Hiding in the Lights 

While prioritizing production value over substance, Flood depicts an emotionally taut family drama set during the farmland flooding of the Franco-Dutch war.

Not every silence is empty. Some are filled with things too heavy for words.

Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion is a fan-favorite, as are some of the more science fiction angled movies like 28 Days Later or World War Z. I recently watched the 1995 Wolfgang Peterson-directed movie, Outbreak for the first time, which is currently available on Netflix.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a film that is jarring within the first five minutes. Being at the edge of my seat from the very beginning made me feel both excited and frightened for what was to come, and it did not disappoint. Led strongly by Jennifer Lawrence as Grace, a woman trapped in the “American dream”, this film shows that society tells us what should make us happy. Many critics describe Die My Love as being about post-partem depression, but it is so much more. After moving to a secluded home with her husband Jackson, Grace finds herself in the throes of motherhood. Feeling isolated in her physical environment and her romantic relationship, Grace suffers psychologically. Lawrence brings a sense of rawness and humor to the screen that is often uncomfortable. Robert Pattinson adds to the discomfort as her loving, yet lost husband Jackson, who cares about his wife but does not know how to help her. Lynne Ramsay has presented a film that forces us to look at the realness of life, and what happens when the promise of what should make you whole fails.

This current year, as well as the past several, has seen a slowly building increase in something the horror genre has required for quite a while in this critic's opinion...originality. I've stated before that I am very hard to please when it comes to this vein of the film industry's offerings, always leaning more towards that which sends chills through my very being in lieu of buckets of blood and gore.