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Strange Darling is a masterclass in story narrative, full of breathtaking surprises and harrowing thrills. JT Mollner applied the non-linear storytelling cinema rules from Tarantino and Nolan to the horror genre and succeeded brilliantly. In a year that thus far has struggled to impress horror fans, Strange Darling is destined to be a classic. A fair warning, though: as impressive as this movie is, its use of sexual violence may be severely triggering for some audiences.
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In The Bunker, an alien fleet has arrived on Earth. Dr. Michelle Riley has been assigned to work in a deep underground bunker to find a bio-weapon that will kill the invaders and save Earth's human population. Isolation, alien schemes, and team dysfunction threaten to ruin the project's success. Some nifty effects and visuals offset a script that sometimes drifts into melodrama. The Bunker had its world premiere at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival.
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Booger is a body horror/comedy treatise on grief and loss. Anna's best friend Izzy has just died in a tragic bicycle accident. The only remnant from their relationship is Booger, a cat that the two Brooklyn roommates took in. When Booger bites Anna and runs away, Anna becomes the proverbial crazy cat lady in more ways than one. Grief and comedy are a tough pairing, and this story struggles to marry the two competing themes. Booger just played at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival.
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Birthrite is a slow-burning American Folk Horror tale of a pregnant woman who inherits a New England home with a hidden occult legacy. She and her girlfriend struggle to start a family with the specter of a curse hanging over them. Birthrite had its world premiere showing at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival 2024.
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Repeat after me: Nothing good comes from conducting a séance! In Scared to Death (2024), a horror film crew conducts field research by invoking a seance in an abandoned orphanage with a sordid past. Bad idea! This breezy fun film is full of familiar seance tropes and charming characters. Though it doesn't introduce anything groundbreaking to the genre, it is solid entertainment from front to back. Scared to Death had its world premiere at Popcorn Frights Film Festival in Fort Lauderdale.
The Dead Thing is a slick, good looking film, but the story is a dull affair despite attempts at going for something sexy.
5 Deaths in the Ring, that is the Thing!
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In Ghost Game, a trio of mischief-makers stakes out an old manor with a dark legend surrounding it. Their goal: stay in the house without the new residents discovering them. Internal relationship conflicts, a disturbed resident family, and the potential of a supernatural haunt upend their Ghost Game efforts. A solid cat-and-mouse thriller with fun haunted house tropes propels this film, which was the centerpiece of the Portland Horror Film Festival.
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The Complex Forms is a master achievement in visual design. Everything, from the stunning black-and-white cinematography to the conceptual creature designs to the stark splendor of the sets and the pulsing orchestral score, pushes the envelope for an independent film budget. The story, however, though narratively simple, is very difficult to digest in one sitting. Multiple viewings may be required to understand the plot. And even then, you may be left scratching your head in confusion.
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DID I?, the winner of the Portland Horror Film Festival's Goule D'Or (Best Feature in Festival) Award, takes an honest approach to the cruelty and ramifications of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The psychological thriller invests its time with Genevieve, a bookish junior editor at a publishing company who struggles with her alter ego, Stevie, who is a bit of a wild child. Her traumas are buried deep, and it puts several new wrinkles into the good/evil dichotomy that films that used what used to be called multiple personality disorder under the microscope.
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In the Name of God (Gudstjänst) explores how the pressure of grief can convince even the most pious among us to do horrible things. Theodor is a young priest who succumbs to a "righteous" Faustian deal, where he murders the wicked in exchange for healing gifts. It is a slippery slope that could doom his family and his priesthood. At what cost are miracles?
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The Invisible Raptor is a crowd-pleaser, plain and simple. This spoof of Jurassic Park flips the script on the behemoth tentpole franchise by not trying to do digital dinosaurs at all. Instead, The team behind The Invisible Raptor did the monster movie without the monster, and it worked brilliantly. This is a meta-movie for the Easter Egg enthusiasts, but be warned, there is so much blood and shit in this movie that it isn't for the squeamish or the kiddos! (Though the twelve-year-old me would LOVE this movie.)
