About Deirdre Crimmins
Deirdre Crimmins is Chicago-based freelance film critic and a member of the Boston Online Film Critics Association. She contributes regularly to FilmThrills, Rue Morgue magazine, and Birth.Movies.Death. Though a lifelong horror film fan, she also loves a good musical or screwball comedy when the mood strikes.
The current trend in toxic fandom is to hold certain films and media as precious, and think it’s blasphemy to consider reimagining them. While I understand, but do not share, this territorial ownership on a childlike, emotio...
Against all odds, 2015’s Goosebumps was a fun little family movie. It combined a collective affection for R.L. Stine and an interest in quirky characters, and somehow everything clicked into place. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Hall...
Though the moves make it seem like being a teenager in America is the same wherever you are, that’s not the case. Gone are the Breakfast Club days of waxing nostalgic for the archetypes of the Jock or the Princess. Now we...
Most superhero movies gross enough money to make small nations look broke, regardless if the movie is any good or not. Because of this, it would be understandable if studios stopped trying so hard. So far, Marvel and DC have been ...
After the clunker that was Hotel Artemis, it’s not unreasonable to feel that we’re owed a better hotel-themed movie in 2018. Bad Times at the El Royale is slightly more successful, but still comes a little short of gre...
Emma Tammi’s The Wind is based on terrifying true stories. Back in the Old West, “prairie madness” would actually drive people mad. From the isolation to the unfamiliar surroundings, just about everything involve...
With the recent explosion of Mandy on social media and the big screen, the cult of Nic Cage has been given new life. With these “Rage Cage” flicks, it just makes sense to give the actor a character and a rough plot, an...
Horror fans can be a tough audience to please. Speaking as a lifelong member of that tribe, I know we can be curmudgeons. We complain about remakes and sequels, while also complaining when films don’t offer the fan-service t...
Director Jim Hosking is a singular force. His first feature , The Greasy Strangler, was doused in anxious energy and grease, so much so that I desperately wanted to take a shower after watching it. It’s not that his films ar...
Though the latest film based on the parent murderer and Fall River, Massachusetts native Lizzie Borden attempts to frame itself as a thriller, it’s a much more complicated and nuanced tale of death than the sensationalists w...
If recent history has taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected. The past few years have been doozies. We’ve seen footage of a live giant squid and the return of Twin Peaks! So if I tell you that Eli Roth has m...
The general premise behind The Basement isn’t terrible. However, the way it’s carried out on screen leaves much to be desired.