The Conjuring: Nostalgia Made Me Do It

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2021 has been quite a year thus far for all the things that get me. Netflix aired the documentary “Sons of Sam” which leans into the satanic panic conspiracy theories espoused by Maury Terry in his book “The Ultimate Evil.” And then, the forces behind the theatrical juggernaut Conjuring-verse have resuscitated the “Devil Made Me Do It” case, which loomed large in my 80’s Connecticut-based childhood.

I’ve waxed plenty nostalgic about it here, and though I want to avoid rehashing what I’ve already said countless of times ad infinitum, I will need to revisit the trial of Arne Johnson, Gerald Brittle’s rotten book “The Devil in Connecticut,” and our sainted paladins of the paranormal, Ed and Lorraine Warren.

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Around the World in 31 Days: Pakistan

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It’s official: James Wan’s Conjuringverse has set its stamp on global horror cinema. A lot of the foreign horror films coming across my streaming platforms are taking the formula of haunted abodes, nuclear family, demonic evil and resolution by faith, and placing it within their own cultural context. At least that’s how it seems to me; hopefully I’m wrong and there’s a wealth of horror cinema telling all kinds of different stories.

To my highly-limited knowledge horror movies from Pakistan are rare, and I was happy to checkout Pari, currently streaming on Netflix.

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Being A Witch Ain’t One

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October 17, 2017 – Do we have a witch problem in recent horror cinema? Or are some filmmakers taking a mirror to something around us? I’m referencing three semi-recent films that look to me like a brutal, radical trifecta of witchcraft. Are they more Malleus Maleficarum, or more like a horror movie Valerie Solanas might have cared to make? Continue reading