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Elephant (2003)

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When writer-director Gus Van Sant initially set out to produce the psychological drama, Elephant , its title a reference to director Alan Clarke's 1989 BBC short film of the same name, it began its journey as a documentary about the Columbine High School massacre, one of the most infamous massacres ever committed in the United States that remains the deadliest mass shooting in Colorado. On April 20, 1999, two 12th-grade students named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold arrived at their high school in Columbine, Colorado and murdered 13 of their fellow students and one teacher in a shooting and attempted bombing, concluding once both gunmen took their own lives before they could face criminal punishment. Their gunshots injured 20 more people, and three others were injured while trying to escape.   For whatever reason, Van Sant elected to abandon his idea of a factual account in favor of a largely fictionalized cinematic dramatization. The core concept of his movie would remain faithful t...
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Scream 2 (1997)

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The first time we're reintroduced to Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), the quintessential horror movie know-it-all who survived the Woodsboro, California killing spree orchestrated by Billy Loomis and Stu Macher in Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's  Scream , he's sitting in the Film Theory class of Windsor College, leading a discussion about whether the violence depicted in entertainment bears any responsibility for the real-life violence committed against two senior students butchered in a movie theater. One student, played by Josh Jackson, insists that because the killer was wearing a ghost mask that resembled that of the villains from the film presented in the theater, "it's directly responsible." Cici Cooper (Sarah Michelle Gellar) asserts otherwise: "Movies are not responsible for our actions." When their teacher poses the question of whether someone is setting out to make a real-life sequel to the Woodsboro massacre, Randy replies, " Stab 2 ? W...
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Horror Invades the Oscars: Every Genre Film Nominated at the 2026 Academy Awards

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Holy horror, you guys! In exactly 12 days from now, on Sunday, March 15, the horror genre is going to make history at the 98th Academy Awards ceremony, with a total of four horror films nabbing nominations, and not merely in the superficial categories this time. While 2026 does not represent the first year within the 21st century that the Academy has lifted its previously undisguised bias against the horror genre, it does represent a milestone therein. For the sake of transparency, I haven't yet seen any of the four horror films welcomed into the Academy this year, so this article will be an objective overview of the awards for which they've been nominated. Much like how many Americans naively assumed that racism had come to an end with the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States in 2008, I can more confidently assert that the Academy's long-standing bias against the horror genre, while slightly lifted in 2018 with the embrace of Jordan Peele...
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The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

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Slow-building, sinister, and unapologetically bizarre, The Killing of a Sacred Deer , directed by Greek absurdist Yorgos Lanthimos from a screenplay co-written by him and Efthimis Filippou, puts an idiosyncratic spin on the eye-for-an-eye revenge horror narrative, with a trio of compelling lead performances counterbalancing the filmmakers' stilted dialogue. Unfortunately, a gallery of distinctly unreal characters breed a dreamlike, Twilight Zone -adjacent atmosphere that holds the viewer at arm's length and prevents the inevitable, nihilistic resolution from reaching its full heart-wrenching potential. The title, one of the more memorable and distinctive in modern horror, is technically derived from part of the story of the ancient Greek tragedy, Iphigenia in Aulis , by Euripides. However, within the context of the movie that bears its name, the "sacred deer" in question refers to a human being, specifically one of the three loved ones of a cardiac surgeon named Steve...
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