#52FilmsByWomen 2018 pt. 32.

Corey Monteith is the weakest kind of werewolf: he does not transform physically, he isn't especially strong or savage, gains no special powers except night vision that he doesn't use, and his main combat takedown is pushing people over. Half-baked stereotypical Native American mysticism and a generic "science is bad" message doesn't substitute for having zero in the way of character development. Boring when it tries to be tense, boring when it tries to be moving,…

The film that opened my eyes to Tobe Hooper's brilliance was neither The Texas Chain Saw Massacre nor Poltergeist (though I had previously seen both) but rather Toolbox Murders. I was 18 years old, living with my parents and unemployed, having withdrawn from college after a disastrous first semester. It was the beginning of a four-year spiral of depression, isolation and substance abuse: the darkest period of my life thus far.

I rented Toolbox Murders from my local Hollywood Video…

God bless Mike Flanagan. Hush was, as I suspected, more of an experiment/trifle than a sincere piece of work, and now he's back with another gem that deals in true auteuristic style with his pet obsessions: how we process grief and loss, the unseen forces that surround us, how the past infects the present. And it's impeccably made; somebody needs to grab whoever directed Annabelle and say. "THIS is how you make a horror film set in the '60s!"

In…