Tag: Madisen Beaty

REVIEW: Seance [2021]

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)…

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REVIEW: To the Stars [2020]

Jared Mobarak

Welcome to Oklahoma. The whole of Martha Stephens‘ To the Stars can be summed up by a line in the director’s statement of intent: “Longing is part of the human condition: the ever-present awareness of what’s still missing from our lives.” It’s true. We all long for something. Sometimes it’s for something as simple and direct as love. Sometimes it’s for something as complex and harrowing as equality. We long to be seen as who we are and often for the escape that’s necessary to allow it to happen far…

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REVIEW: The Clovehitch Killer [2018]

Jared Mobarak

I like bad news. Don Burnside (Dylan McDermott) is a pillar of his community. He’s the troop leader of his son’s (Charlie Plummer‘s Tyler) church-adjacent Boy Scouts, a devout man of the Lord alongside his wife Cindy (Samantha Mathis), and the type of guy to go out of his way to volunteer and make the neighborhood a better place. So we laugh when the town’s resident eccentric teen (Madisen Beaty‘s Kassi), carrying a mark of “whore” around simply because she’s an atheist among cultish worshippers needing a reason to denounce…

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