Final Women

*Spoiler Alert* So I finally watched What Keeps You Alive , which had been sitting toward the top of my list for a while but somehow kept getting looked over. Honestly, it's pretty good, although the last half features some seriously questionable character decisions. Jules and Jackie are a lesbian couple celebrating their one year wedding anniversary at Jackie's family's lake house. Though the couple initially seems happily in love, Jules soon starts to feel as if Jackie is hiding something. The first crack in Jackie's facade appears when a neighbor comes by the house to check on it, having seen the lights on, and refers to Jackie as Meagan. Jackie is able to explain this away, saying that she changed her name in an effort of self-renewal when she realized she was gay. Unfortunately, Jules soon realizes a name change is the least of Jackie's secrets. Brittany Allen and Hannah Emily Anderson both nail their roles as the not-so-happy couple. (The two had previou...

Everyone pour one out for the Gore-Met tonight. The Rue Morgue columnist has passed away. Rue Morgue is something of a bible around these parts, and I was a devotee of the Gore-Met's (real name, Andrew Bailees) column. Although the explicitness of many of the movies he covered kept me from watching them, I often found myself seeing films in a new light after reading his opinions on them. He truly appreciated and loved the genre and will be greatly missed.

I'll start this review by saying that rape/revenge films are not for everyone, and I'm personally pretty squeamish about rape scenes. Often times they come across as exploitative, even if the following revenge sequences are generally cathartic. Frequently, when watching films of this subgenre, I find myself having to fast forward through the sexual assault. Revenge , however, manages to sidestep a lot these problems by virtue of being written and directed by a woman, Coralie Fargeat. For instance, the film specifically side steps the exploitative nature of the rape scene by not making it explicit. Is it uncomfortable to watch? Hell yes. Is it exploitative? No. Because unlike many other films of its ilk, the rape isn't made to titillate; it isn't shot for the male gaze. Does this at all cheapen the revenge aspect? Hell no. Revenge shows viewers that an explicit rape scene is not needed for the revenge to be satisfying. Special credit has to go to French actres...

The stories in this particular collection are all prefaced by Masterton's descriptions of the locations in which they take place and of how those places inspired him. The locations are important to the stories, and in many of them, the location is almost a character itself. You often feel, reading these tales, that the stories are actually dependent on their settings. Masterton could not have set a single one of them anywhere else without drastically changing the tale. Many of the stories in this volume share another common theme, however, and that is loneliness. Masterton's characters are frequently faced with isolation and despair. The protagonists in "Heart of Stone" and "Beijing Craps" are adrift in the world after the death of loved ones, while hard times have forced the heroes of "The Woman in the Wall" and "5a Bedford Row" into starting over in new towns where they don't know anyone, and they find themselves facing mounting h...

This week I watched two arguably feminist horror films, The Witch Files, now streaming on Netflix, and Revenge (available on Shudder), an award winning French entry into the rape revenge subgenre. While both movies couldn't be further apart both tonally and in subject matter, they were both female focused horror films that refused to cater to the male gaze. So, for that, mad props to both of them. I'll review Revenge later, but right now, I'm here to discuss The Witch Files. I checked this one out solely because I saw it featured Paget Brewster (I have a major crush) of Criminal Minds fame. Other than that casting choice, I honestly wasn't expecting too much from the film. I knew next to nothing about The Witch Files going in, other than that it was aimed squarely at a teen audience. However, I ended up pleasantly surprised. The movie plays out like a PG-13 version of The Craft, one of my favorites. Witch Files revolves around 5 teen girls who form a coven and start...