Awards Stitches completely owns:

These are the ten movie clips that are always playing in my head, the ones that I don’t feel I’d be the same me without, my cine-DNA, I suppose. But, no, these clips aren’t necessarily the most iconic from all of film. There’s no “You had me at hello” or “Make my day” or “Of all the gin joints” or “I’m walking here”-stuff. All of which is cool and great, of course (here for more like that). Just, …

Found Footage. I love it when a term contains the conceit, just because, by accepting the term, you’ve already bought into the trick: this movie you’re watching, it’s an artifact. Which of course means that it’s real. And if a horror film can have you convinced of that before even watching—it’s a feat. Most horror on the screen strives for that. Found footage horror starts there. The analogue in fiction are those shoebox novels, that pretend to be documents and forms and snapsh…

How many grails are left now, in American horror? I mean, untouched, un-remade. Exorcist, Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, American Werewolf in London. Surely there’s another iconic one or two I’m missing, but, I mean, Jason and Freddy and Michael and Leatherface have all been updated, a new Carrie’s on the way soon, and I guess the only reason Ghostface has missed that treatment lo these seventeen years later is that the franchise is still alive.

The Evil Dead, though, man. There’s ra…

I haven’t been this impressed with a slasher in a good long time. I want to say since Cabin in the Woods. And before that . . . Tucker & Dale vs. Evil? Behind the Mask: Leslie Vernon? Except none of them quite play it Golden Age, either. And that’s good, don’t get me wrong. As you can tell from Demon Theory and The Last Final Girl, self-aware’s more than fine with me. Almost all the slashers to come all along after 1996 have been the children of Scream, after all, if not clones. And you …

1. Horror can still be very disturbing and very complete without gore and nudity

Is there even any profanity in The Mooring? I can’t think of it, if there is. Which isn’t to say over-the-top gore isn’t a complete riot, just all kinds of fun. I like it when I have to hide my eyes. Last time that happened, I guess, would have been Excision. First time? Probably The Exorcist. Well, okay, The Eyes of Laura Mars, but that wasn’t from gore, but absolute, undiluted terror; I was eight, I thin…

Man, sat down to make this list on the last day of 2012, but stumbled into the opening line of a novel instead, and have been there ever since. 160, 170 pages in right now, and staring down that last chapter. Which, as always, is terrifying. So, to stall, here’s my list, taking into account the specific kind of loser I am—that is, one who somehow missed Final Destination 5, just because I got burned by Final Destination 4. But I should have just remembered how much I loved the fi…

This deep into a franchise—really, I’ve lost count of the Texas Chainsaw Massacres—most horror series are  limping along, putting a movie out just to keep the brand in-house, that kind of stuff. Not here. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D is every single thing I want from a horror movie. And the story actually surprises me.

Worse, I almost missed the whole thing. Because I accidentally read a review or two, and it’s so easy to pan the sequel to a remake, or however this one’s stacked. Re…

ten in the morning, just after comic book class:

and. the close-up:

and, will be something different tonight, I suspect. Jason Voorhees, Ghostface, a horse-head dude, I don’t know. I do know this night’s never long enough.…

This was the easiest list to make. These are the images and jump-scares I think of first thing each night at two or three in the morning when I wake up. Take last night for example: I’m gonesville when I hear something crash downstairs. Or, I hear the end of it. So of course I have to investigate. By degrees. And, instead of anything understandable, what it is that fell is this skeleton hand we keep perched on an antique typewriter. Why it would fall at three in the morning, I hav…