Ben Ulansey
Bio
Ben is a journalist, essayist, and reviewer who writes about everything from AI, technology, politics, and religion to travel, film, dreams, drones, drugs, dogs, music, video games, and writing.
Stories (35)
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The Believable Dystopia of Black Mirror Season 5
So what if I'm doing a review for the fifth season of Black Mirror a few years late… and? Maybe I wanted to put off my fears for the future for as long as I could. Maybe I wasn't particularly excited to watch the singer of "Party in the USA" starring in a Black Mirror episode. But now that season 6 is upon us, I guess I can wait no longer.
By Ben Ulansey2 years ago in Futurism
The Evolution of Black Mirror: Embracing a Strange Present and Exploring a Familiar Past
Black Mirror is a show like no other. With few exceptions, each episode in its first four seasons centers around a futuristic technology, and the depictions are disturbingly well-realized.
By Ben Ulansey2 years ago in Futurism
The Film That Scared Me Most as an Adult: Hereditary. Content Warning.
Trigger AND spoiler warning --- For much of my adult life, I didn't think very highly of the horror genre. I still enjoyed a good scary movie, but entire years seemed to go by without the slightest deviations from the standard old formulas. Each year brought with it a new onslaught of blockbusters with a recycled series of jump scares and ghastly looking ghosts, demons and ghouls. I'd grown to accept that the horror genre as a whole was something tired and contrived.
By Ben Ulansey2 years ago in Horror
3 Iconic Horror Movies That Haven't Aged Well
I might be a bit of a modernist, but I'll always give credit where it's due. In the case of so many of history's most famous movies, sometimes a story can truly endure through the generations (The Shining, Alien, the best episodes of The Twilight Zone).
By Ben Ulansey2 years ago in Horror
'Pet Sematary: Bloodlines' - A Cinematic Offbreed Fit to Its Name
I might've been fashionably late (by several decades) with my first Pet Sematary review. Being a 90s child, though, I suppose I have my excuses. But there's really no reason I couldn't at least grace the world with my thoughts on the 2019 remake before a pandemic swept the world. And for that, I owe you all an apology, and a promise to do better.
By Ben Ulansey2 years ago in Horror
The Intrinsic Terror of 'Pet Sematary' (1989)
Of all of Stephen King's stories, perhaps none is more innately chilling than Pet Sematary. Where Stanley Kubrick's The Shining terrifies the viewer with its slow-rolling and measured portrayal of isolation in the sprawling Overlook Hotel, what director Mary Lambert's Pet Sematary provides is utterly visceral in its simplicity. Where The Shining opens to a car slowly winding its way up a desolate mountainside, Pet Sematary's introduction to the characters is marked by the abrasive passing of a speeding tanker. Pet Sematary is devoid of the subtletly that defined the Kubrick horror classic.
By Ben Ulansey2 years ago in Horror
Oh, the Places You'll Play
One of the most powerful features of video games is their ability to let you inhabit new worlds. Games aren't just fun pastimes, they're places that we go. Whether the grounds of The Mushroom Kingdom, the Hills of Hyrule, the Depths of Brinstar, or the streets of Los Santos, the memories made in video games can be as real as any others.
By Ben Ulansey2 years ago in Gamers
“Barbie”: The Politics of a Plastic World
The task of bringing Barbie to the big screen was hardly a simple one. The film went through various iterations and spent over a decade in development before it could make its way to cinemas. And while it isn't a film I was particularly looking forward to seeing myself, it's one I'm still glad that I got to see all the same.
By Ben Ulansey2 years ago in Critique
The 'Halloween Trilogy': Because 10 Halloween Movies Weren't Enough
Watching the new Halloween Trilogy is funny when you know Jamie Lee Curtis - not as the veteran actress who made her acting debut four and a half decades ago as Laurie Strode in the original 1978 Halloween movie - but as the rigid, hot dog-handed, mixed martial arts-trained, self-stapling tax attorney from Everything Everywhere All at Once. Even with a list of credits that stretches back to the days of Jimmy Carter's presidency, it's hard to unsee her for her role in that famously bizarre, interdimensional odyssey of a film.
By Ben Ulansey2 years ago in Horror
'It: Chapter Two' - The 'Grownups' of Horror Movies
By the sounds of it, It: Chapter 2 has all the makings of a hit movie. With an all-star cast, spearheaded by the unforgettable Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the Clown, and a skilled team of writers, directors, and special effects artists, it was a follow-up poised to be one of the great horror films of the decade. But where it falls apart lies almost entirely in the feelings of warmth and nostalgia from the prior iteration that it woefully fails to recapture.
By Ben Ulansey2 years ago in Horror
Friending and Remembering
TW: this piece contains mention of suicide. --- The year is 2008 and I'm standing in my town's ice skating rink in a Tony Hawk hoodie. I can see my breath floating out in front of me and solemnly toward the ceiling with each new exhale. I'm in the long adjoining room beside the main rink and I'm frozen meekly beside a vending machine equipped with Cup O' Noodles. Veronica is standing across the room from me and she looks as nervous to approach me as I do her.
By Ben Ulansey2 years ago in Journal
