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In the techno thriller Red Rooms, a model obssesses over a sensational murder trial, and searches for clues about the killer on the dark web. This French Canadian film explores society's voracious and voyeuristic desire for the darkest of true crime details, and the lengths some will go to find out the juicy, nasty details.
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The sexy body horror thriller film Kill Your Lover manifests a literal toxic relationship between a mismatched British couple who let things go a bit too far. This feature from The Overlook Film Festival will make you squirm uncomfortably. Come for the steamy sex scenes, then stay for the awkwardly painful dissolution of a partnership in body-altering collapse.
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The Canadian slasher film, In a Violent Nature, roared out of the gates with much buzz from The Sundance Film Festival and was bolstered by a menacing trailer. It has a great-looking monster, and a few spectacularly gory kills will make this movie pop and evoke fond old memories. The advance word on this movie was that it reinvented the slasher film. It's different, to be sure. The odd pacing, however, cannot be ignored, and the movie plods along with its villain for far too much of the movie. It felt like a shorter film padded to make a feature-length time. High highs. Low lows.
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A bloodied woman on the run begins a frantic chase in John Rosman's debut thriller, New Life. This film holds its cards tight for half the movie, allowing the major implications of the plot lines to simmer before revealing the root causes of the pursuit, like a bomb drop. New Life transitions from political thriller to body horror in a dramatic shift that moved me from curious to engrossed.
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Arachnophobes beware! Infested (Vermines, En français) is the pinnacle of spider horror. It is also an expertly done class struggle diatribe, using a scrappy group of young survivors of the French underclass pitted against both an infestation of fast-breeding and fast-growing venomous spiders and the law enforcement that should be protecting them.
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Sasha is a young vampire who cannot develop her fangs because she has empathy for her potential victims and refuses to kill. Her family is concerned that this jeopardizes the family lineage and legacy and urges her to make her first kill. She meets Paul, a boy with suicidal wishes, and considers him as her first kill and a humane one. This movie does all the little things right and, consequentially, nails the big things.
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Abigail pits a group of misfit criminals up against their captive, a little ballerina dancer named Abigail. Much to their surprise, she's a powerful vampire. The movie is action packed, with plenty of gore and laughs, but is a station to station production that while fun, telegraphs its moves well in advance. It's empty calories, but, for many fans, sometimes this is exactly what you crave.
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Cuckoo is a wildly imaginative and original slice of mad science horror. It doesn't always feel coherent, but it constantly entertains with roaring action and fascinating characters. This is a showcase for rising star Hunter Schafer, who commands attention as the surly lead protagonist, Gretchen.
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Hunting Daze explores the complications of stacking up bad decisions when a male bonding session in the woods of Quebec is injected with a headstrong young woman and a mysterious stranger entering their insular group.
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If fear of the unknown is the most primal of horrors, imagine living in a prehistoric world and arriving on a new barren continent. In the new British Paleolithic horror film Out of Darkness, a group of stone-age nomadic survivors cross the sea and find a land bereft of resources and quarry. Everything is unknown, their worldview is limited to their tribe and the stories passed down from their elders. Their only protection is a spear and a campfire. Scary times, indeed.
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I will give points to A Creature Was Stirring (2023) for trying to do something that was original. A were-porcupine (A Porcupinecanthrope?) is a new addition to the monster lexicon. It's a parenting horror piece. Also, a home invasion. And a drug horror story. The problem is that in execution, it never finds its proper footing, and the narrative gets lost.
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HBO's acclaimed series True Detective returns to the horror roots it developed in season 1. In Season 4: Night Country, the franchise brings screen legend Jodie Foster to the TV streaming powerhouse production. Foster is paired with up-and-coming talent Kali Reis. They are investigating a grotesque mystery where a research station's entire crew is found frozen, naked, and apparently terrified out in the Alaskan tundra just as the permanent night of the polar winter is settling in.
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No One Will Save You is an ambitious and curious film. It is a tightly wound home invasion film with an Alien Invasion theme. That's not uncommon. What makes this film unique is that it has no dialogue. Actress Kaitlyn Dever carries this film, her emotional performance winning the day. That, and top notch sound and production values makes this worth a watch on HULU.
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It Lives Inside is a fresh look at the assimilation of an Indian family into the United States that pits a teenage girl against a demon that feeds on loneliness and despair. The story is resonant, and the examination of Southern Asian -American culture is nicely done. The scares are as much as you can hope for in a PG-13 film, and the non-cultural elements feel a bit mechanical. Still, for those of us who have lived this experience, it is a welcome entry into the genre.
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Quicksand (2023) is a straightforward wilderness survival horror movie that pits a struggling married couple in a pool of quicksand in a Columbian mountain bog. It's a stylishly shot film and features a pair of fine acting performances. However, to call the quicksand quick would be a misnomer, as the couple struggles... slowly... against the fate of getting sucked to the bottom of this quagmire.
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The Argentinian possession as apandemic film When Evil Lurks took the horror community by storm this year. It is a tale spun by South America's greatest horror director, Demián Rugna, and it is bound to become a modern classic. With his latest feature film, Rugna has written the new rules for possession horror in a George Romero fashion. Brilliant and brutal, but also a downer.
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Godzilla Minus One: Oh, my... Godzilla! Takahashi Yamazaki created a powerful, emotionally resonant, and visually spectacular film. More than any other film in this esteemed franchise run, Godzilla is a reflection of a country in catharsis. It is steeped in survivor's guilt, post-traumatic shock disorder, family bonds, and the restoration of a nation's belief in itself... by way of Kaiju. As a film-going experience, this will get your blood pumping. Go see it on the biggest screen possible.