Rachel Wayne

Medium • September 15, 2019

Dark: Chamber Films of the Horror Genre — Part 2

This is part two of a series on chamber horror. A link to the first part of the series is at the end of this piece. Chamber theatre is a style of theatrical production in which there is typically little to no set (and any set pieces are moved by...

Ytori • September 4, 2019

From Kinshasa to Gainesville

In a locked room at Smathers Library on the UF campus, rows of manila folders and stacks of cardboard boxes are filled with polyester sleeves and simple copy paper, among which hide one of Smathers’ — and the world’s — most unique collections. The...

Ytori • September 4, 2019

Pure Imagination

Imagine the once-lush Planet Earth scorched across its surface, while the sublime beauty of the coastline has been subsumed by rocky shorelines comprising jagged remnants of once-valuable properties. Crops domesticated to be weather-hardy pale, while...

Medium • August 29, 2019

Gatekeepers of the Galaxy

Gatekeeping refers to the practice of ranking fans of a book, movie, game, or franchise as either “true” or not. Gatekeepers think of themselves as bearing the correct opinion of pop culture and insist that others memorize a vast amount of trivia...

Medium • August 24, 2019

Small-Town America in Disaster Films

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, America was battered and embattled: we went to war, we experienced terrorist attacks and biological warfare, we endured hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes, and we lost everything in a recession and subsequent...

Medium • July 24, 2019

That’s So Meta

In the beginning of Robin Hood: Men in Tights, villagers suddenly find their homes on fire, set ablaze by the Merry Men dramatically shooting flaming arrows. “There must be another way of doing the credits!” one exclaims. “That’s right, every time...

Medium • January 12, 2019

Angels and Gurus: Hypnotism and Self-Fulfillment in the Movies

The concept of angels has changed drastically from their origins in the ancient world and sometimes bizarre imagery captured in the Bible to a romanticized version created through Renaissance art. Yet 20th-century cinema has transformed angels once...

Medium • January 10, 2019

“You Hurt the One You Love”: Toxic Ideas in Romantic Movies

We love romances for their fateful meet-cutes, awkward family situations, and epic confessions of love. The more implausible a plot, the more we adore it. We, too, wonder if we could find true love at a coffee shop or unlock our true selves in a...

Medium • December 30, 2018

A Star is Born … through Destruction

The highly anticipated A Star is Born revives an old story with fresh talent and a wee-bit on-the-nose commentary about the contemporary pressures and fleeting nature of fame and the tension between artistic integrity and profitability.

Medium • December 28, 2018

Bird Box and the Fear of Death

The Internet is a-chirping about Bird Box, the Sandra Bullock-starring post-apocalyptic thriller that achieved what The Happening failed.

Medium • November 26, 2018

Dark: Chamber Films of the Horror Genre — Part 1

A critical essay examining how chamber theatre techniques help craft a unique subgenre of horror cinema.

Medium • August 15, 2018

The Fallen and the Extinct: Issues of Ethics in “Jurassic Park” and “Jurassic World”

Jeff Goldblum’s most iconic movie quote (besides Must go faster) is: “Life finds a way” — which is the primary theme of Jurassic Park. His character Ian Malcolm, a “chaotician,” waxes philosophical throughout the film.

Medium • July 13, 2018

“And I Feel Fine”: What Our Obsession with the End of the World Says About Us

While Jules Verne was penning his tales of great feats of engineering, incredible new worlds, and the future of human expression and technology, H.G. Wells envisioned bleak scenarios of alien takeovers, the division of the human race, the devastating...

Medium • April 27, 2018

Domestic Goddess (Feminist Film Critique of mother! and What Lies Beneath)

The house breathes, laughs, cries, sneers, challenges, and manipulates the woman tasked with its care. Dressed in virginal flowing whites while lugging around baskets of laundry, Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) in What Lies Beneath and Mother (Jennifer...

Medium • February 11, 2018

A Thousand Words: The Life of Photographer Fred Ward

In 1948, 13-year-old Fred Ward’s family departed the small-town ethos of Huntsville, Ala. for the bustling, balmy Miami, Fla. Perhaps it was the cross-cultural exchange of multicultural south Florida, or perhaps it was the thought of a larger world...

Medium • January 28, 2018

The Woman in the Abyss (Feminist Film Reviews of “The Dark Below,” “47 Meters Down,” “The Shallows”)

As she is suspended in a grotesquely beautiful swirl of detritus, the deep blue somehow illuminates her skin, the features of her fear-stricken face. The water seems like air in its stillness, only the occasional ripple across her face and the...