Fear in a Handful of Dust: Hell, Faith, and Will in The Exorcist

A concerned Regan bows her head and leans against the wall near the door of her bedroom to listen to her mother in the other room.

|Harry Mackin| The Exorcist knows you’re afraid of it from the moment it begins. Well before its disturbing supernatural plot starts in earnest, you can feel the malice Friedkin imbues into every shot and frame, like “fear in a handful of dust”…  Continue reading

Richard Nixon and the Ghosts of the American Dream

|Finn Odum| I must admit to you that I know very little about the 1970s. I know that Richard Nixon “pledged to end the Vietnam War”, sending the poorest of America’s sons to die aimless deaths while massacring innocents. Black activists fought in memory of assassinated… Continue reading

The Political, Personal Prophecies of There Will Be Blood

|Ryan Sanderson| “Shuffle the cards, and deal a new round of poker hands: they differ in every way from the previous round, and yet it is the same pack of cards, and the same game, with the same spirit, the players grim-faced and silent, surrounded by a haze of tobacco-…” Continue reading

Diabolical Vilification & the Transformative Power of Xenophobia in The Wailing (곡성군): An Outsider’s Perspective

The Outsider, an old Japanese man, sits apart from others on a city bus with four black chickens tied together near his feet.

|Chris Ryba-Tures| When my parents first met, my dad was a Jesuit priest and my mom was studying to be a Catholic nun. While I may have started life as a “Child of the Cloth” I’ve since become an outsider to the Catholic Church. Still, I’m Culturally Catholic (which my wife insists is “not a thing”). … Continue reading