Author: Olga Tchepikova-Treon

Confession of an American Moviegoer

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Image of train car full of zombies

|MH Rowe| In the pantheon of suspected or perhaps nonexistent genres of film, one of my favorites is the foreign film that has the copy-pasted soul of a Hollywood blockbuster but feels strangely fresh and new. Such films relieve me of the burden of familiar movie stars. They relieve me temporarily of the peculiarities… Continue reading

Tragic, Gothic, and Domestic: Classical Horror in Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters

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A low shot from the vantage point of under a piece of furniture, which frames the view, two men are seen cradling the flailing body of a woman, whose back is arched and looking out and above the lens. Dishes and pills are scattered on the burnt orange floor, where there is also a lace-covered table in the background, a velour-covered table in the middle ground, and a blue-gray Persian rug in the foreground.

|Chris Polley| For many who have endured a ninth grade and/or AP literature class, Shakespeare brings to mind big emotions and melodramatic ideas: forbidden romance, corrupt monarchs, or mistaken identity. An underrated aspect of a good chunk of his work, however, is its exploration of the horrors of the great beyond… Continue reading

Gender Bias and the Horror Film That Was Eaten by Disney: Zach Cregger’s Barbarian

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A brown-skinned woman with medium long, loose hair stands on an illuminated front porch of a house, facing the door. It's dark and raining outside, and the woman's hair and coat are wet.

|Penny Folger| “Your movie is like the Jaws of Airbnbs,” jokes Korey Coleman, host of the Double Toasted podcast to writer/ director Zach Cregger for whom Barbarian, in 2022, was his solo feature debut. For those who don’t remember the cultural impact of that record-breaking 1975… Continue reading

Trailers from Heaven: How Barbarian’s Advance Publicity Made a Good Film Better

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A photograph of a young woman mostly in silhouette looking down a dark stairwell. She is wearing a white blouse and blue jeans and has her right hand on the doorframe

|Jay Ditzer| Half the fun (well, maybe a quarter of the fun) of going to the movies is the trailers shown before the main event. Do I want to see—or avoid—a new release? Well-made trailers are almost like tiny little movies themselves, and indeed, there’s an art to making a good trailer. The first rule of good trailers is … Continue reading

Diabolical Vilification & the Transformative Power of Xenophobia in The Wailing (곡성군): An Outsider’s Perspective

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The Outsider, an old Japanese man, sits apart from others on a city bus with four black chickens tied together near his feet.

|Chris Ryba-Tures| When my parents first met, my dad was a Jesuit priest and my mom was studying to be a Catholic nun. While I may have started life as a “Child of the Cloth” I’ve since become an outsider to the Catholic Church. Still, I’m Culturally Catholic (which my wife insists is “not a thing”). … Continue reading

The Terror of Timelessness: Screens and Screams in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows

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Olivia Luccardi as Yara Davis, a young long-haired white brunette wearing large black-rimmed glasses and a teal hospital gown, sits up on a hospital bed at a tray with a plate, juice box, jello cup, applesauce, and a banana. In one hand is a sandwich on white bread with a bite taken out of it, and in the other is her pink clamshell e-reader, which is she is staring into. A wrinkled periwinkle pillow and bed sheet are behind her, as are white vertical blinds and a calm blue curtain.

|Chris Polley| I was lucky enough to see David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows in the theater when it was originally released a little under 10 years ago today. At a movie theater that no longer exists, playing hooky from work after lunch but before daycare closed, I was already a bit anxious, being a goody two-shoes… Continue reading