I really love the horror genre, at its best it can truly give you a cinematic feeling like no other. The jolts you experience from watching a spook-fest are akin to being in "fight or flight" mode, your body's natural ability to react to a harmful event, attack, or threat for the sake of survival.
Read moreJohn Carpenter to Be Honored at Cannes
John Carpenter will be honored by the French Directors' Guild with this year's Carrosse d'Or, the Golden Coach prize, during the Directors' Fortnight section in Cannes. The honor will be handed out on May 15. I will be there This year's Cannes Film Festival happens May 14-25.
Read more'Halloween' Success Awakens Slasher Genre From the Dead; Lebron James to Produce ‘Friday The 13th’ Reboot
I pointed out in my 10.16.18 review of David Gordon Green's "Halloween" that I feared the success of the film would re-energize and wake up the 'slasher' genre, which has been dead since the early aughts. I wrote, "Let's hope the success of "Halloween" at the box-office doesn't have Hollywood re-energizing a dead genre."
Read more‘Halloween' is a dumbing-down of the genre; It feels like a slasher film that was made in the '90s... and that's not a compliment [Review]
Director David Gordon Green has built up an eclectic filmography since "George Washington," his visionary 2000 debut. There's Green, the artist ("George Washington," "All the Real Girls," "Snow Angels," "Undertow," "Prince Avalanche"), Green, the cult comedy filmmaker ("Pineapple Express," "The Sitter," "Your Highness") and Green, the Oscar-bait deliverer ("Stronger," "Our Brand is Crisis").
Read moreJohn Carpenter: The most influential director of the 2010s
If there's a filmmaker whose stock/legacy has been considerably bumped up the past decade, it's John Carpenter's. And yet, he's only directed a single film in the last 17 years (2010's The Ward" starring Amber Heard). At 70 years of age, Carpenter is mostly concentrating on producing nowadays, but you cannot deny just how influential he's been to the resurgence of the horror genre.
We have seen shades of Carpenter classics such as “Halloween,” “The Thing,” “Assault on Precinct 13,” “Escape from New York,” “They Live,” and “Big Trouble in Little China” all over the neo-horror resurgence. There's Ti West's "House of the Devil," David Robert Mitchell's "It Follows," Adam Wingard's "The Guest," Jeremy Saulnier's "Green Room," Jeff Nichols' "Midnight Special," The Duffer Brothers' "Stranger Things," and even Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight," the latter which had Tarantino only showing "The Thing" to his cast before production begun.
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