Trippy Canadian feature Kryptic relies heavily on its Lynchian and Cronenbergian inspirations, tripping up on other areas in this dark fairy tale journey.
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poster reveal and venue change news for Pigeon Shrine FrightFest's 2024 edition
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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.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
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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.
The Calgary Underground Film Festival has announced the full lineup of films playing the 21st Festival, from April 18-28, 2024 at Globe Cinema.
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Joseph reviews Graham Skipper's horror film The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine, from Make Believe Seattle.
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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.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Fandom, obsession and identity are illuminated in I Saw the TV Glow
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Come for the kidnapping, stay for the teriyaki! Dead Mail...delivers the weird.
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SHIFT is a fun 1990s riff on Hitchcock’s Rear Window, complete with paranoia, mystery, and a sentient office chair.
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Intensity and effectiveness of jump scares
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Oddity is the horror who-done-it, supernatural, revenge thriller, comedy you have been waiting for!
The Overlook Film Festival is an event that is near and dear to The Scariest Things. Eric and Liz will be there live and in person to review their slate of horror films, which always represent the best of the independent horror scene. They just released their initial slate of films, including a few we eagerly anticipated.
Preview of A Night of Horror, which makes its initial run in the United States from March 1–3, 2024, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Joseph reviews three Romford Horror Festival shorts: Fuse, Bisected, and Spiral to the Center
Australia's Dark Nights Film Festival inaugural edition has been announced and is calling for entries.
Make Believe Seattle Film Festival announces its full lineup for its second edition
Combining both body horror and creature feature elements, Malaysian film TIGER STRIPES is a unique effort and an intriguing feature debut from a promising new directorial talent..
The Scariest Things brings you the trailer for THE ACTIVATED MAN, which screens at the U.K.'s Romford Horror Festival.
Saint Maud director Rose Glass's sophomore effort brings mayhem and muscle to the big screen.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Tentacled cosmic horrors besiege a seaside Greek town, and it's up to the patrons of a local taverna to save the city. The directors refer to this as "My Big Fat Greek Monster Movie." Minore punches well above its weight class, featuring top-shelf cinematography, complimented with high-end visual FX and an excellent ensemble cast.
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Joseph Perry reviews show creator and writer/director Trevor Solway’s Tales from the Rez, a six-part Canadian horror anthology series with a focus on ghost stories from Canada’s indigenous peoples.
A Night of Horror International Film Festival announces its move from Australia to the United States in 2024.
Just in time for Halloween, Liz sat down and chatted with film and television editor, Jeremy Cohen to talk about his most recent project Totally Killer!
★★ out of ★★★★★
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Gods of the Deep (2023) takes a group of intrepid explorers into the depth of an Antarctic trench to discover why there is an Ancient Temple. This HP Lovecraft World Premiere was unintentionally silly, and full of bad logic and cheap sets, but might qualify as so bad it's good.
Dr. Rebekah McKendry is a Renaissance Woman in Horror Cinema. She carries the unique position of not only being a director, but also is a professor of film at USC (Just the best film school in the world, right?) Dr. McKendry was the keynote speaker at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, and we got an opportunity to talk with her backstage to talk all things Cosmic, including her terrific film Glorious.