Tag: Angela Trimbur

REVIEW: Trespassers [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Sometimes you just can’t stop what’s coming. The film opens on an affluent white couple living close enough to the Mexican border for another character to later say, “You can’t open the door to strangers in today’s society.” They’re awoken by three men in masks made to look like MS-13 gang members, dragged out, and put in the trunk of a car before being shot dead by the side of the road. The MAGA allusions are therefore present from the start with pretty Malibu types falling victim to violent “cholos”…

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REVIEW: Psychopaths [2017]

Jared Mobarak

Evil’s a straight and simple ‘just because’. It’s hard to reject a film as having no substance when its narrator apologizes for that very fact. Was its hollowness therefore an intentional commentary on the empty nihilistic void that we call life or was the filmmaker throwing us for a “meta” loop with a tongue-in-cheek laugh that knowingly commends our having sat through it in its entirety nonetheless? In this vein Mickey Keating‘s Psychopaths could be profound or worthless. It could be a full-fledged movie that seeks to entertain in its…

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REVIEW: XX [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“Well I have to eat. Don’t I?” The concept is simple: task four female directors to create and film four unrelated shorts in the horror vein—with female-led casts—to be combined into a single compilation in which to show off the talents and voices of artists Hollywood continues to ignore. Tap newcomer Jovanka Vuckovic (whose “The Box” is based on a story by Jack Ketchum), musician Annie ‘St. Vincent’ Clark with her debut behind the camera (“The Birthday Party”), the veteran leadership of V/H/S producer and Southbound helmer Roxanne Benjamin (with…

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