Popular reviews

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  Review by fran hoepfner ★★★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  I love when the deal with a guy is that he's the devil

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  Review by Lucy ★★★★½ 9

  went to a mystery screening tonight and when the opening credits started playing, i couldn't contain my excitement. this works on so many levels for so many reasons, even the occasional hokeyness adds a new layer to the sickly dark humor. but it's the cinematography and unusual directing that kicks this up a notch, and as a result, it transcends

  this might be one of the best films ever made

  "i can feel myself gettin' awful mad. i'm out of patience, children. i'm coming to find you now."

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  Review by Rida ★★★★½ 21

  The Night of the Hunter is a classic Gothic fairytale: an evil being charms an unsuspecting parent, while only the children are aware that things are not what they seem. It was only while watching the film, enthralled but also deeply unsettled, that I fully realized just how insidiously terrifying the stories of our childhoods are. It's probably not the kind of entertainment that children should be absorbing, but there you are.

  When Reverend Powell arrives in town, singing a hymn in his deep, carrying voice, he immediately charms everybody but the children he wants to steal ten thousand dollars from. Little John and Pearl have been burdened with an enormous secret: to keep this vast amount of money safe…

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  Review by iana ★★★★½

  i love the expressionist style — the use of shadows makes everything scarier than it already is. it’s a damn shame that charles laughton never made another film because he is an insanely talented director. 

  also has lemony snicket/daniel handler ever cited night of the hunter as an influence for a series of unfortunate events because the plot is like...the same.

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  Review by brendan o'hare ★★★★½ 1

  The year is 1955. I'm in a movie theater watching The Night of the Hunter. I keep shouting "WHAT INTERESTING BIRTHMARKS!" whenever Mitchum's LOVE/HATE knuckle tattoos are shown. Eventually an usher tapes a popcorn tub to my face as a makeshift muzzle. The crowd cheers when he does this. The next time the knuckle tattoos are shown, I attempt to shout again. The popcorn tub doesn't really do anything to stop the noise. If anything it's a little louder now. Everyone groans. The usher wails in agony. And me? I'm simply enjoying the wonderful smell of popcorn. And hidden inside the popcorn tub, I'm smiling.

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  Review by Patrick Willems ★★★★½

  What a god damn movie.

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  Review by Shane McAvoy ★★★★★ 2

  imagine making one movie and it’s the best movie

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★★★ 3

  won't somebody please think of the children.

  full discussion on ep 218 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.

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  Review by Lucy ★★★★ 3

  “it's a hard world for little things”

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  Review by Adam Kempenaar ★★★★★ 9

  A Southern Gothic masterpiece about the insidiousness of shame. 

  (And with a narrative driven by a con man obsessed with money claiming moral authority who has issues with women... not at all timely.)

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  Review by sarah squirm ★★★★★ 1

  how can i see that underwater shot and be expected to live to see another day?!?!

  also Pearl’s head is the perfect Big Head / Little Face equation 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

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  Review by Peter Labuza ★★★★★ 2

  First viewing in 7+ years, and only seems more complex, disturbing, and impossible to fully grasp the various layers working through Laughton’s singular work. Hugely influenced by Griffith and Murnau, Hunter resembles a comic book more than any other film in cinematic history, as in Laughton opts for a series of tableaux shots with very little movement (a few shots recall another 1955 masterpiece, Ordet, and maybe Dreyer in general). All the tracking shots are usually left to right or right to left movement, and there’s definitely a flatness to his images the makes it feel all the more painterly.

  But what we really have here is a film built on the power of manipulation; where the same authority (religion,…