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Queer Fear Film Festival •

Interview: Alice Maio Mackay

Alice Maio Mackay has quickly made a name for herself in genre cinema. At just nineteen years old, Mackay has been steadily pumping out several modern queer horror classics since 2020. Her first two films, So Vam and Bad Girl Boogey, are currently available on Shudder. Joining her work available on VOD this month is her third film, T-Blockers, a trans take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The film was created during and is directly calling out the ongoing rampant transphobia that has, sadly, o
Screen Speck •

In Defense of ‘Oppenheimer’s’ Women

Christopher Nolan became infamous for prioritizing male genius and exceptionalism. It’s an interpretation that’s followed him since the Dark Knight trilogy and met renewed interest with the announcement of his latest release, Oppenheimer. It played into the odd dichotomy of the Barbenheimer double feature, which almost asks for gendered separation: the omnipresent dichotomy of “boy” thing versus “girl” thing.

Oppenheimer does seem to feature every available white actor over twenty-five in some
Flip Screen •

‘Skinamarink’ (2022) as Ergodic Filmmaking

When a leaked screener of Kyle Edward Ball’s feature debut Skinamarink reached viral status on YouTube and TikTok, the film quickly garnered attention for its minimalistic approach to scares. Though the film may have come out after the “disturbing movie iceberg” trend died out, many a YouTuber has dedicated themselves to explaining the film or trying to articulate what makes Skinamarink a transgressive nightmare. It’s not an entirely incorrect assumption, but there isn’t that much content to spe
Screen Speck •

There's No Such Thing as a 'Lifetime Guarantee'

For this past Pride Month, the Criterion Channel released a collection of nineteen films under the title “Masc” – a celebration of trans men, butch lesbians, and transmasculine people through film. Buried within the collection was a short little documentary that stands out amongst the others. Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc’s Adventures in Plastic focuses on SoCal’s sole butch Tupperware saleswoman. The documentary was nearly forgotten until Criterion restored and released it on their service in June
Dread Central •

The Brief and Troubled History of Universal Monster Reboots

The Brief and Troubled History of Universal Monster Reboots

Despite being nearly a century old, the Universal Classic Monsters still remain titans of the genre. Early additions like Phantom of the Opera, The Man Who Laughs, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame cemented Lon Chaney Sr. as one of Hollywood’s first horror icons and brought the legendary Conrad Veight to American screens. With 1931’s double hitters of Dracula and Frankenstein, some of horror’s first talkies, the Universal Monsters univer
Gayly Dreadful -- Bursting out of your closet with the latest horror reviews •

[Pride 2023] Interview with 'Saint Drogo''s Michael J. Ahern and Brandon Perras-Sanchez —

Red: So what inspired the lore for Saint Drogo and the cult situation? That was a really interesting route to take.

BP: I think that what I was saying with creating the mythology of folk horror, they really serve as a cautionary tale. They’ll all have some kind of monster or some sort of magic that is for the protagonist or villain. I think that we wanted to create our own folklore with Christian and Catholic mythology, but not so much of the moniker of the “saint” route. We’re kind of showing
Dread Central •

'Seed of Chucky': Horror Outside the Binary

‘Seed of Chucky’: Horror Outside the Binary

In the horror genre, a lot of scares manifest as “fear of the other” by using a marginalized group as a source of terror. This is where a lot of trans representation in horror falls. Both coded and explicitly trans characters (almost exclusively trans women or transfeminine characters) end up filling the position of antagonist in one form or another. Where there’s an overrepresentation of transfeminine characters in negative roles, there’s also a larg
Certified Forgotten •

'Lily C.A.T' and the Allure of Animated Body Horror

‘Lily C.A.T’ and the Allure of Animated Body Horror

Body horror is an intricate subgenre of horror preying on the innate fear of losing bodily autonomy in an incredibly visceral way. More often than not, the cause of the bodily takeover is not from Earth, allowing for a variety of settings for the horror to unfold. Lily C.A.T—directed by Hisayaki Toriumi—is one example of the subgenre within another subgenre: space horror, combining the fears of the infinite cosmic void and the aforementioned d
Screen Queens •

The Body as a Product in ‘Helter Skelter’

One guaranteed aspect of the human experience is the body. We all have organs and blood and bones encased in skin meant to allow us to move, breathe, and think (though sometimes the body decides to ignore its basic properties). What is a relatively new concept is the body transcending its original purpose. No longer is a body just a body, it’s a machine. It’s a product. We’re expected to make it run as efficiently as possible and fix it until it’s a flawless product. Any flaws in the eyes of the
Film Cred •

Living on the Dance Floor: Ten Years since 'Dance Moms'

Lifetime had its humble beginnings as a channel built on small talk shows. It soon evolved into producing its questionable “based on true life” stories and reality television. Once upon a time, its flagship trash boat was Dance Moms: a journey through the competition season of the Abby Lee Dance Company (ALDC), located outside of Pittsburgh. While the premise of watching a bunch of 8-10 year old competitive dancers rotate through weekly choreography might not sound deserving of the title “garbag
Screen Queens •

‘Fat Girl’ and the Conditions of Desire

No matter how you slice it, the definition of femininity is devious. The way it’s societally applied to exclude trans women and women of colour is sinister enough regardless of how many girlboss infographics are made. This is due to the inextricable connection between the ideal feminine and the male gaze; all the stringent, unspoken guidelines applied to women for the sole purpose of pleasing a man visually, behaviorally, and sexually. From childhood people socialised as women are taught to thin
Rainbow & Co •

The History of Trans & Non Binary Lesbians

The History of Trans & Non Binary Lesbians


The definition of lesbian isn’t simply “a woman attracted to other women”-- it never has been. As long as lesbians have been around, not every lesbian has identified as a woman. Naturally, part of the reason for the very limited modern definition of lesbian stems from the rigid gender binary and the systematic elimination of other gender identities from non-European cultures. The more correct definition of a lesbian is a non-man attracted to exclusiv
Film Cred •

'American Satan,' 'Lords of Salem,' and the Reverberations of the Satanic Panic

Rock and the dark forces have always been tied together. It’s been part of the appeal, an additional edge that used to pull it away from the mainstream. However, the passive association became a lot more active during the 1980s, initiated by a distinct rise in conservative Christian values. The Reagan administration allowed for the rise of Evangelical Christians, spearheaded by Jerry Fallwell Sr. and the Moral Majority, which had a major cultural impact on what was deemed “wholesome” and what wa
Film Cred •

Sundance Interview: Director of 'We're All Going To The World's Fair' Jane Schoenbrun

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair debuted at Sundance Film Festival 2021 and needless to say, I was a massive fan (as evidenced by my review). Jane Schoenbrun’s debut is a trippy homage to the forums from which legends like Slenderman spawned. But, the World’s Fair holds a lot more to it than just a simple Internet rumor.

I had the chance to speak with Schoenbrun over Zoom shortly following the close of the festival. We discussed online forums, the power dynamics that form within them, and th
Gayly Dreadful -- Bursting out of your closet with the latest horror reviews •

[Editorial] The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Leatherface, and Gender —

Gender nonconformity in horror has a weird track record. Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill, though never explicitly mentioned or debunked as not trans, carry a reputation of giving transfeminine people a bad reputation. Films like Sleepaway Camp and Dressed to Kill have more explicitly trans antagonists and provide further fuel to the idea that gender nonconforming people are irredeemably evil. But quite a few trans horror fans online (including myself) have been reevaluating characters that they fe
Screen Queens •

[The Final Girls Club] ‘Ginger Snaps’ and the Elusive Non-Male Werewolf

The Final Girls Club posts on the 1st, 3rd and 4th Monday of the month. It aims to take an analytical and retrospective look at female-led horror cinema and how these films hold up in the context of current issues surrounding gender, sexuality and politics.

A glaring similarity between the more well-known werewolf media portrayals in An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, The Wolfman, and Twilight are the lycanthropes themselves: they’re all men. The lore behind them may differ, their app
Flip Screen •

Lesbians and Gender Nonconformity in ‘Lyle’ (2014)

Despite representing the first letter in the LGBT acronym, lesbians have a difficult time procuring representation in film. In GLAAD’s most recent annual report of LGBT representation in film, only one percent of all films released in 2018 contained some form of lesbian representation – the highest reported since GLAAD started their yearly round-up. However, next to none of these films featured a lesbian character in a role even remotely consequential to the plot, much less a leading role. Stewa
Screen Queens •

Supernatural Horror and the Problem with Bio-essentialism

Something special about the horror genre is the sheer range of characters women play; rarely is a woman relegated to a love interest or a passive, disposable role. Supernatural horror — especially those centring witchcraft — often place women as complex anti-heroes: outcasts ridiculed by society, and using witchcraft as both an empowerment tool and a way to destroy those who’ve wronged them. Unfortunately, recent films revolving around witchcraft still pull heavily from prejudices that remain fr
Film Cred •

"It's Hip to be Square": American Psycho and Influencer Culture

Since the exponential rise in popularity of social media we, the unglamorous masses, have gained access to the “personal” lives and thoughts of influencers: those who generate interest in a product or lifestyle through their posts on social media. The rich and famous no longer remain a mystery but are transformed into a ready-made product easily consumed by anyone with a stable Wi-Fi connection. Within each picture, post, or tweet lies a subliminal message pointing to a lifestyle of ease where t

Reviews

Dread Central •

'Purgatory Jack' Salem Horror Fest 2024 Review: An Overambitious Look At The Afterlife

‘Purgatory Jack’ Salem Horror Fest 2024 Review: An Overambitious Look At The Afterlife

Editor’s note: This review contains mentions of suicide.

The simultaneous fear and insatiable curiosity about what happens after death fuels art to this day. There are innumerable interpretations of Heaven and Hell. But the secret third option of Purgatory rarely receives the same kind of dedicated love, apart from the poet Virgil, No Exit, and The House that Jack Built. The Butler Brother’s Purgatory Jack r
Queer Fear Film Festival •

Review: The People's Joker (2024)

The People’s Joker is officially free and ready to make anyone that lays eyes on it transgender: a promise from mastermind Vera Drew herself. For the sake of an extended diatribe, I won’t get into the protracted copyright situation that Drew and the film were embroiled in–let’s be honest, the film is way more interesting than a legal situation–but it’s certainly added to the mythos of The People’s Joker. Whenever the film appeared on festival line-ups, it felt like a creature breaching containme
Queer Fear Film Festival •

Review: Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

Rose Glass’ sophomore feature Love Lies Bleeding continues the weird sapphic energy from her previous film Saint Maud in spectacular fashion. The film follows the whirlwind romance of reserved gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) and current drifter, aspiring bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian) as the tightening grasp of Lou’s father Lou. Sr. (Ed Harris) threatens to expose both Lou and Jackie’s worst habits. Under the guise of a Cohen-esque crime thriller, Glass weaves a surreal tale of lesbian erot
Film Matters Magazine •

Monkey Puzzle Shorts Block. Reviewed by Red Broadwell ⋆ Film Matters Magazine

The Monkey Puzzle shorts block of Cucalorus features experimental shorts existing in the limbo between dream and nightmare. These shorts use surreal imagery to convey indescribable parts of the human experience or fears we don’t dare speak of. This review covers the first five short films in the Monkey Puzzle block in the order they were aired at Cucalorus 2023.

Zac Ivey’s Incident 4 fits squarely in the recent analog horror film trend: a cinematic successor to the alternate reality games (ARGs
Dread Central •

'Satranic Panic' Review: Alice Maio Mackay's Most Ambitious Film Yet

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Alice Maio Mackay’s directorial career is skyrocketing. In just three years she’s released three features, each deconstructing a portion of the queer or trans experience with equal parts heart and wit. So Vam tackles the monstrous “othering”, Bad Girl Boogey uses supernatural horror to examine how queer suffering is ignored en masse, and T-Blockers turns toxic sludge into a metaphor for transphobic vitriol. With a continued commitment to a largely LGBT cast a
Film Cred •

Salem Horror Fest Review: 'Guys at Parties Like It'

Guys at Parties Like It, the feature debut by directors Colton David Coate and Michael Coate, is the latest offering in feminist horror. Utilizing a fraternity party as the story’s backdrop, it follows a sorority sister caught in a hazing ritual gone wrong. The film has a lot going for it with regard to its sense of style: the neon lighting, kinetic cinematography, and special effects provide a lovely feast for the eyes. Unfortunately, like its predecessors — Black Christmas (2019), Promising Yo
Film Cred •

Salem Horror Fest Review: 'HeBGB TV'

Out of all the subgenres, something about horror anthologies always feels the most fun. Perhaps it’s because these films are the closest equivalent to scary stories around the fire. Anthologies also allow creators the freedom to flex their creativity without the rigid constraints of a single story or tone. One bit can balance the thin line between horror and comedy, while the next can be genuinely pee-your-pants horrifying. With the right tie-ins and presentation, they harmonize to form an iconi
Film Cred •

Review: 'T-Blockers'

Alice Maio Mackay has firmly established herself as a staple of independent horror unapologetically made by and for the LGBT community. Her first feature, So Vam, was added to Shudder last year, and her second film Bad Girl Boogey debuted shortly after. Her rapidly growing repertoire now includes T-Blockers — her first venture into the more sci-fi realm — which premieres at Salem Horror Festival next month. As with her previous films Mackay and co-writer Ben Pahl Robinson explore dark themes inh
Film Cred •

Review: 'Bad Girl Boogey'

Compared to the last couple years, 2022 has been a great year for the horror genre. Fans of every subgenre, from slasher to body horror to monster flicks, have received at least one solid film to gush about on Twitter. Unfortunately, the one area that seems to be lacking once again is queer horror. Sure, there’s been a couple nods to queerness in mainstream films like Jordan Peele’s Nope and Ti West’s X, but unfortunately the only mainstream queer horror film has been the experience that was Joh
Film Cred •

Review: 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'

On October 1, 1974, first-time filmmaker Tobe Hooper released a film so visceral and psychologically disturbing that it was banned in several countries. The terror that the original iteration of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre wrought upon the public still hangs in the air nearly 50 years later, despite the lack of explicit gore and violence. While cannibalism and dismemberments are what the other installments in the franchise chose to focus on, the original TCM is first and foremost a social comme
Buffed Film Buffs •

Kore-eda Film 'Air Doll' Releases in the U.S. at the Perfect Time

In the corona years, isolation has become a feeling too well-known by many. Making human connections, whether online or in-person, is in high demand yet invariably difficult to maintain. As communal creatures by nature, the increased distance from others, physically and emotionally, or the lack of ability, be it from having no time or just general discomfort at the idea, to create new meaningful connections has us asking what it means to be a human.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2009 film Air Doll, based
Film Cred •

Salem Horror Fest Review: 'Brain Death'

The first generation of kids that grew up with the modern Internet are now the first “terminally online” adults. Being constantly connected has the perk of building relationships with people we’d never meet otherwise, but the downsides are much more detrimental. Irony and borderline mean-spirited satire drive humor, which becomes a coping mechanism for the larger issue of constant omnipotence. “Doom scrolling” — spending an excessive amount of time scrolling through generally bad or triggering n
Film Cred •

Salem Horror Fest Review: ‘So Vam’

Vampirism has always been tied to queerness, for better or for worse. In the original Dracula and Carmilla, the titular vampires are alluring to their respective protagonists (and in Dracula’s case, his wife too) but are explicitly labeled as monstrous and deviant — pretty much the blueprint for a queercoded character. But the same characteristics that make vampires scary in the popular consciousness are what make them endearing to us. Their otherness is what makes them easy to relate to, their
Film Cred •

Review: ‘Spiral’

In 2004 the trajectory of horror changed forever with the release of Saw directed by James Wan and written by Wan and Leigh Whannell. The film arguably ended the run of more teen-centered, Scream-inspired horror movies with the opening shot of a nasty bathroom and the utterance of “I want to play a game.” The success of the film led to the spawning of six sequels during the rest of the decade, a seventh film in 2017, and a laundry list of copycats. Billy the Puppet, Jigsaw, and the reverse bear
Film Cred •

Sundance Review: 'The Blazing World'

Fairy tales have been synonymous with light, bright animation since Disney started churning out their adaptations despite the sinister tones of the source material. However, films like the children’s nightmare fuel Coraline, the cannibalistic fever dream of The Lure, and a solid chunk of Guillermo del Toro’s repertoire prove that fairy tales can be anything but wholesome.

The Blazing World, Carlson Young’s feature debut based on her short film of the same name, has all the elements to join the
Film Cred •

Sundance Review: 'We’re All Going to the World’s Fair'

As long as the Internet’s been widely available, there’s been horror games. What started as small roleplay and fan fiction blogs created on dial-up Internet connections slowly grew and developed into dozens of story games, discussion blogs, and writing challenges. The most infamous evolution of these early horror blogs was Creepypasta: collections of short horror stories copied and pasted across the Internet starting on the Something Awful forum and the subreddit r/nosleep. The mass creation and
Film Cred •

Sundance Review: 'Eight for Silver'

Werewolf mythos is an intricate, expansive mass. There’s plenty of ways one becomes a werewolf, and the resulting lycanthropes come in all shapes and sizes: some are more man than beast, others are in a weird limbo between the two. One part of lore that manages to worm its way into the vast majority of werewolf media in one way or another is the creature’s guaranteed kryptonite— silver.

Sean Ellis’ Eight for Silver aims to take a more original crack at werewolf lore, while still keeping very tr
Film Cred •

Sundance Review: 'Cryptozoo'

By the time the United States inserted themselves into the Vietnam War in the 1960s, there was a marked shift in the attitude towards interventionism. Suddenly, the demographic of young adults that used to line up in droves to go to war were suddenly more interested in peace and harmony (and psychedelics). The dream was to have everyone hold hands and start planting the seeds for an idealized society. But, what if the seeds are planted in rancid soil?

The ideals of free love and utopias-gone-wr
Flip Screen •

REVIEW: ‘Flinch’ (2021) is Perhaps a Little Too Genre-Curious

“Flinch wants to be so many things…However in its search to be something exciting, it skips over what makes its inspirations work so well”

The revival of the mob movie began with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather in 1972. What separated Coppola’s work from its predecessors is his choice to characterize the mafia members as men still trying to keep their peace with God while dedicating their lives to devilish deeds. There was an added level of moral complexity that centered around the men’s r
Film Cred •

Review: Anything for Jackson

Exorcism and possession-based horror has been going strong for the better part of the last decade, spurred on by the success of cult classics like Paranormal Activity, The Conjuring, and Insidious. As a result of the mass production of such a specific sub-genre, films of this ilk get very formulaic very fast: an unsuspecting family accidentally invites an evil presence and has to remove it to survive. It’s a basic and easy to replicate set-up, guaranteeing a few good scares.

Anything for Jackso
Flip Screen •

REVIEW: ‘A Ghost Waits’ (2020) is a Heart-wrenching and Hilarious Horror Comedy

“A Ghost Waits creates a delicate tonal balance of humor, genuinely tender moments, and existential dread that never lets the audience escape the emotional turmoil of life and death.”

For the millenia that humans have inhabited Earth, there’ve been two pressing questions that haven’t been given concrete responses: what is our purpose while living and how does that translate after our deaths? Filmmakers have been tackling this question for as long as film’s been around. From Caspar the Friendly
Screen Queens •

NIGHTSTREAM ’20 — ‘May the Devil Take You Too’ is a Decent, Albeit Predictable Addition to the Haunted House Subgenre

Any casual horror fan knows it takes a lot to put a demon down for good. Even when the protagonists are convinced they’ve said the right incantation to send the devil spawn back to hell, somehow they always come back for a sequel. Such is the case with Timo Tjahjanto’s newest release May the Devil Take You Too — the sequel to his 2018 film May the Devil Take You. While Tjahjanto’s direction is as beautiful as ever and the visuals, especially the special effects, are just as terrifying as the fir
Screen Queens •

NIGHTSTREAM ’20 — ‘Boys From County Hell’ is a Funny, Yet Terrifying New Take on the Original Vampire Novel

From Nosferatu to What We Do in the Shadows, the influence of Bram Stoker’s Dracula still persists a little more than a century after its publishing. While the novel’s vampire is a Romanian nobleman and a good portion of the novel is set in Eastern Europe, legend says some inspiration for the titular bloodsucker lies closer to the author’s hometown. Boys from County Hell, the third feature from Irish director Chris Braugh, is a venture into the more homespun origins of Stoker’s seminal novel rif
Film Cred •

Nightstream Review: Frank & Zed

The art of puppetry is complex and time-consuming. While normally relegated to children’s programming, puppetry has the capacity to accomplish things that simply are not possible with live action. Puppets do have their moments in horror movies, mostly as some form of tiny villainous entity, but rarely are they the full focus of a feature rated above PG.

Enter Frank & Zed: the feature film debut of Jesse Blanchard and his studio Puppetcore Films. Their puppets may look straight out of Henson Stu
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Retrospectives

Queer Fear Film Festival •

Review: Killer Condom (1987)

The history of comics and contemporary queer culture have been long intertwined. Beyond newer entries like “Gender Queer” or the continuing legacy of queercoding in mainstream series like X-Men, archives of independent queer zines are littered with long-running comic strips from the likes of Alison Bechdel and Howard Cruse; these comics were bite-sized ways to communicate community in-jokes and condense aspects of gay and trans life into funny, somewhat informative anecdotes. During the AIDS cri
Queer Fear Film Festival •

Review: Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

There are three things certain in life: death, taxes, and absolutely devastating friend group drama that changes you as a person. Bodies Bodies Bodies dares to ask: how toxic can a messy queer friend group get? The film taps into the early-to-mid-twenties queer zeitgeist, to varying degrees of accuracy, through a twist on a classic murder mystery. The film’s focus on a very specific type of queer friend group feels refreshing to a degree, although mileage may vary on how willing one may be to pu
Queer Fear Film Festival •

Review: Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke (2021)

Safe, sane, and consensual: these are the last words anyone would possibly use to describe Eric LaRocca’s novella Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. Even without the objectively disgusting twist in the last act–which is largely responsible for the novella’s gristly, “endurance test” reputation– the under negotiated terms of the central dom/sub relationship creates enough tension for the reader to endure. However, the reduction of Things Have Gotten Worse to just its (rightfully) infam
Queer Fear Film Festival •

Review: The Lost Boys (1987)

Vampires, since their inception, have always been queercoded at minimum. Carmilla clearly, at least for 1876, centers on a U-Haul lesbian situationship gone wrong and several analyses of Dracula posit Bram Stoker used the titular count as a vessel for societal ills including homosexuality. So what exactly makes The Lost Boys such a long-standing classic queer horror classic? Despite the film largely sidestepping the romantic or gothic trappings of traditional vampire narratives, Joel Schumacher

Podcast Appearances

Buzzsprout •

EP 083: Challengers (2024) ft. Red Broadwell - The Rolling Tape

After originally being set to open the Venice International Film Festival in 2023 and a long delay for its release, we have finally made it to the official arrival of Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist. The tennis-centered sports relationship drama features Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach, who turned her husband into a champion. But to overcome a losing streak, he needs to face his ex-best friend and Tashi's ex-boyfriend.


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THE ROLLING TAPE •

EP 069: The Iron Claw (2023) ft. Red Broadwell

Based on the true story of the Von Erich family, director Sean Durkin dives into the 1980’s world of professional wrestling with The Iron Claw, his third feature film. Starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, and Harris Dickinson, we review the triumph and tragedy of the wrestling quartet and their domineering father and coach who pushes them to the biggest stage in the sport.


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