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Articles by Max Matta
LONGLEGS Terror From Inside and Outside the Frame
There is a common safety technique: when entering a new space, people are advised to identify all entrances and exits for a quick escape in an emergency. In movies, during a conversation or a scene with a simple frame, the audience will let their eyes wander to look at the scene around the character and possibly the extras that may be walking around.
UK Electronic Healthcare Records for research: A Scientometric analysi
Georgie M Massen,1 Olivia Blamires,2,* Megan Grainger,2,* Max Matta,2,* Rachel Monica Gyemfuah Twumasi,2,* Tanvi Joshi,2,* Alex Laity,2,* Elena Nakariakova,2,* Thilaksana Thavaranjan,2,* Aziz Sheikh,3 Jennifer K Quint1 1School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK; 2Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK; 3Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK *These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence:...
OUT THERE HALLOWEEN MEGA TAPE-The Long Awaited Sequel Arrives
Anyone who grew up in the 90s or was familiar with the television trends of the time knows that Americans were obsessed with two things: talk shows and aliens. Between shows like The X-Files and Ricki Lake, people learned to fear the possibilities of life outside our atmosphere and watch all the trash that is trapped within it. So what if someone was to take those two fandoms and see where they intersect on Halloween?
HORRIFIC ORIGIN: From Chilled To Thrilled
People’s passions are something that are so unique to each individual and so fascinating to trace back especially when they have surprising origins. For some, it is something that caught their attention from a young age whether it was art or space, and these are passions fostered through years of love. Others have an experience with something in their later years and the passion just clicks with them, something that catches their imagination.
IDA RED-In The Shadow Of Other Films
As time goes on it feels like creators are struggling more and more to tell an original story, or at least avoid direct scene comparisons to other films. Considering that the medium of film has been around since the 20th century it is easy to make a case that everything has already done but it is nonetheless disappointing to see a movie tread a path that has been thoroughly walked time and time again.
DEMIGOD-The Goosebumps A24 Movie
For the uninitiated Goosebumps was a series of children’s horror books that were popular in the 90s that spawned a TV series and more recently a movie starring Jack Black. While certain episodes could be surprising and indeed frightening to a young audience, to adults they are just spooky kids’ horror that is often comical with the production value and script quality.
ANTLERS-A Beast Made Of Broken Lives
If we stop for a moment to think outside of our own lives, whether your food wasn’t made how you requested it at the restaurant or that your coworker’s slacking is making your day more difficult, there are people whose lives are a living horror movie. It is easy to get wrapped up in our own mundane melancholy that it can be hard to enjoy what we have.
MALIGNANT Is The Everything Bagel Of Horror Movies
It is rarely spoken in a positive sense when people say “it has everything and the kitchen sink” when talking about movies. Much in the same way a movie with too many tones can give audiences a feeling of emotional whiplash, there are sensations and visuals that cannot be excessive for the sake of cohesion. Malignant puts that theory to the test by being a horror film that has everything you could want all mashed together, and it is surprising how fun it is.
RUST BELT DRILLER-Both Lynchian And Not
Lynchian is a term to describe media that has qualities seen in the works of director David Lynch. These qualities are usually ones of abstract plots, strange situations, and the media usually has a deeper meaning that must be explored to be understood. It is the deeper meaning that filmmakers often struggle with when they draw direct inspiration from Lynch, often leaving their projects feeling like a cluttered abstract mess.
HATCHED-How To Make A Dinosaur Horror Movie Boring
Great pieces of cinema will always have their imitators, as they say, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Without Halloween we wouldn’t have Friday the 13th, which started off as an imitation but then took on a life of its own. It is never just enough though to copy something that is popular, it has to have something that makes it unique or it just becomes one of the thousands of movies that The Asylum releases.
THE DARKNESS, the First-time Feature Film Pitfalls
When being a first-time filmmaker there is nearly constant pressure to make your project ambitious as to stand out in the crowd. It has to be the most clever, the most interesting, and the most unique if it ever has a chance of being noticed by a studio. What that tends to lead to though is a film that is far too big for a new director to wrangle, which leads to an over-ambitious mess of a film.
FUTURE FEAR, a Banquet of Slop with a Cherry on Top
Any piece of media that is composed of multiple creators, whether it be a book of short stories or a film anthology, is inherently a gamble. The curator of the project must find talented people to contribute and decide on the best way and order to present the stories. With film anthologies, there is even a throughline needed to create connectivity between the different segments. Give a poorly made or written segment too much screen time or importance and it will drag the entire project down.
DIGGING TO DEATH, Waiting for Things to Happen
Subtle horror is the subgenre that can haunt the adults in the audience in the same way that outward horror movies scare the young and inexperienced. The difficulties with these films though is with little happening the audience needs to be given something to keep their interest. This can be characters or an interesting location or an exciting killer, but the film becomes tedious and boring if they are given nothing.
FUNHOUSE-Lost Potential Of The Almost Murder Mystery
In just the last year I have been introduced to well-crafted murder mysteries, with classics like Murder on the Orient Express and Then There Were None, and taken to them like a fish to water. These films combined with my constant searches for good murder documentaries have had the idea of mysteries as well as murder at the forefront of my mind.
SLAXX-Killer Pants Are Not A Great Fit For The Story
Within the genre, horror has always reveled in revealing the uncomfortable truths to its audience and unexpecting first timers. If horror has always been built on a foundation of shocking and horrifying the viewers, few things do that as effectively as the reality of the world. Sometimes this can be through the minimal realities that people experience every day or the terror that exists in the systems that “serve us”.
BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL-Tone Of The Dead?
Much in the same way a trapeze artist must balance during their act or become quickly familiar with the ground, films have to balance tone if they are going to try multiple moods or risk falling flat. Of the possible genres you can mash together, adding comedy is difficult but making a comedy horror has to be handled with the utmost care.
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