“She’s a girl with a problem,” Roman Polanski says on the director’s commentary of Repulsion, speaking as efficiently and abstractly as he directs. He’s describing Catherine Deneuve’s Carole, a stoic young woman of ineffable beauty and disintegrating mental health who is harassed by some boorish men, as women often…
As films from Village Of The Damned to The Omen to this year’s Tales Of Halloween have made very clear, children are duplicitous little instruments of Satan who should not be trusted. Therefore, your best strategy when the little hellions begin descending upon neighborhoods across the country tomorrow night is to draw…
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week: For Horrors Week, we’re once again talking about songs with the word “ghost” in the title.
Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: Get in the holiday spirit with these horror anthology films, which offer several scary stories for the price of one.
NBC’s Today has a longstanding tradition of dressing its hosts in elaborate costumes every Halloween, the better to scare its viewers out of their living rooms and into doing something more productive with their mornings. In the past, the crew at 30 Rock has extended network branding initiatives by disguising…
With Run The Series, The A.V. Club examines film franchises, studying how they change and evolve with each new installment.
In Scenic Routes, Mike D’Angelo looks at key scenes, explaining how they work and what they mean.
Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d…
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week: For Horrors Week, we’re once again talking about songs with the word “ghost” in the title.
Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: Get in the holiday spirit with these horror anthology films, which offer several scary stories for the price of one.
The A.V. Club staff is full of horror movie buffs, but one film in particular has generated a lot of discussion over the past few years, just as it has in the horror community in general. Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s The Cabin In The Woods was widely acclaimed upon its release for being a smart and immensely…
Despite starting off perfectly, the Halloween series becomes less scary with each film, succumbing to tonal inconsistencies, an emphasis on violence over atmosphere, and two completely separate timelines. But if we’re going to blame the cinematic neutering on a single thing, it would have to be the over-explained…
(Note: This piece contains specific plot details about several horror films.)
John Carpenter’s low-budget, precision-made slasher Halloween is one of the cornerstones of the modern horror film. A massive hit upon its initial release in 1978, the movie spawned a franchise and scores of imitators, and put Carpenter on the path to becoming an above-the-title household name. Carpenter’s subsequent…
In Gameological Unplugged, Samantha Nelson looks at trends and new developments in the vast world of tabletop games.
Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: Get in the holiday spirit with these horror anthology films, which offer several scary stories for the price of one.
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week: For Horrors Week, we’re once again talking about songs with the word “ghost” in the title.
In Page To Screen, we compare a movie to the book that spawned it. The analysis goes into deep detail about specific plot points—in other words, you’ve been warned.
You may remember moments like these from your own childhood, or you may have already inadvertently passed some on to the next generation. You settle in on a rainy Saturday for an afternoon of classic, conceivably benign children’s entertainment. Suddenly you are struck by an unexpected moment that startles you so…
