Tag Archives: George Wolf

Fright Club

Fright Club: Teenage Vampires in Horror Movies

Leave a comment

Those teenage years can be beastly! A lot of vampire movies channel the alienation, hormones, angst and general misbehavior into a cautionary tale about teeth. Here are some of our favorites.

5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

Back in ’92, Rutger Hauer and Paul Reubens played vampires (thank you!) bent on draining a California town. But one superficial mean girl at the local high school happens to be the Chosen One, the Slayer, or so says Donald Sutherland, and it generally seems like a fine idea to listen to him. Kristy Swanson then flirts with Luke Perry while training to stake some bloodsuckers.

Swanson is joined by Ben Affleck and Hilary Swank as vacuous teens in a highly dated but no less fun horror comedy. Reubens was a huge inspiration for our own short film Drunkula. Plus, anytime you crown Rutger Hauer prom king, you can count us in.

4. The Lost Boys (1987)

Out and proud Hollywood director Joel Schumacher spins a yarn of Santa Carla, a town with a perpetual coastal carnival and the nation’s highest murder rate. A roving band of cycle-riding vampires haunts the carnival and accounts for the carnage, until Diane Weist moves her family to town. While hottie Michael (Jason Patric) is being seduced into the demon brethren, younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) teams up with local goofballs the Frog brothers (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) to stake all bloodsuckers.

Michael’s a recent high school grad, and the coven of vampires seems to also be allegedly the same roundabout age. Certainly Sam and the Frog Brothers would be high school age, although none of them turn. (Spoiler!)

What’s most fun about this movie is how gloriously gay it is, from the “will he or won’t he” chemistry between Michael and David to Sam’s Rob Lowe poster to the grinding sax man, Schumacher’s film finds sexuality in the vampire tale that swings.

3. Fright Night (1985)

Fright Night takes that Eighties, Goonies-style adventure (kids on an adult-free quest of life and death) and uses the conceit to create something tense and scary, and a bit giddy as well. The feature debut as both writer and director for Tom Holland, the film has some sly fun with the vampire legend.

Roddy McDowall got much deserved love at the time for his turn as a washed-up actor from horror’s nostalgic past, and Chris Sarandon put his rich baritone to campy, sinister use.

Still, everyone’s favorite character was Evil Ed, the manic, pitiful loser turned bloodsucking minion. Credit Stephen Geoffreys for an electric and, at least in one scene, heartbreaking performance.

2. My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To (2020)

Making an unnervingly assured feature film debut, writer/director Jonathan Cuartas commingles The Transfiguration’s image of lonely, awkward adolescence with Relic’s horror of familial obligation to create a heartbreaking new vampire tale.

Many things are left unsaid (including the word “vampire’), and My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To confines itself to the daily drudgery of three siblings. Dwight (Patrick Fugit) longs to break these family chains, but sister Jessie (Ingrid Sophie Schram) holds him tight with shame, love, and obligation to little brother, the afflicted Thomas (Owen Campbell).

What could easily have become its own figurative image of the masculine longing for freedom mines far deeper concerns. Cuartas weaves loneliness into that freedom, tainting the concept of independence with a terrifying, even dangerous isolation that leaves you with no one to talk to and no way to get away from yourself.

1. The Transfiguration (2016)

Milo likes vampire movies.

So, it would seem, does writer/director Michael O’Shea, whose confident feature debut shows us the relationship between the folklore and the life of a forlorn high school outcast.

Eric Ruffin plays Milo, a friendless teen who believes he is a vampire. What he is really is a lonely child who finds solace in the romantic idea of this cursed, lone predator. But he’s committed to his misguided belief.

O’Shea’s film borrows ideas from George Romero’s Martin, Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In, and openly gushes over Murnau’s Nosferatu.  Inside and out, the film draws on the best in vampire cinema to help Milo deal with a world in which he is a freak no matter what he decides to do.

New In Theaters

Now With Extra Whitening!

Leave a comment

Slanted

by George Wolf

Writer/director Amy Wang’s debut feature Slanted has so many plates spinning in the air, I expected most of them to eventually come crashing down. For just over ninety minutes, Wang juggles social satire, body horror, high school comedy and cultural drama with a fearless commitment to boundary pushing.

Actually, maybe more like boundary shoving.

Chinese-American teen Joan Huang (Shirley Chen) has a singular mission: to beat out her high school’s Queen Bee Olivia Hammond (Amelie Zilber) and be elected Prom Queen.

Just imagine her gigantic framed picture in the hallway next to all those other white, blonde Queens of the past!

Joan’s mother, Sofia (Vivian Wu) and best friend, Brindha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) aren’t thrilled when Joan bleaches her black hair, but that’s just the beginning. Lured into the office of the smiling Dr. Singer (R. Kieth Harris), Joan is hooked by his pitch of a perfect new life. She tricks her mother into signing a consent form and undergoes Dr. Singer’s experimental surgery.

And when Joan Huang wakes up from the operation, she’s Jo Hunt (McKenna Grace). No scars, no bandages, just all pretty, blonde and perfectly white.

Dr. Singer’s first recommendation: “Go see Michael Buble!”

Anyone who remembers Eddie Murphy’s classic “White Like Me” SNL bit from 1984 will recognize the world that suddenly opens up to Jo – and Wang skewers that world with biting humor and wry precision. But as much as Wang pushes her character envelopes, she gets balance from a more subtle hand that calls out the systems that breed and perpetuate this Lilly white playground. (Keep an eye on the local business names, as well as the photographs chosen for mantles, bedroom walls and school lockers.)

Could there be a price to pay for Jo abandoning her family, friend and heritage? Oh yes. And while I won’t be the first or last to mention the resulting mashup of Mean Girls and The Substance, give Wang credit for not giving a flying F.

There’s plenty of last year’s Grafted here, too, though Wang never dives that deeply into a horror show. What she does do is pull all of these influences through her own lens with unapologetic abandon, and a fittingly flawed final girl.

This is a wonderfully ambitious, high concept debut for Amy Wang. At turns both familiar and ferocious, it never lets you get too comfortable with its message. Funny, horrific, bittersweet, angry and insightful, Slanted feels like an experiment gone right.

Outtakes

Fearless Oscar Predictions 2026

Leave a comment

Who ya got: “Sinners” and its record-setting 16 nominations or “One Battle After Another” and 13 nods?

There are other deserving nominees, to be sure, but these two films have dominated the movie year 2025 and much of Awards Season 2026. There is no reason to think it won’t continue come Oscar night.

Which is better? Wow. What day is it? Let’s just say we have extra love for the split in the Best Screenplay category this year, where they both can collect the hardware.

And what a great year for Horror! Don’t forget del Toro’s visionary “Frankenstein” nabbed 9 nominations, Amy Madigan’s Aunt Gladys gets recognition for “Weapons” and “The Ugly Stepsister,” Emilie Blichfeldt’s beautifully brutal debut, is up for the Best Makeup and Hairstyling award. All well deserved.

So let’s dig in:

Best picture

  • “Bugonia”
  • “F1”
  • “Frankenstein”
  • “Hamnet”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “One Battle After Another”
  • “The Secret Agent”
  • “Sentimental Value”
  • “Sinners”
  • “Train Dreams”

Should win: “Sinners” or “One Battle After Another”

Will win: “Sinners”

Best Actress

  • Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet”
  • Rose Byrne, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
  • Renate Reinsve, “Sentimental Value”
  • Emma Stone, “Bugonia”
  • Kate Hudson, “Song Sung Blue”

Should win/Will win: Buckley. Probably the surest bet this year.

Best Actor

  • Timothée Chalamet, “Marty Supreme”
  • Leonardo DiCaprio, “One Battle After Another”
  • Ethan Hawke, “Blue Moon”
  • Michael B. Jordan, “Sinners”
  • Wagner Moura, “The Secret Agent”

Should win/Will win: Jordan

Best Supporting Actress

  • Elle Fanning, “Sentimental Value”
  • Inga Ibsdotter LilIeaas, “Sentimental Value”
  • Amy Madigan, “Weapons”
  • Wunmi Mosaku, “Sinners”
  • Teyana Taylor, “One Battle After Another”

Should win: Mosaku

Will win: Madigan

Best Supporting Actor

  • Jacob Elordi, “Frankenstein”
  • Sean Penn, “One Battle After Another”
  • Stellan Skarsgård, “Sentimental Value”
  • Benicio del Toro, “One Battle After Another”
  • Delroy Lindo, “Sinners”

Should win: Lindo – how does he not have an Oscar by now?

Will win: Penn*

*Hope disagrees. Her last shred of faith in humanity says Lindo will pull it out.

Director

  • Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
  • Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
  • Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet”
  • Josh Safdie, “Marty Supreme”
  • Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”

Should win: PTA or Coogler

Will win: PTA

Original Song

  • “Golden” from “Kpop Demon Hunters”
  • “Train Dreams” from “Train Dreams”
  • “Dear Me” from “Diane Warren: Relentless”
  • “I Lied to You” from “Sinners”
  • “Sweet Dreams Of Joy” from “Viva Verdi!”

Should win/Will win: “I Lied to You”

Original Score

  • “Bugonia,” Jerskin Fendrix
  • “Frankenstein,” Alexandre Desplate
  • “Hamnet,” Max Richter
  • “One Battle After Another,” Jonny Greenwood
  • “Sinners,” Ludwig Göransson

Should win/Will win: Göransson – the integration of music in Sinners was masterful.

Animated Film

  • “Arco”
  • “Elio”
  • “KPop Demon Hunters”
  • “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain”
  • “Zootopia 2”

Should win/Will win: “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain”

International Film

  • “The Secret Agent,” Brazil
  • “It Was Just an Accident,” France
  • “Sentimental Value,” Norway
  • “Sirât,” Spain
  • “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” Tunisia

Should win/Will win: “Sentimental Value” in a category so stacked that neither “No Other Choice” or “The President’s Cake” could crack it.

Documentary Feature

  • “The Perfect Neighbor”
  • “The Alabama Solution”
  • “Come See Me in the Good Light”
  • “Cutting Through Rocks”
  • “Mr. Nobody Against Putin”

Should win/Will win: “The Perfect Neighbor“

Casting

  • “Hamnet”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “One Battle After Another”
  • “The Secret Agent”
  • “Sinners”

Should win: “Sinners” or “OBAA”

Will win: “OBAA”

Best Sound

  • “F1”
  • “Frankenstein”
  • “One Battle after Another”
  • “Sinners”
  • “Sirāt”

Should win: “Sirāt”

Will win: “F1”

Cinematography

  • “Frankenstein”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “One Battle After Another”
  • “Sinners”
  • “Train Dreams”

Should win/Will win: “Train Dreams” in another category brimming with excellence.

Original Screenplay

  • “Blue Moon,” Robert Kaplow
  • “It Was Just an Accident,” Jafar Panahi, with script collaborators Nader Saïvar, Shadmehr Rastin, Mehdi Mahmoudian
  • “Marty Supreme,” Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie
  • “Sentimental Value,” Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier
  • “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler

Should win/Will win: Coogler

Adapted Screenplay

  • “Bugonia”; Will Tracy
  • “Frankenstein,” Guillermo del Toro
  • “Hamnet,” Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell
  • “One Battle After Another,” Paul Thomas Anderson
  • “Train Dreams,” Clint Bailey and Greg Kwedar

Should win/Will win: PTA

Live Action Short Film

  • “Butcher’s Stain”
  • “A Friend of Dorothy”
  • “Jane Austen’s Period Drama”
  • “The Singers”
  • “Two People Exchanging Saliva”

Should win/Will win: “Two People Exchanging Saliva”

Animated Short Film

  • “Butterfly”
  • “Forevergreen”
  • “The Girl Who Cried Pearls”
  • “Retirement Plan”
  • “The Three Sisters”

Should win: “The Girl Who Cried Pearls”

Will win: “Butterfly”

Visual Effects

  • “Avatar: Fire and Ash”
  • “F1″
  • “Jurassic World Rebirth”
  • “The Lost Bus”
  • “Sinners”

Should win/Will win: “Avatar: Fire and Ash”

Production Design

  • “Frankenstein”
  • “Hamnet”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “One Battle After Another”
  • “Sinners”

Should win/Will win: “Frankenstein”

Film Editing

  • “F1”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “One Battle After Another”
  • “Sentimental Value”
  • “Sinners”

Should win/Will win: “F1”

Makeup and Hairstyling

  • “Frankenstein”
  • “Kokuho”
  • “Sinners”
  • “The Smashing Machine”
  • “The Ugly Stepsister”

Should win/Will win: “Frankenstein”

Costume Design

  • “Avatar: Fire and Ash”
  • “Frankenstein”
  • “Hamnet”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “Sinners”

Should win/Will win: “Sinners”

The 98th Academy Awards will take place March 15th, 2026.

Shudder Premiere

The Camera Never Lies

Leave a comment

Bodycam

by George Wolf

Take the frenetic desperation of The Blair Witch Project‘s final minutes, move it to a more urban battleground and layer it with plenty of first-person shooter sequences, and you’re in the ballpark of Bodycam, director Brandon Christensen’s shaky cam shakedown of two cops and one very bad choice.

Officer Bryce (Sean Rogerson) and officer Jackson (Jamie M. Callica) respond to a domestic dispute, and we follow along thanks to their bodycams. The house is dark and plenty creepy, and things escalate to the point of a fatal shooting. The possible fallout spurs Bryce to panic.

He has too much to lose for this situation to go public and convinces Jackson to help him cover up what happened. But when a techie colleague tries to scrub the cam footage, she notices some strange graffiti on the wall, and realizes it’s already too late to keep the killing a secret.

At least from certain, very scary people.

Uh oh. Bryce and Jackson are in for a bad time.

Christensen (Night of the Reaper, Z, Superhost, The Puppetman), co-writing again with his brother Ryan, doesn’t waste any time getting down to nasty business. And once the 75-minute film hits the midway point, the bloody fun is amped up a notch or three as the two cops come to grips with the promise of retribution for their actions.

“Why couldn’t you have done the right thing?”

In today’s climate, that question from one cop to another carries some serious weight. And though the implications are clear, Christensen is more committed to the repercussions.

Bodycam dishes them out in frenzied, crowd-pleasing glory.

New In Theaters

Idol Hands

Leave a comment

Billy Idol Should Be Dead

by George Wolf

As great as Robert Patrick was in Terminator 2, Billy Idol would have made a pretty rad T-1000.

Billy was indeed up for the part, and a glimpse of his screen test with James Cameron is just one of the archival delights in Billy Idol Should Be Dead, a new doc that traces his life of curled lips, spiked hair and legendary rock god excess.

Adding plenty of never-before-seen footage to many of the sentiments from Billy’s 2014 memoir, director Jonas Åkerlund does a great job taking us inside young William Broad’s English upbringing and the Seventies punk scene that launched the Billy Idol persona and his early bands, Chelsea and Generation X.

Billy is refreshingly honest and self-reflective in the new interview footage, as Åkerlund often layers it with classic clips from the Eighties that accentuate how committed Idol was to the “sex, drugs and rock-n-roll” lifestyle.

But once the two-hour doc hits the halfway point, the career overview starts to suffer from a drifting focus. Billy’s longtime personal relationship with girlfriend Perri Lister gets plenty of scrutiny, while musical partner Steve Stevens is barely mentioned. Åkerlund (Lords of Chaos, Metallica Saved My Life) juggles a shifting timeline, animated segments, a black and white aesthetic and celebrity commentary (Miley Cyrus, Pete Townshend, etc.) with an approach that seems random. The film’s vision never feels fully formed, especially up against the heels of Morgan Neville’s expertly crafted Paul McCartney doc, Man on the Run.

And strangely, despite Åkerlund’s extensive experience in music videos, Idol’s catalog isn’t mined as deeply as it could be, and several chances to anchor some passages with more Idol hits are left unexplored.

The film might not reach the raw emotional honesty of docs such as Steve! (Martin) or Pee Wee as Himself, but for Billy Idol fans, there is plenty here to satisfy. From early clubs to MTV glory, from the gnarly scars of a motorcycle wreck to embracing family and moments as a doting grandfather, Billy Idol Should Be Dead does make you feel like you know a rock legend just a little bit better.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Skeletons in the Closet, 2026

Leave a comment

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! The time when we celebrate the bad horror lurking in Oscar nominees’ closets. Because we have a lot of return nominees, we have some overlap with earlier years. But there is also fresh blood…

5. Amy Madigan, Antlers (2021)

Scott Cooper reimagines the Wendigo legend to lead us through a dour metaphor full of familiar genre tropes and leave us with a brutal, great-looking, well-acted lecture.

Antlers is not a terrible film. But it has at least one incredibly stupid scene, and that scene stars the otherwise incredible Amy Madigan. She plays a school principal who stops at a student’s home to check on him and then–in a film that otherwise mainly avoids those “what a stupid decision” horror cliches—makes every stupid decision an educated professional could make. There is nothing believable about one step of it, however hard the talented veteran tries. It it so dumb that our friends Tyrone and Vernell abandoned the good characters and joined “Team Creature.”

4. Renate Reinsve: Dark Woods II/Villmark Asylum (2015)

Pål Øie followed up his surprise hit Villmark – a cabin in the woods horror – with this odd sequel set in the high hills above those woods, where an old hospital used after WWII is being prepared for destruction.

Øie lifts most of his story from Brad Anderson’s far superior Session 9, mixing in some Nazi style experimentation and creatures. It’s not a terrible movie, and characteristically, Renate Reinsve, gives a strong performance. There are some real scares, too, and the cast on the whole is solid. The mythology makes little to no sense, the leaps in logic are impressive, and in the end, it’s not memorable outside the early career work of one of the most talented actors working today.

3. Stellan Skarsgård: Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Skarsgård’s made his fair share of horror. We considered both of his Exorcist movies for this list, but since they’re basically the same movie, which too choose?

Deep Blue Sea is a fun B-movie creature feature. It’s mindless, violent, action packed, and Skarsgård gets one of the most ludicrous deaths in horror.

2. Benicio del Toro: The Wolfman (2010)

We had such hopes for this one when it came out. That cast! Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving, Emily Blunt!

Good God, was it awful. If you can look past the idea that Hopkins and Del Toro could be father and son, look past the insipid plot, look past Hopkins’s hamminess or del Toro’s disinterest, you cannot look past the heinous FX. But Blunt handles herself really, really well.

1.  Leonardo DiCaprio: Critters 3 (1991)

Long before Django Unchained, Titanic, or even What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, a barely pubescent Leo DiCaprio donned a day-glow t-shirt and a pre-teen scowl to battle Gremlin rip-offs in Critters 3.

They are furry, toothy, ravenous beasts from outer space and, until episode 3, they were content to terrify rural folk. But now they’re in the big city, and (in a clear rip off of the not-quite-as-terrible film Troll), they are pillaging a single apartment building and terrifying all those trapped inside. It’s a comedy, really, the kind with farting furballs and dunderheaded people. Which is to say, one that’s not particularly funny.

Serving up the same derivative comedy/horror pap you can find in one out of every three films made that decade, Critters 3 has a lot of hair in scrunchies, oversized blouses belted over colorful leggings, stereotypes, and actors on their careers’ last legs. And Leonardo DiCaprio, which will forever be the only reason this movie was released to DVD.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Scream 7, Pillion, The President’s Cake & More!

Leave a comment

Hope and George review this week’s new releases: Scream 7, Pillion, The President’s Cake, Dreams, Dolly, Crazy Old Lady, PLUS movie news and notes from The Schlocketeer Daniel Baldwin!

New In Theaters

Knife Finds a Way

Leave a comment

Scream 7

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

There’s a lot to be said for the Scream franchise. Sure, Wes Craven’s 1996 iconic original delivered the shot of adrenaline needed to reimagine and reinvigorate the horror genre. But the fact is that, seven episodes in, the series doesn’t have a lot to be embarrassed by.

In case any unexpected callers ask, there are 12 Friday the 13th films, 8 Nightmare on Elm Street films (yes, we are counting the 2010 abomination), 9 Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, 12 Hellraisers, and 13 Halloweens in all. Hell, there are 8 Leprechaun films. And, in every case, most of the individual sequels are terrible. Some of them unwatchable. But not Scream.

Sure, Scream 3 was a step backward. Scream 4 was less beloved than it should have been. Scream 5 was a nice comeback, then 6 was a bit of a letdown. Still, seven episodes and we have no real stinkers. Including Scream 7, co-written and directed by the franchise’s original scribe, Kevin Williamson.

The storyline has veered back, after Melissa Barrera was fired, which prompted Jenna Ortega to quit. So, naturally, the property finally found the money to pay Neve Campbell to come back, and good thing they did. When Ghostface tracks Sidney Prescott down to the smalltown where she’s raising her three kids with husband/police chief Mark Evans (Joel McHale), she needs to keep her own history from echoing through her teenage daughter Tatum’s (Isabel May) life.  

Episode Seven is all about nostalgia, and a reminder of the years we all have invested. You’ll see plenty of familiar faces, including everyone’s favorite from the original film. There is a nicely organic reason for this, but the film’s core is about Sidney’s strained relationship with her daughter. That’s a weaker thread.

Williamson sells the new setting well enough, and with some understatement that feels refreshing. What isn’t subtle is the frayed nature of the mother/daughter dynamic, fueled by dialog and drama that’s forced and unearned.

The younger cast (including McKenna Grace, Michelle Randolph, Asa German, Celeste O’Connor and Sam Rechner), while perfectly talented, are slighted in terms of plot and character development. They only get a passing chance to school us on some new rules of the game, and benefit from the satisfying staging of just one standout kill.

The grownup side of the story is solid. It’s still a kick to see Campbell’s Sid and Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers doing their thing. There is still some teenage dumbassery involved, but this Scream is leaning into its age more than ever.

It’s less risky, and certainly after all this time, less groundbreaking. But Scream 7 is also less silly. Like a proud parent reminding the kids they can always come home, Williamson’s return gives the franchise some bloody comfort food to chew on.

New In Theaters

Let Him Eat It

Leave a comment

The President’s Cake

by George Wolf

After winning two awards last year at Cannes, The President’s Cake missed out on an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature. That says much about how stacked the category is this time, because writer/director Hasan Hadi’s feature debut is an absolutely wondrous mix of empathy and gut-punch heartbreak.

In 1990s Iraq, nine year old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, in a remarkable debut of her own) lives with her feisty grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibet) in the poverty-stricken marshes. As “draw day” approaches at Lamia’s school, Bibi teaches her little tricks to avoid getting chosen for the compulsory “honors” of providing various items at the local celebration of President Saddam Hussein’s birthday.

But Lamia’s stern teacher sees through the scams, and the girl is picked for the most scrutinized task of all: baking the birthday cake.

Needless to day, failure would bring about some harsh consequences.

Though Bibi thinks she knows the best way forward for her granddaughter, Lamia strikes out on her own. Clutching her favorite rooster and conferring often with her friend Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), Lamia desperately seeks ways to acquire the precious baking ingredients that she cannot afford.

Buoyed by the two remarkably assured young performers, Hadi crafts the film with a delicate balance between childlike journey and harsh reality. Though Lamia’s travels through her homeland’s corruption, casual cruelty and degradation may recall The Painted Bird or Come and See, Hadi protects the innocence as fiercely as Lamia protects her rooster. His film’s heart aches for the plight of these people, even as it’s providing sly reminders that aspiring dictators share similar playbooks.

There is a tender, poetic beauty to be found here as well. The President’s Cake signals Hadi as a filmmaker full of insight and compassion, with the storytelling instincts to mine universal resonance from a uniquely intimate struggle.