Bucking Trends
Here's the November 3 edition of the Certified Forgotten newsletter.
Spooky friends,
One of the bittersweet things about mainstream film journalism is that it’s an industry designed to meet — not create — audience demand. Most of the articles people will pay you to publish are tied to conversations that are already happening. If you aren’t pitching folks on new releases or important anniversaries, you’ll have a hard time getting your article published.
And bucking that particular trend can be both satisfying and a bit of a challenge.
If you’ve read our pitch guidelines, you already know that we prioritize the movies that may not find a home anywhere else. New releases and major filmmakers are the lifeblood of most film publications, but there is no quicker path to getting your pitch rejected at Certified Forgotten than sending us something trending.
John Carpenter? Wes Craven? Sam Raimi? No thanks, they’ve been covered to death.
But dedicating a website to creating — not meeting — interest around specific movies means you’re in for some slow-ass growth. That’s what we signed up for, and that’s why we’re proud to keep pushing our spooky boulder uphill.
After all, today’s Certified Forgotten essays are tomorrow’s cult classics.
Published This Week
The Untapped Promise of Disturbing Behavior by Patricia Miranda
You know why I love late-nineties horror? Because it’s the Wild West of critical consensus. Every major Hollywood studio had some blockbuster horror release, and a lot of them landed with a thud right out of the gate. But horror audiences aren’t always good at figuring out which movies have staying power; if that were the case, John Carpenter wouldn’t have to still answer questions about The Thing in interviews. So when Patricia Miranda pitched us with yet-another ‘90s reclamation project, we could not say yes fast enough.
Coming of Age With Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Molly Henery
Remember how we said that we rarely greenlight pitches on well-known movies? We do have one exception to that rule. There’s a reason that Molly Henery continues to be the only monthly columnist at Certified Forgotten: she’s an incredible writer and has done wonderful things with an oft-overlooked mode of horror films. Molly is the one contributor with a complete green light, and freeing her up to talk about movies like Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the smartest things we ever did.
The Sun-Soaked Subversion of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane by Liam Griffin
It’s funny how some films get locked into your head as A Thing. When All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was released, I made up my mind that this was an ugly, exploitative work of horror, and I’ve made a point of never seeking it out since. But Liam Griffin makes a pretty damn compelling case for this as more subversion than anything else. So here I am, nearly two decades later, preparing to rent a movie I had once cast off as not for me. See, y’all? I’m not just the co-owner of Certified Forgotten — I’m also a member!