Duel at Diablo (1966)

Coralie Fargeat once said that “Being a woman is body horror,” and when you think about the ways we are taught to experience our own bodies, it becomes almost impossible to argue with her.

The Gates, John Burr’s new thriller film, is a disturbingly realistic portrayal of three Black twenty-somethings - Derek (Mason Gooding), Kevin (Algee Smith), and Tyon (Keith Powers), as they accidentally take a wrong turn into a gated community that’s more like a modern-day sundown town. The three friends witness a variety of crimes in their new surroundings, including an attempted homicide and an attempted rape. As they attempt to alert the authorities and do the right thing, they are thwarted at every turn by the worst horror stories of American conservatism - racist white suburbanites, reckless gun violence, corrupt police, religious mania, and a megalomaniacal pastor. 

Those saying it's a bad movie simply because it's bad as a slasher should be reminded that the likes of Jordan and Alexandra often don’t get their tales told, let alone in such major releases helmed by veteran actors like Bacon.

Ever since the mid-’90s, the Mortal Kombat game franchise has seen multiple attempts to make it on the big screen, or at least adapted into other media.

Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow era, the film offers layered representation.