GMU Pop Culture Journalism

Film Critic Owen Gleiberman

Horror movie critics are few and far between. When it comes to horror movies, critics generally fall into two categories:
1) Those who love horror movies and are unabashed fan boys.
2) Those who hate horror movies and will bash anything with too much blood and scream, “What about the children?!?!?”

So, while I might go to a website like aintitcool.com to learn more about a flick, I don’t go there for there objectivity.
The one mainstream movie critic (he just doesn’t review horror films) who seems to at least give them all a chance and not dismiss them right away is Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman.

I don’t know much about the man other than what he writes in his columns, but he has a great style and has been working for Entertainment Weekly since 1990, so he has some gravitas behind him.

I became a fan of his writing based on two things. The first being his review of “Hostel II”, where he gave it a “B” writes “[Eli]Roth isn’t just whipping up a blood-smeared megaplex hellhole. He’s asking: In a world of global depravity, where anyone can buy anything, is homicide-for-kicks-for-the-right-price really such a huge leap?” Gleiberman took the time to look for something deeper in this film, rather than just write it off as more “torture porn.”

The second thing I liked was a list he made for ew.com where he ranked the 20 Top Horror Films of the Past 20 Years. Sure some of the ones on his list probably shouldn’t be there (I’m looking at you “What Lies Beneath” and “Dead Alive” should be way higher than number 20) but his top five are really strong, especially his number one pick, “Audition.” About it he writes that “Audition” is a, “great, primal nightmare, which is no J-horror genre film; it’s more like Psycho for the age of feminine empowerment.”

If we both have the same number one horror movie of the past 20 years, than I can’t not look to see what Owen Gleiberman says about anything else horror related that comes out. That’s all I want, somebody who is fair and shares at least some of my sensibilities, because let’s face it, $14 is a lot to waste on 90 minutes of crap.