The Devil in the Details

Alright ladies and gentlemen: late last year, I watched Saint Maud and I had a lot to say about it, but I ended up feeling intimidated and soon gave up attempting to encapsulate its brilliance. However, that defeat has haunted me ever since, and so I feel I just have to talk about it, sooner or later.  Today, I'll be taking one last whack at discussing one of the best films to come out this decade or any other, a psychological horror film to end all psychological horror films: Rose Glass's Saint Maud. When a young, deeply religious nurse named Maud is tasked with watching after and caring for Amanda, a terminally-ill actress, as her live-in nurse, the two of them find themselves becoming very close very quickly. Amanda finds Maud fascinating, especially her faith, and Maud sees her interest as a sign from God that this is what she was born to do: save this poor dying woman's soul before she leaves this world. Unfortunately, a third woman, Amanda's occasional girlfrien...

In the previous two parts of our Fatal Frame analysis, we got up to speed with the general thrust of the game's plot, and took time to put it all under the microscope a bit before doing the same with its presentation and interactive elements. You can read pts. 1 and 2 here and here, respectively. For those of you who wish to go into this game without knowing all the details of the ending, this is where you get off the bus, I’m afraid. It's really no biggie, as I’ve taken pains to say most of what I wanted to say prior to this point and most of this last bit will consist entirely of summarizing not only the ending but also my own thoughts, but still: fair warning. I will be freely spoiling everything from here on out. If you’ll recall, we last left Miku after she fell unconscious after letting herself get grabbed by Kirie yet again. Now, as she comes to, still in the spooky cavern, everything seems quiet once more, and so we set out. Well, that is until Miku stumbles upon a ...

  When last we spoke, we had just about finished summarizing the plot of the game up to the point of spoilers, and are now ready to dive into analysis and criticism. If you've not read pt. 1 yet, check it out here. Despite a myriad of little niggling issues and an overall overstuffed quality, I generally find the narrative of this game quite charming. No, it’s not quite as strong as Fatal Frame II’s narrative, but it’s also much simpler and more potent than whatever the hell Fatal Frame III’s tangled mess of plot was getting at. It’s chock full of motifs that would go on to become staples of the series: a fixation on ropes, strangulation, creepy dolls, feudal Japanese houses in the country, sibling relationships, Hellgates run over, and of course, elaborate ceremony and ritual as metaphor for everyday struggles. We’ll go a bit deeper into the subtext of the game once we get into spoiler territory, but for now, let’s just say: pretty interesting stuff. Something strange about this...

Released in 2001 in Japan and 2002 everywhere else, Fatal Frame is the brainchild of one Makoto Shibata, who dreamed of creating the single scariest video game the world had ever seen. Inspired primarily by spooky dreams he’d had, along with a few brushes with the paranormal he claims to have experienced, Fatal Frame isn’t your average J-horror ghost story, incorporating aspects of folk horror, religion, and superstition alongside its central idea about a camera that can see things the naked eye can not. Obviously, it was a huge hit, otherwise it wouldn’t have spawned such a large franchise that still continues to this very day. Despite being something of a survival horror hound, I’d never played the first Fatal Frame before, and after a recent run-through of Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly, I decided to go back and give this one a whirl. Needless to say, this eventually turned into me playing all the way through the first four games in the series, and so now I embark on trying to g...

After the relative disappointment that was Ringu 2, I was not looking forward to this American attempt at a sequel to Ringu. The Ring Two is technically not a remake of its Japanese sequel but that hardly matters when the story ends up going in such a similar direction. So, how does it stack up to either the original or the earlier attempts at continuing the story? Well, without giving too much away, I'll just do the internet clickbait thing and say: "The results may shock you!" But wait! I can't talk about The Ring Two yet! I forgot all about the short film Rings that's intended as a stop-gap between it and The Ring, that's usually included as a bonus feature on just about every release of the latter . Crap, let me start over. Rings, released ahead of The Ring Two, is a short film cum teaser trailer that remains something of a fan favorite amongst aficionados of this franchise. I've seen more than a few of them gushing about it on forums, fan page...

When Ms. Mayfield, a schoolteacher, moves to a picturesque little village out in the British countryside for work, everything initially seems perfect. The scenery is wonderful, the people kind, and the living simple. Only our heroine becomes more than a little worried when she realizes that, gasp: Heddaby has no church. She becomes yet more alarmed when she begins to catch wind of horrible abuse being inflicted upon one of her students, putting her right in the middle of something awful brewing within the dark corners of this community. What is going on here, and what does it have to do with her ill-fated mission trip to Africa all those years ago? The Witches is an unassuming sort of sixties horror film. Dealing with a dark topic long back when Hollywood was still prone to conservative sensationalism, it was immediately intriguing, but I still found myself with little faith in it. A Hammer horror film that even Hammer fans don't seem to love or bring up all that often, and an app...

After the backlash to Ringu's first, more literary, sequel, it was up to none other than Hideo Nakata, director of the original film, to save the franchise! And wouldn't you know it, without bringing back old characters or contradicting the lore of prior movies, he just  manages to certainly gets things back on track. I mean, kind of. Set just after the events of the original film (ignoring of course everything that happened in Rasen) Ringu 2 follows Mai Takano, a young girl barely featured in the original film, as she delves into the dense and mysterious history of the curse that took the life of her university professor and boyfriend, Ryuji Takayama. Of course, it isn't long before she's put herself in mortal danger as the number of unexplained deaths among teenagers begins to climb. Can she help stop the spread of the tape before it's too late?  First of all, the good: Mai Takano is no longer played by whoever the hell botched her character so badly in Rasen, ...

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 has been a very divisive film since its release, a suspiciously short time after its very successful and very intelligent predecessor. First, you have the camp who hated the first film, and thus have no taste in horror films, that claim this one is better in every way. Then you have those who appreciate that this film tried to do its own thing and thus, armed with excuses about studio interference, claim this film is a misunderstood masterpiece on the basis of that premise alone. And then you have most everyone else, who tend to view the film as a complete trash fire; something to watch with friends over beers and laugh at. Well, having just sat down and watched it myself, I'm here to give you the final word on this debate.  Ignoring any and all subtext, Blair Witch 2's premise isn't exactly earth-shattering: an opportunist from the Maryland area takes a group of hardcore fans of the first Blair Witch  up to the same places the original doo...