The ramblings of a wannabe cineaste. Join me as I dissect the art of storytelling in films, comics, TV shows, and video games.
O'GRADY FILM

From Our Nightmares: Tomie (1998)
Director Ataru Oikawa’s cinematic adaptation of Tomie uses the basic premise of manga artist Junji Ito’s identically titled source...
Junji Ito and the Horror of Compulsion
[ The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] At first glance, the premise of Junji Ito’s “Smashed” is almost...
The Satirical Horror of Junji Ito’s “Hanging Blimp”
[The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Junji Ito’s “Hanging Blimp” features a brilliant moment of dark comedy....
Silent Horror: Celluloid Specters
From Max Schreck’s ghoulishly feral Count Orlok to Lon Chaney’s grotesquely disfigured Phantom of the Opera, the movie monsters of the...
Informal Pitch: A Nightmare on Elm Street Legacy Sequel
Synopsis: The setting is the Lantz Institute, a clinic specializing in the study of sleep disorders. Despite the wide variety of...
The Small Town Horror of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki
[The following essay contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Junji Ito’s Uzumaki begins unassumingly enough. The protagonist, Kirie...
The Cosmic Horror of Junji Ito’s Remina
[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of...
The Biomechanical Horror of Junji Ito’s Gyo
[The following essay contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] When questioned about the underlying themes of Gyo, author Junji Ito...
From Our Nightmares: The Shape, Halloween Ends (2022)
[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Evil is a virus. As glimpsed in 2021’s Halloween Kills, its...
Review: Hellraiser (2022)
When Clive Barker decided to direct a cinematic adaptation of one of his own novellas (The Hellbound Heart) back in 1987, he was a...
From Our Nightmares: Last Night in Soho
[The following essay contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] In Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, ghosts are real. Skeptics may...
From Our Nightmares: Michael Myers, Halloween Kills
[The following essay contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Despite the clear iconography associated with the character, the...
From Our Nightmares: Candyman (2021)
[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] In Bernard Rose’s original Candyman, the eponymous hook-handed...
From Our Nightmares: Michael Myers, Halloween
You can feel them. Frigid as a bucket of ice water poured straight down your back. Eyes. The eyes of a stranger. Stalking you through the...
From Our Nightmares: The Demon Woman, Onibaba
A pair of wounded samurai wade through a dense, endless sea of tall grass, leaning on one other for support. Every line on their...
From Our Nightmares: Hans Beckert, M
A mother looks from the ticking clock on the mantel to the empty chair at the dinner table. She leans out the window and calls her...
From Our Nightmares: Hannibal Lecter, Silence of the Lambs
Few cinematic serial killers ooze calculated creepiness quite like Sir Anthony Hopkins’ “Hannibal the Cannibal.” From the slurping to the...
From Our Nightmares: Mamiya, Cure
The “villain” of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s tense police thriller seems to step into the story fully-formed–no past, no future, living entirely...
From Our Nightmares: Count Orlok, Nosferatu
A few patches of wiry hair frame his otherwise bald head, sprouting just behind his pointed ears. Razor sharp talons flex at the end of...





















