Horror | www.jaredmobarak.com

FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Never Tear Us Apart [2016]

2016/07/142016/07/21 Jared Mobarak

“I was attacked by a cougar once. Her name was Janice.” It plays out exactly how you know it will, but it’s no less funny as a result. Sid Zanforlin‘s (co-written by Chris Bavota) short film Never Tear Us Apart has everything you’d want from a horror with naïve wanderers, cannibalistic hicks, dismemberment, and a healthy dose of blood. But don’t discredit its humor either, a tone introduced directly after watching the screams of an unnamed victim (Mark Anthony Krupa) tied to chair bleeding. James (Matt Keyes) and Colin (Alex…

FANTASIA16 REVIEW: The Alchemist Cookbook [2016]

2016/07/122016/07/21 Jared Mobarak

“This human form, which I was born, I now repent” I have no clue why Sean (Ty Hickson) messes with the titular book in Joel Potrykus‘ The Alchemist Cookbook. He doesn’t seem to care about money while living as a hermit inside a hidden trailer deep within the woods—bill collectors “no longer owning him”—so gold is out of the question. It might be for an elixir of immortality, his ritualistic incantations recalling satanic verse in search of dealing with a demonic presence that only pentagrams and dead animals hope to…

FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Crimson Dance [2016]

2016/07/112016/07/23 Jared Mobarak

“Welcome to the Bloody Burlesque Freak Show” Letting American burlesque dancer Tonya Kay perform an interpretive, sensual dance with blood isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to my mind when thinking about ways to raise public consciousness about donating this crucial fluid, yet here we are. Writer/director Patricia Chica not only thought it, she filmed it as the 4-minute short Crimson Dance—a document of the performance as it is staged with the addition of a surreally aroused crowd bloodthirsty enough to probably lick the substance off Kay’s skin if…

REVIEW: The Invitation [2016]

2016/07/102016/07/11 Jared Mobarak

“I’ve been waiting to die since the moment it happened” Death plays a large role in our lives, mortality seemingly out of reach but never forgotten. For some it knocks early—or at least earlier than we’d hope to believe. Disease, accident, and fate remind us how precious our time on Earth is. We grieve, pray, repress, and overcome, the inevitable sorrow bringing as much strength to move on as agony to stop everything. And nothing is more heartbreaking or painful than the passing of a child taken too soon and…

REVIEW: The Neon Demon [2016]

2016/06/302016/07/01 Jared Mobarak

“Are you food or are you sex” Fame: all that’s glittered and gold, the intrinsic “it” quality we’d kill for but never do. That aura with an expiration date; beauty, confidence, radiance, and whatever other label outsiders use to transform you into a commodity to be bought, sold, and exploited within the tiny window before someone younger takes your place. This is Nicolas Winding Refn‘s The Neon Demon, an unexplainable concept jumping person to person without definition or discernment. It consumes the souls of unwitting vessels, makes them and breaks…

REVIEW: The Purge: Election Year [2016]

2016/06/282018/07/03 Jared Mobarak

“Is murder our new religion?” The escalation of terror has dialed up a few more notches as writer/director James DeMonaco takes us further down the hole of first world genocide in The Purge: Election Year. What began behind fortified walls and a false sense of modest superiority to show how no one was safe when bloodlust, greed, and jealousy ruled mankind soon entered the outdoors to find the government blatantly enforcing its own thinly veiled mantra of “kill the poor” when the public stopped doing it for them. The only…

REVIEW: The Shallows [2016]

2016/06/262016/06/27 Jared Mobarak

“The island of the pregnant woman” Not all shark movies should be compared to Jaws—not even The Shallows. If you were to make any type of correlation cinema-wise it should be Cast Away meets Gravity or All Is Lost. The idea here is to put a character in isolation during a survival moment where hope can be lost in an instant. Will he/she prevail? Will he/she give him/herself the opportunity to live? Most of us would give up as soon as that shark’s vice-grip tightened around our thigh. Kicking and…

REVIEW: The Conjuring 2 [2016]

2016/06/062016/06/09 Jared Mobarak

“This is the closest to Hell I ever want to go” When a formula succeeds as well as that of James Wan‘s The Conjuring and its real life subjects have as extensive a Rolodex of haunting investigations as Ed and Lorraine Warren, the prospect of a sequel arrives as both inevitability and an initial pause. Generally these types of projects change creative hands early so studios can rush ahead without worrying about scheduling conflicts, but Wan has never been one to shy away from involvement on subsequent entries to his…

REVIEW: Possession [1981]

2016/04/062016/04/07 Jared Mobarak

“There is nothing to fear except God. Whatever that means to you.” It’s the early 1980s in West Berlin and graffiti everywhere screams for the wall to be taken down. Mysterious figures linger on the other side not quite hidden from view, watching with binoculars and always seemingly looking directly in our direction. Tensions are high, psychosis runs rampant, and people begin to start disappearing. There’s a palpable sense of paranoia setting in that cannot be combatted except by our personal allowance to embrace an unpredictably chaotic side of ourselves.…

REVIEW: Darling [2016]

2016/03/302016/03/31 Jared Mobarak

“Abyssus Abyssum Invocat” Much like with Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining, the job of caretaker isn’t an easy one in Mickey Keating‘s Darling. It should be: combat any prospective upkeep problems, tidy up, wait until the tenure is complete, and collect your pay. But not this New York City brownstone with its history steeped in satanic ritual. The Madame of the house (Sean Young) knows more than she lets on, dropping juicy tidbits about young “Darling’s” (Lauren Ashley Carter) predecessor’s suicide and cryptic warnings about a locked room at the end…

REVIEW: Heir [2015]

2016/03/302018/01/11 Jared Mobarak

“Ain’t nothing like the real thing” It’s not difficult to parse what’s happening after watching Gordon (Robert Nolan) chat online about his son with an as yet unnamed partner. The verbiage is simple and direct: “my son” with photo and a “play date??? :)” in reply. His anxiety and fear is palpable, but he doesn’t stop. He’s ready to take a leap that leaves no room for turning back and his transformation into the monster necessary to do so has begun to take shape with his flesh opening wide. Gordon…