amber can walk

This is not a review. About a month ago, I saw The Shrouds (2024) in the cinema for the first time. After ruminating on it, posting a quick review to Letterboxd and eating some very mediocre sushi, I found myself, periodically crying throughout the rest of the evening and well into the early hours of the morning. This, unfortunately, ruined the unintentional double feature I did with Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (2024), a film I remember very little about, but have the vague sense that I did, in fact, like it. It wasn't for the lack of quality that the details of this fluffy little movie slipped away, but rather due to me having what I will euphemistically call a 'bad turn'. I do spiral. I've been known to dwell. I've sunk to depths of depression that I didn't think I was capabale of. I've been triggered by the innocuous and I've been triggered by the terrifying. I've spaced out for days and been knocked back to reality by something as mundane as a ...

Note: This post was originally published on 8th December 2021 but I'm reposting it here because the site it was originally posted to has disappeared. I haven't edited it from the original document so everything should be exactly as it was when it was written, except there are two links in the original post that I can't seem to recover. I didn't keep the source document for whatever reason and it hasn't saved in Google Docs so whatever I referenced at the time has been lost to history. * Jumbo (2020) is, by all accounts, a classic love story, with its meet cute, its honeymoon period, its 'meeting the parents scene', its breakup, reconciliation and typical marriage ending. The film follows the shy and awkward Jeanne as she starts her job at a fairground and eventually falls in love with one of the rides, who she affectionately calls Jumbo. Where her life was previously grey and drab, she suddenly finds happiness in the bright neon glow of her lover. The story’...

Note: This post was originally published on 28th July 2021 but I'm reposting it here because the site it was originally posted to has disappeared. I haven't edited it from the original document so everything should be exactly as it was when it was written, except there are two links in the original post that I can't seem to recover. I didn't keep the source document for whatever reason and it hasn't saved in Google Docs so whatever I referenced at the time has been lost to history. * Whilst the image of the witch has permeated culture as a haggard, ugly woman who is hellbent on causing destruction with her spells, popular depictions of witches have mostly been neutralised as western culture has embraced wicca as a legitimate belief system. It's no longer a character trope that writers are scared to imbue with positive connotations, even in horror. Within the genre, the character of the witch has undergone a transformation, often keeping the same enemy - that bei...