Girl Meets Freak
Evil Children & Monstrous Pregnancies
Movie Discussion: David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979)
Girl Meets Context: Throughout the month of May we will be watching 1970s films about cults and conspiracies – from covens of witches to New Age self-help groups to neo-Pagans. This week we discuss one of Cronenberg’s early efforts – in fact, The Brood is often considered to be the director’s first “classic” film. The movie … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Ti West’s The House of the Devil (2009)
Girl Meets Context: It’s Indie Horror Month, where we cover some of the best original and independent horror movies to be released in the last few years. The House of the Devil was actually the second movie Kristine and I watched for horror movie club, way back in the days before our blog existed. We chose to revisit … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961)
Girl Meets Context: This is the best known and most critically lauded adaptation of Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw. It was not a commercial success at the time of its release, but the film has gone on to have a long life as a “classic” psychological thriller (Scorsese included it on his “11 … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976)
Girl Meets Context: In the wake of The Exorcist‘s massive popularity, dozens of “Satanic thrillers” were made in the mid-to-late 1970s, of which The Omen might be the most famous one. The film is about Robert Thorn, an American diplomat (played by screen legend Gregory Peck) who comes to believe that he may have unwittingly adopted the son of … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive (1992)
Girl Meets Context: Dead Alive is one of the most notorious splatter movies of all time, and is often cited as New Zealand director Peter Jackson’s (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong) first signature masterpiece. The movie is set in 1950s Wellington and concerns a zombie virus that begins after a rare Sumatran rat monkey bites … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1985)
Girl Meets Context: For Phenomena, Dario Argento moved his regular antics to a remote all-girl boarding school in the Swiss countryside. The whole set-up is very reminiscent of his classic Suspiria (considered by many to be his signature masterpiece), in which an American girl finds herself abroad at a strange European school where uncanny events occur. In this version … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Girl Meets Context: It is difficult to even synopsize The Cabin in the Woods because the plot of the movie relies so much on twists and turns… so please be forewarned that there will be massive SPOILERS AHEAD!!! If you haven’t gone to see this movie yet, rush to your local theater to see it, then … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In [Låt den rätte komma in] (2008)
Girl Meets Context: On February 2, 2012 we sat down to watch the Swedish vampire epic Let the Right One In, which was based on a book of the same name that came out in 2004. The movie follows a nerdy outcast middle-schooler named Oskar who spends his days being harassed by classmates and his nights … Continue reading
TV Discussion: Season 1 of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s American Horror Story (2011)
Girl Meets Context: After continuing problems with Netflix’s Streaming services ruined our attempt to watch The Howling, we decided to tackle something we’d both watched attentively last year: Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s FX series American Horror Story. The show is a new kind of horror anthology series, in which a story plays out over the … Continue reading
Super-Sized Movie Discussion, Part 4: J.A. Bayona’s The Orphanage [El orfonato] (2007)
Girl Meets Context: On Friday, December 2nd 2011, Kristine and I held our second Horror Movie Sleepover. We started with Frank Darabont’s 2007 adaptation of Stephen King’s novella The Mist, and couldn’t believe all the Walking Dead cast members that were in it. Then we watched another 2007 horror movie, the Spanish supernatural thriller The Orphanage by J.A. Bayona, who is … Continue reading
