This is a brilliant, ballsy movie that merges two forms of "horror" - old-fashioned movie horror & modern, all-too real horror - via two different stories, whilst meditating on the nature of film in these changing times. Karloff & Bogdanovich play themselves (pretty much), and the final sequence, in which a drive-in movie literally has the power to kill its audience, is incredible. This thriller is a seriously impressive debut for the director.

In the world we live in today, Targets is sure to be triggering for a lot of people, and I staved off watching it a couple of weeks ago because I didn't want to review it within a stone's throw of a rogue shooter incident here in Atlantic Canada. But then, is there ever a good time for it these days? The portrait of a lone gunman, Targets doesn't really give you insight in the why, because no explanations make sense for this kind of action. Such killers are simply among us, and nowhere is safe. Peter Bogdanovich was allowed to make this thing (in fact, "anything he wanted") on Roger Corman's thin dime so long as he used up the two days Boris Karloff owed the production company. So Targets becomes a study in what constitutes horror. In an older model, there's the Universal monsters and Gothic chills represented by Karloff's aging actor Orlok (it's extra meta, with Bogdanovich playing his director); the newer model is the real-world terrors of serial killing and bell-tower snipers. One world is shot like a Hammer Horror, the other very naturalistically, in cinema verité, and there's a certain ticking clock in knowing the two must eventually collide... but with what results? Ultimately, why does artifice still scare when there are real monsters in the world? Good stuff that has only become more relevant with time.

"....modern, all-too real horror"

true indeed....