Toronto After Dark Picks!
At Biff Bam Pop, Karen Shute and the Gutter’s own Sachin Hingoo share their picks for the 2026 Toronto After Dark Film Festival! See them here.
Carol Goes to Fantastic Fest 2026!
There’s still some screenings today, but Fantastic Fest 2026 is over for me at least. I had a good festival this year. I didn’t get to watch all the films I hoped to, but it’s hard to be disappointed when I know I’ll see most of them eventually. […]
Fantastic Fest 2026: Terms & Conditions (USA, 2026)
Kev Dooley’sTerms & Conditions (USA, 2026) was the only short–and the last film–I watched at Fantastic Fest this year and it was a delight. I enjoy translation and summoning based-humor. Fun, genderqueer demons are my favorite demons. And I enjoy seeing ironic, comedic justice done to people who […]
Goopy Gore, Killer Kotatsu, and the End of the World: Three Films from Jôji Iida
Cyclops (1987) Japan made a good number of direct-to-video horror shorts in the ’80s, and Cyclops is one of the better ones, even though the story is almost incomprehensible. Takamori (Kazuhiro Sano) is obsessed with birth defects, specifically “cyclopia,” where the two eyes fuse together in the womb […]
Summer Fun Time Reading ’26
It’s not meteorological summer here in the Northern Hemisphere yet, but it’s June. It’s hot and my a/c is on. I have been sticky with sweat and sunscreen. I have had my first Arnold Palmer of the season.(And my first Dinah Shore—lemonade with seltzer). It is summer as […]
Exhuma: Demons of the Past
The past is very present in writer/director Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma (South Korea, 2024). There is familial and imperial history reaching back to World War II and even further. And if there are not precisely demons in the film, well, there are things that are close enough.
