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Archive for ‘Reviews’

Need a recommendation? We consume as many movies, TV shows, and books as we possibly can and let you know what we thought of them!

Dead List: All the Boston Strangler Films Ranked!

Dead List: All the Boston Strangler Films Ranked!

Do you know everything there is to know about the Boston Strangler? Really?!?! The Boston Strangler is an incredibly complicated tapestry of lies, mistruths, deception, greed, murder, and avarice. Using beautiful early 1960s Boston as its backdrop, this story is the pure embodiment of truth always being weirder than fiction. 

To celebrate this year’s most recent take on the Boston Strangler, aptly titled the Boston Strangler, the Scariest Things went back and looked at each and every film adaptation of the Boston Strangler story and ranked ‘em all!
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Eric’s Review: Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Eric’s Review: Evil Dead Rise (2023)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for constant pervasive gore, grotesque transformations, and severe violence against children

Evil Dead Rise is everything you would want a film in this franchise to be. It gets to the bloody action right from the start, and does not let up once it gets rolling. This incredibly gory film reconstructs the fundamental Evil Dead script in by making it a family-forward story, but it still walks a familiar path.

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Eric’s Overlook FF Review: Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism

Eric’s Overlook FF Review: Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸for raw intensity and domestic abuse, and a rough exorcism.

This is a horror movie that examines exorcisms, not from the horror of the demonic possession itself, but that of the zealotry and shoddy practices of non-sanctioned exorcisms as exercised by charismatic charlatans. It recognizes the fragility of those who are mentally ill and the unfortunate abuse that they receive when those who are supposed to love and care for them instead seek help from the questionable practices of religious hucksters.
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Eric’s Review: Brooklyn 45 (2023)

Eric’s Review: Brooklyn 45 (2023)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for horrific gun violence, some torture, and some crunchy re-animated dead.

Ted Geogeghan wrote and directed a nifty mystery box of a film wherein a group of WWII army officers support their friend, Lt. Colonel Hockstetter (Larry Fessenden) in his attempts to to reconnect with his recently deceased wife. A terrific veteran cast delivers the drama in this well constructed (and occasionally bloody) ghostly escape room of a story.

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Eric’s Overlook FF Review: Renfield (2023)

Eric’s Overlook FF Review: Renfield (2023)

★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for copious amounts of bloodshed, dismemberments, beheadings, exploding bodies, the use of severed limbs as weapons, and eviscerations.

The Dracula tale has never been more fun to watch than in Chris McKay’s Renfield. Nicholas Hoult is the remorseful and downtrodden manservant Renfield who struggles with how to escape servitude from his vile master. Nic Cage is perfectly cast as the dapper and ferocious Count Dracula, mixing a looming malevolence with goofy charm. Universal has found its footing again with its legendary roster of monster films. Renfield mixes full-theater belly laughs with spectacular gory action to create a movie destined to get repeat viewings. Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee would be proud.
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Mike’s Review: The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (SXSW 2023)

Mike’s Review: The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (SXSW 2023)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild gore and violence. 

A hundred years on we’ve been blessed and not-so-blessed with hundreds, or maybe thousands or Frankenstein-related films. Remakes, reboots, re-imaginations,  reworking of the Mary Shelley source material, and even re-re-working of Shelley’s book. The Frankenstein mythos has comfortable slipped into our collective horror zeitgeist.
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Mike’s Review: Late Night with the Devil (SXSW 2023)

Mike’s Review: Late Night with the Devil (SXSW 2023)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild gore.

If you’ve even run across Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, or Dinah Shore you’ll know that they all roiled in a very specific talk show space in the 1970s. Talk shows were smarmy, boozy, and informal affairs that gave audiences time each day to let their hair down and forget about the doldrums of the Viet Nam War and the crushing presence of socio-economic injustice in America. 

These talk shows were also incredibly competitive. Johnny Carson was king, but there was a lot of room under him to vie for advertisers and Neilson ratings. Late Night with the Devil follows that exact story line, by exploring frustrated talk show host Jack Delroy played pitch perfectly by David Dastmalchian.
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Mike’s Review: Only The Good Survive (SXSW 2023)

Mike’s Review: Only The Good Survive (SXSW 2023)

★★.5 out of ★★★★★

🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild comedic gore.

Midway through Only the Good Survive the local sheriff and Dennis Miller impersonator (Frederick Weller) is interrogating young Brea Dunlee (Sidney Flanigan) about her involvement in a string of ritualistic murders and asks “…is this a comedy or a horror?” While the film chugs along like an Edgar Wright-inspired effort, this very sentiment is really the film’s problem. It wants to be both. Unfortunately, juggling these two juxtaposed art forms is a tricky bit of business that is almost never accomplished.

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