Billie Walker
Read articles by Billie Walker
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Mother Mary & The Power of the Fictional Pop Star
From Mother Mary to Trap and Lurker, a number of recent horror-thrillers have commented on the dark side of fame and fan culture through their troubled-musician characters, says Billie Walker.
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Ari Aster’s Fascination with Conspiracies
A constant in the horror auteur’s work is manipulative characters shaping the reality of their vulnerable targets, and Eddington – with its Covid deniers – is no exception. Here, Billie Walker examines the cunning conspirators in each of Aster’s films.
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Joaquin Phoenix’s Miserable Men
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Jurassic Park’s Gothic Monsters
With its horrifying creatures, monomaniacal scientists and suspicion of technological progress, the blockbuster action franchise – and Jurassic World: Rebirth – owes a lot to Gothic storytelling traditions, writes Billie Walker.
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Final Destination Offers a Different Kind of Killer
Forget the masked madmen that have haunted horror films for decades, the Final Destination franchise’s anonymous, amorphous killer taps into real anxieties about mortality, says Billie Walker.
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I’m Still Here & the Elliptical Violence of Military Dictatorships
Walter Salles’ drama is the latest in a spate of recent films, including Parallel Mothers and The Childhood of a Leader, that confronts authoritarianism head on, rather than obscuring it beneath allegorical fantasies, writes Billie Walker.