Trippy Canadian feature Kryptic relies heavily on its Lynchian and Cronenbergian inspirations, tripping up on other areas in this dark fairy tale journey.
Latest
Reviews
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity: 🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity: 🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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 ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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.
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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.
★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
While there’s a surprising lack of Rottweilers, The First Omen is chock full of reproductive rights, secularism, mental health, religious repression, and a gang of scares — most of them well deserved. Most importantly, The First Omen is a GREAT horror film that will make even the most hardened horror heart thump.
★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Is it a thriller? A sci-fi abomination? A psychedelic mishmash? A video game? An affront to Toho’s original vision? A horror film? Seriously, what the hell is this? Truth be told, it’s really of all these things crammed together in a gargantuan hodgepodge of CGI lunacy. Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is a wildly chaotic film with an equally wild plot that makes little to no sense. Scratch that…no sense.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
As we’ve said before, pulling off a horror comedy is one of the most precarious feats a director can attempt. The feat is made all the more difficult when it’s done on a micro-budget with limited to no resources. Easter Bloody Easter manages to walk this tight rope with aplomb, while pulling in one of the coolest Black Sabbath horror references since the semi-eponymous Black Sabbath in 1963.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Joseph reviews Graham Skipper's horror film The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine, from Make Believe Seattle.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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 ★★★★★
Existential Dread 📺 📺 📺 📺 📺 out of 📺 📺 📺 📺 📺
Fandom, obsession and identity are illuminated in I Saw the TV Glow
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Eddie Izzard steals the show in Hammer Films' DOCTOR JEKYLL.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Come for the kidnapping, stay for the teriyaki! Dead Mail...delivers the weird.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
SHIFT is a fun 1990s riff on Hitchcock’s Rear Window, complete with paranoia, mystery, and a sentient office chair.
★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity and effectiveness of jump scares
🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Oddity is the horror who-done-it, supernatural, revenge thriller, comedy you have been waiting for!
★★ out of ★★★★★
🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
In a genre overloaded with movies inspired by the Frankenstein story, Lisa Frankenstein fails to catch a spark.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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.
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Joseph reviews Robert Morgan's UK macabre horror film STOPMOTION, a body horror movie full of unsettling stop-motion animation.
Joseph reviews three Romford Horror Festival shorts: Fuse, Bisected, and Spiral to the Center
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..
"Dario Argento: Panico" delves into the enigmatic world of horror maestro Dario Argento, chronicling his influence on the genre. While shedding light on Argento's creative process and personal influences, the documentary overlooks pivotal aspects like his iconic soundtracks and collaboration with George Romero. The film explores the intricate duality of Argento's artistic vision and personal intricacies.
★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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.
★★ out of ★★★★★
Wait 30 minutes after eating before going for a Night Swim.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
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.
Joseph lists his top 10 horror films of 2023.
For the Best Horror Shorts of 2023, we cherry-picked our favorite short films from the festivals we attended this year. We also selected a few films from the game-changing streaming short film distributor Alter. We've got many of these full short films linked to this post. Give them a watch!