From around 2006 to 2008, in my ‘scene kid’ phase, I was listening to a lot of deathcore – a genre combining death metal with metalcore – as a lot of scene kids were. We wanted to hear breakdowns, guttural vocals, and pig squeals (vocals that go “breeeee”). It was part of the cultural zeitgeist.…
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If Alfred Hitchcock is the ‘master of suspense’, then I think we can call filmmaker Brian Yuzna the ‘master of disgust’ (or at least, one of the masters in this subtype of horror). Born in 1949, the American director and producer is best known for his work in the science fiction and horror genres, most…
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Pulse (Kairo) is a 2001 Japanese techno-horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. After having watched Kurosawa’s 1997 psychological thriller Cure (Kyua), widely regarded as a masterpiece, I was keen to check out more of his work. (Cure was inspired by David Fincher’s crime film Se7en; it likewise follows a series of gruesome murders and detectives…
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Seconds (1966) is a sci-fi psychological thriller directed by John Frankenheimer. In my eyes, it’s a perfectly made film, and I found it to be a fascinating exploration of several existential themes: identity, choice, desire, fantasy, regret, eternal youth, and the wish to start life again. (The philosopher Slavoj Žižek analyses Seconds in his 2006 documentary…
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