a remote Italian convent only to discover she’s been chosen for a terrifying divine purpose. The film flirts with powerful themes—bodily autonomy, reproductive control, institutional gaslighting, and the weaponization of faith against women. In the hands of a bold filmmaker, this could have been a Rosemary’s Baby for the post-Roe era. Instead, director Michael Mohan and writer Andrew Lobel deliver a film that feels like it was focus-grouped into mediocrity, or never intended to be great in the first place. There are so many interesting ideas here—Cecilia as a modern-day vessel, the convent as a gilded prison, the Chu...

The Substance (2024): Body Horror as Capitalist Self-Cannibalism “Audaciously gross, wickedly clever, and possibly Demi Moore’s finest hour.” — 4/5 Stars In a world that demands women consume themselves to stay relevant, The Substance literalizes the metaphor with grotesque, operatic precision. Coralie Fargeat’s audacious body-horror epic isn’t about aging—it’s about the capitalist machinery that turns self-optimization into self-annihilation. Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a fading aerobics icon fired on her 50th birthday for being “too old.” Desperate, she injects a black-market serum that splits her body in two: out of her back emerges Sue (Margaret Qualley), a younger, hotter, more marketable version of herself. For seven days, they alternate consciousness. But the system demands sacrifice—and the original body pays the price. The Horror of Self-Commodifi...

  A Beautiful, Frustrating Near-Miss from Oz Perkins, Longlegs (2024) "A visually hypnotic horror-thriller that doesn't quite deliver on its promise" — 3.5/5 Stars Official trailer for Longlegs (2024) — Neon Longlegs (2024) review: From the first frame, Oz Perkins’ horror-thriller lets you know you're in the hands of a visual stylist. He paints with shadows and light in a way that feels both meticulously crafted and dangerously unhinged. The aspect ratios shift like moods, the lighting schemes evoke everything from ’70s conspiracy thrillers to Scandinavian nightmares. There are moments of pure cinematic sorcery here—sequences so visually arresting they momentarily make you forget you're watching a movie and instead feel like you've stumbled into someone's fever dream. But like the best fever dreams, Longlegs starts to fray at the edges when you t...

Drew Friedman: Vermeer of the Borscht Belt (2024): A Loving Tribute to a Legend "A loving, star-studded tribute to one of America’s most distinctive cartoonists" — 4/5 Stars I first heard about the Drew Friedman documentary online and immediately went hunting for it. Finding this film about the legendary cartoonist proved challenging, but I eventually watched it for free thanks to my library card and Hoopla—a huge shout out to them. Reviewing a documentary is always tricky, especially one this short, but this one is excellent. I found myself wishing I could see every single second of the interviews that ended up on the cutting room floor. Who is Drew Friedman? Drew Friedman (or "Jewdots," as Gilbert Gottfried affectionately called him) is a legendary American cartoonist and illustrator. He has published many books, and his work has appeared on t...