When I started writing film criticism in the mid-2000s, the horror genre was at a creative low point—what I consider the worst era for horror of my lifetime. The 1990s slasher resurgence spearheaded b...

Listmaking is a fun, somewhat obligatory, and ultimately meaningless exercise. Not a year goes by that I don’t look back at a list and think this or that title should be swapped. Why did I rank that o...

The Scream franchise is among the most iconic and influential horror series in cinematic history. It also might have the best track record. Other slasher franchises have uneven results, often with eup...

By design, ambiguous endings have a way of hanging around in the mind For me, an ambiguous ending is different from the sort of unresolved conflict in David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007), where investigator...

If you see enough movies, then there’s never been a bad movie year. There’s always plenty to make a Top 10 list. However, some years are better than others, and 2022 was a good year. This means, as ev...

2021 turned out to be stellar, largely due to the year-end influx of festival favorites and pandemic holdovers. Had you asked me in September what kind of movie year 2021 was, I would have said, “Aver...

This Top 10 List is currently posted on Patreon. Support Deep Focus Review by becoming a Patron, and you’ll get exclusive access to this review and many others published on Patreon first. Patrons also...

This list is currently posted on Patreon. Join Deep Focus Review’s Patron community, and you’ll receive exclusive access to this piece and many others published on Patreon first. Patrons also ge...

By now, you’ve read countless assessments of 2020 as a traumatic and unprecedented year. I won’t bother recapping the numerous troubling developments the world over in the last twelve months, except t...