(ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS, NJ) -- SModcastle Cinemas presents Horror Fest 2026 on Saturday, August 8. The festival features seven blocks of independent horror, featuring sinister shorts, creature features, dark comedy, supernatural chills, and plenty of blood-soaked surprises.
(ASBURY PARK, NJ) -- This August, The ShowRoom welcomes audiences back to its annual Summer Camp series, a celebration of cinema at its most gloriously excessive. Featuring larger-than-life performances, outrageous style, melodrama, and unapologetic bad taste, this four-film lineup showcases the movies that have earned devoted followings through their fearless embrace of the theatrical, the flamboyant, and the fabulously over-the-top.
(ASBURY PARK, NJ) -- This August, The ShowRoom Cinema invites audiences to celebrate the Garden State on the big screen with The Jersey Shore on Film, a special three-film series presented in collaboration with film historian and author Marci Mazzarotto. Executive Director of the Bread & Roses Film Festival and Associate Professor of Communication at Georgian Court University, Mazzarotto will introduce each screening and share insights into New Jersey's rich cinematic history. Copies of her acclaimed book, The Jersey Shore on Film—the first and only book dedicated entirely to the region's cinematic legacy—will be available for purchase at each event.
The recent wave of women-directed horror movies centred on image insecurity (The Substance, Thinestra, Grafted, The Ugly Stepsister et al) have all fallen into the body-horror sub-genre. These movies share a Monkey's Paw "be careful what you wish for" setup in which an insecure female protagonist unleashes a nightmare after trying a "quick fix" to alter their looks. Natalie Erika James' Saccharine has a similar starting point, but the scares here are of the supernatural rather than body-horror variety.
Pregnancy horror movies fall into one of two categories. There are those, like Rosemary's Baby, that play out during the pregnancy term, and there are others, like It's Alive, that focus on the horrors that arise once the child is born. They all tend to share a female protagonist's fear that her child, whether it's inside or outside of her womb, is something monstrous.
The recent wave of women-directed horror movies centred on image insecurity (The Substance, Thinestra, Grafted, The Ugly Stepsister et al) have all fallen into the body-horror sub-genre. These movies share a Monkey's Paw "be careful what you wish for" setup in which an insecure female protagonist unleashes a nightmare after trying a "quick fix" to alter their looks. Natalie Erika James' Saccharine has a similar starting point, but the scares here are of the supernatural rather than body-horror variety.
Pregnancy horror movies fall into one of two categories. There are those, like Rosemary's Baby, that play out during the pregnancy term, and there are others, like It's Alive, that focus on the horrors that arise once the child is born. They all tend to share a female protagonist's fear that her child, whether it's inside or outside of her womb, is something monstrous.
2023's excellent dramedy Amanda introduced us to the Italian double act of writer/director Carolina Cavalli and her leading lady Benedetta Porcoroli. After a brief flirtation with American cinema (Cavalli co-wrote Babak Jalali's Fremont while Porcoroli had a role in the Sydney Sweeney horror movie Immaculate) the duo have returned to Italy to reunite for The Kidnapping of Arabella, and they've brought an American star back with them in the form of Chris Pine.
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is a lot like Odyssey's 'I Got the Melody'. The equivalent of the Roots Suite here is the portion of the movie that follows Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his men as they try to make their way back home following the sacking of the city of Troy. You don't need to have read Homer to be familiar with its various episodes, as they're practically ingrained in the minds of anyone who grew up in the western world. We all learned about Odysseus and his crew sneaking into Troy by hiding in a wooden horse in school, and we've all seen Ray Harryhausen's classic stop motion takes on the mythical monsters of Greek lore. In these scenes Nolan takes us back to those days listening intently to teachers or staring wide-eyed at a TV screen on a Sunday afternoon. Largely eschewing digital effects, Nolan puts the fantastical back into the fantasy genre.
Hundreds of thrillers have been centred on the idea of a vulnerable young woman being drawn into a life of crime by a handsome young scoundrel. Writer/director Georgia Bernstein's feature debut Night Nurse might be the first erotic thriller in which a young woman finds herself seduced by a roguish retiree. It's certainly like no other movie I've ever seen.
