• The Turn of the Screw

    The Turn of the Screw

    The aesthetics of the ghost story and of horror in general are essentially those of the Symbolist movement that spanned the 19th and the 20th centuries. Phenomena that are perceived by the senses, say the sight of a ghost or the sound of a raven tapping on the chamber door, intimate the existence of a…

  • Silent House

    Silent House

    The advance notices have been a bit unfair to Chris Kentis and Laura Lau‘s SILENT HOUSE. They have made it impossible to experience the film’s aesthetic structure – it was ostensibly shot in real time and in a single take – as one might have without having had prior knowledge of the device. Rather than…

  • Sleep No More

    Sleep No More

    I was one of those lining up on Memorial Day night to see Punchdrunk’s SLEEP NO MORE in the Chelsea gallery district. The Scottish play as nightmare is an old trope, well founded in the text. So to deconstruct it as a sort of haunted house theme park and fragment its episodes in the manner…