PETERSON REVIEWS
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Sex and Death, Locked in a Tango, in ‘Def by Temptation’
In this atmospheric and sensual (but not humorless) horror movie, Bible-style capital-T temptation is embodied by a blood-thirsty, ostensibly eons-old succubus that disguises itself as a distractingly beautiful woman.
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Bad Ideas
On ‘Halloween Kills’ and ‘Lamb.’
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‘Countess Dracula’ Doesn’t Deserve Ingrid Pitt
‘Countess Dracula’’s wall-to-wall wasted potential is almost as suffocating as the castle in which its bloodthirsty noblewoman commits her imaginatively heinous crimes.
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Men on Missions
On ‘No Time to Die’ and ‘The Guilty’
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‘The Cell’ Gives New Meaning to the Psychological Thriller
‘The Reflecting Skin’ has two ways of seeing.
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‘The House That Dripped Blood’ is a Solid Horror-Omnibus Movie
Even if ‘The House That Dripped Blood’ isn’t particularly scary in real time, the places its stories go manage to still linger in our memory a bit — an effect all good horror should have.
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‘The Reincarnation of Peter Proud’ Doesn’t Go Where You Think It Will
The finale is so wonderfully ghoulish — it almost makes the story feel like an old moral tale — that I’m sure Peter Proud might wish he’d woken up prematurely yet again instead of getting what he thought he wanted.
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She’s Not There
On ‘Titane’ and ‘The Mad Women’s Ball.’
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In the House
‘Tenebrae’ is about as personal as a slasher movie can get.
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‘Museo’ Smartly Rejiggers the Heist Movie
The film tries to stay planted in real life; it’s grounded by its convincingly co-dependent lead performances and Ruizpalacios’s measured and thoughtful approach to what is outwardly a too-wild-to-be-true curiosity of a story.
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Smoke Screens
On ‘The Nowhere Inn’ and ‘Prisoners of the Ghostland.’
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‘Taste of Cherry’ is Simple and Complicated
The jarring meta finale may seem playful — from a pessimistic perspective even a copout — but I think it’s wise.
JUNE 2026
The Theme is ‘Pride’
ASDFJHGSD
‘By Hook or By Crook’ is a Moving Ode to Friendship
Despite its low budget and the sometimes-amateurishness of its performances, it isn’t obvious that 2001’s ‘By Hook or By Crook’ was made by people who came into filmmaking practically on a whim.
May 25, 2026
May 13. 2026
March 27, 2026
Superheroines
On Julia Loktev’s towering, terrifying ‘My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow.’
March 30, 2026
Everything Everywhere
William Greaves’ ‘Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One’ is almost 60 years old and still feels ahead of the curve.
March 11, 2026
Next Big Things
Gregory La Cava’s ‘Stage Door’ is often at once hysterically funny and brutally pragmatic about the personal toll a career in entertainment can take.
March 4, 2026
Peterson Reviews 