A wounded hand disappears into nothingness as a modern, chain link fence divides us, at least initially, from an idyllic English churchyard; if Penda’s Fen (1973) can be seen as fairly recusant in its treatment of themes and narrative structure, then you could equally argue that it spells out its key themes, or at least […]
As dystopia has become established as a genre, it’s become the case that the futures it explores have wound up with a few similarities. There’s no mystique about this; dystopia amplifies and extends our fears about the world we currently live in, so environmental angst, fear of political corruption, conspiracy, loss of selfhood – all […]
Editor’s note: this discussion of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities contains some spoilers. Anthology TV series always feel like a tantalising prospect: the same goes for feature films which use the same frame. Even if one, or a couple of the stories aren’t to your tastes, you can usually bet that there’ll be something […]
Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula has always proven a particularly rich seam for filmmakers hoping to develop their own interpretation of his story. Thus, Dracula has been a rat-like creature, a suave nobleman, an aged warlord, and all manner of subtle variants of same. By no means is every interpretation going to please all of […]
This feature discusses the series in full and as such may contain spoilers. Mike Flanagan gets it. He gets the power of horror, and he doesn’t seek to delegitimise that power by needlessly talking it up or talking it down; with his work adapting Stephen King, his films such as Oculus and (the rarely-mentioned, but […]
When most people think of literary witches, they imagine either a crooked-nosed old hag or a cat-eyed seductress intent on taking your virgin blood. Either way, they are generally written as mischievous or evil women that get their powers from demons. But aside from a few exceptions, it wasn’t until Japan mashed witches with magical […]
We’ve all heard of post-apocalyptic drama – literature, film and television which look at life after the End of the World as We Know It – and we can all name a few noteworthy examples, I’m sure. Well, the recent BBC series Hard Sun reinterprets this idea, giving us something rather different: ‘pre-apocalyptic drama’. It’s […]
You know what I miss most about being a kid? Saturday morning cartoons. Sitting down with a bowl of cereal at eight in the morning and turning on ABC’s Kids or Fox Kids or any other combination of a television channel and the word Kids and watching cartoons until the sun reached its peak at […]
Much as they have at the multiplexes, Marvel have carved out a real niche for themselves with their Netflix shows. Whilst their big screen ventures remain resolutely big budget, globe/universe-hopping fantastical adventures bringing the comic label’s most grandiose superheroes to life, these small screen offshoots, while ostensibly still set in that same (buzzword alert) cinematic […]
Bob’s Burgers is the quintessential struggling family show. You got a mom, a dad, and 2.5 kids working together to keep their struggling burger joint afloat amidst money woes and wacky happenings. Each character is a caricature of various family member archetypes almost anyone might have in their household, from the boy-crazy teeny bopper to […]
There’s a scene in episode 5 of GLOW in which the director Sam Sylvia pitches the show to a network exec, explaining that it will be “deeper” than your average junk food TV, showcasing women “wrestling with their own female stereotypes, metaphorically,” arguing this will “really resonate with the female audiences.” And of the male […]