Mudbrick (2024)

The 92nd Academy Awards had many strong contenders for best animated short. But which Oscar nominated short wins for diversity and inclusion?

Every movement becomes a question of identity. To become who we are meant to be. In order to reach that we often have to shed who we once were, and that shedding can sometimes be so brutal it’s ungraceful.

My review’s title is a nod to Shakespeare and is entirely deliberate. The original movie portrayed the high-end fashion world as a brutal arena of plotting, backstabbing, and betrayal, and most Shakespeare’s plays depend on these plot devices. The Devil Wears Prada 2 uses the same formula, and is, plot-wise, almost identical. Once again, we plunge into the cutthroat world of Runway, where to get and stay at the top, you must let go of your principles and moral sense. The only thing different is that due to the digital era, Runway is not a print magazine anymore, but one that is running online.

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.

Malignant is a roller coaster ride of slow-build scares, moments of wonderfully absurd camp, and explorations of autonomy.