Horror | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: Seance [2021]

2021/05/132021/05/17 Jared Mobarak

Edelvine Ghost, rise up to us. A teenager took her own life two decades ago and the prestigious Edelvine Academy hasn’t yet escaped the cloud formed above its roof as a result. Rumors of the “ghost” run rampant and jokes to scare new students with Candyman-esque rituals bringing her back to haunt them have become a rite of passage. It’s not until the present-day, however, that someone actually conjures her. By speaking the words at the exact time of her death in the exact place she died, Alice (Inanna Sarkis)…

REVIEW: The Djinn [2021]

2021/05/072021/05/11 Jared Mobarak

You’re perfect just the way you are. There’s a reason young, mute Dylan Jacobs (Ezra Dewey) longs for a voice and it’s not simply an ableist fantasy striving for some misguided ideal of “normalcy.” A bit of that is present (he’s a child seeking friendship and community, after all), but the reality is that he sees his silence as the reason why his mother (Tevy Poe) left. He’s starting over in a new apartment with his radio DJ father (Rob Brownstein‘s Michael) and yet he still can’t forget the night…

REVIEW: Jakob’s Wife [2021]

2021/04/132021/04/14 Jared Mobarak

Good people just don’t leave their families. The opening scene of Jakob’s Wife sets the stage for what’s to come as Reverend Jakob Fedder (Larry Fessenden) sermonizes about the love a husband should have for his wife. His partner Anne (Barbara Crampton) is in the front pew listening, but never smiling. She’s not hearing his words and nodding her head in agreement. She’s actually staring daggers at the reality of what his words mean. Because Jakob never says anything about that love being for her benefit. He never says men…

REVIEW: Honeydew [2021]

2021/04/012021/04/12 Jared Mobarak

Let’s start with the nasties. It’s comforting to see the words “bizarre” and “absurd” in the press notes and director’s statement for Devereux Milburn‘s Honeydew because they prove that he understands what he’s created. When a film exudes such a self-serious tone despite possessing so many odd idiosyncrasies and wild leaps of narrative coincidence, it’s easy to think you’re laughing at the whole rather than with it. Reading those words therefore allows us to know that the artist was fully aware of that incongruous juxtaposition. It might have even been…

REVIEW: Lucky [2021]

2021/02/262021/03/01 Jared Mobarak

Make a plan and try to stay calm. It’s easy to get caught up in your own privilege to the point where you don’t even recognize it exists. I can’t recall how the conversation started, but I do remember the topic shifting to using a gas station in the middle of the night. I was talking with my father and mentioned how doing so was a solution to some problem regarding my older sister and him responding, “Well it’s different for her.” I’m in my teens and suddenly racking my…

REVIEW: The Vigil [2021]

2021/02/192021/02/23 Jared Mobarak

It wants your pain. After spending his entire life within the Orthodox Jewish community, Yakov Ronen (Dave Davis) recently decided to leave its insular environment and make his way amongst the freer and more modern society away from its borders. It’s hardly an easy transition, though, when you consider how little he and his fellow defectors know about the world they’re entering. Yakov himself can’t stop marveling about his new smartphone because it has a flashlight let alone access to the internet, so it’s no surprise that he’d fail to…

REVIEW: The Reckoning [2021]

2021/02/012021/02/02 Jared Mobarak

I must persist. While Neil Marshall‘s 1665 London-set, Great Plague drama The Reckoning has obvious allusions to our own present-day pandemic, COVID-19 wasn’t a factor in its creation being that filming occurred in 2019. The fear and paranoia that surround both eras are palpable, though, and the ways in which our current disease has been politicized beyond the point of human empathy does bear superficial similarity to the ways in which women were persecuted as witches against the backdrop that past sickness. Despite Marshall and co-writers Charlotte Kirk and Edward…

SUNDANCE21 REVIEW: In the Earth [2021]

2021/01/312021/03/12 Jared Mobarak

You worried she’s going to get you? There’s a shared ambition during times like worldwide pandemics and it’s to find meaning in the chaos. We need to figure out cause and composition in order to create a solution, but there’s also a necessity for comprehension insofar as abetting the anxiety that inevitably rises from the moment’s uncertainty. Some of us go straight to the science as a result, (How bad is it? What can we do to stay safe? Who’s at a higher risk?), while others search their souls through…

REVIEW: Saint Maud [2020]

2021/01/262021/02/10 Jared Mobarak

Never waste your pain. After attempting to get her young nurse to agree with a mean-spirited comment about a just departed houseguest, Amanda (Jennifer Ehle) remarks that, “We don’t see what we don’t want to see.” Maud (Morfydd Clark) never disagreed with her, though. She simply stated that she didn’t notice. That’s nevertheless enough to make her the enemy in this instance. That’s enough for Amanda to grow defensive (towards herself) because that anger is the only thing keeping her warm against what she deems emotional betrayal. And who’s to…

REVIEW: آن شب‎ [The Night] [2021]

2021/01/202021/01/27 Jared Mobarak

There’s no way out. While playing a game of “mafia,” Babak (Shahab Hosseini) and Neda (Niousha Noor) are tasked with figuring out who amongst them (it’s an evening with friends rounded out by two more couples) are gangsters and who are citizens. The idea is to therefore lie if you’re the former. Pretend you’re innocent and point your finger elsewhere in hopes that the majority of players choose to “kill” the wrong person. A poker face is king and in this case salvation for those searching for one last victory…

REVIEW: PG: Psycho Goreman [2021]

2021/01/182021/01/25 Jared Mobarak

That is a tale bathed in the blood of a million dead memories. It opens with a gladiator-level war of attrition between two middle school-aged siblings in their backyard. The game is called “crazy ball” and the loser gets buried alive. Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myre) pick-up their respective dodgeballs, throw them as far behind themselves as possible, and run after the other as fast as they can to try and take advantage of the five-point bonus “butt shot” rule. Writer/director Steven Kostanski shoots it like battle with…