Guy Ritchie brings his trademark rough and tumble style to the iconic Arthur Conan Doyle creation, Sherlock Holmes. Robert Downey Jr. steps into the titular role, and while the script plays with the literary canon and text, it remains a fun interpretation of the character. Jude Law plays the loyal Doctor John Watson, Rachel McAdams…
Tag: ritual
Midsommar (2019) – Ari Aster
Writer/director Ari Aster’s follow-up to his unnerving horror film, Hereditary, is another menacing, and ominous story, Midsommar. Florence Pugh stars as Dani, a traumatised young woman, who is dealing with personal grief, and a crumbling love life, when she learns that her boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor) and a number of his buddies, some are doing…
Millennium (1997) – Powers, Principalities, Thrones, and Dominions, and Broken World
Ted Mann and Howard Rosenthal expand Frank Black’s (Lance Henriksen) in this episode of Millennium that first aired on 25 April, 1997. Still reeling from the murder of his friend, police detective Bletcher (Bill Smitrovich), Frank is unsure of his gift and may not be ready to return to work with the Millennium Group, despite…
Millennium (1996) – 5-2-2-6-6-6, and Kingdom Come
Writers James Wong and Glen Morgan pit Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) and the Millennium Group against a serial bomber in 5-2-2-6-6-6 (which entered into a phone pad spells K-A-B-O-O-M), which first aired on 22 November, 1996. Raymond Dees (Joe Chrest) is a bomber, there is sexual transference involved, as well as the desire to be…
The X-Files (1995) – Anasazi, and The Blessing Way
Series creator Chris Carter (who makes a cameo in this episode) penned the teleplay from a story he and David Duchovny developed, and season two of The X-Files came to a conclusion on 19 May, 1995, with Anasazi. In a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, something that looks like an alien corpse is recovered from…
Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) – Piers Haggard
The next film in the chapter on Devil’s Works in DK Canada’s highly enjoyable Monsters in the Movies is a small UK film that very much falls into the under-explored sub genre of folk horror. Set in the 17th century, things start to go badly for a tiny English village when a young farmer working…
Star Trek: Short Treks (2018/2019) – Runaway, Calypso, The Brightest Star, and The Escape Artist
Captain’s log: 2257 I take on the first season of Short Treks this week which aired between the first and second season of Star Trek: Discovery, Featuring shorter tales, some that will have a direct effect on future episodes and events. The first episode, Runaway, lets Tilly (Mary Wiseman) have a bit of a moment…
Lovecraft Country (2016) -Matt Ruff
This week I dove into Matt Ruff’s brilliantly entertaining Lovecraft Country, which takes all the things you love about a good Lovecraft story; otherworldly horror, science fiction mixed with horror, and some other familiar horror tropes, the creepy doll, the haunted house, and deliver it without Lovecraft’s far too prominent racism. As much as I…
Toronto After Dark 2019: The Assent (2019) – Pearry Teo
There’s a Barker/Lovecraftian feel to the gritty dirtiness of this entry in the Toronto After Dark film festival. Couched in a house covered in unnerving art, and filled with troubling apparitions and visions there is an aggressive edge to The Assent in the way it is shot, and the way the story unfolds. Mostly. Halfway…
Those Across the River (2011) – Christopher Buehlman
This week’s Book Shelf brings me another horror novel, this one from a list of scary books that I hadn’t read yet. Set after the end of the First World War, Orville Francis Nichols, and the young woman soon to be his wife, Eudora, move to a small town in Georgia, Whitbrow. A town that…
The Mind Reels 