Sink your teeth in
Sink your teeth in
In this week's Field Notes From Hell: Thoughts on The Batman, Fresh, the new Apple TV+ series, Severance, and the revamp of the newsletter.
Welcome to Field Notes From Hell—the weekly roundup email from my twisted newsletter, Deep Cuts. Each dispatch contains key horror news, thoughts on recent horror films, and personal life updates.
Here are this week’s Field Notes:
🦇 The Batman is great. Matt Reeves’ noir-ish take on the oft-mishandled DC sad boi features an inexperienced yet immovable Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) as collective disdain pushes Gotham into the throes of anarchy. Also, tremendous performance from Paul Dano.
🧸 Speaking of Dano, Prisoners from 2013 is worth revisiting based on this stars-have-aligned moment of fate: “Jingle bells, Batman smells…”
🍴 Fresh doesn’t mince its words — and I love that!
💼 Severance continues the streak for creepy, speculative TV. It’s a literal, twisted take on achieving work-life balance. And in the hands of Ben Stiller, it comes off both like a well-executed punchline and a jab-hook-punch combo that pulls your spirits apart. It’s available on Apple TV+.
🦊 Umma’s first trailer looks interesting. My default is to automatically watch a film that has Sandra Oh in it, though.
🎫 Films I’m excited to see this year: Jordan Peele’s Nope; Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone; David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends; Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling; and since I can’t shut up about it, Ti West’s X.
X (2022, dir. Ti West)
📨 This newsletter is back to regular programming…yay! To those of you who are still here, thank you for sticking around. Promise to put out more writing following a more consistent schedule.
🤳 Lastly, I’m on TikTok! Rappler’s TikTok, actually. I run a show called Play Of The Week where I recommend films and TV shows.