Christmas movies are a staple of the holiday period, the movies designed to be watched with the family on the big day, films filled with whimsy, heart and holiday charm. Commonly characterised by comedies and dramas, films like Home Alone, Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life and Elf are the most common staples of the holiday season, or films focused on fantasy elements like the multiple adaptations of Dr Seuss’ The Grinch. The horror genre is not uncommon to be included in the holiday craze however, with one of the many prototype slasher films coming as a holiday feature, in the film Black Christmas, and horror-holiday features continue to this day with films like Krampus. One of the most famous horror features set in the Christmas season would come in 1984, with the release of Joe Dante’s Gremlins. The film was released in the height of Steven Speilberg’s producing career, where most of the big blockbusters of the 80s felt like Spielberg films even when they were not directed by him, with films like Back to the Future and Poltergeist falling under this category.
Gremlins follows Billy Peltzer, who receives the mysterious Gizmo as a pet, who spawns evil members of his kind when touched with water, unleashing mischievous creatures onto Billy’s hometown. Gremlins would soon become a holiday classic, blending the worlds of dark comedy and horror under a Christmastime setting, and inspired a trend of horror creatures causing chaos on the big screen, with films like Critters and Spookies following the release of Gremlins. Demand would be made by Warner Bros for Dante to make a sequel instantly after the success of the original film, and the sequel would arrive in 1990. Not a Christmas classic in any sense of the word, it is one of the most entertaining and complex sequels made from such a lucrative property. Gremlins: The New Batch follows the same basic plot of the original film, but with a grander scale, as Billy now works in a skyscraper in New York City, where the mogwai Gizmo resurfaces, and a fresh new breed of Gremlins wreak havoc in the skyscraper.
Dante was originally against the idea of making a sequel to his Christmas classic, believing that the original told a very open-and-close narrative, and he seen the production of the original film as very taxing for him. Work on the sequel would be shopped around afterwards, with ideas being formed around bringing the Gremlins to cities like Los Angeles or even Mars. Dante would return to production of the sequel when Warner Bros returned to him with the offer of having complete creative control over the film, and budget that was triple compared to the original film. The 80s and 90s were filled with sequels, with most being seen as near-remakes of the original film but going under the motto of bigger is better. Ivan Reitman’s 1989 sequel to Ghostbusters would retread many of the same character beats of the original, resetting the characters progress so they could come apart and come back together as the Ghostbusters once again, leaning into the family friendly angle that came from the cartoon produced at the time. Chris Columbus’ 1992 follow-up to holiday classic Home Alone would do much of the same, but instead swapping Kevin and his family, leaving him home alone abroad, but still having to deal with the same robbers. Even Spielberg would not be immune to just remaking his own film, with 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park coming alive with the central idea; what if there was a second island with dinosaurs on it. Dante seems to follow this trend of sequels, with the plot following the same basic concept of the original, but this time on a grander scale, but also heavily parodies sequels, and Hollywood itself.
Gremlins: The New Batch opens with a Looney Tunes animated short, directed by Chuck Jones, who had retired before being asked to return for these shorts. The opening short acts to confuse the audience, believing it’s an animated short attached to the film, and not actually part of the film, with Daffy Duck attempting to become the main character and requesting for the actual film to play once he fails to do so. The opening sets up the chaotic tone of the film, and how anarchic the film will get as it continues. The animated opening also helps set the stage for how animated and slapstick oriented the actual film becomes, as the film leaves its connection to horror behind to focus on the signature Gremlins causing chaos. A central plot thread leads to the Gremlins mutating into various forms, causing the Gremlins to become their own characters, most likely for merchandise but also to fall in line with its cartoonish aesthetic.
There is a lightning Gremlin, a female Gremlin and a smart Gremlin, who can speak full sentences. It is a rather goofy set of scenes that would not sit at home in the original feature. Satirical elements make up a large section of the Gremlins sequel, as the setting even satirises Trump Tower, with the character Daniel Clamp and his Clamp Tower clearly being a satirisation of billionaire Donald Trump. Spoofs of popular media appear all over the film, alongside spoofing cable television, which was on the rise in popularity at the time. Scenes include Gizmo wearing an outfit that resembles the lead character from the Rambo franchise, a Gremlin wearing the outfit owned by the Phantom of the Opera, or a bat Gremlin resembling the iconic Batman logo. Robert Prosky appears in the film as an actor portraying Grandpa Fred, a character from the popular show The Munsters, and the cast of the show Square One Television appear as themselves filming an episode of the show.
Meta comedy is all the rage in Hollywood nowadays, with films referencing popular culture and satirises their genres being common staple after the release of Scream in 1996, but it was certainly not commonplace in the time of the release of this Dante feature. The most meta moment comes when Dante stages the idea of the film breaking, as the Gremlins sabotage the projector and begin to engage in shadow puppets across the scene. Hulk Hogan makes a cameo appearance next as he threatens the troublemakers into allowing the film to continue to be shown, as the film continues. This scene was then reworked when coming to VHS and home media, where the scene is staged to make it look like the viewer’s VCR has been sabotaged, as the Gremlins are threatened by John Wayne instead, in a broadcast of the 1970 film Chisum, with actor Chad Everett providing voice over lines impersonating the late actor.
Hulk Hogan’s cameo in Gremlins: The New Batch
A scene also includes film critic Leonard Maltin, a critic who had heavily critiqued Dante’s original film, who retreads his thoughts on the original film inside the film’s sequel, before cutting off when being attacked by the Gremlins. There is another scene that acts as a direct commentary on the original film, namely around the rules placed on the Mogwai. The first film sets up rules, that you should not splash any water on the mogwai and you should not feed the mogwai after midnight, with this second rule leading to various fan theories. A scene in the sequel follows-up on this running ‘criticism’ of the first film, as Billy explains the rules to the staff of Clamp Tower, with the staff finding them absurd. The staff then ask the fan favourite question, whether a mogwai on a plane travelling across time zones would keep with the rule or break it, because it is always ‘midnight somewhere’.
Gremlins: The New Batch became a cult classic in the years after its release in 1990, grossing $42 million at the box office on a budget of $30-50 million, compared to the box office success of the first film, which sits at $212.9 million on a budget of only $11 million. With a higher budget, the film didn’t translate into a bigger box office haul, which put a pause on the franchise for nearly two decades. Dante would move on and find success with two more cartoon-focused features with 1998’s Small Soldiers, and 2003’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Dante remains focused that Gremlins 2 is his last film with the franchise, as Warner Bros has moved into the streaming era.
HBO Max series, Gremlins: Secret of the Mogwai
With the need of content for their HBO Max Streaming Service, Gremlins: Secret of the Mogwai would air on the service in 2023, with the second season, renamed to Gremlins: The Wild Bunch, airing between 2024 and 2025. The series acts as a prequel to the films, and also gaged the interest of the audience into the franchise. With the franchise appearing in various video games in the past couple of years, from crossover fighting game Multiversus, and the Lego Dimensions game, it was only time that the franchise would make a return. A Gremlins 3 is currently scheduled for 2027, directed by Chris Columbus, with Spielberg returning as producer, after being in development hell for decades. It can only hope that this film will live up to the hilarious heights of Gremlins: The New Batch, a film which broke the clear sequel roles, ushering in a new trend of meta filmmaking
Video game adaptations seem to be a new commodity for Hollywood in the wake of the oversaturation of the superhero feature, with video game adaptations moving from the joke of the industry to big moneymakers. The earliest live action adaptation of a video game for film would be the Super Mario Bros in 1993, a critically appalling movie, which hurt the video game film brand for decades. Followed by live action takes on franchises like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, the video game movie was received as one flop to the next. However, things have changed in the 2020s, with video game adaptations going as far to be nominated for the Emmys and winning big at the box office. Sonic the Hedgehog has just finished a trilogy of blockbuster family features, with a fourth on the way, and Mario returned to the big screen with an animated feature with Illumination, becoming the second highest grossing film of 2023. Television has lit up with adaptations of The Last of Us and Fallout and will soon be joined by a revival of Tomb Raider, and a reported Assassins Creed television series. The franchise potential of gaming brands that have already got a built-in fanbase has opened the door to new attempts at Resident Evil and Street Fighter coming in 2026, and sequels to the Mortal Kombat reboot and the animated Super Mario Bros film, both also coming in 2026. One of the biggest surprises in the current video game adaptation boom came in 2023 with the release of Five Nights at Freddys.
Based on the video game franchise of the same name, the games follow the player as a night security guard as they attempt to survive five nights in a closed down restaurant, which is the home to deadly living animatronics. The horror games are designed as point-and-click thrillers, with jumpscares as the biggest release of tension, eventually expanding to bigger free-roam style games when moved to consoles. The franchise is synonymous with the expanded lore that is hidden in supplemental material and in the games itself, building a life for itself on Youtube with theories circulating in the fanbase. Bringing this simple game with such complicated lore to the big screen was no easy task, and it released a film that was mixed in its critical response. Loved by fans but failing critically, the film however grossed an impressive $297.1 million on a $20 million dollar budget and marked itself as a new horror franchise for Blumhouse.
Piper Rubio, Josh Hutcherson and Elizabeth Lail in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
Two years later, and creator Scott Cawthon has crafted a follow-up, in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, which follows loosely the elements of the second game in the series. Set a year after the events of the previous film, the film follows the characters still reeling from the action taken place at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Vanessa, daughter of serial killer William Afton, is having nightmares about her past with her father, and Abby Schmidt attempts to regain her animatronic friends when contacted by them. However, what she doesn’t know is that there is a second Fazbear location, which holds a terrifying and secret enemy who is looking for vengeance.
Before exploring the film’s plot, specific attention must be paid to the shining light of both horror productions, and that is the animatronic suits created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop has been a longstanding effects and creature design location for Hollywood, crafting amazing suits for projects like the Muppets, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They crafted 6 amazing suits for the original Five Nights at Freddys, and now up to almost 16 for the film’s sequel. The production design has always been the part that impresses the most about these features, and the amount of variation in each animatronics design is impressive. The film features up to three different sets of animatronics, from the ones featured in the original, the withered and destroyed versions of that animatronics and the new Toy animatronics, who are designed to be looking shinier and newer. The designs look ripped straight out of the games, and are brimming with personality, fluid movement and detailed. Even the production design of a lot of the sets is a massive step up from the previous film, with the new location featured here feeling more lived in and resembling a real-world Chuck E.Cheese.
With the positives out of the way, it is not hard to see Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 as around the same quality as the original feature. Both films seem designed to put video game references and easter eggs before crafting an actual meaningful or engaging narrative, with both films falling flat in both their dramatic and horror moments. Fans of the games will find the films fun and entertaining, with the films designed to make those fans point and reminiscence of better uses of those elements or characters, but someone looking to feel engaged in a plot or feel scared will be missing out here. The previous feature lacked any serious scares and felt more like a children’s film that sometimes-featured scary animatronics, with the film leaning heavily on its antagonists being really victims and children. This film attempts to include some scares, but they are all boiled down to generic jumpscares, and the movie takes so long to even get to the horror that it is almost a shock when those horror attempts begin. There is a lack of tension in any of the scenes featuring the villains, and the new central villain, the Marionette, becomes a use to turn characters into possessed monsters who resemble more like members of the band KISS then something horrific.
For a franchise that is remotely more about child murder, decomposing and brutal possessed monsters, it lacks any actual brutal or unsettling imagery, with every kill featured in the film feeling like something that could be at home in a children’s movie. The camera cuts when it gets to the good bit, with the only actual kills being seen when the animatronics get destroyed or hurt. The movement of releasing the animatronic killers from their pizzeria homes to the actual real world leads to some of the most humorous moments of the year, which is certainly not the point the movie was aiming for.
Matthew Lillard in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
Character work does not seem to be the focus for screenwriter Scott Cawthon, who also created the game series, as the characters become the worst part of this film. Cawthon seems to want to be seen as a serious screenwriter, attempting to fill the film with drama, the characters are attempting to overcome their trauma, in a first act that feels slow and plodding in nature. The character work is just not strong enough to keep the boring and monotonous first act above water, with Vanessa, played by Elizabeth Lail, taking the focus as she attempts to remove herself from the trauma of her father. However, its one to thing to say that it is her arc throughout, and another thing to prove it when the film only pays attention to that character arc in a small amount of scenes, with the real role of that arc being so that they can include a dream sequence role for Matthew Lillard and set up another future villain.
Lillard feels wasted once again, appearing in only two scenes, and his Scream star Skeet Ulrich feels wasted himself, appearing in one scene that only serves to throw exposition at the viewer. Josh Hutcherson, who took on the protagonist role in the prior film, feels lost in the shuffle of this film, as his character is thrown to the background as support for Vanessa and her non-existent character journey. Abbey, played by Piper Rubio, gets a lot to do, but a lot which still boils down to replicating her role in the prior film, with the script asking you to suspend your disbelief in the smarts of a child, especially one that has already been through a life-and-death scenario such as this.
Skeet Ulrich in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
The biggest problem with the film is how aimless it feels, it’s a sequel that seems designed to set up sequels, by throwing as many video game characters in as possible, instead of telling its own contained story. The amount of sequel set up leaves the entire narrative feeling too convoluted for its own good, designed almost to confuse people who are not familiar with the games, and are not familiar with the already complicated lore that originates from there. The film seems to be building to a massive confrontation at the FazFest event taking place, but the film just ends far away from that choreographed end. Cliffhanger endings can leave you anticipating the next entry but also can leave a film feeling unfinished and unsatisfying, and the ending of this film just feels rushed and confusing. It almost feels like the film lacks a third act, completely stuck in the second act once the animatronics come into play. It is an ending that wants to set up the future, with the writer and Blumhouse high on their supply with the almost guaranteed box office success this film will have, allowing them to just produce an unsatisfying finale that can print out more sequels.
Barrack Obama was the president of the United States when Netflix’s biggest series, Stranger Things aired in 2016, and while the show has been airing its subsequent seasons, America has gone through a Donald Trump presidency, a Joe Biden presidency and now amid Trump’s second term. It has been nearly ten years since the show began, and this year marks the final season of the show. There has been much criticism facing the show around the long wait times between seasons, as streaming series become increasingly padded in release, and as the actors who were once age appropriate for their roles, have become twenty-year olds playing high schoolers. However, it is hard to downplay the power of Stranger Things, and the immense popularity it has had since its release in 2016, and its importance to Netflix. It has been reported that the combined production cost of the newest season is in the ballpark of $400-$480 million, around $50-$60 million per episode. Netflix, the streaming giant that is well known for cancelling shows only two or three seasons into their lifespans, has threw massive amounts of money into the series that has essentially became its backbone.
The service has big series, mainly all released off the back of Stranger Things, with shows like Squid Game, Wednesday and Bridgerton being streaming series giants, but nothing compared to the cultural phenomenon that Stranger Things was. When its first season aired, it became the third most streamed season on the service and come the third season the show was watched by 64 million households in the first month of release of the show’s third season. The show’s fourth season has entered the top 10 most streamed seasons on Netflix of all-time and is one of the few Netflix franchises that have evolved past just the series. The show has launched a set of comics and novels, including crossovers with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dungeons and Dragons, various mobile games and appearances in crossover games like Dead by Daylight and Fortnite, and a canon stage play prequel known as Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Mere weeks before the launch of the fifth season, an animated series was announced, set between the shows second and third season, proving the franchise is here to stay.
Set in 1983, the first season opens with the disappearance of Will Byers, as he leaves a Dungeons and Dragons game with his friends and disappears into the night. His friends find a strange girl when on the hunt for him and soon encounter a supernatural being linked to another world. Will’s mother believes she is communicating with her son and brings the local town sheriff in to investigate Hawkins Lab, as the child’s brother teams up with one of his brothers’ siblings to hunt the monster themselves. The Upside Down, the other world mentioned beforehand, and the characters become the centre piece of the show, as the second season explores a larger threat coming from the Upside Down, as Will becomes possessed by the being that calls that world home. The third season hosts the Mind Flayer, the larger threat, trying to become real, as the Russians attempt to use the Upside Down to win the Cold War. The fourth and fifth season expand the scope of the show, as the expanded cast attempt to put an end to the threat faced by the military, the Russians and the Upside Down, who has revealed a new threat in the form of Vecna.
Stranger Things came out during the height of the 2010’s 1980s nostalgia movement, a nostalgia that critics have pointed out had started since the 1990s but only became more prominent in the past decade. Stranger Things owes much of its success to the films, series and iconography that it draws upon from the 1980s. The biggest inspirations clearly come from the work of John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg, and the literary works of Stephen King. The first season acts intentionally as a merging of the narratives of ET: The Extraterrestrial and King’s Firestarter. Eleven, the mysterious little girl who becomes the focus of the series, acts as a stand-in for the pyrokinetic abilities of the character from King’s novel, hunted by the government for the abilities she holds. However, she also acts as a stand in for ET, being harboured by Mike in his house, and the season features a homage to ET raising the bikes in the air in that classic feature. The characters travelling around on bikes acts a homage to both Kings’ novels, IT and the Body, which would be turned into the film Stand By Me, to the point that Warner Bros’ future IT adaptations that came in 2017 and 2019, would in turn cast one of the central Stranger Things’ child actors for a character and feature a decade change in setting to the 80s to cash in on that nostalgia started by Stranger Things. Connection in the show comes from the characters’ love of pop culture, as the show acts as not just a homage to the pop culture icons it is based on, but a celebration of those cultural touchstones.
The central boys are friends because of their love for Dungeons and Dragons, which the show derives names from for its central antagonists, and Eleven finds love for Eggo Waffles, a brand which brings her close to Mike and eventually Sherriff Hopper, in season 2. The homages to 1980s pop culture only continues to become more prominent in the shows’ subsequent seasons, with the shows’ sophomore season featuring a clear callback to The Exorcist in the possession of Will Byers. The season’s finale features more than one Demogorgon, now known as Demodogs, as a translation of the movement between Alien and Aliens. Even the casting of Sean Astin acts as a popular culture callback, known for his roles in the Goonies and Lord of the Rings, and even a Halloween episode where the characters dress as the Ghostbusters. Season 3 featured a plot which called back to films like the Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as the Mind Flayer possessed large groups of people and reformed into a sinister blob-like creature.
A heavy-handed Russian character also clearly seemed to reference The Terminator. The show’s fourth season acts an homage to Nightmare on Elm Street, with a central antagonist that can attack the characters in your dreams and nightmares, feeding on fear and trauma, and even featuring an appearance from Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund in a small role. Character’s connections form from their love of pop culture, but also in their love of 80s music, which becomes a driving force of the show’s nostalgia. From a duet to The Never Ending Story to the immensely popular Kate Bush sequence from the show’s fourth season, the show homages the best in 80s music to a great degree.
Homages to the 80s famous features even comes at the cost sometimes of even understanding what those films were about, as the third seasons acts as a clear homage to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. That film featured zombies in a mall, deriving metaphoric commentary around the consumerism of the 80s and how the ones who mindlessly consume products of such are just the same as the zombies featured. The show’s third season derives inspiration from the film by featuring a mall as a central location, and a final battle featuring the monster being trapped in said mall. However, the inspiration stops there, as the show’s love for the past and love for consumerist goods hits an all-time high, featuring a mind-numbing sequence where Lucas advertises New Coke to the audience, an old rebrand for Coke that was brought back as a tie-in promotion for the season. Season three also moved the show from just referencing products from the past, to featuring products that Netflix would sell themselves inspired by the show, from Scoops Ahoy to the fourth season’s Surfer Boy Pizza. The show became bigger than it could have ever imagined to be at this point, moving from the small ‘indie’ series that was a mystery to Netflix’s blockbuster show which acted as a long-running film. This could be seen as early as the second season, with the show referring to its seasons as sequels, with its second season being labelled as Stranger Things 2.
What really made the show shine, however, was how it also turned its inspirations on its head and turned character archetypes on their head. The central bully character, Steve Harrington, played by Joe Keery, becomes a hero as the show progresses, and a fan favourite character alongside that. The character was designed to die but was rewritten once the creator’s fell in love with Keery as the character. The season two-character, Billy, would take on the form of the more stereotypical bully, but once becoming part of the narrative in season two, would be featured in a smaller redemption arc. Hopper, the town sheriff, would start the series as the drunken mess who does not believe in the supernatural happenings, but would be soon developed into a multi-layered character who starts as the cliché trope because of the loss of his daughter, but believes in the supernatural once having clear proof.
The characters became iconic and fuelled fan demand, as the fanbase of the show grew and grew. Fans would get into shipping wars, from demanding the inclusion of Byler, a fan-made relationship between characters Will and Mike, to an online campaign known as Justice for Barb, after the said character died in the first season. This campaign would influence a storyline in the second season, proving how engrained the fan base was in the creation of one of the 2010’s most popular shows. The central five child actors all seemed to strike a chord with audiences, as Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp deliver exceptional performances as young actors in the first season. The show follows the same route as the Harry Potter films, as the cast age with the show and begin to develop as actors as the show becomes more emotionally complex, with season two’s Sadie Sink joining the central child actors and proving herself a talent. David Harbour’s portrayal as Hopper becomes another backbone of the show as he balances a character who is warm but also intense, emotionally guarded but incredibly loyal. This character allowed the actor to finally break out and become the star he is now, starring in films in the Marvel universe and becoming a box office draw.
Winona Ryder, who would be a draw for the show’s nostalgia appeal, starring in 80s films like Beetlejuice, delivers an exceptional performance as a mother who is willing to do anything for her son. The characters are all brimming with charm, characterised by their connection to the audience through their own love for pop culture, but also in their dynamics with each other. Representation is also an important part of the show’s later season identity, with the exploration of Will’s coming out, and the introduction of Robin, a lesbian character who has become a fan favourite. Positive representation of LGBTQ characters in popular media is still hard to come by, and this is a very positive direction for the show. The show is immensely popular because the characters are distinct and memorable, but also flexible enough to move between the show’s varying tones.
The strength of the first season is that it is easily able to balance the various genres it is composed. It can pull of the Spielberg feeling, the wonder and awe that comes with referencing those films, but the show can also pull back into being a genuine tensely horror series. Comedy comes from the characters’ relationships and camaraderie, and never from the actual scenarios or the monsters. It can balance being essentially a creature feature at times, with a smart script that keeps the audience guessing with the mystery but also keeping it fun with its science-fiction elements. Later seasons would find it difficult to balance the various genres, with many critics pointing out how absurd season three was in going down the comedy angle, with the show swapping out the autumn leaves and low scale drama for neon lights and a summer blockbuster feel. The fourth season would embrace the blockbuster angle by splitting the characters up into smaller mini-movies, with each mini-narrative harbouring its own tone and genre that makes some hard to combine. The show’s strength is that it always harbours itself in realism, with all the extended world building that the show drags out, there is always a human element to the narrative.
When crafting the show, the Duffer Brothers based their concept off MKUltra, a US project in crafting medicine and drugs that could alter human behaviour, and the show would continue to explore its narrative as being a complex combination of the 80s nostalgia explored before, and the real-world issues happening at the time. 80s films were heavily influenced by the paranoia of the Cold War, with many of the films featuring either a distrust for the American government, with the government being the villains, or a foreign enemy. Stranger Things does both, the American government being after Eleven is a common part of each season, but the Russians become a antagonist from season three onwards. The supernatural elements of the fourth season become a conflict in the town because of the current events of the Satanic Panic. The panic came about with over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic Ritual Abuse in the 1980s, with major cases being linked to the blame of films, music and other popular culture. Season four’s newest character, Eddie, becomes linked to a series of murders that envelops him in the satanic panic movement, as he and the rest of the characters are blamed because of their involvement in Dungeons and Dragons.
Stranger Things is a cultural phenomenon that has survived a long period of time and remained able to be as popular as ever. It has nearly been ten years since the show first aired, and it is hard to argue against the fact that the show is probably the most famous show of the 2010s. It owes so much of its success to the films, music, television and games it takes ideas from, as its homages so many popular media, but it brings enough of its own twists that it stands on its own. The characters are memorable, becoming much as part of popular culture as the films they have based them on, and the mythology crafted for the show is rich enough to become important. 2025 marks the end of the show, but with promises of a spin-off series, a rumoured anime and the animated series premiering next year, the story is far from over.
Various characters throughout history have become almost mythological, so contained in culture that every generation will know about them, even if they have never read the original story they were formed from. From Dracula to Pinocchio, Sherlock Holmes to the Peter Pan, or one of the most adapted monsters of all time, Frankenstein’s Monster. The character originates from the 1818 gothic novel that shares the name with the character, also known as the Modern Prometheus, written by Mary Shelley, who published the novel anonymously, until attaching her name in a re-release in 1821. The novel follows the life of Victor Frankenstein; a scientist obsessed with conquering death and creating life. In the process of understanding life, the scientist brings together remnants of dismembered corpses and brings to life an amalgamated corpse that plagues him throughout his remaining life. The first film adaptation of the monster would come in 1910 by Edison Studios, a silent film which was lost to time until being found in the 1980s. After another silent era film in 1915, the Monster would come back to the big screen in his most famous cinematic endeavour, portrayed by Boris Karloff in 1931’s Universal Pictures’ Frankenstein.
Separating the events of the books between the film and its 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, the films took liberties with the material and turned the monster from horrific victim-turned villain, into a brainless monster who was more of a victim than an antagonist. 1939’s Son of Frankenstein would be the last time the most iconic version of the character would be portrayed by Boris Karloff, the franchise moving into crossovers with characters like Dracula, The Wolf Man and comedians Abbott and Costello. British versions of the character would come in the Hammer horror series, beginning with The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957, and ending with Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell in 1974. Future cinematic depictions of the monster would use both the Universal Pictures version and the Hammer Horror version as a basis, creating films based on film original characters like Igor or The Bride, or depicting the character as either a tragic hero or a mindless monster, far from the horror character from the text.
Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein
Kenneth Branagh’s film, known as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, would follow the success of Bram Stoker’ Dracula from Francis Ford Coppola, releasing in 1994. The title would be deceiving however, as the feature would differ incredibly from the novel, even with the author’s name attached. The original script for the feature was helmed by Frank Darabont, who would go on to direct features like The Shawshank Redemption, and a script that Guillermo Del Toro would describe as a ‘pretty much perfect’ script. Del Toro had made his interest in directing a Frankenstein adaptation known for decades, first stating in 2007 and was then announced to be part of a three-year picture deal with Universal Pictures, making the film alongside Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Slaughterhouse-Five and Drood. None of these films would come to fruition, with Del Toro’s Frankenstein film being paused once Universal Pictures transitioned their Universal Monsters characters into their Dark Universe shared universe. The project was finally revived in 2023, when Del Toro signed a multi-year deal with Netflix to release films on the service, and the success of his animated Pinocchio movie allowed him to get the funding to finally craft his dream feature. Beginning a limited theatrical release on October 17th 2025, and finally released on Netflix this November, Del Toro’s Frankenstein is released on the world after so many years in development.
Del Toro’s film opens in the same way that the novel opens, a ship gets stranded in the Arctic and the crew pick up a badly injured Victor Frankenstein, who is being hunted across the frozen wasteland by his creation. Once free of the monster briefly, the movie conveys its narrative through Victor telling the ship captain his past but also allows the film to separate the film in half. Separated as chapter titles, the film begins as Victor’s recounting of events and then switches to the Monster’s own perspective. This matches the film’s character exploration and its use of the unreliable narrator, Victor is a troubled character across this film, the film very heavily handily says at a certain point that he is the true monster, and the film conveys this by showing the differences once it switches perspectives. Victor sees the world one way, and some relationships one way, but they are revealed to be figments of his imagination once you get the Monster’s more streamlined and simplistic perspective. Del Toro conveys the narrative as more of a gothic tragedy, for both the monster and Victor, as he picks up the sympathetic portrayals of the monster from the Universal features.
Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth in Frankenstein
Jacob Elordi’s performance in this film will be the thing that will be talked about most after the film has been on Netflix for years, and it is only right. Elordi disappears into the role, proving himself an incredibly capable actor, and even more impressive when he was the second choice for the role after Andrew Garfield departed the role. There is an innocence to the character that he can portray, as he learns the world for the first time, and the movie makes you feel for him as he faces abuse at the hands of his creator. However, what the film also manages to balance that many versions are unable to, is making him scary as well. Elordi’s massive height allows him to be both a gentle giant but also a towering presence, a force of nature who becomes consumed by vengeance and loneliness. There is something so sad about the character, as he struggles with becoming the thing he is told he is, and how experiences life’s struggles, not its strengths.
Most of his abuse comes from his creator, who features in one of the film’s biggest changes from the novel, as Victor keeps the monster after his creation, rather than almost instantly leaving it to go on the run. This brief time with the monster becomes important, as his ego comes to full effect as he moves from protective father to an abuser, who repeats his father’s mistakes. Oscar Isaac brings a level of gravitas to this multi-faceted character, keeping the character from falling too far down the villain category. He is a tragic figure, who contains the film’s messages around nature versus nurture, the power of nature when trying to play God, and generational trauma. The film takes its time in building Victor as a character, with an incredibly slow-paced opening act which explores his childhood and how he brings the monster alive, enough time to give the character enough backstory to make him sympathetic. Isaac can play much with the ego of the character, and his obsession with science and controlling life and death, coming from a personal history with death.
Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein
His trauma from being abused by his father is passed down to the monster, as the film makes you sympathise with both characters for their shared trauma and the constantly continuing cycle of hurting the other. Elordi’s Monster doesn’t want to feel alone, shown in a translation of a scene from the book, where he demands Victor to make him a bride, which comes across less threatening and more desperate in this version. The refusal to give him a companion is the final nail in the coffin for him, as his creator refuses to allow him to live and feel happy, resorting instead to succumb to his monstrous appearance and inflict the pain he also faced. This slow-paced opening allows great exploration into some of the minor characters, with a specific memorable performance coming from Christoph Waltz. Mia Goth’s role as Victor’s brother’s fiancée, and as the romantic connection for Victor, is a slightly underdeveloped part of the narrative, but later narrative reveals showcase the purpose for this. Her tenderest moments come from her interactions with the Monster, the one character who is not scared of his appearance, her role seems to bring a level of humanity to the monster, tender moments that bring warmth to a very serious film.
The film feels like almost a culmination of Del Toro’s career so far, from his early work with Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone, to more contemporary work like Pan’s Labyrinth and Crimson Peak, Frankenstein feels like all the elements of those features put on as a final display. Del Toro feels drawn to monsters throughout his films, with films like The Shape of Water showcasing the beauty and humanity of what is seen as monstrous, and the tragic tale of Frankenstein’s Monster just climaxes that draw. His films have always had a level of gothic backdrops to them, his use of shadows and muted colours have always been a draw, and his look at fantastical technological in a world grounded in moody backdrops. The locations in Frankenstein invoke the gothic backdrops of Crimson Peaks and reflect the visual look of Hammer Horror and Universal Monsters takes on the characters. The production design of the film is immensely impressive, with fantastic costuming and an incredible attention to detail in the use of Mia Goth’s character in makeup. Del Toro has always had a great control over the camera, and expresses great confidence in direction, and paired with the excellent cinematography by Dan Laustsen, the film looks fantastic. The final sequences where the film finally shows how the Monster and Victor came to the arctic showcase some of the best-looking visuals across the film, as the frozen landscape showcases their slow chase and the sun shines down on them in beautiful shots.
After so many years in development, it could have been easy for Del Toro to deliver something messy and disjointed with all the versions that probably existed over the years, but he has instead delivered a film that feels like a culmination of his work. Frankenstein is a moving piece of cinema that looks at generational trauma, with all the gothic and drama elements pulled from Mary Shelley’s original story. There are clear changes made across the film from the text, but they are all in service of a grand story, a story which still feels the same in its soul as the original text. Jacob Elordi proves himself an incredible talent here and will be the most memorable part of this film for sure.
Director Chris Stuckmann started his career in the film industry by being one of the earliest film reviewers on video-sharing website, Youtube. Starting on the website in 2009, the film critic has gained over 2 million subscribers and over 779 million views, marking him as one of the biggest online critics. His career on the website has allowed him to focus on other big projects, from releasing two film-focused books and directing the short film, Auditorium 6, in 2017. In a controversial video released in 2021, Stuckmann revealed that he would be cutting down on his film-reviewing content, and he would stop reviewing films that he did not enjoy. His content would transform instead into informative videos on filmmaking and the work behind the camera, and his reviews to something more positive, focused on what he likes about new releases. This change was marked with the news of the film reviewer making the jump to becoming a full-fledged director, with Stuckmann stating it would not be fair to be a filmmaker who criticised other filmmakers. With the dawn of Youtube, there was bound to be a large movement of Youtubers making their way onto the big screen, with mixed success, from 2010’s Fred: The Movie and its sequels, to 2015’s Smosh: The Movie. In the years following however, there has been a clear movement of Youtubers making their way behind the camera rather than in-front, and to large success. From David F. Sandberg being able to get a career making films for Warner Bros, to Danny and Michael Philippou moving from their youtube channel RackaRacka to big screen horror features like 2022’s Talk To Me and 2025’s Bring Her Back, Youtube filmmakers are becoming common place, and it is only more impressive that Stuckmann could make the jump himself.
This film debut would come in the form of horror feature Shelby Oaks, which has finally released in cinemas this Halloween. Initially an independent feature, which was crowdfunded by Kickstarter, the film drew in a massive amount of support, becoming the most-funded horror film ever placed on Kickstarter. Its world premiere was held in 2024, at the 28th Fantasia International Film Festival, where horror director Mike Flanagan would come onboard as executive producer, and, after another screening, film distribution and producer company Neon would come onboard and would fund substantial reshoots. The film serves as a continuation to a set of short films Stuckmann released, focusing on an online paranormal investigation team known as the Paranormal Paranoids. Shelby Oaks sees a woman searching for her sister, who went missing during the production of an episode of the Paranormal Paranoids, when investigating the abandoned town that shares the film’s title.
Sarah Durn in Shelby Oaks
Stuckmann’s debut starts out with great promise, pre-title drops, the first 30 minutes set a mood and a central intriguing mystery that the rest of the film can very clearly not deliver upon through its full runtime. The film has been advertised as a found-footage feature, and was labelled as so when initially announced, and the first act delivers on that, but once the title sequence drops, the real film begins. The best moments of the film are the eerie and creepy found footage of the Youtube ghost-hunters, as they encounter a sinister threat. Stuckmann delivers excellent scares which sometimes fall back on jumpscares but are more commonly based around mood and tension. Exposition is conveyed in a mockumentary style, which delivers on all the backstory required and setting up a mystery that engages the viewer. Found footage has always been a effective new horror sub-genre, conveying a realism that some horror features lack, and the simplicity of the scares help the terror feel real and palpable.
This opening good will only take a movie so far however, as the movie transitions into becoming a standard horror feature that stumbles and falls in attempting to answer its mysteries. Stuckmann’s film seems more concerned with building horror and tension, and showing off his impressive directorial talents, and lacks clear focus on delivering worthwhile characters or dialogue. Camille Sullivan does what she can with a script that doesn’t seem to concern itself with her or her character, as the downfall of her relationship with her character’s husband seems to just rely on cliches rather than to build anything worthwhile or dramatic. Cliches plague the second half of Shelby Oaks, from a sequence of the main character going the library to research the plot, a husband that does not believe the central supernatural events, or a scene with Keith David, who only serves to be a clairvoyant character who hands the plot reveals to the main character and the audience.
Keith David in Shelby Oaks
The film is clearly inspired by various other horror features, and uses various scenes, plotlines and scares as blueprints to transport over. It feels like a disjointed combination of Rosemary’s Baby, Hereditary and The Blair Witch Project in particular. Even the use of an online campaign where the advertisers are pretending that the events of the film are true and delivering more footage and theories on a website harkens back to the marketing campaign for The Blair Witch Project. The central tagline of ‘What Happened to Riley Brennan’, also seems to share a lot in common technically to ‘Who Killed Laura Palmer’ from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks series. These inspirations plague that second half of the film and leave the film feeling predictable and unoriginal, and its only hurt more by an underwhelming finale that gives the film’s central mystery out on a whimper. As a directorial debut, the film feels like an entertaining B-movie that wants to be higher, but the third act strives for something grander and more metaphorical, that the film has not earned at all. It feels A24-lite, but in a way that is incredibly unsatisfying, and seems to be engaging with Stuckmann’s time as a Jehovah Witness during his youth, but this is not developed at all.
Shelby Oaks is a film fighting against itself, between an original mockumentary with clear tension and emotions, to a derivative and cliché supernatural feature with worrying special effects and a mystery that feels disjointed and not thought out at all. Things happen for seemingly no reason, as the plot races to the finish line with no time to stop and breathe, the only lights to be shown being the found footage sequences that still rear their head in the second half. The film is a good showcase of Stuckmann’s directorial talents, and it can only be hoped that he can continue after this, maybe with a screenwriter on hand to work on a script that can match his eye for visuals.
The Monsterverse has been a staple of the American box office in the last decade, with 2021’s Godzilla Vs Kong being one of the few big budget features to make a massive profit during the COVID pandemic. Produced by Legendary Pictures and co-financed and distributed by Warner Bros Pictures, the franchise has been one of the only major cinematic universes that have been successful in the wake of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the franchise uniting the worlds of Godzilla and King Kong. Across five feature films, namely 2014’s Godzilla, 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, 2019’s Godzilla: King of The Monsters, Godzilla Vs Kong and 2024’s Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, and two series, the film has grossed $2.525 billion at the worldwide box office, and will only continue to grow, with Godzilla X Kong: Supernova releasing in 2027. Known for its cinematic kaiju fights, the focus of the franchise is less on characters and drama, but more the conflicts between the massive monsters that call the franchise home. The character of King Kong belongs to Universal Pictures, first appearing as a novelization of the 1933 film that shared the character’s name, and appearing across various feature films, with remakes hitting the big screen in 1976 and 2005. Kong’s franchise was a relatively simple one and is easily reinvented for the Monsterverse to turn the character into a fighting monster. Godzilla, on the other hand, was most associated with the entire genre of Kaiju features, with one prior American film, Roland Emmerich’s 1998 film sharing the character’s name.
33 films have been made for the character across his time as a staple of Japanese cinema, released by the Toho company, as the monster battles various other kaiju’s, from King Ghidorah to Mothra, Rhodan to MechaGodzilla, the focus of the franchise has always been on the clash of giant monsters and the destruction that comes from that action. The initial concept of the clash between Godzilla and King Kong even comes from the initial Japanese Godzilla features, with 1962’s King Kong Vs Godzilla introducing the characters to one another, but also really reinforcing the routine of each Godzilla feature introducing a new monster for the titular character to face. The franchise is rooted in its own complex mythology, with films like 1968’s Destroy All Monsters acting as a crossover between various monsters featured throughout the franchise, and spinoff franchises that spawned from the franchise.
Godzilla and Kong clash in the American Monsterverse
However, there is more to the Japanese productions of Godzilla then just climatic monster fights, the franchise is rooted in Japanese political and social turmoil. As easily Japan’s biggest film franchise, the films consistently reflect the period they are made in, reflecting Japanese life and the struggles that are happening socially and politically. The initial Godzilla feature, released in 1954, set the template for the franchise, following the reactions by the people and government of Japan as they attempt to take down a massive monster, a monster who is linked to the atomic past of the country and which triggers the fears of a potential nuclear holocaust. The conflict of World War II had not been kind to Japanese way of life, with the country joining the Axis powers, alongside Italy and Germany, to fight against the Allies. Though successful through a series of attacks, from the invasion of the Republic of China to the Military occupation of French Indochina, they also started the Pacific War, the biggest battle of the war after Japanese forces attacked multiple American and British positions in the Pacific.
Their successes would only lead to embarrassing defeats however, with the world power taking major losses in the Battle of Midway and facing the Soviet Union when they also declared war. The biggest loss would come on the 6th and 9th August 1945, when Japan was hit by two atomic bombs, over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, sent by the American armed forces, which killed between 150,000 to 246,000 people, mainly civilians. Only six days after the dropping of the second bomb, Japan would surrender to the Allies, and an American occupation of the country would begin, starting on September 2nd, 1945, and ending with the Treaty of San Francisco on April 28th, 1952. Godzilla would come out in the wake of all these events, only two years after America had left their posts in the occupation and would be seen as a reflection of Japan’s role in this nuclear conflict, and the potential annihilation that could come from continued nuclear tests.
The remains of Hiroshima
The film opens with Godzilla destroying a Japanese vessel, a reflection of the most recent nuclear disaster that had happened in the country. Months before the film was made, in March of the same year, Japanese vessel Daigo Fukuryu Maru, was showered with radioactive fallout from the testing of the US’ Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb, at the nearby station of Bikini Atoll. This event led to the fear of Japan’s fish being contaminated by the nuclear fallout, with each member of the fishing crew being sickened, and one dead, and the boat’s catch becoming contaminated with radiation. This led to the emergence of a still-enduring anti-nuclear movement, which eventually became institutionalised as the Japan council against Atomic and Hydrogen bombs. Godzilla being a monster that is both mutated from nuclear bombs, and hails from the sea reflects this fear tremendously. The only way the characters can defeat Godzilla, in the end, is through the creation of the Oxygen Destroyer, a weapon that disintegrates oxygen atoms and causes victims to asphyxiate, and eventually dissolve, an item which is tested out in many horrifying scenes on fish. The item is dropped in the water, with its creator going with it to stop any attempt of it becoming a weapon of mass destruction, another weapon used on the aquatic life that had only just recovered from atomic testing. It is a grim ending, showcasing the only way to stop the atomic monster is to use another weapon that could cause as much pain and destruction.
Godzilla, who would soon become a character akin to a superhero in the initial 70s stretches of features, becoming a protector of the innocent in child-friendly films like Son of Godzilla and All Monsters Attack, is shown as a frightening monster across the initial feature. His first actual appearance in the film, he is contained in darkness, with only his reign of terror being visible until his actual reveal later in the film. For a franchise that would soon be centred around action set pieces featuring people in costumes, the first film is incredibly bleak and contemplative. Most of the scenes feature people in boardrooms discussing how to stop the monster, or people travelling by town as they discuss the atomic past faced by the country. The film’s metaphors are laid out in dialogue, labelled out clearly in a thoughtfully manner which is both entertaining to view but also saddening and horrifying. A staple of Godzilla is used briefly in the film, the Atomic Breath, which would soon become an all-destroying beam which would be used as a killing blow to any other monster, is depicted as a beam which sets ablaze anything it encounters, smog filling the air.
After an attack on Tokyo, the hospitals are crowded with the maimed and the dead, many suffering from radiation sickness. Though seen as a being of pure destruction, nature’s attempt to punish man’s creation of the atomic bomb, the shared history of atomic destruction would cause Japanese viewers to feel sympathy for the terrifying monster. When being dubbed for the American release, 1956’s Godzilla, King of the Monsters, which featured new footage of Raymond Burr as an American reporter covering the events of the original film, removed the themes from the film in the dubbing. Though both featuring connections to Japan and atomic testing in their opening sequences, both 1998 and 2014 American Godzilla movies would quickly move the monster into America and forget these connections after. The 2014 film even moves the monster instead into being a prehistoric predator, a so-called ‘Titan’ which exists to battle to become nature’s champion. Godzilla’s connection to Japanese culture does not translate to American audiences, and once removed from so, becomes a generic monster to do battle with others.
Japanese Godzilla sequels would have a hard time trying to balance the monster fighting, which would be introduced instantly in the film’s sequel, 1955’s Godzilla Raids Again, and the political messaging that the initial film was known for. As mentioned previously, some films would focus more heavily on the fights, like 1965’s Invasion of the Astro Monster, or would be more comedy and family-friendly, like 1967’s Son of Godzilla. Some films, however, continue and develop more onto the themes of the original film. 1964’s Mothra Vs Godzilla, which unites the two monsters after starring in separate entries, 1961’s Mothra introducing that so called character, sees an exploration into greed and corruption. These themes, alongside military distrust and evil corporations would become a staple of the sequels, as the film involves Mothra’s egg being contained by a company in Japan. Rather than trying to save the egg itself, the film’s leads come to Mothra and ask for more, ask for its help in stopping Godzilla, using the egg as a bargaining chip. Mothra, who soon becomes more empathetic and willing to forgive, has a clear distrust for humanity after the atomic testing on its home, Infant Island, which left it as an atomic wasteland.
Mothra takes down Godzilla
1971’s Godzilla Vs Hedorah sees the lead monster coming into conflict with a being made from pollution, reflecting the movement of fear for the country from one focused around nuclear disaster to one based around environmental fears of pollution. The film features some of the most graphic deaths in the series, as characters succumb to poisoning, their bodies dissolving when encountering the monstrous villain, and even sees Godzilla becoming burned and disfigured. Pollution is at the heart of the film’s central theming, but the victims becoming burned into becoming skeletons connects it heavily to the original atomic theming.
1984 and 1998 would see the franchise rebooted, both ignoring all sequels to the original film and being a direct sequel to that feature, with The Return of Godzilla and Godzilla 2000: Millenium respectively returning Godzilla to his force of nature identity. However, both rebooted series would return Godzilla to his heroic demeanour and to Kaiju fights soon after. 2016’s Shin Godzilla served as an update for the film’s metaphorical themes, transporting the character’s connection to the atomic bombings featured in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to being inspired by the tragedies of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The film focused on Japanese politicians attempting to confront the foreign foe, with the film criticising the Japanese government, being unable to confront the threat as they fight themselves, reflecting the countries’ biggest threat as being from inside, rather than out. The most recent Godzilla feature, 2023’s Godzilla Minus One, works incredibly well as a modern reinterpretation of the original feature, exploring similar themes as that feature but through a directly post-war lens.
The Destruction of Godzilla Minus One
Godzilla is depicted in his most frightening form, with an atomic blast which can level a city instantly, destruction that has never looked more like an atomic bomb than ever before. Released the same year as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which explored the creation of the atomic bomb, the movies act as a conversation between each other, one focused around America’s involvement in the creation of such a weapon, and Japan’s exploration of the effects that the bomb had on everyday lives. The film’s newest theme focuses on its protagonist, who served as a kamikaze pilot during the war, who is looked down upon by his community because of his inability to die in conflict and do his role.
Bushido was a central ideal in Japanese way of life, connected to the samurai period in the country, and being reinforced as the honour to die in battle during the second World War. The lead of Godzilla Minus One is suicidal, wanting to die in battle fighting Godzilla and bring honour back to his name, as he faces the conflict between wanting to live and die. The film is a clear critique of the government’s argument that persuaded many to take their life during the second World War, using Godzilla once again to hit home a sensitive topic for the people of Japan.
All in all, Godzilla is one of Japan’s biggest touchstones, a cinematic franchise that is so deeply rooted in the social and political conflicts that have faced the country across the years. The initial feature rooted itself in the nuclear fallout of the second world war, using Godzilla as a metaphor for the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Subsequent follow-ups would continue to develop on these themes, alongside explorations into bushido, pollution and the earthquake-tsunami that occurred in 2011. The character has become one of the countries’ biggest exports, appearing in a series of films by Legendary Pictures from 2014 to the present day, a series which loses its connection to the film’s thematic roots, and becomes boiled down to monster fights. This is simply because Godzilla is Japan, and removing the monster from so loosens his impact.
Romero behind the scenes of Night of the Living Dead
Horror has always been linked to challenging societal norms, applying commentary on the unknown, whether its topics around gender, race, sexuality and any other of society’s taboos. Unlike any other film genre, the genre is linked to the fear of the unknown, the return of the repressed, whether that’s the return of a zombie from the grave or confronting societies repressed notions of sexuality. 1985’s Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge has been analysed as metaphorically focused on gay repression, 2000’s Ginger Snaps uses the werewolf transformation as a metaphor for puberty, and 2008’s mockumentary feature Lake Mungo uses its ghost story as an exploration around grief. These are all prime examples of horror being metaphor, but no director can summarise this more through his work, then George A. Romero and his Living Dead franchise. Made up of five central features, the films would be a staple in the zombie sub-genre, creating the commonly accepted version of the monster for modern audiences. His initial feature, 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, became a metaphor for racism in complete accident, recontextualised in its time and through its central casting, when Romero had no plans to make the film metaphorically about anything at all.
The positive reaction to this aspect of his debut feature led to the original Trilogy of the Dead being heavily focused around political and social commentary, 1978’s Dawn of the Dead and 1985’s Day of the Dead being clearer with its commentary, built into the narrative rather than being analysed retrospectively. Twenty years later, the franchise would continue with 2005’s Land of the Dead, the film continuing the franchise’s lack of continuity, joined together by the similar exploration into a group of survivors trying to thrive in a zombie infested America. Land of the Dead updates the franchise to the modern day, making the use of phones, and reflected Romero’s future with the franchise, following with 2007’s Diary of the Dead and 2009’s Survival of the Dead, which would both tackle modern commentary through the lens of the zombie feature. Survival of the Dead would be the final feature of the late director, dying in 2017 at the age of 77, during pre-production on his newest feature in the franchise, but the director left behind a compelling legacy of social commentary in the zombie feature.
Duane Jones and Judith O’Dea in Night of the Living Dead
The zombie feature found prominence with the release of the 1932 feature, White Zombie, with the original concept of the zombie focusing on African voodoos, capitalising on a race angle as African characters being villains, turning white characters into mind-controlled puppets. It was rooted in America’s obsession with African mysticism, and that concept of the zombie would not change until Night of the Living Dead. Made on a miniscule budget and shot in black and white to save costs, the film never actually refers to the flesh-eaters as zombies, rather as ‘ghouls. The film set up the precedent of the creatures rising from the grave, their craving for brans, infecting others and the slow-walking nature of their movement, with the film’s implied backstory for the infection coming from radiation from a fallen satellite. The casting of African American actor Duane Jones, who had been cast by Romero because he was the best actor for the best part and not because of any racial undertones for the plot, moved the narrative into one being composed of a racial angle. Prominent black characters in mainstream Hollywood were increasingly uncommon, so the first major black protagonist in a horror feature being gunned down alongside the monsters of the film by a horde of white men seems to have major political meaning. Critics have long compared the death of Jones’ Ben to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and compared the ending to the multiple African American causalities of the civil rights movement.
Ben is shot down in the movies’ conclusion, as the white hunters mop up the remaining zombies left after morning rises, and confuse him as a zombie. Ben represents a racial other, joined forth with the zombies as a racial threat, a victim of white America. His presence in the film comes as a threat to the white suburban home, as he finds solace in what he believes is an abandoned home, only to come face to face with a father, child and mother. The conflict of the movie comes from the butting heads between Ben and the father, as Ben takes the upper hand and the father’s insistence to not listen costs his family their lives. The white family feels threatened by a black man in their home, the film aligning him more with the zombies outside, the family seeing him as mindless threat just like the undead. Even without meaning to, the film draws incredibly clear racial messaging, confronting headlong into the black experience during the civil rights movement.
The credits roll in 1978’s Dawn of the Dead by showing the zombies walking around aimlessly the mall that the central characters of the film once called sanctuary, multiple still shots showing the zombies acting as mindless as the shoppers that once roamed those very aisles. Dawn of the Dead very much tackles the concept of consumerism head on; it’s a film where Romero realised, he could imbue his movies with specific actual messaging that would not be forced onto the film after release. In the present day, shopping malls are very uncommon, in a world where most shopping can be done on your phone, but during the time of release, shopping malls were a societal norm which represented the capital of capitalist spending. Most of the runtime of the film takes place in the very shopping malls that represent America’s interest in consumerism, as the characters find solace and happiness in meaningless items, walking around in new clothes and taking part in various montages as they move from shop to shop. The items mean nothing in an apocalypse, and once the zombies descend into the building, stacked outside like an army of shoppers waiting for the doors to open, the items become just part of their fight for survival, no different to how they were trying to survive beforehand.
Shot in colour and with a larger budget than his previous feature, Romero uses the movement in the zombie genre since the release of his previous feature to highlight the impressive zombie makeup featured here. The zombies all wear distinct outfits, matching the professions that they had when they were alive, less a horde of similar monsters and more now a group of victims that resemble the humans that kill them. Even zombie children are included, who our protagonists have a moment of hesitation for, wondering if they will kill a child. The outfits make them blend into the shopping districts, they are one in the same as the groups that have used this as their home, as brainless as the people who make shopping and commercial goods part of their need to survive. The protagonists can escape, using a helicopter on the roof, but the zombies are not so lucky, stuck wandering the halls of a dead mall, a mall which has no monetary value in a world which does not run on money and spending. The zombies are victims in Romero’s mind, forced to repeat their meaningless monetary existence in both their life and death.
Sherman Howard in Day of the Dead
Dawn of the Dead’s opening sees a group of media agents trying to downplay the current zombie crisis, showcasing the media hiding the truth from the public as a breakdown in information and communication leads to it all going array. Breakdowns in communication and distrust of governmental bodies makes up a major focus of Day of the Dead’s narrative thrust. The film is contained to a small underground bunker in Florida, where a group of survivors, made up of scientists and military personnel must decide how to continue society after the zombie virus has got even worse. Romero mentioned in an interview after the release of Dawn of the Dead, that he saw the zombies as sympathetic characters, as the real victims of the entire conflict, and that’s how this movie depicts the characters. In the final decade of the Cold War, the movie released during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, a period where the president led America to becoming more consumerist but also helped private owned businesses and struggled to respond to the threat of AIDS. It was a period which was uncertain for the American citizen, and Romero’s feature reflects that, showcasing the worst of the military personnel and the scientists that should be trying to stop this zombie threat. Zombie media frequently boils down to narratives which reveal that humanity is the real villain, even with all the zombies featured, it is the basis of every season of The Walking Dead series, and Romero seems to be where this factor began. The characters bicker at each other, turn on each other constantly and the scientists are taking part in inhuman tests on zombies, so bad that the lead scientist is nicknamed ‘Frankenstein’.
With zombies becoming more part of their regular everyday life, the zombies have moved from horrific to a part of life that the military personnel enjoy, loving the sport of dispatching the zombies one by one. They are sexist to the female lead, violent and Joseph Pilato’s performance as Henry Rhodes leads him feeling more mentally insane than trustworthy military man. A film needs a protagonist then, and the only way the film can keep up with this need is making the zombies the protagonists, and specifically a domesticated zombie, known as Bub. In a world where humanity has been taken over by flesh-eating zombies, the only actual human thing in the bunker is one of the zombies, as the deaths of the various military personnel becomes cathartic to the audience. The zombies are contained to their nature, they cant help being monstrous, while the humans decide to be cruel, it instinctively reflects the feelings of unease and distrust in America, when the monster is the hero, how does that reflect on who is meant to be the good guys.
Eugene Clark in Land of the Dead
Sympathy for the zombies becomes the backbone of Romero’s return to the zombie genre, in Land of the Dead. The zombie sub-genre was back, popular at the box office once again, after the success of 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead, and these successes allowed Romero the chance to make another zombie feature. Land of the Dead builds on various aspects of Day of the Dead and contains elements that were scrapped from that film because of budget restraints. Years removed from the initial zombie outbreak, humanity survives in city-states across North America, where the rich live in high rises and in safety, and the poor live in the outskirts of the guarded cities, forced to survive in squalor. Consumerist goods become a means to an end in this new society, used by the paramilitary personnel to barter for money, housing and favours with the leader of the city, Paul Kaufman. The poor are given worse goods when the paramilitary travel for supplies, giving the rich goods to the upper classes and the spoiled foods to the poor. The features’ plot gets into focus when one of the army men takes Kaufman’s rich army vehicle, bartering it to get the apartment that was promised to him, each character is just fighting to survive in a world where consumerism is used to subjugate them and keep them in check.
The zombies featured, led by a former gas worker, known as Big Daddy, fall in line with the poor of the city. Zombies are used as threats in the town, forcing prostitutes into cages with zombies for entertainment, its Romero continuing his view of the rich and governmental bodies being unfair and the true evil. The zombies gain sentience, as Big Daddy can learn how to use a gun, and is able to have enough mental capabilities to become a leader to the zombie horde. By the end of the film, the zombies and the paramilitary both storm the city, both using guns and taking down the rich. When it comes to face off, the zombies spare the humans and walk away, recognising each other as societies just trying to survive. The movie’s exploration into the split between the rich and poor is very clear, and reflects a movement in Romero’s film-work, where his metaphorical messaging has become less like metaphors, and is clearer and more heavy-handed. It is a continuation of the themes that appear in the previous two features, but with a modern and less polished look.
Romero’s final works for the franchise are easily his worst, and less fleshed out compared to the previous four. Diary of the Dead takes place during the initial outbreak, shot as a found footage film with Romero seeing out of his depth in exploring the zombie as a metaphor for modern media. It is a thinly veiled look at the disinterest in violence in the modern day of cameras and social media, and the commercialisation that comes from that new world, but it’s just a worse version of Romero’s previous exploration of those themes. Romero stated in an interview after the release of Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead in 2005, that the exploration into consumerism would not work in the modern day, and that was proven right by his own feature. Survival of the Dead works more as a zombie feature because of its lack of major metaphorical themes, outside of the continued narrative thread of the distrust of the military, it’s a narrative sure zombie feature. They both continue the zombie as metaphor staple of Romero, a factor that unites his Living Dead franchise, a franchise that is without any actual continuity. Zombies are seen as victims, representing themselves as both villain and protagonist, and reflecting the messaging fitting the period, from racism, to consumerism, to distrusting governmental bodies, and finally, as a mirror of the feudal system.
John Carpenter is one of the masters of the horror genre, forming the basis for the slasher sub-genre, but also dabbling in the psychological horror, the science-fiction horror and even wandering outside of the horror genre. He is characterised heavily by pessimistic and nihilistic films, and by composing his own scores for his features, becoming a soundtrack artist long after he has finished being a filmmaker in the modern day. With the upcoming Halloween season, following will be a ranking of the eighteen theatrically released films directed by the horror auteur, not including his direct to television features or his involvement in anthology features.
18) Ghosts of Mars
Pam Grier, Natasha Henstridge, Clea DuVall and Liam Waite in Ghosts of Mars
Starting the list off, comes Carpenter’s second most recent film released into cinemas, 2001’s Ghosts of Mars. Starring a central cast of Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, Jason Statham and Pam Grier, the film centres itself around a future where Mars has been colonized. A squadron of police officers and a convicted criminal are forced to work together to fight against the possessed residents of a mining colony, with the ghosts of the planet’s original inhabitants taking control over the peaceful residents. The film has slowly become a cult classic to many fans of the director’s work, but the film also marks a downward trend in the director’s late career, from the 1990s to the present day. The film essentially serves as a remake of one of Carpenter’s classic features, Assault on Precinct 13. Just like that film, the feature brings police officers and criminals together to stop a gang that essentially act as zombies, mindless monsters that exist as cannon fodder in various action sequences where they try to break into one building.
Where that original feature is entertaining, this film just blends itself in mediocrity, with all the central players failing at making their characters feel convincing or entertaining. The film lacks the central feel of a Carpenter feature; his nihilistic characters and plot lines are replaced with a film that feels more campy and embarrassingly unfunny compared to a genuine horror-action feature. Carpenter’s score feels generic and unimpressive, lacking a unique hook that makes it stand apart, and the direction flounders in keeping up with the set style of 2000s horror, with an oversaturated look and shaky camera use that makes it fall in line with the eventual style that Saw, in 2004, would set for the genre. Action sequences can be fun at parts, but when the film stands out so much from the general quality of Carpenter’s work, it is hard to praise anything in the feature
17) Village of the Damned
Christopher Reeve in Village of the Damned
In a 2011 interview, John Carpenter described his remake of Village of the Damned as a ‘contractual assignment’ that he was ‘really not passionate about’. Starring Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski and Mark Hamill, the film follows what happens after all women in a town are impregnated by brood parasitic aliens, with the children growing rapidly and having psychic abilities. Based on 1957’s The Midwich Cuckoos, the book has created various adaptations of the work, with 1960’s Village of the Damned and its sequel, 1964’s Children of the Damned, being the basis of Carpenter’s remake. The novel also spawned a television remake, sharing the same name as the novel rather than the film version, released in 2022. A remake of Village of the Damned had been in the works for a decade since the popularity of 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with the adaptation being aimed to tackle the subjects that the original film could never tackle.
With censorship at the time of production, the original could not even mention impregnation and could not explore the true focus of the narrative, abortion. Outside of this big change with the lack of censorship, Carpenter’s version of the narrative just falls short and ends up feeling campier than a serious outlook on abortion. Reeve’s final role before he was paralysed in 1995, both him and Hamill feel miscast in their roles and fail to convince as serious stars, and the score suffers, similarly to Ghosts of Mars, as feeling generic, and at times, out of place in such a dramatic feature. The film marks the ‘work for hire’ time in Carpenter’s career, with the 1990s serving him badly with a lack of creator-owned projects.
16) Escape from LA
Kurt Russell in Escape From L.A.
A fifteen-year late sequel to Carpenter’s classic feature, Escape from New York, 1996’s Escape from L.A, is a derivative film that feels in line with sequels to 80s classics. Similar in case to features like Ghostbusters 2, the film serves more as a remake of the original film than a direct sequel, with very little callbacks to the original and more of Carpenter just doing the same plot beats again. Set in a near-future world of 2013, where the United States is ruled by a President for life, the film sees Snake Plissken returning into action when the president’s daughter steals the remote of a new superweapon. She finds herself in L.A., which has been walled off from the rest of the States as a prison-city, and Plissken is tasked to save her and retrieve the weapon to stop his upcoming deportation. Carpenter has long declared his sequel to be his favourite of the two, stating his reasons as because of the film’s darker and more nihilistic tone and its deeper themes, but the film fails at being either of these things.
A competent film, but a lesser feature when compared to Carpenter’s original, the film feels sillier and more cartoonish than a darker feature. Scenes including a paragliding action sequence, a chase on surfboard and a showdown between heroes and villains through a basketball game come across as goofier than anything, and the turn from impressive miniatures and practical effects to poorly aged digital effects lead the film looking less impressive than ever. Originally, the film would be followed with an end of a promised trilogy, as Escape from Earth would double down on the special effects, however the poor box office performance left all plans for the franchise on the cutting room floor. The shining light of the film comes from Kurt Russell’s still impressive performance as Plissken, he is still committed to making the character cool and the character never flounders when the rest of the film does.
15) The Ward
Amber Heard in The Ward
There would be a nine-year gap between Ghosts of Mars and Carpenter’s most recent big screen venture, 2010’s The Ward. He has since directed an episode of the streaming series Suburban Screams in 2023, but until then this was his most recent directorial work, with the director falling out of love with the medium in the years since Ghosts of Mars. It was during his short stint working on two episodes for Showtime’s anthology series, Masters of Horror, that his love for the medium returned. The Ward sees that love for return, and though it is nowhere near groundbreaking, it is a chilling story that proves that Carpenter still can make a tension inducing and briefly scary feature. The film follows a young woman who is institutionalized after setting fire to a house, and once arriving at the institute, she becomes haunted by the ghost of a former inmate at the ward. Starring Amber Heard, Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker and Jared Harris, the film suffers from a script that undermines everything Carpenter has done with the atmosphere and setting.
Characterisation is basically null in the film, with each inmate having one personality trait, and the late-game reveal that the narrative is all happening in one person’s head, and no one is real gives that a reason, but leaves the film feeling cheap and empty. Knowing the central twist as well, leads to the film feeling impossible to enjoy on a rewatch, when nothing that is happening on screen is real, it is hard to become invested.
14) Memoirs of an Invisible Man
Chevy Chase in Memoirs of an Invisible Man
The production of Carpenter’s take on H.F. Saint’s novel, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, would be hellish and would almost make the director want to quit, a hard start to his downward trend in filmmaking during the 90s. The film was backed by the studio because of Chevy Chase’s intense interest in using it as a star vehicle to move him from being a comedic actor to a serious star. The star was most well-known off the back of his stint on comedy series, Saturday Night Live, where he starred from 1975 to 1976, and then a comedy leading man in films like 1980’s Caddyshack and the five National Lampoon’s Vacation movies. His move to serious actor was a confusing one, and the departure of director Ivan Reitman, famous for Ghostbusters, came about because of these budding heads of tone, with Carpenter eventually hired after Superman-director Richard Donner left the project after eight months.
The film follows Chase as Nick Halloway, a man who is rendered invisible after an accident, and he soon becomes the target of a CIA operative who sees him as a potential new weapon for the American government. Chase wanted to base the film in drama, focusing on the troubles a man would have when becoming invisible and how that would drive him away from his friends and family, and wanted the film to be a central love story. This is where the film falls flat, Carpenter directing a light-hearted comedy drama, where the main star is refusing to do the comedy aspect only leads to disaster. The film is tonally confused, and there are interesting uses of the invisibility effects, and a fun performance by Sam Neill, but Chase only bewilders in his performance, and the central connection between him and love interest Daryl Hannah is nowhere to be seen. The troubled production has only led to an equally troubled feature.
13) Vampires
Thomas Ian Griffith in Vampires
When asked in an interview on his opinion of the filmic version of his novel, Vampires, author John Steakley pointed out how the adaptation retained much of his dialogue but none of his original plot, though he liked the film. Carpenter’s 1998 film Vampires has become a cult classic since its release, spawning a franchise which contains two direct-to-DVD features, 2002’s Vampires: Los Muertos and 2005’s Vampire: The Turning. Moving away from the gothic loneliness that the monsters were known for, Carpenter’s film tackles the vampires as bloodthirsty monsters which more resemble zombies than anything like the Draculas of the past. Starring James Woods as Jack Crow, who leads a team of vampire hunters, after being raised by the Catholic Church to become their master vampire slayer. The plot kicks into gear after his crew are killed, and he must pull together new members to take down the first vampire, Jan Valek, who is after a centuries-old cross. The plot is paper-thin, essentially a series of engaging action sequences that are stitched together by something resembling a plot.
The film has become a cult classic because of its reliance on action, it is a movie trying its best to be cool and kick-ass, with a central performance by James Woods that feels laughably over-the-top at times. Carpenter has always wanted to make a Western, with many of his films falling into Western-lite at times, with Ghosts of Mars and They Live being the prime examples. Vampires serve as the closest to a Western for Carpenter and showcases his tendency to make his films increasingly goofy and comedic in the 90s, but its also hard to be completely invested when Carpenter makes all his characters so increasingly unlikeable. It has gained a cult-following in the years since but outside of some great action and some maybe not on purpose-comedic moments, it is hard to see why.
12) Dark Star
Serving as Carpenter’s debut feature, the science-fiction comedy, Dark Star, is a bit rough around the edges as a student film but has enough charm and is important enough to the genre that it deserves to be high enough on the list. Set up essentially as a spoof of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film went through a journey from University of Southern California student film, to expanding with reshoots in 1973 and then having a limited theatrical release in 1975. Serving as Carpenter’s first directorial project, the film also offered Carpenter his first chance to score a feature. The film follows the crew of the deteriorating starship, named after the title of the film, twenty years into their mission to destroy unstable planets which might threaten the future of galactic colonization.
The film feels messy at times because of the clear inclusion of various random sequences to lengthen the runtime of the film, with the film’s plot essentially being a bunch of comedic sequences one after another until the central bomb plot takes place in the back half. The film does not really get going into that secondary half, but the inclusion of a beach ball alien is humorous and makes up for some of the shortcomings of the set up. Outside of making a career for horror auteur John Carpenter, the film is equally important for launching the career of Dan O’Bannon, who would take the beachball alien concept and turn it into screenplay of the hit 1979 film Alien. His animation work here would also lead him to provide the special effects animation for 1977’s Star Wars, setting himself up as a signature creator for the science-fiction genre, and marking the importance of Dark Star as a figurehead of the genre.
11) Christine
Keith Gordon in Christine
The opening sequence of John Carpenter’s Christine sets itself apart from the original novel instantly, as the film opens with the creation of the signature car, with the car instantly revealed to have a mind of its own as it injures a mechanic. The film marks a connection between Christine and femineity, the car strikes out in anger when a man touches herself in a private area, and later becomes jealous when Arnie, it’s owner, becomes entwined with another woman. It is far away from Stephen King’s original concept for the central car, where the car was possessed by its previous owner, marking it as a normal car made evil through possession, where Carpenter’s is evil from the assembly line. Like Kubrick’s take on The Shining, this had led King to disliking this version of his novel, but outside of this central origin difference, and some more cinematic depictions of the death sequences, the film is faithful to the textual events. The film was handled by Carpenter as a work-for-hire job, while he was trying to develop a filmic version of King’s other novel, Firestarter. The film follows Arnie Cunnigham, as his life takes a dramatic change when he purchases the car known as Christine, which only becomes worse when he meets a new girl at school, and the car begins to take control over him.
As a work-for-hire job, the film excels in showing the class of Carpenter’s 80s work, working hard to make a car scary and capable of gruesome kills. The film conveys an interesting personality through an inanimate object, and Keith Gordon’s central performance as Arnie holds the film together perfectly. The character is as multilayered as the novel, the film spending so much time away from the character so that by the end of the feature, he feels as evil and alien as the car, Gordon tracking a change in his performance, from innocent and kind student to a crazed murderer. Even if King does not like this version of his work, it has the spirit contained in it for sure.
10) Prince of Darkness
Donald Pleasence in Prince of Darkness
The second instalment in what Carpenter names as his ‘Apocalypse trilogy’, alongside The Thing and In The Mouth for Madness, Prince of Darkness is a mix between Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2. Starring Donald Pleasence, in a welcome return to the world of Carpenter after last being in Halloween, and a larger cast, the film follows a group of quantum physics students who are assigned to assist a Catholic priest. The priest has found a liquid at a local monastery, which they soon come to find is a sentient, liquid embodiment of Satan himself. At heart, the movie is a possession film, a possession takes on The Thing, as the characters fall one by one to the possession in a similar way to that previously mentioned feature. Like Raimi’s Evil Dead movies, the charm comes in the possessed creature effects, and the compelling ways that each character plays their possessed self-compared to the original character, mixing the serious nature of Evil Dead with enough goofy and comedic performances that makes it stand toe-to-toe with Evil Dead 2. The central romance of the film feels underwritten, but each other aspect of the film more than makes up for it. An early found footage scene is included, well before the concept boomed with the release of The Blair Witch Project, and the film works to convey a film brimming with doom and despair.
The liquid possession angles the film explores seems to be a clear comparison to the AIDS epidemic that was still raging during the release of the film. The possession is transmutable, passing via fluid transferred between person to person. Similarly, the film also transmutes many references to homosexuality across its runtime, namely through a sequence where Walter, an implied gay man, is only able to escape from a group of possessed women, by coming out of a closet. Homosexuality, at the time, was believed to be the only sexuality to be infected by AIDS, marking a deeper meaning in a tonally comedic film, balancing both comedy and heavier themes perfectly.
9) Assault on Precinct 13
Austin Stoker and Darwin Joston in Assault on Precinct 13
Carpenter’s second feature as a director is essentially a remake of George A. Romero’s classic 1968 feature, Night of the Living Dead, only swap out the mindless undead instead for an army of mindless gangsters. The film even retains Romero’s accidental social commentary by focusing the film on a black lead during a time where that was a phenomenon in mainstream cinema. Originally developed as a straightforward Western, a film that Carpenter has always wanted to create, the film explored a similar plot to Rio Bravo, where a sheriff’s office is attacked by the local rancher’s gang when the sheriff arrests the corrupt rancher. When the film lacked the budget required, the film was downsized to taking place in the present day instead, following a police officer who must band together with a death row-bound convict to defend a defunct precinct against a criminal gang. The film opened to mixed reviews, and a dwindling box office performance, but would soon become a cult classic, allowing it to even garner a remake in 2005, starring Laurence Fishburne and Ethan Hawke.
Even if no longer a Western, the film still retains Western components and features a running gag of the line ‘Got a smoke?’, a reference to the various cigarette gags that came from Howard Hawks classical Westerns. The film features a poppy score from Carpenter, a synthy electric score that breaths strong life into the action, as the station gets swarmed by army after army of faceless goons. The film’s most shocking moment, however, comes from the execution of a little girl in bloody fashion, an event that kicks off the central plot of the film after a slow start of plot build-up. The MPAA threatened that the film would receive a X rating if the scene was not cut from the film, and Carpenter relented, removing the scene from the copy he gave to the MPAA, but distributing the film with the scene still present to play coy with them. It was for the best that the film retained this harrowing sequence, it marked it for what it truly was, one of the very best exploitation features.
8) In The Mouth of Madness
Sam Neill in The Mouth of Madness
The one movie that still proved that Carpenter had the ability to make a tremendous film during his ‘work-for-hire’ period of the 90s, In The Mouth of Madness is a great outlier in Carpenter’s filmography, a supernatural film that feels smart and surreal in its narrative, that many critics considered it pretentious during its initial theatrical run. Starring Sam Neill, in his return to the world of Carpenter after a villainous turn in Memoirs of an Invisible Man, as an insurance investigator, visiting a small town when looking into the disappearance of a successful horror author. Once reaching the town, the lines between reality and fiction begin to blur as Neill’s character begins to question his sanity, as this famous horror author seems to be able to bend reality to his own whim. The horror from this feature comes from the sense of the loss of free will, questioning how much free we will really have when something dictating our every move can be written. It is a clearly multilayered feature, questioning even what insanity really means, when one can be labelled as such when they are just acting outside of the regular order of nature put forward by society.
The texts written by the central author also make people insane, essentially showcasing Carpenter questioning the true meaning between crime and media, does what people view through film, television and fiction truly make them violent, or is it the people themselves that is to fault. There is a grand scale to the narrative that is so unlike Carpenter, with excellent creature designs and a genuine foreboding tone. Inspired by the works of H.P Lovecraft, and clearly with the author being designed to be like Stephen King, the film matches the scale of those two authors perfectly. The film even opens in media res, as Neill’s character tells the film’s narrative in a similar way to Lovecraft’s work, it’s a love letter to Lovecraftian horror that truly works.
7) The Fog
Jamie Lee Curtis in The Fog
Started in 2020, and occurring annually on April 21st is Fog Day, a day where fans will watch Carpenter’s classic supernatural feature, The Fog. The fact that there is an entire day named after the film is a shocking one, especially after it received incredibly middling reviews during its initial theatrical run in 1980. In the years since, the film has garnered a cult following and an impressive re-assessment as one of Carpenter’s finest works, a drive which brought upon a critically panned remake in 2005. The film follows the day-to-day lives of the residents of a small coastal town in Northern California, whose lives are mixed up when a strange fog arrives in town. The fog brings ghosts linked to the past of the town, as the ghosts seek revenge on the children of the men that wronged them many years in the past. Dean Cudney’s cinematography is the star of the show of this feature, as Cudney shoots an incredible number of scenic shots of the coastal town, as it becomes encased in eerie fog, with the one brimmer of light coming from the tall lighthouse poking out in the distance. Carpenter makes the use of shadows to shoot the ghosts in complete murky light, more silhouettes than fully formed designs that add to the creepiness of the sequences, the fog hides them, and the lightning follows suit, but the little you see, of the zombie-like pirates makes for memorable creature design.
Carpenter’s strength here is the build-up, bringing together an incredibly well-cast set of characters that make the town feel alive, the tension palpable and makes you question the validity of the ghosts when both sides are almost human. Tom Atkins, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh and Carpenter’s at-the-time wife, Adrienne Barbeau, all deliver strong performances. At heart, the movie is about the pain and sin that causes a town, a nation to be built, for each beautiful thing created, someone else is either stolen from or hurt for it to be made. 100 years on, the townsfolk celebrate their town with no idea what was done to create that very town, a topical message that could be conveyed to various aspects of American life, with a clear analogue to the pain and suffering brought to the Native Americans.
6) They Live
Roddy Piper in They Live
Carpenter’s career was characterized heavily by a series of films that were pessimistic in nature, even before he got to a feature focusing around Lovecraftian monsters controlling free will, and no film is more pessimistic than 1988’s They Live. A precursor to that before mentioned Lovecraftian feature, They Live follows a drifter who finds a special pair of sunglasses that reveal the secret truth of humanity. Putting on the sunglasses, they reveal to Nada, played by Roddy Piper, that the ruling class are aliens concealing their identities and rule the world through manipulating people to follow the status quo through subliminal messages across various forms of media. Based on the 1963 short story known as ‘Eight O’clock in the Morning ‘by Ray Nelson, the short story’s film rights were bought by Carpenter as he used it as a basis of his more developed script. His take came from how dissatisfied the director was with then-president Ronald Reagan’s economic policies, also known as Reaganomics, which was focused around increasing defence spending, slowed growth of government spending, reducing government regulation and tightening the money supply to reduce possible inflation. These economic policies were mixed in value, on one hand causing an entrepreneurial revolution, and on the other, the national debt tripling in eight years. The biggest outcome was the rise in consumerism in the country, another factor that Carpenter was spoofing in this feature, connecting mass consumerism as one of the major causes of drone-like personalities and American patriotism.
The film’s signature sunglasses sequences were shot with black-and-white photography, a filmic style which brings the sequences closer in line with war propaganda films during the second World War. The film has all the action movie quirks that makes films like Assault on Precinct 13 and Big Trouble in Little China work but mixed with an excellent amount of social commentary that makes every punch and gunshot come with a thematic purpose. It is a complete shame that the movie has essentially become the opposite of its thematic theming in popular culture, becoming a pop culture juggernaut in one of its central macho lines, and the film’s alien designs becoming synonymous with street art.
5) Escape from New York
Kurt Russell in Escape from New York
Written originally in 1976 as a response to the Watergate scandal, the political turmoil of the time where American society did not trust their own president caused Carpenter to pen Escape from New York. The project would not be released until 1981, after the director had enough pull to begin production on such a risky movie after the smash hit of Halloween, and after Michael Myers actor Nick Castle was able to touch up the script with some humorous additions. The film mirrored a common trope for the time, concerning a grim and gritty look at New York City that perpetuated through the 80s with films like Ghostbusters and then into the 90s with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a level of humanity drawn through humorous New Yorkers. Dealing with a near-future, a future which is ruled over by a forever president, and one where Manhattan Island in New York City has been caged off as a maximum-security prison. When Air Force One is hijacked and the President is kidnapped into the streets of New York, federal prisoner Snake Plissken is given twenty-four hours to find and rescue the President to be able to be pardoned for his crimes. Plissken is easily where this film shines, he seems like your typical action hero, but he is incredibly stubborn, angry and resentful across the film, speaking in low octave with almost growls rather than the typical one liner you would expect from an 80s action hero. Kurt Russell really shines here, playing against type as a gritty and serious action star after years of being a comedic actor.
He is known by every character in the film, building a mystique around him and the eventual excellent action sequences he will be able to pull off, and he has morals. The film twists the script on the typical hero-villain dynamic, Plissken is a shady individual but he’s a hero, while the people he is helping are clearly the villains. The President is the true antagonist, and the people who are keeping him hostage are just victims of a system that had put them down and refuses to give them the rehabilitation they deserve, a pure criticism of the American prison complex. It is a film which gives its viewers all the gritty action you would want out of your Hollywood blockbuster, but also enough to chew on under the surface, a bridge of both best worlds of cinema.
4) Big Trouble in Little China
Kurt Russell, Dennis Dunn, Victor Wong and James Lew in Big Troubles in Little China
20th Century Fox hired Carpenter to helm Big Trouble in Little China because of his reputation of being able to work incredibly fast, with the film facing a limited preproduction schedule of only ten to twelve weeks and rushed into production to beat a similar releasing film. The Eddie Murphy starring feature, The Golden Child, was seen as big competition for the studio, a film Carpenter was even offered to direct, sharing similar narrative threads, and having such a big star attached. Big Trouble in Little China was originally put into production as a separate film, mixing the action of the Western with the new popular sensibilities of the martial arts feature, but would be rewritten into being more modernised. This version of the script would be what enticed Carpenter to the feature, fulfilling his desire to one day direct a martial arts feature. The film, which continued Carpenter’s lack of success at the box office during theatrical runs, followed drifter truck-driver Jack Burton, who must help his friend Wang Chi rescue his green-eyed fiancée from criminals in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The green-eyed woman is important to the plot of an ancient sorcerer, who requires a woman with green eyes to marry him to be released from a centuries-old curse. An interesting genre blend of various tones and genres, from the American action movie, the comedy, mystical and supernatural elements and the martial arts feature, Carpenter’s high-flying feature has everything and has become a deserved cult classic in the years since release.
Kurt Russell returns to the world of the Carpenter feature, his role of Jack Burton inspired by the machismo of actors like John Wayne, but with an entertaining satirical edge. The film flips the American movie on its head, where once the American lead would have a foreign sidekick, Russell’s Burton is macho and cool, but he is a goof, and out of his element next to such strong leaders like Wang Chi. He is along for the ride in a narrative that spins around him, never through him, to the point that he is knocked out and misses the entire final battle. The failure at the box office of Big Trouble in Little China is what led John Carpenter back into the world of independent filmmaking, disillusioning him with mainstream Hollywood, where he would only come back for work-for-hire jobs. It is a shame as well that the movie put a pin in his big-budget career, because the film is one of the perfect summer blockbusters, feeling like a genre-blender at its best.
3) Halloween
Nick Castle wears the mask of The Shape in Halloween
1978’s Halloween is an important release in the Hollywood zeitgeist for various reasons, from it being Carpenter’s first box office success, to launching the career of Jamie Lee Curtis, or being a big factor in the boom of the slasher movie sub-genre into the 80s and 90s. The slasher film existed beforehand, with 1960’s Psycho, or the double release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Black Christmas in 1974, but the story of babysitter killer Michael Myers, who returns to Haddonfield after escaping a mental asylum to kill everyone who stands in his way, lit up the zeitgeist and proved the sub-genre could be a box office success. The final girl, the use of point-of-view shots of the killer, the chase sequence and the defining of sex as the cause of death in the feature would become staples of the genre and would define the entire Halloween franchise. To date, there are thirteen movies released in the franchise, with varied levels of involvement from series creator Carpenter, who essentially handed over the franchise after releasing the first feature.
The sequel’s script would be penned by the director, the third feature would move away from Michael to go through an anthology lens because of Carpenter’s insistence, and the director would return as producer and composer for Blumhouse’s requel trilogy, 2018’s Halloween, 2021’s Halloween Kills and 2022’s Halloween Ends. The slasher genre would follow the Halloween genre across the decades, with the initial boom coming from 1980’s Friday the 13th, which was a remake without the name of Halloween, to the genre being revived in the wake of 2018’s Halloween. This importance comes with a major reason; Carpenter’s initial Halloween feature is one of his very best. It is his very best score, with his most memorable motifs, and has two winning central performances by Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence. The film’s central villain is incredibly intimidating and eerie, a feeling that many slasher villains cannot convey, with the eerie sound of his breathing being felt across various sequences. The film’s final shots linger on empty spaces, leaving the film on a menacing note, retracing each location from the film and proving that nowhere is safe, the boogeyman could be anywhere.
2) Starman
Karen Allen and Jeff Bridges in Starman
What starts as a science-fiction adventure with a creepy alien morphing sequence, soon becomes an emotional drama that stands as the biggest outlier in Carpenter’s filmography. The film, starring Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen, follows an alien arriving to Earth in response to the invitation found on the Voyager 2 space probe. The alien takes the form of a cloned body of a grieving widow’s husband, as the widow and the clone must take on a cross-county road-trip to send him home and escape the government who is after him. The film has been theorised to have been put into production as a response to the success of Spielberg’s ET: The Extraterrestrial and picked up Carpenter after The Thing failed at the box office because of audience’s being more familiar with positive alien features off the back of that previously mentioned Spielberg venture. The film, which went through at least six different script drafts, one where the signature alien flew during sequences, feels like an outlier in a career which is characterized heavily by films which feel pessimistic in nature. The film is hopeful and warm, a love story which uses its central science-fiction narrative to wow and surprise rather than to make the audience uneasy, a scene where Bridges’ alien revives a deer that has been killed by a hunter is one such powerful moment.
It is a road movie, with each character the central leads meet across their journey feeling warm and sincere, and even the central governmental forces allow the characters to go at the end. Karen Allen’s character feels like Carpenter willing himself into the narrative, a nihilistic character who feels only pain from the death of her husband, whose nihilistic tendencies are proven wrong by the film’s genuine pleasantness. Bridges received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for the film, in a performance that feels so inhuman but never in a terrifying way, a perfect encapsulation of the fish out of water trope, he is charming in his eccentricities, and the central love story is moving and powerful. The movie ends on a terrific note, a loving final embrace leads Allen’s widow pregnant with a child who is both the child of her late husband and the alien she loved soon after, a moving final beat that encapsulates the tenderness of this film compared to each other Carpenter feature.
1) The Thing
Kurt Russell in The Thing
No other film could be placed first on a John Carpenter ranking, The Thing is just his magnum opus. Based on the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr, which had already been adapted into the 1951 feature film, The Thing from Another World, the film is another Lovecraftian horror from the director. The film tells the story of a group of American researchers in Antarctica, who encounter an alien life-form that assimilates, then imitates organisms. The group is brought against each other, believing any one of them could be the signature ‘Thing’. The film is a perfect encapsulation of the feeling of paranoia and isolation, the viewer is along for the ride in trying to decide who is the Thing, the film leaving it up to the audience to catch up on the mystery as the characters figure it out together.
The setting of Antarctica also brings the isolation to the forefront, it is open plains of nothingness, encased in darkness which makes the characters cold and isolated, it is an eerie location which is used to its best effect. As mentioned previously, the film was a box office bomb when released in 1982 and was even slated by critics. It has since become a staple of the science-fiction genre, a creature feature with excellent creature effects by Rob Bottin, a film which is both disturbing and impressive in its use of practical effects. The eventual 2011 prequel, with the same name as its title, would try to compete with its CGI effects, but nothing can compare to the practical effects shown here, The Thing looks inhuman in each body modification it causes, but there’s always human elements to it, an eeriness to each form it takes. The film was initially given to director Tobe Hooper, and various other directors were considered after Carpenter briefly decided to leave the project to direct a passion project, which then fell through, but it is hard to see any other director helming the film. It’s Carpenter’s first big-budget feature, and cinematographer Dean Cudney’s as well. Only Carpenter could direct such a bleak film as this, playing the best to his nihilistic tendencies, as the situation feels hopeless and impossible, but balancing that with such well-realised characters.
Kurt Russell takes the lead once again, but with a character who is forced to lead, bouncing off such a wonderful supporting cast that is led by a wonderful performance by Keith David. When asked in an interview, Carpenter stated that the film is pro-human, in comparison to the original text’s pro-science exploration, or the initial film adaptation’s anti-science exploration. The film’s humanist approach to its storytelling has led to a series of discussions about the film’s thematic meaning, namely because of its creation during post-Cold War tendencies. The paranoia can be seen as a metaphor for the red scare at the time, with people not knowing who to trust in the wake of Communists being found across the country. The film is also exploring nuclear annihilation through mutually assured destruction in the wake of the Cold War, with the death of The Thing only being possible if both our lead characters die alongside it. However, the film’s end leads the film on a forever sinister note, a cliffhanger ending that only Carpenter knows the answer to, as both characters sit opposite each other not knowing if either or both are The Thing, a perfectly mysterious ending that leaves the audience thinking long after the film is finished.
In 2013, famed modern horror director, James Wan, released a film based on the cases of Ed and Lorraine Warren, famous paranormal investigators and authors focusing around the supernatural. Based on the case files of the Warrens, the same case films that inspired by the events of the Amityville franchise, The Conjuring was a massive success and would soon join the likes of Saw and Insidious as famous franchises that James Wan helped launch. Followed by a Wan-directed sequel in 2016, the franchise would blossom into a cultural juggernaut, with three Annabelle spinoff features, released in 2014, 2017 and 2019 respectively, two Nun spinoff features, released in 2018 and 2023, and a standalone film focused on Mexican folk lore character La Llorona, with The Curse of La Llorona releasing in 2019. The franchise has become immensely successful across the years, grossing a combined gross of $2.8 billion against a budget of $263 million, becoming the most influential horror franchise of the modern day after the end of Saw and Paranormal Activities’ tenure as box office king.
The expansion of the franchise has slowed down once entering the 2020s however, and the critical reaction to most of the films, namely the spinoffs, would become mixed and poor. Wan would leave the director’s chair for the third core entry in The Conjuring series, with director Michael Chaves, who helmed The Curse of La Llorona, taking the reins of the entire franchise, following up 2021’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It with 2023’s The Nun II. Both films did not fair as well critically as Wan’s time with the franchise, but Warner Bros seems to still be confident with Chaves being in the director’s chair. The final chapter is what is being advertised as Chaves’ next film, The Conjuring: Last Rites, even if it has also been stated as the potential end of the first era of The Conjuring Universe, with a supposed second phase in production.
Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson in The Conjuring: Last Rites
Based on the Smurl haunting case, where the family of Jack and Janet Smurl alleged a demon was inhabiting their home between 1974 and 1989 and was then published as a novel known as The Haunting, penned by the Smurl family, Ed and Lorraine Warren and Scranton newspaper writer Robert Curran. The film works as the supposed final case of Ed and Lorraine Warren, as things become personal when daughter, Judy Warren, and her fiancée become involved in a case that will potentially cost everything
As a finale to the series, Chaves plays the film safe, as essentially a greatest hit of both original Wan features. The previous entry, subtitled The Devil Made Me Do It, went in a different direction, subverting the haunted house formula to play out a narrative focused on possession and a central courtroom drama plot. It only makes sense to return the franchise back to its roots for the final entry, but it only works in returning to the roots if there are still enough fresh angles on the material to be mined. Here, Chaves is playing out the greatest hits of the franchise and giving out very little new, and it is hard not to compare the effectiveness of the scares between Chaves’ work and Wan’s. Wan is one of the most effective horror filmmakers of the modern era because of his distinctive style, his moody colour palettes, his ability to blend genres between horror and drama, and his fast-paced editing gives the movie rhythm and speed.
Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson in The Conjuring: Last Rites
Chaves is a capable director, but he just cannot deliver a direction as distinct and compelling as Wan’s, his work looks too clean for trying to match the vision of Wan, and his scares just rely on jumps. The narrative even just acts as a remake of the events of Wan’s second Conjuring feature, mixing a storyline focused on the Warrens with a family in terror by a demon, a demon which is personally invested in drawing the Warrens out, as the narratives converge. Last Rites has the exact same narrative and then borrows nearly every scare from the first feature to a lesser effect, proving maybe that it was right to end here, when there is so little originality left.
Wan’s signature genre blend is not handled the same here either, the film jumps back and forth between the signature haunted house events, as the family is plagued by a demon, while switching back over to following the Warrens and their daughter, as the film attempts to wrap up character arcs. The focus is clearly on the Warren’s storyline, so the hauntings suffer from a lack of attention, with so little time given to it that the audience will never care for the family in danger or feel genuinely scared when the events are fast-tracked heavily to get to the conclusion. The Warrens’ narrative is easily the best part of the family, and they continue to be the height of this franchise, no matter what someone may think of their real-world personas. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are both wonderful here, one of the most perfect casting duos in horror history, as they bounce off each other so perfectly. It is great to see them get so much focus, but when it takes an hour and ten minutes of a two-hour film for them to get involved in the central haunting, it’s clear that your film has some severe pacing problems.
The film instead has a clear focus on potentially backdooring a continuation by propping up the Warren’s daughter as the new central character. Mia Tomlinson portrays an older version of Judy Warren, who was portrayed previously by Sterling Jerins in the other three Conjuring features and McKenna Grace in Annabelle Comes Home, who acts as the film’s protagonist, as she comes to terms with her abilities and having the mantle passed down to her. Ben Hardy also stars as Judy’s fiancée, Tony, who feels a lot less developed compared to Judy, but is clearly set up as a new protagonist moving forward. It’s a passing of the torch, and the future does not look as promising without Farmiga and Wilson.
Madison Lawlor and Orion Smith in The Conjuring: Last Rites
As a finale as well, the film just fails to wrap everything up. It feels more like a middle chapter of an ongoing franchise, where much of the film is still left open-ended enough to warrant a continuation, like the studio was unsure whether to commit to the finale lens if the film is successful enough. The marketing has teased a loss or sacrifice that caused this to be the final case for the Warrens, but that seems to be more of a marketing ploy rather than to be relevant to the text’s content.
With all this, the film plays out its events incredibly safe, with a predictable narrative that does not offend, shock or even leave an audience in awe, only leaving an audience whelmed. It reads as a film that exists to keep a franchise alive that makes an alarming amount of money for the studio, with very little passion behind the camera. Michael Chaves is a perfectly okay director, but it fails at being scary or balancing the elements that have made the previous films in the franchise so successful. The central performances are strong but are lost in a film which is attempting to conclude a saga, set up new instalments and play out the greatest hits all at the same time. It is the last breath of a franchise that really should have ended when Wan departed from the saga, and the film fails to explain its existence at large.
Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson in The Conjuring: Last Rites
Kyle MacLachlan and Sheryl Lee in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Famous director David Lynch died this year, on the 15th January 2025 at the age of 78. He was well-known for his avant-garde filmmaking, which focused on surrealist and experimental features, becoming one of the most famous and well-respected directors of the modern day. Releasing 10 films across this career, his most iconic features would include his directorial debut Eraserhead, the drama adaptation The Elephant Man, the neo-noir mysteries Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, and the space opera adaptation Dune. However, what could be argued as his most well-known and well-regarded project would be the ABC series, Twin Peaks. Premiering on April 8th, 1990, and running for two initial seasons until 1991, the series followed the residents of the town Twin Peaks, as the town’s golden daughter, Laura Palmer, mysteriously dies. FBI special agent Dale Cooper arrives to the town to help the investigation but is soon drawn into a darker story which mixes the melodrama of a soap opera, eccentric comedy that was common to Lynch’s work and horror and surrealist elements. Created with co-showrunner Mark Frost, the show was pitched to the network around the mystery of Laura Palmer’s death, but Lynch and Frost made the promise that the mystery would eventually become a background element of the show as the audience becomes more comfortable with the residents of Twin Peaks.
Opening title sequence of ‘Twin Peaks’
After an incredibly successful first season, which Lynch directed multiple episodes across the 8 initial episodes while multitasking with his feature film Wild at Heart, ABC demanded season 2 to put an answer to the question of who killed Laura Palmer. Being forced to reveal such a crucial plot reveal prematurely led to a lot of knock-on effects for the famous show, namely Lynch and Frost both stepping back from the show until returning for the finale, and a ratings decline. Once being one of the most watched shows in 1990, the 15th episode of the show’s second season would be placed 85th out of 89 for ABC’s ratings numbers. The return of Frost and Lynch to the writer’s room could not save the show, and after multiple timeslot changes that only hindered the show more, the show would be placed on indefinite hiatus and eventually cancelled on a cliffhanger. Though the show would eventually return for a third season in 2017, that would finally address the long-simmering cliffhanger, fans’ original hope for answers would come in Lynch’s feature film follow-up, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
Released in 1992, the film serves as a prequel, a fact that turned off many viewers who were hoping to finally receive the answers to Twin Peaks’ cliffhanger ending, where series protagonist, Dale Cooper, was replaced with an evil doppelganger. The film was booed during its screening at the Cannes Film Festival, and was panned by the American press, eventually ending up as a box office bomb. Foregoing the show’s large cast of eccentric characters and its upbeat and humorous tone, the film goes for a darker tone and a surrealist directorial style that was more in line with Lynch’s work. A set of deleted scenes would be recut into a separate film, Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces in 2014, which featured the various characters from the show that were cut from the film for time. Instead of the larger cast, the film focuses on the murder of Laura Palmer, stepping the audience into the toes of the character that was only known to her audience because of her death. She is plagued by the malevolent spirit known as Bob, as the film tracks her final seven days, where she soon finds out that her own father is Bob.
The move between television and film comes with the movie literally beginning with the smashing of a television by a man as he murders Teresa Banks, the original victim of Bob. This opening marks the idea that Lynch seems to be putting across the film, that nostalgia and fan service is not what the film exists for, it is pulling its audience into unfamiliar settings and setting itself apart. This would be a decision that would be followed in the show’s third season, known as The Return. This can be seen even more by the film’s opening act, where FBI agents Chester Desmond and Sam Stanley are assigned to investigate the death of Teresa Banks in Deer Meadow, Washington. With the appearance of Gordon Cole, a character played by Lynch himself in the series, and the appearance of a death girl for the FBI, the film begins with a false sense of security. The plot sounds eerily familiar to Twin Peaks’ original storyline, with the opening act even initially planned to feature Cooper instead of Chester Desmond, but actor Kyle MacLachlan requested for his role to be lessened compared to the series.
David Lynch, Chris Isaak Kiefer Sutherland in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
The plot may seem familiar, but the setting of Deer Meadow welcomes the film to breaking that familiarity, as the settings that would be central to comedy for the series would instead be conveyed as combative and tension-building. The residents of Deer Meadow do not welcome the FBI with open arms, shown through the diner sequence, a place that was routed into the television series as a place of comfort and joy. The police department welcome Cooper into Twin Peaks with open arms, as Sherrif Truman essentially becomes Cooper’s best friend straight away, but the police department of Deer Meadows are violent towards Desmond and Stanley. These differences open the film for an audience familiar with the brand that things are not going to be the same here, you cannot go home, and everything will feel the same.
This difference in tone translates over when the film transitions over to the familiar town of Twin Peaks. The series’ iconic theme, composed by Angelo Badalamenti, pulls the viewer into feeling comfortable, but rather than pulling into one of the various characters that make up the show, the first character we see is Laura Palmer. Actress Sheryl Lee finally gets to play Laura Palmer in all her various shades of grey, a fully realised character that only existed as a dead body and a ghost that haunted the Black Lodge in the series. The feeling of unfamiliarity is mirrored by the appearance of Donna Hayward, Laura’s best friend, who is recast and played by actress Moira Kelly here. Donna may be Laura’s best friend, but Laura refuses to allow Donna to become like her, to follow her into her sexual liberation or her sexually driven sadness, and the recasting almost adds a sense of isolation to the proceedings.
The pieces fall into place across the film, as the film retraces the steps of the investigation into her death from the film, as Laura places those clues down that Cooper, Truman and the rest of the cast would soon discover. The investigation in the series brought unexpected reveals to Laura’s character, the golden girl who brought food to the less fortunate and helped with English lessons, was revealed to be moonlighting as a prostitute, and cheating on her drug dealing boyfriend. Laura Palmer haunts the narrative of Twin Peaks, and it is until the reveal that her own father was sexually assaulting her that you get a full understanding of Laura. The events surrounding Laura’s death are choreographed to feel true and real, the comedic overtones of the show are replaced by scenes that are shocking and disturbing, from the explicit rape of Laura, to seeing her death played out through her own point of view.
Ray Wise, Grace Zabriskie and Sheryl Lee in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Ray Wise plays Laura’s father, Leland, and he is easily one of the most complex performances and characters across the film. Leland’s reveal as Bob came as the final straw in Lynch and Frost’s relationship with the studio, a reveal that would have been saved for many seasons in the future. The reveal and execution of that storyline however is incredibly powerful, as Ray Wise gives a fantastic performance with his last scene, crying in his final moments as he realises what he has done to Laura throughout the years. There’s a clear intention to blur the lines of what really Leland is, and how much control does Leland have in his own body when Bob is in the mix. Fire Walk With Me continues this distinction, Wise plays the character as both terrifying and sympathetic, he is ruthless, demanding his daughter to clean her hands before dinner or verbally assaulting her once he catches wind of her relationship with James Hurley. However, he also has scenes of genuine kindness and remorse, as he apologises for his dinnertime outburst and hugs Laura. It is clear from the series that Leland was sexually abused in his youth as well, potentially by Bob, and he is just passing that trauma down to his own daughter.
The home is portrayed as something frightening for Laura, as the fan spins above, and her own mother seems to be ignoring the sexual abuse her daughter is facing. Grace Zabriskie’s Sarah Palmer smokes and cries at what is happening to her daughter, and screams for Leland to stop his verbal attack, but never protects her daughter, she knows what is going on but is powerless to do anything about it. The entire proceedings are just played incredibly straight and sad, there is so little comedy after the opening act, and it just hits home harder how real this movie feels. Stripping out all the supernatural aspects, the film is boiled down to a domestic drama about the sexual abuse faced by a young daughter, a father who is inflicting that sexual abuse while questioning why he is doing so, and a mother who just wants to look the other way.
David Bowie in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Mark Frost declined to be involved in this film, as Lynch and Frost were mixed on what to write the story around; Lynch wanting a prequel, and Frost wanting a continuation of the events of the series. Frost would continue to be involved in the franchise for years after, penning various supplemental material, such as The Secret History of Twin Peaks in 2016 and Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier in 2017, before having an equal role in the show’s revival. However, Lynch’s signature surrealist nature comes about across the runtime of Fire Walk With Me, leaving the show as much as a prequel as it is a sequel. Various characters make their appearance known across the runtime, and some creative visuals open the door for their return in the show’s third season, name in point being the namedrop of Judy, and the appearance of David Bowie’s Phillip Jeffries. There is even a brief appearance of a character from the future, as Annie Blackburn appears from the Black Lodge, a character who was added to the original in the tail end of the second season as an attempt to raise ratings by giving Cooper a love interest. She appears in an unsettling sequence, where the bloodied body of Annie appears after being trapped in the Black Lodge at the end of the series, and warns Laura that the good Cooper is trapped in the Black Lodge. This would be written in Laura’s diary and become one of the most important plot points moving forward.
These sequel moments highlight the dream-like nature that would soon come in Twin Peaks: The Return, as the film bridges the gap between soap opera-drama and Lynch’s signature filmic tendencies. The signature red drapes, eerie editing with quick cuts and over-lit blinding horror scares, a strong control over sound and the use of silence and blaring music, are all signatures to how Lynch creates that dream-like reality for his films, and it is incredibly present here. But, at heart, the movie is the story of Laura Palmer, a character who the audience never actually meets. This film allows that audience to become familiar with the character, and her struggles, and when they will return to the show’s pilot episode again, and Andy and Truman find her body, the audience will grieve alongside them.
Rhys Reviews 