Tag: horror

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A still from Kane Parsons's "Backrooms," depicting Chiwetel Ejiofor in a brightly lit yellow room, as reviewed and analyzed by poet and film critic Ezekiel Yu for the automachination literary magazine.

I Think I Like It In Here: Reviewing Kane Parsons’s “Backrooms” (2026)

Kane Parsons’s “Backrooms” is the first mainstream film that I’m aware of to have been inspired by, of all things, a 4chan post. Chances are you already know about the Backrooms, especially if you’re Gen Z or a millennial or have spent any significant amount of time memeing on the Internet. If you don’t, then it’s a simple enough concept to explain. Imagine a dank, yellow-wallpapered office space, empty of all features save the blank angularity of walls and a vaguely unsettling openness. Now imagine that going on and on, forever.

It’s a weird alternate take on our reality, as if the universal software had glitched and copy-pasted this uncanny liminal space into its own pocket dimension. An anon on the original 4chan post (which featured on one of the site’s forums dedicated to paranormal phenomena), however, explains it more evocatively:

“If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in

“God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you”

—Anonymous, 4chan (May 13, 2019) […]

Film by Jessica Schneider
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An early scene from William Lustig's slasher film, "Maniac," showing a blonde woman screaming as she is about to be murdered, as reviewed by poet and novelist Jessica Schneider for the automachination literary magazine.

Bring Out the Knife: Reviewing William Lustig’s “Maniac” (1980)

If you were to watch a slasher film, would you be offended if the film delivered the gore it promised? Would you expect a deep, existential exploration of the human psyche, or would you just want to laugh and be entertained? I’m always amazed by what films make it onto the high-brow Criterion Channel, as it’s no stranger to ‘junk cinema’, but then again, one might say this is what gives the channel its charm.

William Lustig’s “Maniac” is currently being featured on the channel, and it seemed to offend critics in its day. Granted, while the ‘slasher’ film was still new to viewers then, Gene Siskel claimed to have walked out due to its violence, and Roger Ebert likewise called it ‘exploitative.’ Now, years later, as a genre all its own, would these critics have known what they were getting into? This is a slasher film, and what can one expect but to see people being slashed? Perhaps it does take years later to gain a perspective, because when I watched it, I found it funny.

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A shot from Coralie Fargeat's "The Substance", where Demi Moore's character is looking into the mirror.

Control Your Self: on Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” (2024)

If you could be younger, sleeker, and 10x more desirable, would you be? To be fair, it’s something of a non-question, because simply on its face, I feel that most of us would answer with a simple Yes. However, since reality is the way it is, and we must suffer its constraints, we also understand that beyond the impossibility of reversing time and age, even if some midnight daemon were to offer us this option, such things always come at a price. Wisdom, then, compels us to say No—but there is always, behind that No, the Yes which tickles our desires and pays little heed to the caution of wisdom, or the concept of constraint.

In Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024), the offer comes in the form of a futuristic serum that creates, from your body-stuff, a younger, more attractive duplicate. The only price, it seems, is a somewhat tedious process in which each version, as it lives out its allotted portion of days, must tend to the vegetative state of the other. Supplied are feeding tubes and thick needles. Time, again, is split between the forms. A certain level of, according to its makers, “respect” is required. And then you get to be beautiful. […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A stylized shot from Jonathan Glazer's "Under the Skin", depicting an alien (Scarlett Johansson), in profile, at the beach.

Through the Void: on Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” (2013)

Jonathan Glazer might not be the greatest director still active, but his filmography is surprisingly varied, considering how relatively few films he’s made compared to the other top dogs in the business. His third film, Under the Skin, further estranges itself from the others in terms of its subject matter, and while it may be his weakest film (particularly in light of its finale) it still bears an unmistakable Glazer imprint, and, like Birth, manages to carry itself most of the way through in spite of an outlandish premise.

But not so outlandish, really. We’ve seen alien sci-fi before, but what distinguishes Under the Skin from other such movies is its distinct style. There is an almost Kubrickian detachment from its genre elements, an arthouse stylization that mixes a strong sense of formalism with authentic guerilla filmmaking.

Now, I’ve never been the biggest Scarlett Johansson admirer, and that’s not because I think she’s a bad actor—on the contrary, I’ve only ever seen her be passable to good. Maybe it’s simply due to the fact that I watched a lot of those Marvel blockbusters and I’m used to her being utilized as kickass eye-candy and not much else. […]