A Farewell to Horses

An extreme closeup of the face of Buffalo Bill (played by Ted Levine), focused on his eye as he applies makeup to his eyebrow. Just to the side of the frame, the flaking edges of a woman's scalp that he's wearing are visible.

|Natalie Marlin| Hearing it solely on its own terms, “Goodbye Horses” is an achingly beautiful song. Q Lazzarus’ voice quavers but never loses its assuredness. She makes the most of her low resonance, embracing her voice’s androgynous qualities. William Garvey’s gorgeously cryptic lyricism is just as crucial to the song’s mystique… Continue reading

From Sundance to Box Office Gold: The Story of The Blair Witch Project

The iconic close up confessional of the doomed filmmaker

|Kevin Maher| The pitch for The Blair Witch Project, the 1999 summer box office phenomenon and viral marketing sensation, is as simple as the finished movie actually turned out to be. “Student filmmakers go into the woods to make a documentary, disappear, and their footage is found,” certainly relays the basic tenants of the story… Continue reading

Horror without Borders: My Blair Witch Project

A dilapidated cabin stands alone in the woods.

|Chris Ryba-Tures| Somewhere between Planet Hollywood and Hooters, on the top floor of the Mall of America, I was stopped dead in my tracks. It was 1998. I was seventeen, sporting a bleach-blonde Eminem haircut, a brand-new Marilyn Manson “Antichrist Superstar” ringer tee from Hot Topic, and black leather 8-hole Doc Marten’s that were finally getting that perfect mosh pit scuff… Continue reading

Double Exposures, Love, and Magic: Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula

The Coppolas employed vintage effects to gorgeous ends: in this case model train + giant book

|Penny Folger| Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a novel that was originally published in 1897, was later adapted to film over 200 times. What led Francis Ford Coppola to make it again in 1992, on the heels of his Godfather III? The answer can be found in then 19-year-old Winona Ryder. After dropping out of Godfather III due to nervous exhaustion… Continue reading

Bram Stoker’s Dracula as the Center of the Universe: A Mini-Memoir of Cultural Consumption 

Mina Murray wears a high-collared light green floral dress and Jonathan Harker wears a dark plaid suit as they converse in a sunlit garden

|Hannah Baxter| It’s November 1992, and a new movie with Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves has just come out. As someone born at the tail end of Gen X, that’s all you need to know. You’ve never heard of Francis Ford Coppola or the male lead, someone unmemorably named Gary Oldman. You have, however, watched Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, … Continue reading

Aggressive Adaptation: Francis Ford Coppola’s Visionary Madness in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

A menacing Gary Oldman as Count Dracula, wrinkled and pale, with his white and coiffed beehive hairdo, licks his razorblade to the right of the frame while shrouded in blackness.

|Chris Polley| Besides both of us being complete dorks, the venerable, legendary auteur Francis Ford Coppola (of Godfather and Apocalypse Now fame) and I have exactly one thing in common: We both forced a group of people to sit down and read Bram Stoker’s iconic gothic novel Dracula out loud together… Continue reading

Golden Eggs Flying Through Space: The Horrific Dream Logic at the Heart of The Vanishing

Saskia stands outside of a highway tunnel with a green mountain in the distance.

|Sophie Durbin| My first encounter with George Sluizer’s The Vanishing was on a lazy evening in February of 2023. The Criterion Channel description promised a “truly unsettling” ending, which drew me in since I love being upset by fictional peoples’ problems… Continue reading

Gothic, Dull and Sharp: George Sluizer’s The Vanishing

A close-up image of a missing person poster showing a black-and-white image of Saskia. The poster is glued to a tree on a city street

|MH Rowe| You might say The Vanishing (1988) tells the tale of two creepy men. One is a fretful, controlling boyfriend, the other a methodical murderer. With a different emphasis, the director George Sluizer might have smoothed out the boyfriend and signaled to the audience that we aren’t supposed to understand Rex Hofman (Gene Bervoets) as a creep… Continue reading