Did we ask for this? Is the zombie genre dead? Did the Walking Dead franchise kill the zombie genre? Will Train to Busan 2 live up to its forefather? Is this really just cheap hype for a video game tie in? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS!!!
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Mike’s Review: Lights Out (2016)
★★ out of ★★★★★ The tweens are taking over! Hollyweird has handed over the castle keys to a gaggle of focused-grouped 13-year olds. Scary films are now purposely trying to not be scary. All is lost.
Movie Posters We Love: The BEST Pandemic Horror Movie Posters
You’ll scream, screech, gasp, cough wheeze, and, well…hopefully it’s just a common cold and it’ll be done in a couple days. One of the best ways to determine whether it is a common cold? Check the current CDC guidelines and consult with your local health department.
After you’ve done the requisite diagnosis, grabbed some vitamin C, and little DayQuil — THEN check out this gallery of the weirdest, wildest, wackiest and just plain BEST pandemic horror posters ever created!
These posters are infected so wash your hands after you’ve touched this gang of impurity!
Mike’s Review: Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)
★★ out of ★★★★★ Sometimes less really is more. And sometimes way less is really way more. Eschewing all prior entries in Paranormal Activity franchise, and more importantly questioning the simple aesthetic of the found footage horror sub-genre. Enter Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. For those of you keeping track at home — and sadly, at this point, you really need to keep track to follow this franchise — this is number six.
Mike’s Review: 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)
★★★ out of ★★★★★ Young women. Adventurous young women. Genetically perfect adventurous young women. Impossibly tight spaces. Blind killing creatures who’ve not seen the light of day for millennia. It’s the Descent for the tween generation! Plus, did we mention the forever hunky John Corbett?
Movie News: Extra Ordinary Hits the Streets on March 6
Our universal fav’ film from 2019 gets its official release on March 6! Prepare to laugh, cry, and get 👻 spooked.
Mike’s Review: Dr. Sleep (2019)
★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Nearly 1,000 pages of creepy thoughts, actions, and psychic happenings were laid out between the Shining and its murderous offspring, Dr. Sleep. It seemed impossible that 1) the Shining would be made in to a film, 2) that Stephen King would be so dissatisfied in one of the true horror greats, 3) that it would deserve a remake, 4) the story would evolve in to a 500 page psychedelic mishmash, and 5) that mishmash would be made in to its own celluloid opus. Seem fantastical? Well it is.
Mike’s Review: Three from Hell (2019)
★★ out of ★★★★★ At Rob Zombie’s darkened dirtbag core is a full and unfiltered embrace of the age-old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Slow motion. Hyperbolic acting (or in some cases no acting). Closeups so close you can count individual pores Captain Spaulding’s grease-paint soaked forehead. Weirdly rare and off-putting selection of non-Joe Walsh James Gang tracks. If you’ve seen House of a Thousand Corpses and Devil’s Rejects then you’ve been thoroughly exposed to Mr. Zombie’s cinema trickery.
Mike’s Review: Bliss (2019)
🤟🤟out of 🤟🤟🤟🤟🤟
Are you a fan of a) Metal, b) vaguely satanic possessions, c) explicit drug usage, d) nudity, e) lots of blood (read: LOTS), and f) the word FUCK? I mean, sure who isn’t in favor of all these things right? Each has lots to offer. They’re interesting. Taken in small doses they can be a very powerful antidote to a lagging cinematic undertaking. When taken in over-dose-like proportions the gore and bad words take on an underwhelming status.
Mike’s Review: The Color Out of Space (2020)
★★★ out of ★★★★★
Is the ultimate test of a director the ability to grow, mature, and evolve? Pick up new tricks, devices, and viewpoints? Create new and unique takes on the film medium? OR, is it the director’s job to figure out what formula works, stick with that, and never grow, mature, and evolve. Sort of a “greatest hits” approach to filmmaking.
Trailer Alert: Color Out Of Space (2020)
The most fully realized film version of an HP Lovecraft story? More psychedelic freakouts from Nick Cage? The return of more Mandy-like weirdness? A real live Cthulu monster? Director Richard Stanley’s (Island of Dr. Moreau, Hardware, Dust Devil) return to greatness? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS!
Mike’s Review: Mausoleum (1983)
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ 1983 just called. Your VHS tape is overdue!
Mike’s Review: The Marshes (2020)
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ Word has it that the kids are in to mash-ups. Girl Talk, Danger Mouse, a little Jay Z, a little Beatles. Throw it all together and see what sticks. 2020’s the Marsh (originally released in 2018 in Australia) does just that — but maybe a little too much.
Movie Posters We Love: Top 10 Horror Posters from 2019
Once again Hollyweird cranked up the almighty money-making hype machine and got to work on some very fine artistry. While it’s got to be more and more difficult for graphic designers to cram all of the fear, fright, and gore on to an iPhone screen, designers have not yet thrown in the towel!
Mike’s Top 10 Horror Films of 2019
2019 was as year that was awfully similar to its most recent astrological brethren, 2018. There were some awfully big, earnest, and well-heeled horror offerings – while at the same time, 2019 served up the weird, the indy, and the quirky in spades!
Mike’s Review: Haunt (2019)
🤡🤡.5 out of 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 Writing is a struggle. Too much exposition gives the appearance of being a churlish jerk who sucks all of the oxygen out of a room. While too little exposition has the air of being aloof, uncaring, and unwilling to let the audience in on the scares. Weirdly, Haunt vacillates between both words, but manages to tell this spooky story in the most ineffective way possible.
Movie Posters We Love: Les Monstres de l’espace (1967)
Who were they running from? What do they fear? What have they seen!?!?! Quartermass and the Pit, AKA Five Million Years to Earth, AKA Les Monstres de l’espace!!! So many names, but just ONE great piece of artwork.
Trailer Alert: Antebellum (2020)
US + Get Out + Lost + the Shining + the Others + The Grudge + butterflies + Janelle Monae = possible (?) greatness! Antebellum is one of the hot new things coming out in 2020 and we here at the Scariest Things Podcast are INTRIGUED.
Mike’s Review: Tenebre (1982)
🔪🔪🔪🔪1/2 out of 🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪 The rules surrounding Giallo have been firmly established. Beginning somewhere around 1964 with Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace and continuing to the present with such color-soaked homosexual freakouts as 2019’s Knife+Heart, Giallo has been around the block.
Mike’s Review: Eli (2019)
★★ out of ★★★★★ Hey Netflix, we see you over there! Yeah, you. Trying your darnedest to jump on that horror bandwagon, peer in to the abyss, produce that oh-so-perfect horror film, and reap the ghoulish accolades of horror fans everywhere. Just so you know, it’s not working. While 2019’s Eli is awfully close to being a solid film you still have a lot of work to do to make in the fast-paced world of horror.
Mike’s Book Report: Dr. Sleep
This was a herculean task. The public’s mind was so ensconced and involved with the original 1977 novel and the equally transformative 1980 film, that it was hard to envision a story line that would perpetuate this seemingly finite tale. In a classic case of “never say never” esteemed author Stephen King decided that it was time to give Danny Torrance his day in the sun.
Mike’s Review: Girl on the Third Floor (2019)
★★.5 out of ★★★★★ As we’ve all come to learn in the horror game, a haunted house, no matter how haunted, does not a movie make. For that matter, a bunch of spooky trappings within a haunted house, also does not a movie make.
Mike’s Review: Martin (1978)
★★★★ 1/2 out of ★★★★★ Vampires have been around for a long time (read: possibly forever?) and their story has been told in a weirdly limitless number of ways. Sexy vampires. Gory vampires. Child vampires. Deaf vampires. Suffice it to say, the votes are in and humanity LOVES its vampires!
Mike’s Review: Sisters (1972)
🔪🔪🔪🔪out of 🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪
Siamese Twins at Birth: What the Devil hath joined together let no man cut asunder.
Mike’s Review: Wolf Creek (2005)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
The joy of youth. The post-college road trip. Finding your way in vast spaces. Unconstrained, unconfined, uncontrolled. The world is your oyster, until it isn’t.
Mike and Eric’s Review of It: Chapter Two (2019)
Mike’s Review: ★★★ out of ★★★★★
Eric’s Review: ★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
The big horror movie that everyone has been waiting for has landed. It: Chapter Two delivers a good looking, well-acted and often scary film that is also overly long, and has a mechanical narrative style, but is, in the end, an enjoyable outing.
Trailer Alert: Black Christmas (2019)
Well, we’re not sure who asked for this, but it’s on the way. On December 13, 2019, we’ll all get a chance to sit down and ingest the latest spooky offerings from Blumhouse in the form of the re-re-re-make of Black Christmas.
Mike’s Review: House on Sorority Row (1983)
★★.5 out of ★★★★★ College isn’t for everyone. There’s peer pressure, there’s social acclimatization, there’s the freshman 15, there’s the daily grind of keeping one’s grades in check to maintain that almighty scholarship, and then there’s the relationships. The social bond that’s created can be a lasting and spiritually satisfying affinity, but the bond can go so deep that it’ll eventually turn collegiate relations sour and crazy.
Mike’s Review: The Boar (2017)
🐷🐷.5 out of 🐷🐷🐷🐷🐷
The planet is running out of animals. Literally and figuratively. Hollyweird has given us sharks (Jaws 1-4), rabbits (Night of the Lepus), bears (Grizzy), fish (Piranha), and man’s best friend (Cujo). There’s even been birds, wolves, snakes, rats, and gators, and whatever the hell a sharktopus is supposed to be. One of the things that Hollyweird hasn’t gotten its money-grubbing paws on is the pig, javelina, or boar – until now.
Mike’s Review: Green Inferno (2013)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Are you looking for that something extra to jolt you out of life’s day-to-day doldrums? That little something to shock your system in to a complete state of hysteria? Something so odious and vile that your mind won’t know how to process the capital “G” grisly-gore? Your pals at the Scariest Things Podcast have found just the thing. Enter…Green Inferno.