Matt Simon

Graham Greene and Ron Lea in Clearcut

In this week’s letter:

- When extremely on-the-nose storytelling works in horror
- All the visible historical layers (from the 30s to the 90s) in new teen horror
- How a refusal of easy answers brings riveting energy to a kidnapping thriller

www.deadofnightletter.com/that-babadoo...

#filmsky

‘Spoorloos’ aka ‘The Vanishing’ is so scary in many ways, not least is the kidnapping scene and the background sound. In the American remake it’s overlaid with music, but in the Dutch original you can hear the sound of people playing in the rest area… as poor Johanna ter Steege is kidnapped.

yeah I liked it too—shades of Jeunet & Caro

(You can also buy the book from Amazon etc but fucked if I'm gunna share links to those evil fucks)

The Babadook picture book.

Out tomorrow, I'm writing about monsters as metaphors -- the good and the bad -- by focusing on a movie that is both extremely on-the-nose and extremely well done.

sign up to get it in your inbox: www.deadofnightletter.com

#filmsky #horrorsky

The Babadook picture book.

Out tomorrow, I'm writing about monsters as metaphors -- the good and the bad -- by focusing on a movie that is both extremely on-the-nose and extremely well done.

sign up to get it in your inbox: www.deadofnightletter.com

#filmsky #horrorsky

the Benshi performance and the piano accompaniment by @unpianistique.bsky.social were both wonderful

bsky.app/profile/unpi...

EVERY—NIGHT DREAMS / APART FROM YOU - American Cinematheque

Tonight I'm seeing Naruse silent films with a live Benshi performer providing narration. A first for me.

www.americancinematheque.com/now-showing/...

poster: Spoorloos/The Vanishing

In this week’s letter—

- The Vanishing’s rest area as “one of horror’s great, malevolent spaces”
- How CGI as a technology and practice undermines the latest Final Destination movie
- The remarkable, dangerous chaos of When Evil Lurks

www.deadofnightletter.com/bleak-cruel-... #filmsky #horrorsky

This point is decades late, and not necessarily breaking news, but CGI as a technology and a practice has really done a number on horror. Horror asks for solidity, weight, real bodies. So often we get insubstantiality—slick gestures that picture but do not convince.

precisely

thank you!

poster: Spoorloos/The Vanishing

In this week’s letter—

- The Vanishing’s rest area as “one of horror’s great, malevolent spaces”
- How CGI as a technology and practice undermines the latest Final Destination movie
- The remarkable, dangerous chaos of When Evil Lurks

www.deadofnightletter.com/bleak-cruel-... #filmsky #horrorsky

really

I’m always reassuring friends and relations about horror movies—about how a title isn’t that scary/gory/upsetting. Usually people imagine the worst. Then there’s When Evil Lurks which shocked and upset me at maybe 10 distinct moments.

As of tonight, licenses of trans people across Kansas are being invalidated en masse, enabling the overnight criminalization of an entire group of people for going about our lives. It’s often said you never know when you’re living through history, so let me assure you: that’s what’s happening now.

The last scene in The Vanishing (family hanging in the yard, angle down at the earth, float to newspaper) is perfect but, at least for me, was entirely forgotten because the second-to-last scene is such a classic gut-punch.

Even, I think, an austerely formalist lens (New Criticism, etc.) doesn’t dispense with this background understanding.

Discourse around AI-generated art tends to circle around the question, “Can AI produce something good?” But we often overlook the fact that part of what’s interesting about art is that there’s a living, breathing human behind it.

Johanna ter Steege and Gene Bervoets in The Vanishing

Tomorrow in the letter, I get into a classic with an outrageously bleak, cruel, and perfect ending: George Sluizer's The Vanishing (Spoorloos).

Sign up here www.deadofnightletter.com and spend a few minutes in your inbox tomorrow contemplating this malevolent gem.

#filmsky #horrorsky #horror

Mikio Naruse: An American Cinematheque Retrospective - American Cinematheque

so @amcinematheque.bsky.social has an amazing Naruse retrospective just beginning www.americancinematheque.com/series/mikio... #filmsky

good picks!

Johanna ter Steege and Gene Bervoets in The Vanishing

Tomorrow in the letter, I get into a classic with an outrageously bleak, cruel, and perfect ending: George Sluizer's The Vanishing (Spoorloos).

Sign up here www.deadofnightletter.com and spend a few minutes in your inbox tomorrow contemplating this malevolent gem.

#filmsky #horrorsky #horror

Poster: Wife! Be Like A Rose!

Made it out alive—and Naruse’s Wife! Be Like A Rose! was a big winner. Lean’s Blithe Spirit was gorgeous on a Technicolor nitrate print and a fun watch too.

I am seeing two movies on nitrate today. If I don’t die in a fire it should be quite a good time.

Sope Dirisu in His House

This week’s letter—

- frames-within-frames as visual conduits of suspense
- how a chimp’s human qualities are portrayed as sinister in Primate
- & melancholy vampire Adeline in @keithrosson.bsky.social’s bleak road trip Coffin Moon

www.deadofnightletter.com/haunted-maul...

#filmsky #horrorsky

Not quite incongruous but it always blows my mind that Don’t Look Now and The Wicker Man were on a double bill in 1973.

Like is he a part of the family or not?

Should have given the chimpanzee a bedroom instead of having him sleep in a cage/kennel thing outdoors.