1BR
Written & Directed by David Marmor
Starring Nicole Brydon Bloom, Taylor Nichols, Giles Matheny, Naomi Grossman, Clayton Hoff, Curtis Webster, Alan Blumenfeld
Runtime: 90 Minutes
Distributor: Dark Sky Films
Release date: April 24, 2020
Streaming on Netflix

Cults are scary. Unlike demons, vampires, monsters, etc., cults are both 100% real and 100% human. In the last few years evidence about the recruiting tactics behind the Church of Scientology and NXIVM have been detailed in docu-series and tell-all books. Los Angeles has its own storied history of cult behavior, most infamously The Manson Family. David Marmor’s new film 1BR captures the unsettling reality of modern cult behavior and gets to the core of things that terrify any and everyone who lives in a big city or an apartment complex. Who are your neighbors really? Who can you truly trust in your building? Who is really watching you from the security cameras? Add in some mesmerizing performances and you are left with one of the most tense psychological horror films of the year.

Shudder Presents: Cursed Films Episode 4 & 5 – The Crow & Twilight Zone: The Movie

Shudder’s new documentary series Cursed Films came to a conclusion this Thursday with two episodes surrounding movies that are notorious more for tragedy than for supernatural cursing. Those films are 1994’s The Crow and 1983’s Twilight Zone: The Movie. As he did with the Poltergeist episode, series creator Jay Cheel interviews people who were on set and worked with actors who died during production of the films. Their stories are harrowing and devastating and make the series a necessity for any horror film fan or cinephile in general. Here’s hoping for a season two.

Shudder Presents: Cursed Films Episode 2 & 3 – The Omen & Poltergeist

Living through the real world horrors of a global pandemic and quarantine makes sitting for horror-based entertainment very interesting, to say the least. Shudder is there for us horror fans, updating their catalogs with a “Halfway to Halloween” theme as well as a new series from writer/director Jay Cheel, Cursed Films. Last week’s premiere episode: The Exorcist, was Shudder’s second biggest streaming debut ever behind their updated Creepshow series last year. This week, we get a two-fer of episodes dealing with two of the most notoriously plagued and cursed productions in cinematic history, let alone horror history: The Omen and Poltergeist.

Shudder Presents: Cursed Films Episode 1 – The Exorcist

Horror fans have long shared stories of cursed productions on the set of some of the most famous and infamous horror films. It’s easy to shake many of these away as superstition or paranoia, but we are talking about the horror genre here, so is it too far out of the reach of our minds, that maybe… just maybe the films that scare us the most are cursed? That is the question being posed by Shudder, AMC’s horror streaming service, which unveiled today Cursed Film, its new 5-part series. The series covers Poltergeist (1982), The Omen (1976), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), and The Crow (1994). Perhaps fittingly, though, the premiere episode deals with William Friedkin’s genre-defining classic from 1973, The Exorcist.

Marriage Story
Director: Noah Baumbach
Writer: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Azhy Robertson, Julie Hagerty, Merritt Wever
Distributor: Netflix
Rated R| Minutes: 136
Release Date: November 8, 2019 (Limited Theaters)| December 6, 2019 (Netflix)

Writer and director Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story is an emotionally crushing, yet very compassionate depiction of a collapsing marriage between two people and the irony of the realization that they must come together in order for them to go their separate ways. It also may be one of Baumbach’s greatest pieces of work.

Films about divorce rarely explore the heartbreak of two people who could not make it work with such honesty. But with Marriage Story, it feels raw and unnerving. The film moves like a stage play with its characters (played brilliantly by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver) pouring out their souls for all of us to see as they go through one of the most difficult points in their lives.