Jodelle Ferland | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: The Unspoken [2016]

2016/10/242016/10/25 Jared Mobarak

“I repeat. Suspect present.” There are only so many iterations of the haunted house trope and yet they continue getting made. Sometimes we’re lucky with James Wan‘s The Conjuring series delivering fear along with period aesthetic and tense mood, but those are few and far between. More often we receive work trying hard to stand out from the pack that prove less than inspired with the past decade or so seeing an uptick in violence and gore to make up for any redundancies in themes. To that end I commend…

Posterized Propaganda October 2012: Summer Excess and Festival Freshness

2012/09/302014/04/11 Jared Mobarak

“Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” is a proverb whose simple existence proves the fact impressionable souls will do so without fail. This monthly column focuses on the film industry’s willingness to capitalize on this truth, releasing one-sheets to serve as not representations of what audiences are to expect, but as propaganda to fill seats. Oftentimes they fail miserably. Summer is over and the studios still have a few genre flicks to unload before the arthouse, festival favorites begin rolling out. Oh, and Halloween is here too. The sad…

REVIEW: ParaNorman [2012]

2012/08/102014/04/11 Jared Mobarak

“He’s probably up there fiddling with his Wee-Jah or his orbs …” LAIKA, Inc., the little studio with big dreams in Oregon is officially more than a flash in the pan success story that brought to life a critically acclaimed feature film before scaling back to commercials and music videos. Using a beacon in the stop-motion animation world like Henry Selick to adapt and direct Coraline showed the vision to take chances on darker material than most may want to expose their children to and they were rewarded for the…

REVIEW: The Messengers [2007]

2007/02/012013/07/16 Jared Mobarak

“Farmer Sutra” Special sneak previews are always a good time. No matter what movie it is you are seeing, people will always pack the theatre who have been awaiting the film, like free stuff, thought it’d be something to do, or just got lost. Either way, no matter how good or bad the film, the audience alone will make it enjoyable. Now when said movie is a PG-13 pseudo-horror film (can you really delve into horror when the MPAA is on your back censoring everything?) you know there will be…

REVIEW: Silent Hill [2006]

2006/09/062011/08/24 Jared Mobarak

“Sinners deserve to lose their spawn” Silent Hill is a study in atmosphere and mood. While some may say it is style over substance, I’d have to agree a bit, but correct the statement to style with substance. Christophe Gans, the visionary director behind a great foreign film Brotherhood of the Wolf, has crafted a film that is visually astonishing while mind-bendingly layered. Credit writer Roger Avary, whom I have yet to be disappointed with anything I’ve seen containing his involvement, for adapting, not the story exactly, but the emotion…