Sara Clements

It feels odd to see a wide release of a B-movie action thriller like Fall in a cinematic landscape dominated by ones on multi-million dollar Marvel budgets. It’s especially rare to see a film like this at the theatre nearest to my home, which is in Canada and not in a major city. These moments are special because, despite budgetary constraints, films like these in the genre employ practicality in their craft to create a work that feels more grounded but remains immersive to a nerve-wracking d...

Ten years after the panned Dracula 3D, Dario Argento is back to his giallo roots with Dark Glasses. There’s a familiar structure in his script, co-written with Franco Ferrini, that includes violent bloodletting and a psychopathic killer who stalks and butchers women. In this case, the woman he stalks is a blind prostitute. It’s the kind of narrative Argento is known for — he loves a good murder and we love the suspense he creates. Unfortunately, Dark Glasses ends up being a mixed bag; Argento...

Berkley Brady’s Dark Nature has the best intro credits of the films I screened at the Fantasia International Film Festival. The picturesque beauty of nature that surrounds the Rocky Mountains is laid out like still images … but ones that have been soaked in blood. The blood drips down the screen, tainting scenes linked to tranquillity. Even the most peaceful environment, however, can’t calm the mind of trauma. The Métis director’s first horror feature is gripping from beginning to end and is ...

KC Carthew’s Polaris is one of the most unique cinematic experiences from the Fantasia International Film Festival this year. Set in a frozen, post-apocalyptic landscape, the film features an all-female identifying cast and follows a young girl’s survival as she searches for her mother — who happens to be a polar bear.

Few survived the freezing that led to the end of the world. It’s 2144 now, but the earth is barren of both men and technology. One survivor, a child named Sumi (Viva Lee), was ...

Nico van den Brink’s feature debut is a Dutch folk horror seeping with dread. Co-written alongside Daan Bakker, Moloch is a treat of atmospheric fright, both nightmarish and dreamy, that digs up a family’s tie to an ancient curse and the generational trauma that has haunted them as a result.
Emo Weemhoff’s camera established right away that the setting of this film is an ancestral one, as he pans to family photos on a wall that go back decades, even centuries. Then, a scene warning of the ter...

Based on a popular Korean web novel, Choi Jae-Hoon’s The Killer may seem familiar at first blush. We’ve seen many movies about spies or assassins getting stuck looking after a kid (My Spy) or having to rescue their own (Taken). Choi’s film is a combination of the two but executed much more stylistically than anything before it. Nam Ji-Woong’s screenplay is hard-hitting as it takes an unfiltered look at the terrifying reality for many of South Korea’s young people, and also the country’s deepl...

There’s no doubt that Taika Waititi’s entrance into the MCU was the jolt that Thor’s story needed. The writer-director not only re-invigorated the Chris Hemsworth-led franchise but also brought new vigor to the studio with his unique style full of wacky humor and a flash of color. Thor: Love and Thunder contains that same vigor Waititi brought to Thor: Ragnarok, creating a film that’s a visually stunning blast with ‘80s rock flavor. However, the biggest flaw of Love and Thunder may be Waititi...

What lies in the sea’s dark underbelly has always both frightened and amazed. Legends have moved across its waters for centuries that speak of beasts like the Kraken that wait to wrap its tentacles around passing ships. Whether you believe they’re real or not, they must have come from something. Chris Williams’ solo debut as director (having previously co-directed Moana, Big Hero 6, and Bolt), co-written with Nell Benjamin, is fuelled by the legends of pirates and sea monsters and told throug...

For our second review this week, Ema Sasic, Dan Bayer, Sara Clements, Daniel Howat & Zoe Rose Bryant joined me to discuss the second feature film from Cooper Raiff, "Cha Cha Real Smooth," starring him, Dakota Johnson, Vanessa Burghardt, Leslie Mann, Brad Garrett & Raúl Castillo. The follow-up to his directorial debut "Shithouse," Raiff's latest premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to enthusiastic reviews and is now streaming on Apple TV. What did we think of the film's writing, performances, and themes? This one certainly inspired a lot of thoughtful conversation, which you can listen to...

The Netflix series shatters old tropes to tell a new kind of story.
This essay contains spoilers for the Netflix series First Kill.
Two decades before Bram Stoker created one of horror’s most celebrated characters in Dracula, Joseph Sheridan LeFanu wrote the 1872 erotic novella Carmilla. Told in the first person, it recounts a young woman’s romance with the titular vampire countess. While LeFanu didn’t write the first vampire novel (that would be Polidori’s The Vampyre), Carmilla introduced r...

Mafia films are all deeply rooted in family, not only because the mafia themselves are built on blood ties but also because members believe they are doing what’s best for their families. Above all else, the actions taken are as much about gaining power and wealth as it is protecting those they love. Jonas Carpignano’s A Chiara has all of this but also feels like a very different mafia film. Family is Carpignano’s sole focus, with all mafia dealings as background noise. Painful and intimate, i...

Our 2012 retrospective continues with the Palme d'Or and Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner of 2012: Michael Haneke's brutally devastating but honest love story, "Amour," starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva & Isabelle Huppert. Incredibly heavy in its subject matter, the film has endured as one of the great cinematic works of art over the last decade earning various accolades from all over the world, including a nomination for Best Picture. What do we think of the themes, the...

Horror films like Orphan and The Omen are perhaps more frightening than many films of the genre because they twist our perception of children. Most parents raise their children to be as angelic as they believe they were when they came out of the womb, so children being born evil or capable of evil is perhaps frightening to them because it means they failed. But children aren’t born pure, as writer-director Eskil Vogt explains in an interview with the Norwegian Film Institute. “I think childre...

No true-crime podcast or show these days seems to struggle to find an audience. We all relate to that The Simpson’s meme. We all obsessively watched Abducted in Plain Sight. Some like to watch the lesser-known unsolved murders and others can’t wait for the next documentary about Ted Bundy. True crime is fascinating, especially so when someone who seems so normal commits the most brutal and grisly crime. Candy Montgomery is one of those cases.
Robin Veith and Nick Antosca’s Candy paints a port...

You don’t have to experience profound loss to know it’s debilitating. It sticks with you. No matter how you try to avoid it, the memories never fade. This is the reality of widower Eric Black (Tom Hughes) in Russell Owen’s sophomore feature, Shepherd. Touching on grief and guilt, and taking inspiration from Welsh ghost stories, Owen creates an engrossing experience that makes the audience feel they are going through every emotion that plagues the titular shepherd. He’s desperately searching f...