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3/4
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Scream
(2022)
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Dustin Putman
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This year's SCREAM is a total blast; the decade-plus-long wait was well worth it.
Posted Jan 14, 2022
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3.5/4
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It: Chapter Two
(2019)
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Dustin Putman
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Sticks the landing & then some. This chance-taking, frightful, deeply poignant conclusion is a beautiful phantasmagoria that deepens what came before it while provocatively & rather astutely delving into decades-spanning reverberations of trauma & grief.
Posted Sep 06, 2019
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3/4
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Annabelle Comes Home
(2019)
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Dustin Putman
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A clever mood piece with all the requisite suspense one could hope for. "Annabelle Comes Home" works like gangbusters, a funhouse-style thriller with an emphasis on the fun.
Posted Jun 27, 2019
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3.5/4
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Midsommar
(2019)
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Dustin Putman
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A renaissance of the macabre, a cinematic symphony of lulling, twisted goodbyes and portentous shadows in the blistering light of day. Once it latches on, there's no breaking away.
Posted Jun 26, 2019
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2.5/4
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Ma
(2019)
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Dustin Putman
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A great performance can often elevate a stock plot, and that's precisely what happens with "Ma." Octavia Spencer is simply sensational in the title role.
Posted May 31, 2019
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2/4
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Godzilla: King of the Monsters
(2019)
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Dustin Putman
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Loses its way by trying to do too much and, consequently, not doing enough, gravely assuming loud noises, freneticism, and lots of crashing and bashing is all audiences need to get their money's worth.
Posted May 29, 2019
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2.5/4
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The Curse of La Llorona
(2019)
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Dustin Putman
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Captures the viewer's attention immediately. A taut, brooding, admittedly streamlined instrument of the playfully macabre.
Posted Apr 19, 2019
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2.5/4
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Pet Sematary
(2019)
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Dustin Putman
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Viciously poignant and dread-inducingly eerie. As far as inferior remakes go, it achieves a welcome unpredictability precious few manage.
Posted Apr 05, 2019
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3.5/4
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Us
(2019)
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Dustin Putman
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Duplicitous yet unsuspectingly human, "Us" is an expertly crafted cinematic hall of mirrors drenched in sinister, provocative portent.
Posted Mar 22, 2019
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3/4
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Happy Death Day 2U
(2019)
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Dustin Putman
|
"Happy Death Day 2U" is almost ridiculously fun, a snappy, thoughtful ride with the ability to have viewers uproariously laughing one minute, wiping away tears the next, and on the edge of their seats throughout.
Posted Feb 14, 2019
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3/4
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Escape Room
(2019)
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Dustin Putman
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"Escape Room" is going to either send the popularity of actual escape rooms into the stratosphere, or be the cause of their hasty demise because everyone will be too scared to try them; it's that effective.
Posted Jan 04, 2019
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3.5/4
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Suspiria
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
|
A sustained death rattle in dread-inducing cinematic form, a tale of thematically loaded suggestion and ominous fate, of deep-seated guilt and haunting premonition. Seeing it once isn't nearly enough.
Posted Nov 08, 2018
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3.5/4
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Halloween
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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A reverent, rousing, moody, marvelously suspenseful success, a new perennial holiday-horror mainstay. "Halloween" is the "Halloween" the world needs in 2018.
Posted Oct 17, 2018
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2.5/4
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Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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Involving, thoroughly atmospheric, and altogether satisfying. For 90 minutes it celebrates the season of the witch with celebratory imagination and mirthful energy to spare.
Posted Oct 12, 2018
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2.5/4
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The House With a Clock in Its Walls
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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Gateway horror full of punchy repartee and an empathetic soul. The blending of the spooky and sweet is infectious.
Posted Sep 19, 2018
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2/4
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The Nun
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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"The Nun" is handsomely shot and rich in atmosphere, but it cannot sustain itself on a darkly attractive veneer when there is little else about which to think or care.
Posted Sep 06, 2018
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3.5/4
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Ghost Stories
(2017)
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Dustin Putman
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A rattling scare show with a brain. Defies expectations by shattering conventions of the classic horror-anthology style.
Posted Aug 30, 2018
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2.5/4
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Pyewacket
(2017)
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Dustin Putman
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Takes an age-old proverb—"Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it"—and puts its own diabolical spin on it.
Posted Jul 26, 2018
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3/4
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In the Mouth of Madness
(1995)
|
Dustin Putman
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Chillingly blurs the lines between truth and fantasy, between logic and the malevolently illogical.
Posted Jul 24, 2018
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2/4
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Unfriended: Dark Web
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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Sure, the web can be a dangerous place if one is not careful, but "Unfriended: Dark Web" simply doesn't offer enough to think about or cling to as it wallows in slickly designed but thematically shallow cruelty.
Posted Jul 19, 2018
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3/4
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Traffik
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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Even if, in form, "Traffik" is little more than a crowd-pleasing B-movie with ultra-slick production values, it is an undeniably arresting one with a deeper purpose beyond its polished surface.
Posted Jul 09, 2018
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2/4
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The First Purge
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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As a whole, "The First Purge" is not without merit—even when it's less than eloquent in its delivery, at least it has something on its mind—but this is the first installment where signs of series fatigue are in evidence.
Posted Jul 03, 2018
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2.5/4
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The Midnight Man
(2016)
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Dustin Putman
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"The Midnight Man" isn't exactly deep and the film is not quite sure how to stick the landing, but as a trifle offering a stylish sheen and a handful of effective chills it proves more successful than not.
Posted Jun 07, 2018
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4/4
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Hereditary
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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To experience "Hereditary" is to sense something monumental being born, a quaking, foreboding, tragically humane tour de force penetrating itself squarely into the epicenter of darkness.
Posted Jun 07, 2018
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1/4
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Blumhouse's Truth or Dare
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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The truth is that it's a lazily helmed, cheap-feeling trifle with no true scares and an off-putting cynicism coursing through its veins. The dare is to sit through all 100 minutes and not walk away feeling like you've totally wasted your time.
Posted Apr 11, 2018
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3/4
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A Quiet Place
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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Deliciously coiled tension arrives briskly and often in "A Quiet Place," a near-silent thriller with a humdinger conceit. The unnerving terror threatening to boil to the surface at any moment is where the film most excels.
Posted Apr 05, 2018
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3/4
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Terrifier
(2016)
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Dustin Putman
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Taut, brutal, seasonally atmospheric, and filled with the kind of macabre tension that leaves one jittery even after the end credits have rolled.
Posted Apr 02, 2018
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3.5/4
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The Strangers: Prey at Night
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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Beautifully moody and evocatively sinister. A haunting, portentous and altogether electrifying dip into a maelstrom of raw-nerve terror and poignant humanity.
Posted Mar 08, 2018
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2.5/4
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Death Wish
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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Bloody and violent, but also carries with it an emotional enough core to make the controversial question it poses—Is vigilante justice ever morally warranted?—worth asking.
Posted Mar 02, 2018
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3.5/4
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Annihilation
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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Mesmerizing and thoroughly unshakeable. In spite of its title, "Annihilation" isn't just about the end of things, but also about the beginning of something else—an insinuation of profound and portentous consequence.
Posted Feb 22, 2018
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2/4
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The Cloverfield Paradox
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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"Cloverfield" and "10 Cloverfield Lane" left audiences thrilled and exhilarated. "The Cloverfield Paradox" will leave them scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders.
Posted Feb 08, 2018
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1.5/4
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Winchester
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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The Winchester Mystery House is an optimally spooky place in which to set a film, but not the plodding, decidedly exploitative one "Winchester" has turned out to be.
Posted Feb 02, 2018
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2/4
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Like Me
(2017)
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Dustin Putman
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Director Robert Mockler's technical ambitions are bold, but as a cautionary tale about real-world desensitization in a social-media age, it lacks any fresh insights.
Posted Jan 25, 2018
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2/4
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Insidious: The Last Key
(2018)
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Dustin Putman
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Joins "Chapter 2" and "Chapter 3" as faint shadows of the superior original. If "Insidious" continues to stand as a gem of the horror genre, its successors have never quite been able to capture that same macabre magic.
Posted Jan 05, 2018
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3/4
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Killing Ground
(2016)
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Dustin Putman
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"Killing Ground" is primal and nerve-shredding, a savvily constructed horror film of very real human monsters and innocent victims staring death in the face.
Posted Nov 13, 2017
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2.5/4
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Jigsaw
(2017)
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Dustin Putman
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As a one-off serving fans a nostalgic dose of a mid-2000s fad, it's just what the coroner ordered.
Posted Oct 27, 2017
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3/4
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The Snowman
(2017)
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Dustin Putman
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Even in its imperfections, "The Snowman" is unusual, fascinating, and warranting of closer consideration, a layered thriller with aesthetic beauty to spare and forlorn wisdom into both the mysteries and universalities of the human condition.
Posted Oct 26, 2017
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1/4
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Leatherface
(2017)
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Dustin Putman
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It may sound oxymoronic to criticize a movie like "Leatherface" for being depraved and mean-spirited, but this particular installment is ugly and distasteful in a way the previous seven entries were not.
Posted Oct 16, 2017
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3/4
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Happy Death Day
(2017)
|
Dustin Putman
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An involving, vivaciously written morality chiller. "Happy Death Day" is fun, plain and simple, injecting welcome devilish mirth into a genre—and a bleakly discordant 2017 landscape—when we need a little cathartic levity more than ever.
Posted Oct 11, 2017
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2.5/4
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The Devil's Candy
(2015)
|
Dustin Putman
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"The Devil's Candy" is smart genre filmmaking, a taut juggling of the menacing and the character-centric.
Posted Sep 20, 2017
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4/4
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mother!
(2017)
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Dustin Putman
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A maddening, nerve-shredding masterstroke of auteur ballsiness, "mother!" is writer-director Darren Aronofsky's jolting answer to cinematically capturing what it is like to be trapped in a nightmare.
Posted Sep 14, 2017
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3.5/4
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It
(2017)
|
Dustin Putman
|
Hits the ground running as a deliciously entertaining, legitimately shuddersome horror feature, but it excels as something altogether more profound, a cathartic fable constellating the twilight of childhood innocence.
Posted Sep 06, 2017
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2.5/4
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Annabelle: Creation
(2017)
|
Dustin Putman
|
This engaging, solidly freaky prequel is certainly at one with what has come before—and, more to the point, what chronologically comes after—delivering to fright-famished audiences exactly what they've come for.
Posted Aug 10, 2017
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2.5/4
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The Dark Tower
(2017)
|
Dustin Putman
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Works more often than not, a muscular yet appreciatively unshowy conjuring of spectacle, action, and crucial character beats all playing out on a multi-plane tableau melding reality with sinister fancy.
Posted Aug 03, 2017
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4/4
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A Ghost Story
(2017)
|
Dustin Putman
|
A cosmically connected masterpiece, deceptively simple in design yet awe-inspiring in its philosophical vastness.
Posted Jul 05, 2017
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2.5/4
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The Mummy
(2017)
|
Dustin Putman
|
When it sticks to thrills and spectacle and, you know, horror, there is unmistakably exciting potential in seeing the first glimpses of Universal's Dark Universe take shape.
Posted Jun 08, 2017
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2.5/4
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It Comes at Night
(2017)
|
Dustin Putman
|
Conjures an unsettling aura but does so at a deliberate tempo where its characters' emotional journey and insular world takes precedence over predictable genre tactics.
Posted Jun 07, 2017
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4/4
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The Blackcoat's Daughter
(2015)
|
Dustin Putman
|
A motion picture so intensely layered, so fastidiously detailed, so remarkably constructed, so suggestively atmospheric, and so emotionally resonant it earns its place as a modern work of art.
Posted Jun 06, 2017
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2.5/4
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Alien: Covenant
(2017)
|
Dustin Putman
|
Wildly uneven yet impossible to discount, continuing to confront big questions about the genesis of life and the mysteries of death.
Posted May 11, 2017
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3/4
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The Autopsy of Jane Doe
(2016)
|
Dustin Putman
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A horror-mystery of elegant craftsmanship and genuine unnerving fear.
Posted Apr 25, 2017
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