​Horror/thriller, The Lodge, recently went up on Hulu and I could not have been more excited! This movie has been teased for what feels like an eternity! Its ethereal yet haunting atmosphere from the trailers alone felt like the next big thing to continue the reign of chilling, compelling horror films coming out of the woodwork recently. Written in part and directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, The Lodge is a long-awaited follow-up to the excellent body horror film, Goodnight Mommy. The other huge draw for me was Riley Keough as Grace Marshall. Her performances in more recent movies like Hold the Dark, Under the Silver Lake and It Comes At Night are always solid and believable. The Lodge shares similar tone and tension with each of those films so in those moments of paralyzing despair and inconceivable fear, she really shines. Quick recommendation: I first saw Riley Keough in a lesser known film from 2012 called, Jack & Diane. Half horror, half love story with damn good practical effects and like, bloody, organ eating. It’s one of my favorites! So yea, The Lodge had all the makings of a huge hit, in my opinion; pressing all the right buttons: A remote cabin, cold, isolating weather and a crazy religious cult. Let’s go.

The plot is simple in order to set up plenty of complex religious themes and symbolism. Grace Marshall is left with her boyfriend’s two children (Mia and Aiden) in a snowy, secluded cabin atop a frozen pond. Her only job is to look after them until he returns on Christmas day. Mia and Aiden have never taken to Grace and the idea of being stuck in a house with her at all sickens them. Especially during the Christmas season of all possible times. Aiden refers to her as a “psychopath.” But why?

The lodge has multiple floors and the camera tends to weave in and out of its wooden levels and layers the same way you’d peer inside an elaborate, multi-story dollhouse. To that point, the use of dolls in the film, their movements, positioning and placement; mimicking and foreshadowing human life, most recently reminds me of Hereditary or the recent Creepshow episode, The House of the Head. The Lodge uses this device to effectively as a physical simulation of a higher power. Specifically, the belief that something bigger than you is pulling all the strings.

Mia is rightfully inconsolable over her mother’s suicide but tortured even further in believing her mother must not be in heaven if she killed herself. This kind of absolute thinking taught to children can be harmful when unexplained things happen. Suicide is hard enough to reconcile without the added idea that a loved one is also burning in Hell for eternity. Her Father quickly throws religious platitudes out the window to explain that no one knows where we go and that might be the only truth we can prove. This conversation between them is healthy and normal and provides additional types of perspectives. Allowing Mia to form her own conclusions. As a society, people bend and mold religious ideas all the time to fit inside whatever makes them most comfortable. Though sometimes to evil, manipulative ends. The scene with Mia and her father matters in order to bring Grace’s childhood trauma as the sole survivor of a suicide cult, to the forefront. Grace, as an adult, is what it looks when a child is raised with extreme religious teaching bathed in punishment and sacrifice as the “true” way to live and worship with zero connection to the outside world. She has all the traumatic symptoms one could expect. The Lodge repeatedly depicts expressions of good and evil invading each other’s territory and the inability to tell the difference. Grace’s nightmares and private rituals are gut wrenching to watch and once her medication vanishes, the soft, maniacal voice of the cult leader reemerges inside her head, echoing the same harrowing messages she heard on repeat as a child.

The Lodge handles the juxtaposition of Heaven and Hell in one physical and mental place as effectively as Hereditary did without anything cliché about it. What I preferred about The Lodge was the absence of a long-winded explanation at the end of the movie attempting to tie together what everything meant. If anything, The Lodge goes the complete other way with it by the final scene. There is so much more to dive into with this movie including some twists that go beyond what I have mentioned here, but it was totally worth the wait and I've since watched it 3 times in a row. Have you seen it? Let me know!

​The wait was finally over for IT Chapter 2. I bought my tickets for the late Thursday premiere just like I did 2 years ago, at the same tiny theater by my house knowing Oktoberfest would be on tap to take the edge off. If you’re already afraid of killer clowns, any movie where they appear is going to be fright-inducing whether it’s a good movie or not. I am one of those people. If you want to know the origin story of my mild coulrophobia, feel free to check my review on IT Chapter 1.
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I must admit I am obsessed with this new version of Pennywise in a love/hate way. I like the exaggerated look of him before he even speaks or smiles which is a whole other thing that terrifies me. There are plenty of clown movies all trying to capitalize on what Tim Curry did almost 30 years ago and both IT Chapters have at least brought some added fun for me where there otherwise would only be impending doom. Because IT Chapter 1, as of right now, is the highest grossing R-rated horror movie of all time, I just expected Chapter 2 to have what all blockbuster movies have: a loaded A-list cast, a bunch of CGI and a plot you just have to ride with to make it all work in the end. I was not surprised when all these things happened. We are talking about the Marvel/DC superhero movie of Horror here. I’d love more practical effects, but this movie wasn’t only for horror fans. The appeal and the point was to make non-horror fans come see it too. And they did. Just another necessary evil to keep making horror movies bankable.  I also realize I read the book a long time ago so I don’t have quite as deep of an emotional attachment to the original story as far as a vivid expectation of how it should all play out. I was just excited to be there. I also like enjoying things.

The casting was excellent, almost to a creepy degree. Every adult version of the Losers Club kids grew up into exactly how you’d expect them to look 27 years later. The hovering enigma in the room is each of their specific traumas as children and what most unites them. I appreciated the time given to depict each of their traumas individually, from character to character, and to watch as they overcame them on their own, earning different relics to show for it. The way harrowing experiences can follow us into adulthood makes the Losers lucky in that they can all relate to each other in the end, as different as they are.

Now let’s talk about Pennywise. The main event! I’m going to be honest, I wished there was more of him! And I wished there was more of Pennywise from the origin days where we get to see him just as he turns into the monster we know now. That closeup of him in streaky, white face paint, scratching blood down his face and screaming like a guttural gremlin is literally everything. I wanted more of that rawness. That darkness under the surface, rising up. Bill Skarsgard had the same effect on me in that moment without the full costume and makeup as he did all made up. That is really something. But the standout for me wasn’t the gigantic Godzilla-like clown-spider boss fight but the unhinged jaw-snapping kills. Chapter 2 felt more like a straight up slasher film in places which evened out the already loaded back story and trauma of the main characters. For me, it really worked.

My final thought is I wish there were more scenes at the haunted funhouse and carnival because that Lost Boys vibe is infectious, the same way it was in Jordan Peele’s, Us. If I had to choose, Chapter 1 wins out for me even though I still think Chapter 2 is a blast in theaters. I can’t wait until it comes out on Blu-ray so I can watch both chapters as a double feature. Also note: I did not float.

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 Oh man was I hyped for this movie! How could I not be? I loved Hereditary for effectively hitting plenty of the horror elements that culminate a smash effort in my little world. I wanted to love Ari Aster’s sophomore attempt, Midsommar, the same way and I’m still working out where I stand on it. Luckily, there were things Midsommar did revoltingly well and while watching I worked hard not to fall back to Hereditary and expect those same dreadful feelings in just the same way. I’m sure that’s where things got murky and unfulfilling in some places, but looking at it as a stand-alone picture, I felt it delivered.

Midsommar deals with cults but the beautiful kind. From the outside. Endless sunshine and overt hospitality. The less you know, the more idyllic it seems. Awesome. Bring a bunch of unsuspecting Americans to Sweden for what they think is a nine-day ritualistic celebration that will not only bring them enlightenment but drugs and booze and Swedish girls is an easy place to start and one you know will take an unpredictable and devastating turn with Aster in charge. Worse than the Fyre Festival but like, lots of actual fire and torch burning too!

Main chick, Dani, has boyfriend problems, namely with a knockoff Seth Rogan looking dude which could normally be a fun thing but, in this case, a gaslighting, weak-willed, un-original thinking loser thing. She goes to Sweden to attend the Halsingland Festival with him and his friends to naively improve their relationship and help her cope with the loss of her parents and sister to a horrible accident; her family’s crime scene sinisterly adorned with flower crowns. So far so good.

Aster is excellent at setting the scene with unusual, striking architecture and harrowing art pieces and symbolism constructed to vaguely foreshadow what’s to come and provide a little more information conveying how the cult operates, their customs and purpose and then perfectly plays some of that out in real time. I will admit, I wish there was more reasoning and story with this cult than we got. Many of the gorey visuals and cerebral beliefs were shocking throughout and got across the bullshit cults put out there to be above “typical life” while traumatizing and killing people in the process but I was still left wondering who or what was it all for? My only guess beyond that is this cult could have been a physical push for Dani to overcome her toxic relationship and familial grief as she and her boyfriend truly experience every uplifting and fucked up ritual this cult has in store. The way these groups manipulatively support people and then swiftly break them in return for extreme loyalty as part of a creepy, family collective is one of the big takeaways and sheds some light on how people can get sucked in. What’s most unforgiving is that several scenes are showered in eternal sunshine, greenery and colorful, flowery aesthetics tricking the audience into feeling like it’s the Sound of Music while skulls are shattering, and backs are butterflied.

Midsommar has so much working at once it almost makes sense why the characters we follow just keep consuming weird elixirs and offerings because they feel like they can’t say no. When a girl makes eyes at you over and over, your ego gets hold and the best idea seems to go with her when she beckons. Everything that seems like a good idea just isn’t in Halsingland.

Take a ::deep breath:: and go see it.

Trailers for Jordan Peele’s Us would have you think this was a movie about an ordinary family torn apart by some inescapable evil inside the house. Whether the evil was always lurking or bursts in afterward uninvited. But with the unreal success of Peele’s first movie, Get Out, we knew Us would reveal itself to be much more.

The Wilson family is pretty typical on the surface: we have the leader and mother of the family, Adelaide, cringey-comedic father Gabe, distracted, teenage daughter Zora and mask wearing little brother, Jason. But it’s Adelaide’s haunting childhood trauma, only known to her, that looms over them as they drive to their vacation home where her frightening encounter took place all those years ago. Adelaide’s cautious detachment from her family seems to be summed up by this one insurmountable childhood experience inside an isolated funhouse on the beach, leaving us to ruminate whether we’ve barely scratched the surface of her trauma.

And well, we don’t need to wonder for long. The Wilsons encounter a shadowed group of 4 holding hands at the top of the driveway at 11:11pm. The group remain frozen in place even as Gabe requests multiple times that they leave the property. And then, they suddenly move towards the house with urgency. But not just move. Each member’s movement seems inhuman and monstrous. Like they came from underground. But this isn’t just some home invasion scenario, we quickly notice that each member of this group is an evil twin inverse of each member of the Wilson family. Adelaide’s doppelganger, Red, is by far the creepiest and the only one of the group who can speak. Her voice creaks through raspy and strained as if she were pushing the words back down inside herself. From there, the family battles this “Tethered” family and others like them for the rest of the film and we get to learn more about Adelaide and Red’s harrowing backstories only made more convoluted by a twist ending and the ultimate showdown we expected.

Without going into more detail, by the end of the movie I was left with a ton of questions and some of the plot holes were hard to ignore, but overall I was into it and there were a number of scary scenes and gorgeous moments of cinematography.  I think the third act hammered the audience with way too much information as though there was a hurry to pull everything together so the twist ending could shine. Peele’s ideas for this movie were extremely creative and asked its audience to engage in the social commentary he has become known for but the points he wants to make about Hands Across America, class issues or the idea that our fortune in life is greatly determined by the hands we’re dealt, (all good points by the way) become muddled if you aren’t paying attention.

My only other issue was the constant comedic breaks in situations that don’t call for it. To balance horror and comedy is hard to explain but the timing and tone have to work and there were just a ridiculous amount of moments that should have let the horror settle in and instead were broken up by an easy joke. Totally took me out of some of those moments that seemed like we were supposed to take seriously. And that confusion carried on, so much so that the audience was just laughing at everything after a while.

I definitely plan to watch Us again and loved that there were more horror elements involved than Get Out showed us. The callbacks to 80s horror favorites were especially fun. I also loved the look of the Tethered people, red outfits, gold scissors, fucked up smiling faces. All awesome. I’d still have to say Get Out wins over Us in pretty much every other category other than the fact that Us has Lupita Nyong'o and she needs to be in every Jordan Peele movie from here on out.
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What did you think of Us? How does it stack up against Get Out? Let me know!

This isn’t a full fleshy review of the highly anticipated Halloween 2018 movie because you can find all sorts of nuanced rants and raves crawling around the internet and the opinions seem kind of all over the place. Where did I ultimately land? I’m still not sure if it was a true sequel or an H20 remake but I don’t think I care, I loved it! Even through some of the plot problems and the extra characters that only served as Halloween skewers, the thrill of Michael Myers returning to Haddonfield was fucking exciting as I was rattled around in my seat thanks to the Dolby theater experience. There was enough there for longtime fans with the added easter eggs of previous installments and accessible to brand new fans who only know of Michael Myers through his mask alone. I live for the Halloween season and carry that love on every day of the year. And in turn, I love the original Halloween film because Carpenter brings back the childhood nostalgia and essence of that magical night while creating the ultimate figure of silent, looming fear against the most quintessential horror movie soundtrack ever.

It would be an understatement to say I went into the new Halloween with a loaded set of feelings and maybe that alone forced me to accept it wouldn’t live up to my carefully curated standards. And frankly, how could it? I’m one person within millions of clamoring fans; each armed with their own ideas of what this film should be. With a movie like Halloween, it’s more than hype, it’s an avalanche of memories and expectations and horror loving nostalgia and for some fans, I realize the film’s problems came down even more disappointing and hard to take (and not without merit in some cases). Either way, I think horror fans can agree we do not want to see the Halloween franchise end (it won't) and half the fun is waiting to see what comes next!

I arrived at the theater super early on October 18th wearing my Halloween 40th Anniversary Fright Rags t-shirt while nodding in solidarity with others who wore variations of the same thing and have since then processed my thoughts. I worked to differentiate between my child-like excitement watching the story unfold and whether it was truly a good movie when I wiped away the heightened anticipation. For me, it’s both. I got the full Halloween experience with the numerous kills, Myers emotionless mask closeups and the fiery, final showdown. I cheered incessantly for three generations of Strode women fighting together and enjoyed Laurie’s transformation from meek babysitter to trained assassin. I got what I came for in that this movie reignited my Halloween spirit and paid tribute to the original.

Most of the sequels following the original Halloween are fun to watch through their varying fan serviced moments and their otherwise embarrassingly incoherent scenes.  Many of my horror pals have been posting their Halloween movie rankings, from best to worst. I can't wait for no one to agree with me on this so here’s mine:

                                                                              HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!

This may be my favorite Nic Cage performance ever and not because he does anything drastically different from past roles but he does the manic, violent, avenger thing well and in this case it’s very horror specific. The trope of the action hero exacting their revenge is a satisfying story, but I find most often the original source of that anger is dissolved into weapons and fire and death metal riffs. We can forget what it’s all for until the very end. I liked that Mandy was a mysterious and intriguing character with some agency of her own despite her limited screen time. She helped to add much of the otherworldly and existential themes into a story that would otherwise be pretty straightforward.  Her overall look is unusual, her eyes shoot lasers straight into your soul. She eerily reminds me of Susan Atkins from the Manson murder cult.





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​This movie is RED. Nic Cage plays soft spoken lumberjack, Red Miller. He sees red, dreams red, looks red; every character is saturated in this red light, like the devil is lurking absolutely everywhere. Mandy starts off with a quiet sensitivity, depicting artful, wooded landscapes and calming bodies of water  and serene darkness. Even with minimal dialogue the audience experiences the entirety of Red and Mandy’s love story. Then throw in cult leader, Jeremiah, and sci-fi biker gang, the Black Skulls and their secluded cabin life goes to Hell. Once the movie shifts to a brutal, grindhouse rampage, some of the most chilling sequences are Red’s animated fever dreams which manage not to feel out of place in an already hallucinatory experience. The 70s and 80s horror nostalgia is strong. It felt very Mad Max meets Texas Chainsaw Masscre meets like...Hellraiser.

​I would have liked more scenes with Mandy and the Black Skulls. Visually they had the most captivating and creepy moments for me. I would watch a full-length feature starring any of them. I'm interested to see if Nic Cage gets the high praise he deserves for his role much like Toni Collete in Hereditary, the academy tends to ignore horror movies almost completely. I think whether people loved those films or not, it would be shocking to deny how amazing their performances were.

If you liked Mandy I would also recommend the 2018 film Revenge as it is similar to Mandy in exploitation and violence but from a female revenge perspective. And really most people favor at least one Nic Cage movie so why not give Mandy a chance this Halloween season? Do it for Cheddar Goblin!

If you’re going to see Hereditary, my advice is to see it at least twice. It would be nearly impossible to pick up on every little clue and hidden symbol the first time which may not be important to some. But to fully appreciate how each of these pieces fit together to create such an unbelievable ending, well, that is really something. I found during my second viewing, it wasn’t about knowing what was going to happen next, but just the dread of having to go through it all over again. Hereditary is not a conventional horror movie and this is not a conventional family.

Hereditary follows the odd, tragic and hellish dynamics of the Graham family: Annie (mom), Steve (dad), Charlie (daughter) and Peter (son). The movie’s opening scene is an obituary for Ellen, Annie’s mother, which lays out some of the family’s lineage right away, a list of predeceased members and survivors of Ellen. It’s a nice setup to immediately introduce some roots of this family tree even if we don’t know any of what it means. Marking the start of the puzzle you’ll be putting together as you watch until the end.
Annie works as an artist and creates meticulously detailed dioramas that mirror her memories and visions. Many of which replicate rooms in her own home and depict her family members as she sees them. These dioramas pop up throughout to help foreshadow future events and fill in blanks from the past. I also got the sense Annie uses this art form to help control and compartmentalize her grief and other things much, much worse.

So, is it scary? OMG YES ABSOLUTELY. But it’s more than scary, it’s emotionally gutting and if you allow yourself to sink down into the uncomfortable, harrowing moments of the Graham family, their trauma feels like an inescapable nightmare.

You spend much of the film thinking you’ve nailed down exactly what this whole thing is about and what the character/s need to overcome, and the writing continues to redirect you like some fucked up GPS. I continuously changed my answers from a movie about overcoming loss, to forgiveness, to a haunted house, etc. All seemed plausible and not unheard of in a scary movie, but the list just got longer. Each horrible moment is worse than the next. It doesn’t get better and there is no way to predict if it ever will.  The writing doesn’t follow audience emotion like in a formulaic slasher film: where we know whose story it is, what the last showdown will probably look like and that the rest of the characters exist merely to be picked off. That’s what the audience wants from a slasher (and we love it!). However, each member of the family in Hereditary is fleshed out in some way where no one seems expendable. I didn’t want anything to happen to any of them.

Director, Ari Aster, uses multiple elements of horror we in the community look for: original, less predictable storyline, believable acting, interesting camera work, sickening tension, gripping suspense, violence, gore, ghosts/monsters/slashers (whatever fits), haunting score and hell, even jump scares. This movie has it all but the difference being, each element serves an actual purpose. Nothing feels hollow or for show. Not that every movie needs to do all of this every time, however, to witness all of that happening on screen AND you’re truly terrified AND your heart is being ripped out (emotionally) AND you’re failing to predict how it will all end…I related all of those feelings to the girl behind me blurting out through prolonged screaming, “What is this!??” after a particularly horrifying scene where I was having no trouble melting into my chair. The shadowy figure sitting behind me summed up my feelings so perfectly in that some of this movie is so indescribably disturbing and I’m not sure I’ve seen anything like it.
So, was it perfect? No, and that’s also objective, but I thought it could have been cut down in places and some of the pacing in the middle of the movie was a little slow and I don’t know if we needed as many seance scenes that we got but that was honestly about it.

But I pose that question because Hereditary has been increasingly hyped as the next Exorcist or Sixth Sense since January and that type of marketing can turn people off or raise the standard too high before anyone can even see it. I don’t believe those types of comparisons did Hereditary any favors because horror fans are awful about letting anything dethrone a classic, if it somehow even could.
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After this opening weekend the horror community seemed very split on Hereditary. I have a theory that if Hereditary was released quietly, without as much in-your-face marketing and high praise comparisons, it may have won more of those people over who weren’t supportive. It would have been an indy horror gem with beautiful production value and sharp writing that no one knew about and horror fans had to go find on their own. But that’s also counterproductive. We want horror treated with respect and consideration for noteworthy awards and cited in the running with other ground-breaking films. There are many that deserve it! I think there is a complicated balance to keep the horror community happy. But Hereditary comes at a perfect time where just last week horror lovers everywhere clamored in anticipation for the Halloween 2018 trailer and we got our dose of a beloved franchise we all respect and can once again revel in that nostalgia come October. I have never been against remakes/reboots and in some cases have preferred some over the originals. That being said, I do think there is plenty of room for original ideas regardless if they're well received and this newfound psychological, sophisticated turn horror has taken. 

I truly love a good possession movie and there are a lot of them, many not so good, but I faithfully watch them all. I bought into the hype of Veronica a couple days ago as Rotten Tomatoes gave it a perfect score and it seemed like every horror group I follow was posting some click-bait about viewers needing to turn off the movie halfway through. I read up a little on the premise in that it’s set in Spain and follows Veronica, a high school girl, looking to conjure her dead father’s spirit through an Ouija board. She instead conjures a demon who violently possesses her AND during an eclipse no less. Plus, she has an adorable family whom she must protect while she battles the harrowing demonic visions and monsters that afflict her. All of this and I haven’t gotten to the scariest part of the whole thing. Apparently, Veronica is based on real events of a girl who died after playing with an Ouija board. So yea, I was ready to watch.

There have been a couple movies in recent past about the Ouija board that I thought were just okay and what I think was missing among other things, for me, was depicting the actual board game as something to be frightened by. There were plenty of creepy things that occurred surrounding the game, but I almost forgot it was about Ouija at all. I wanted to see more of a connection even if it’s not an easy thing to do. As someone who doesn’t believe Ouija boards hold any evil power, I was interested to see if they would be able to take the hokey-ness out of it. I liked that the the board look super creepy and its design was ancient and dark and red. I also appreciated that there was more of a physicality to it, when it cracked in half during the first séance, I had this overwhelming feeling like something was terribly wrong. I felt part of that experience even more. And then I was ready to see some wild body manipulation and speaking in tongues, possession shit! It’s a small note that probably doesn’t matter to most people, but I appreciated that they made the Ouija board a little scary again.

I was getting a heavy dose of It Follows vibes from the stripped down, subtle and suspenseful  scares to the spine tingling score. The pacing was well-balanced and shot so realistically that it felt like this could have actually happened. A nice way to allude to the alleged true events the film is based on.

The most compelling facet of Veronica is her commitment to raising and protecting her younger brother and sisters. You instantly care about each of them and even though Veronica is enduring things like hallucinations, night terrors and haunting voices, she continues to make them her priority. It was the one uplifting sentiment I could take away among the waves of fear and anxiety. Veronica freaked me out and most notably lead actress, Sandra Escacena, was mesmerizing in her ability to portray a typical, sweet, teenage girl and suddenly flip to a possessed, demonic entity. Reminded me somewhat of Ashley Bell's performance in The Last Exorcism. There are some amazing possession, visual effects they do with her too which was the highlight for me.

You can watch Veronica on Netflix and maybe don't watch alone ;)

There has never been something to scare me more than a clown. I'll thank the childhood memory that started it all: A 2 foot tall, circus clown doorstop given to me as a gift (hah!) which propped itself against my bedroom door, dancing in a frozen pose, into the dark hallway. The best part? This little jester was positioned so that my night light illuminated only the face of the clown, staring me down with a toothy, painted smile each evening. NOT COOL, NIGHT LIGHT. From there, I just assumed clowns were not for children. It would be much later when I would discover IT and a guy named Stephen King, who really understood the horror behind my clown phobia.

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Now having said all of that, I will watch any clown movie I can find because I seek out the feeling of being scared. Many horror fans are always searching for that feeling in a film. Heading into the theater last night brought forth a wave of excitement along with a healthy dose of, "Why am I doing this to myself? The original IT did not go well for you when you were 12, Jessica." Bottom line is this version of IT was a gory and entertaining horror experience, the whole package type of horror. You get 80s nostalgia, comedic relief and a riveting, charismatic horror icon that elevated the role of Pennywise and freaked everyone out. Not just those already uneasy about clowns. My girlfriend will attest to this.

Bill Skarsgard had enormous shoes to fill as the big bad, Pennywise, and he brought an intense performance while still pulling off an over the top, colorful costume and dramatic head and face makeup. I was concerned seeing the first images of Pennywise in the movie's early stages. Specifically, whether his appearance would be less unnerving and more of a joke to viewers who don't find clowns all that scary. But, Skarsgard erased those concerns once I heard him speak. The way he was able to master the creepiness of his child-like squeaks to lure children in and then revert to gravelly, hellish bellows in his true form was mind-blowing. Honestly, just him standing still was chilling. I couldn't wait for him to get back on screen. Each sequence of Pennywise was played up as something new to terrify each member of the Losers' Club and feed on their fears. I continuously looked forward to how Pennywise would materialize into their worst nightmares. Also, really glad it wasn't happening to me.

The best part about this movie was how funny all of the kids in the Losers' Club were because the audience got some relief in between our clamoring screams. There were moments that I may have blacked out due to well-timed and unpredictable jump scares and, I admit, I also made myself aware of  the exits upon entering the theater.
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I would recommend IT to anyone who was a fan of the original or just wants to have a good time screaming in front of their loved ones. I truly loved this movie. It did not help that as I was leaving the theater, there was a single, red, floating balloon tied to a storm drain nearby. As if Pennywise were reminding me this was only Chapter One.

Get Out is something writers dream about creating. Making something that speaks so inherently to themselves and more importantly to the world at large. Calling out social issues with such realness in an artistic way and ostenatiously proving horror movies with a message appeal overwhelmingly to horror fans as well as viewers previously apprehensive to the genre. Imagine doing all of that as part of your horror writing and directing debut. Jordan Peele did that.

 I'm glad for it because the community needs it and Get Out sets a precedent for new ideas in horror. I've been deliriously vocal in pushing for the future of horror and my issue with people hanging back on originals and never giving any recent horror movies credit.  There's a lot of shit to trudge through and I agree there, but the horror community needs to look closer for the real efforts certain films are making. As an aspiring filmmaker myself, what impression does that give me to try out my vision? Get Out has done the work I have always dreamed.

In Get Out we follow Chris preparing to meet his girlfriend's parents. The kind with a sprawling property, a black maid and black groundskeeper, a beautiful home. Chris is black, his girlfriend, Rose, is white. They seem happy together but Chris is ever discerning in the dynamics of their relationship. He continuously schools her on the reality of the black experience compared to the white experience. And that  experience ranges from meeting parents, dealing with cops and socializing as the black guy dating a white girl. It's refreshing and Rose seems to be adept at handling each situation. Too adept.

Chris gets to the house and is met with Rose's  dad who tries too hard to relate to him on the surface, never anything deeper beyond "my man" and " Obama." He explains away the fact that his "help" is black and he couldn't bear to let them go. That type of conversation is not casual but geared towards Chris' race and the need to make him comfortable. However, not from an actual human perspective.

Now watching Chris' interactions with outlier white people in this film can be shocking in the way that you may say to yourself, "There is no way someone would say that to another person." And I think that is the point. You'll see very subtle moments of conversation that are supposed to be "getting to know someone" jargon and they turn into subjects very much centered around the fact that Chris is black. It feels insane. It's supposed to feel insane. It's to be expected when you're black.  

Maybe go watch American History X as a precursor before you see Get Out so you can understand that Chris is not overreacting.

It gets better with Rose's mother. She's a psychiatrist continually apologizing for the antics of Rose's father and the obvious plays he's trying to make to Chris. You won't realize that her doctored hypnosis goes deeper and more harrowing. Circling a spoon in a teacup and bellowing, "Sink."

I don't go hard with spoilers in any of my reviews because I hope you just go see the movie! I will say beyond the social commentary this movie is scary as fuck! They work all the psychological shit on you first and about the time the heavy gore comes in, you're begging for it to happen. These people are straight up awful. But I can talk about the way this movie gutted me, differently than any of my favorite horror films.

I am a biracial, gay woman with all sorts friends. I pass for white, I pass for straight and I get to witness people who don't approve of either talk in front of me, hatefully, as though I'm like minded and part of the crowd they think they're in. It's a privilege I will always own that doesn't feel good. My girlfriend is white but I am lucky to be with someone who  gets it. It's complicated. My mother is white and my father is black  and knowing the two of them, they are perfect for each other. I am proud of the life that they have provided me and the opportunity to have such a diverse set of family on each side. I'm not sure I would be as capable as I am without this familial origin. I owe everything to it. It's where my writing comes from. I am lucky. To offer a different perspective of appearing white(and totally not being white)and meeting your girlfriend's family, you almost want to make a point of clarifying that fact. Just because you never know. Luckily for me, it hasn't been an issue but I know the apprehension even from the opposite side.
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​Obviously I have strong feelings about Get Out so anyone that wants to see it with me for a second, third or fourth time, let me know. Can't wait to see what  Jordan Peele puts out next. Btw, the soundtrack is slammin'.