Zero Day
Perhaps the most unsettling element of Zero Day is Coccio’s decision to leave the motives ambiguous, to suggest that the kids themselves don’t fully understand what drives them to commit such heinous crimes.
Psychological Horror
Twixt
If green screen and digital photography free the man from the strictures of big studios, I want to watch the films of the free man, even if he’s something of an impassioned daredevil.
Alan Wake
The chilling ambiance, lush environments, and pulpy story of Alan Wake are enough to scratch the psychological horror itch in video game form, even if it doesn’t justify its lengthy development cycle or the lofty expectations set for it.
Beau Is Afraid
Ari Aster mistakes amplitude for creative insight, inflating a slender conceit about childhood trauma into a three-hour pageant of middle-aged humiliation.
The Vanishing
It forces the audience to assume the roles of both victim and perpetrator, and its sustained horror remains firmly lodged in the mind long after the jump scares and gore of a regular horror film would have faded from memory.
Spec Ops: The Line
Spec Ops is a thoughtful game, one that looks beyond the superficial, one that is worth your attention if you have the stomach for it.
Bringing Out the Dead
Cage moves from serious emotional drama to outrageous antics seemingly on a whim.
The Virgin Spring
Karin is murdered, half-buried, and abandoned, her valuables looted from her corpse.
Sisters
De Palma heaps on the morbidity and gore, and the strange psychological oddities are pressed to the extreme.