Despite being one of Japan’s biggest film studios throughout the late 40s and 50s during the golden age of Japanese cinema, Daiei was struggling by the mid-60s and had to slash budgets for their productions. This eventually led to a merger with Nikkatsu in 1970, followed by bankruptcy in 1971. Somewhat overlooked is Daiei’s

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There is something about bad media that can be extremely attractive in some cases. Why The Room is still revered while The Exorcist II is panned? This fine line between so-good-it-is-bad and please-kill-it-with-fire-bad is still baffling. Maybe because we have always tried to make sense of this oddity, we end up being drawn to absolute

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Audition 1999

Audition (1999) is the scariest movie of all time. I say that without hesitation or hyperbole. No other director is as effective with their imagery as Takashi Miike is here, and no other film elicits fright as consistently on a tenth viewing as the first. The film is a delightful descent into madness executed nigh

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perfect blue book

Paraphrasing the words of a certain author, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a book will be almost always better than its movie adaptation. Yes, almost always because, despite the clear propensity of the written source being much more interesting and developed, sometimes flukes happen and the movie is indeed superior. That is why

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Bite is a 2022 British horror thriller, written and directed by James Owen, with additional writing from Tom Critch. Although a trained trauma surgeon, James started creating short films around 2017 with the comedy short Jaffacakes (2017), with Bite being James’ feature-length debut. After a failed robbery of a dog fighting ring, young con artists

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Give Me Pity

“Ever try to lose yourself? No! Because you’re too busy trying to find yourself.”      -Sissy St. Claire Subversive feminist filmmaker Amanda Kramer returned to this year’s Fantastic Fest with a bizarre journey into the dark soul of one woman’s struggle for identity.  Visually astounding, GIVE ME PITY! takes the form of a prime-time,

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In 2009, House of Wax’s Jaume Collet-Serra gave us the modest hit Orphan starring a pre-Conjuring era Vera Farmiga as a mother who, after the death of their unborn child, agrees to adopt a nine-year-old girl from an orphanage who turns out to be a psychopathic woman posing as a child. Years later, the film

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Chloe Okuno’s Watcher, which delighted lucky Sundance Festival-goers earlier this year, is a step forward for the horror genre and doubles as a neat entry point (for those curious) into the landscape of contemporary Romanian cinema and culture. Shot in Bucharest and featuring the amazing Maika Monroe alongside some of the most recognizable Romanian actors working

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The Drifting Classroom (aka Hyouryuu Kyoushitsu) is a horror manga series released all the way back in 1972 by Weekly Shonen Sunday. This piece of art is written and illustrated by Kazuo Umezu, known for his other works such as Orochi: Blood and Kami no Hidarite, Akuma no Migite aka God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand. 

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Kingdom of the Apes is a 2022 Japanese thriller, written and directed by Shūgō Fujii. Making his directorial debut with Living Hell (2000), Fujii gained notoriety with his recent mystery thriller Red Line Crossing (2017). “A director of a news program was called to an emergency meeting in the boardroom of a TV station on the

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