Comrade Courant Culture Critic

The Blair Witch Project (1999): A Found-Footage Landmark That Changed Horror Forever “What happened to them is real.” — And for a while, we all believed it. — 3/5 Stars In the summer of 1999, a marketing campaign unlike any before it began seeping into the cultural bloodstream. Posters appeared in record stores and video rental shops showing a grainy black-and-white photo of three missing students, their names printed beneath like a police bulletin. A cryptic trailer—aired without context on late-night TV—presented shaky footage of screams in the dark, sticks snapping in the trees, and a voice whispering, “I’m so scared.” And then there was the website: www.blairwitch.com . Now preserved only in the Internet Archive , the original site listed Heather, Mike, and Josh as missing persons, complete with police reports and “recovered” video tapes. There was no mention of actors. No studio...

The Wailing (2016): A Shattering Masterpiece of Spiritual Horror and Existential Doubt "Not just a horror film—it’s a theological nightmare that leaves you questioning everything, including your own eyes." — 5/5 Stars Let’s be clear from the outset: The Wailing (Gokseong) (2016) is not merely a horror film. It is a descent into spiritual chaos—a 156-minute fever dream that weaponizes faith, folklore, and paranoia to dismantle the very notion of certainty. Directed by Na Hong-jin ( The Chaser , The Yellow Sea ), this South Korean epic doesn’t just scare you; it unmoors you , leaving you adrift in a world where every belief system fails, every authority lies, and evil wears a thousand faces. Set in the remote mountain village of Goksung, the film follows Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won), a bumbling, everyman police officer whose quiet life unravels when a mysterious illness begins turni...

Possession (1981): A Shattering Descent into Marital Horror and Existential Chaos "Not a film about possession—but about the horror of loving someone who’s become a stranger." — 4/5 Stars Let’s be clear from the outset: Possession (1981) is not a conventional horror film. It is a psychological exorcism disguised as a marital drama—a raw, unhinged, and deeply personal vision of love’s disintegration, filtered through the lens of Cold War paranoia, religious guilt, and body horror so visceral it borders on the sacred. Directed by Andrzej Żuławski during his exile from communist Poland, the film channels his own divorce, political disillusionment, and existential dread into a work that feels less like cinema and more like a scream carved into celluloid. The story begins simply: Mark (Sam Neill), a spy returning to West Berlin, finds his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) distant, erra...

Batman: The Killing Joke (2016): A Horrifying Masterpiece That Redefined Animated Cinema "As a Batman story, it's controversial. As a film, it's a flawless, soul-chilling descent into madness that forever raised the bar for animation." — 5/5 Stars Let's be clear from the outset: Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) is not a comfortable watch. It is not a heroic power fantasy. It is a psychological horror film disguised as a superhero cartoon—a bleak, brutal, and unflinching examination of trauma, madness, and the fragile line that separates order from chaos. And while I take some issue with the story as a Batman fan, as a film, it is excellent and set the high-water mark for what an animated feature can be . Adapting Alan Moore's landmark graphic novel was a daunting task, and the film delivers its nihilistic thesis with devastating precision. The Joker, seeking 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...

Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (2023): A Lovecraftian Missed Opportunity Wrapped in Decent Animation "A cursed prophecy, a bat-shaped god, and a film that should’ve been far more terrifying." — 3/5 Stars Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (2023) arrives with a tantalizing premise: a 1920s Batman, cosmic horror, and a Gotham City built on occult bloodlines. Based on the cult-favorite Elseworlds comic of the same name, the film leans hard into H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos—specifically echoing The Doom That Came to Sarnath —and reimagines Bruce Wayne not as a detective, but as a reluctant avatar of primordial dread. It’s certainly better than most straight-to-video animated superhero fare —more ambitious in scope, more atmospheric in tone. But let’s be clear: it doesn’t hold a candle to DC’s animated high-water marks like Batman: Under the Red Hood , The Killing Joke , or Gotham by Gaslight...

Wolf Man (2025): A Grounded Rebirth That Howls—But Fades "A visually restrained, emotionally raw take on a classic monster—better in concept than execution." — 3/5 Stars In 1941, Universal gave us Larry Talbot—a man cursed, not evil—whose lycanthropy was less a power than a prison. That tragic core made The Wolf Man endure. Now, Leigh Whannell’s 2025 reimagining honors that spirit: this is not a monster movie about spectacle, but about inherited trauma, loss of control, and the terror of becoming something you can’t recognize in the mirror. Following the path blazed by The Invisible Man (2020)—another Universal reboot that traded gothic grandeur for psychological realism— Wolf Man strips the myth down to its emotional bones. Blake (Christopher Abbott) returns to his remote Oregon childhood home with his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner Ozark , Weapons ) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth), ho...

The Home (2025): A Muddled Asylum Thriller That Finds Catharsis in Chaos "A thriller that forgets to explain its own rules—but ends with a gloriously messy revenge splatter." — 2.5/5 Stars The Home (2025) review: James DeMonaco—director of The Purge —trades social satire for psychological horror in this muddled asylum thriller that stumbles through its narrative but lands hard in its final act. Set in a decaying psychiatric facility, it follows Max (Pete Davidson), a lost young man who takes a job as an orderly and quickly finds himself drowning in conspiracies, gaslighting, and escalating violence. I went in with low expectations—and honestly, I still had fun. Not because it’s coherent, but because it commits so fully to its own unraveling. That said, it fails to recapture the thematic clarity or cultural punch that made The Purge franchise resonate. If you’re looking for sharper horror thi...

  Bring Her Back (2025) – A Harrowing Descent Into Grief and the Occult With Bring Her Back , Australian siblings Danny and Michael Philippou—fresh off their breakout hit Talk to Me —deliver a sophomore feature that’s less a ghost story and more a full-body immersion into maternal grief turned monstrous. Clocking in at a lean 104 minutes, Bring Her Back wastes no time plunging its audience into emotional and visceral chaos. The story centers on Andy (Billy Barratt) and his visually impaired stepsister Piper (Sora Wong), orphaned after their father’s death and placed in the care of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a foster mother whose warmth quickly curdles into something cultish and cruel. What begins as a tale of fractured family dynamics soon spirals into a grotesque resurrection ritual involving preserved corpses, demonic possession, and a mute foster boy named Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) whose physi...