Brian De Palma's spiritual successor to Blowup (and in a way the Conversation too), is one of the director's best, and a conspiracy film bound to get even the steeliest of viewers shuddering with nerves.
Centred around a sound effects technician (John Travolta) who unwittingly records the murder of an aspiring presidential candidate, Blow Out has become a veritable cult classic, embodying the spirit of early Hitchcock while also following in the footsteps of seventies-era conspiracy fiction. It's just a great film and one that also manages to capture a really unsettling atmosphere that poses a constant threat from start to finish.
Despite garnering a positive critical reception, Blow Out struggled to find an audience during its initial release. It has since, however, gone on to develop something of a cult following, and with it being as spine-chilling as it is, it's easy to see why.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
