Sean Patrick
Bio
Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.
Stories (294/1980)
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Movie Review: 'Children of Sin' is Better Poster than a Movie
Children of Sin has a terrific movie poster. The poster is 80’s style, hand drawn, animated art that evokes the aesthetic of direct to VHS horror movie discoveries of the 1980s. It’s a great poster that creates an aesthetic expectation that is sadly unfulfilled in the actual movie. Whereas the poster is distinctive and eye-catching, the movie is indistinct and rather by the numbers in style and in execution.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'Room 203' Hopes You Are Afraid of the Dark
Room 203 is yet another horror movie that mistakes darkness for atmosphere. This by the numbers exercise in haunted house and demon possession tropes is, at times, so dark, in terms of what you can see, that trying to follow the story is impossible. Perhaps the movie might look better on a big screen, but watching on a professionally set up HD Television, I felt like I was staring into a dark room while stock music played.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'We're All Going to the World's Fair' is a Terrifically Moody ARG Horror Movie. Top Story - April 2022.
One of my favorite YouTube rabbit holes to fall into is Alternate Reality Games or ARG’s. An ARG is an interactive online mystery that invites people watching and participating to keep track of and document clues to a central mystery. These stories often involve elements of true crime, they begin with a murder or an urban legend, they have suspects and clues and make use of YouTube, Reddit and various other forms of social media to expand the mystery in unique ways. The stories are densely packed and easy to get lost in for a few hours.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'Kicking Blood' is a Nice Twist on the Vampire Genre
Kicking Blood stars Alanna Bale as Anna, a vampire. Anna has a taste for blood and while she is a murderer, she tends to enact her need for blood on bad people who deserve to have their life force sucked out by a vampire. Her first kill, that we see, is that of a man who works at the same library where Anna works. First, Anna witnesses this jerk breaking the heart of her elderly co-worker all while also acting creepy toward Anna.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is Haunting and Tense
The Yellow Wallpaper opens on a shocking sight. A family of three is in a carriage on their way to a country home for the summer. A mother, a father, and a small baby that will not stop crying. After the husband demands that the wife do something about the crying baby, she picks up the child and hurls it out of the window of the movie carriage. It’s a striking scene, one deeply symbolic of the rest of the movie which takes on postpartum depression through the lens of a horror movie.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'Godforsaken' is a Wild Ride of a Horror Movie
Godforsaken looks as if it was made on cellphone cameras on a budget of maybe two bucks. And yet, despite the low budget aesthetic, it’s as bracing and terrifying as any horror movie released in the last several years. This extremely DIY zombie movie crosses horror subgenres and aesthetics and through ingenuity and gusto manages to craft some of the most genuine scares that I have experienced since I became a cynical, seen-it-all before film critic.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'X' is One of the Best of 2022 So Far
X takes the idea of aesthetic homage to its best possible place by evoking the look and feel of the best of 1970s horror while not forgetting to tell its own story. X is the story of a group of low level hustlers trying their hand at making low budget pornography. The success of Debbie Does Dallas inspired hundreds of copycats and the characters of X feel that they have a terrific chance for success with their sexy strippers and a ‘talented’ male star.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
Classic Movie Review: 'The House of the Devil'
Merely emulating the style of another era of film is not an idea, it’s an aesthetic. The 2009 horror movie, The House of the Devil, a breakout for director Ti West impressed a lot of people with its aesthetic. The film’s grainy cinematography evoked the early 1980s and the horror aesthetic of that time. Indeed, in style alone, The House of the Devil is quite impressive. Every last retro touch from the clothes right down to the heroine’s walkman looks perfectly of the period.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'Heckle' starring Steve Guttenberg
It’s almost hard to believe that at one time, Steve Guttenberg was a major Hollywood star. Coming off of his terrifically fun role in Police Academy in 1984, Guttenberg became a highly marketable talent. He got more than sequel out of The Police Academy movies, to declining interest each time and managed to squander the significant goodwill he’d accrued in Police Academy, a movie many people still love today.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'The World Ends at Camp Z'
World Ends at Camp Z is a low budget zombie movie that, though it may look like a horror comedy, takes its premise deathly seriously. Directed by Ding Wang, what looks like it should be a wild horror comedy quickly establishes itself as a dire waiting game as interchangeable characters are introduced, bicker in desperately unfunny fashion, and wait for zombies to show up and make a meal of them.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'Studio 666' Gets Horror Comedy Right
Studio 666 walks a remarkably slim tight rope between comedy and bloody horror and manages brilliantly to stay upright. This wildly fun and playful horror movie starring the rock band, The Foo Fighters, is such a jovial delight that even when someone dies horrifically you can sense they did so with the glee of a child enjoying a theme park ride. Dave Grohl and company are having an absolute ball sending up horror tropes and playing them straight for scares at the same time and I loved every moment of it.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
Movie Review: 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)' is Utter Trash and We Deserve Better
“Do something and you are totally canceled bro!” Random Leatherface victim in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022. Allow me to set the scene: A bus filled with Zoomers partying late into a rainy Texas night. Leatherface, the famed chainsaw killer boards the bus wearing his adopted mother’s face and carrying his chainsaw. Slack-jawed soon to be dead, Zoomers point cellphone cameras at Leatherface and victim number 1 threatens the lunatic killer with cancel culture. A generation that has lived through multiple school shootings is here portrayed as so dimwitted and P.C that they believe cancel culture would stop a chainsaw wielding maniac.
By Sean Patrick4 years ago in Horror
