Comrade Courant Culture Critic

The Man in My Basement (2025): A Dense, Unsettling Allegory Anchored by Tour-de-Force Performances "Nadia Latif's stunning debut is a philosophical thriller that asks profound questions, even if it occasionally buckles under their weight." — 4/5 Stars The Man in My Basement (2025) is not a conventional horror film, but it is one of the most psychologically unsettling entries of the year. Now streaming on Hulu, this adaptation of Walter Mosley's 2004 novel presents a high-concept premise that unfolds into a dense, talky, and fiercely intelligent allegory about guilt, power, and the cages we build for ourselves. While its ambition sometimes leads to a cluttered narrative, the film is elevated by career-best work from Corey Hawkins and a typically mesmerizing Willem Dafoe . The setup is deceptively simple: Charles Blakey (Hawkins), a man on the verge of losing his family home, agrees t...

The Dark Half (1993): King's Doppelgänger Nightmare Gets a Gothic Makeover "A slow-burn psychological horror that prioritizes atmosphere over scares, anchored by Romero's eye for the grotesque." — 3/5 Stars The Dark Half (1993) review: In an era when studios are finally mining Stephen King’s deeper cuts for fresh horror, it’s worth revisiting George A. Romero’s The Dark Half —a film that was ahead of its time in its psychological ambition, if not always in its pacing. Based on King’s 1989 novel (itself a thinly veiled reflection of his “Richard Bachman” pseudonym), the film explores the terrifying notion that the darkest parts of our creativity might not stay on the page. It’s a gothic, atmospheric, and deeply strange work—flawed, yes, but genuinely haunting in its best moments. Timothy Hutton stars as Thad Beaumont, a literary novelist whose violent crime thriller...