★★★★ out of ★★★★★
The vurdalak legend finds new blood in this exciting, top-notch chiller.
Archive for ‘Reviews’
Mike’s Review: Things Heard and Seen (2021)
★ out of ★★★★★ Serious question. Are horror movies required to be scary? Can they just pass off a sense of dread and doom in other less frightening but equally provocative ways? Answer: it sure makes horror more horrifying if there’s some actual horror in the horror film.
Joseph’s Review: Initiation
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Slasher-film fans should have a great time with this whodunit thriller — set on a present-day university campus — that shines a light on some ugly social issues.
Liz’s Review: My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To
How far would you go for your family?
Mike’s Review: Deadhouse Dark (2021)
★★ out of ★★★★★ The horror anthology is one of the true staples of the horror genre. Always clever, always engaging. As we’ve said before, anthology horror is the traditional extension of gathering around ye’ ole campfire and scaring the hell out of each other. They hearken back to the oldest root forms of scary storytelling. It’s always frightening to hear a scary story, until it’s not.
Liz’s Review: Keeping Company (Panic Fest 2021)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
The insurance game has never been more cut-throat than it has in Keeping Company!
Liz’s Review: The Djinn (Panic Fest 2021)
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Be Careful what you wish for…
Robert’s Review: The Widow (2020)
★1/2 out of ★★★★★
A Blair Witch knockoff out of Russia that fails to deliver.
Liz’s Review: The Stylist (Panic Fest 2021)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Prepare to get more than a trim from The Stylist!
Joseph’s Review: The Banishing
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
The Banishing serves up several haunted house tropes, but it looks good while doing so, with solid performances and conspiracy angles.
Liz’s Review: Below the Fold (Panic Fest 2021)
A missing girl, a grisly murder and two journalists eager to uncover the story Below the Fold.
Liz’s Review: An Ideal Host (Panic Fest 2021)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Appetizers, party games…and Aliens. All part of an epic evening with An Ideal host!
Mike’s Review: Offseason (2021) (SXSW Festival)
★★.5 out of ★★★★★ Pulling the perfect Lovecraftian film is a feat like no other. It’s been tried again and again. You might even say film makers repeated attempts to crawl inside Mr. Lovecraft’s tortured brain is rife with peril, failure, and madness. Or more to the point, it’s a cursed mission. Many have attempted to bring Lovecraft to the silver screen and most have failed. In the case, of 2021’s Offseason, it’s not so much a failure, but a dull attempt.
Joseph’s Reviews: SXSW Online 2021 Horror Shorts
Along with SXSW Online 2021’s incredible horror feature-film lineup, the festival offered plenty of fear fare in short form, too. Here are capsule reviews of four of these short-length shudder makers.
Joseph’s Review: The Power
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
The Power is a riveting U.K. supernatural horror film set in a hospital during that country’s 1970s rolling blackouts, following a nurse on her first night on the job. Real-world horrors are exposed by an otherworldly force in this first-rate chiller.
Directed by Corrina Faith
Liz’s Review: Violation (2020)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Slow, steady and brutal, Violation is a beautiful gut-punch of a horror film.
Joseph’s Review: Sound of Violence (SXSW Online 2021)
★★★ out of ★★★★★
A young woman who saw her family murdered tries to recreate through music the feeling that occurred at that time in this horror outing that is heavy on human suffering but light on logic.
Directed by Alex Noyer
Eric’s Review: The Spine of Night (2021) (SXSW Film Festival)
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
The Spine of Night channels its inner Frank Frazetta and Ralph Bakshi in this bloody rotoscoped production. This is dark high fantasy, with a touch of horror, and though it mines very familiar fantasy tropes for its plot, it does find an original voice. The whole presentation feels more like a curiosity than a revelation.
Eric’s Review: Alien on Stage (2021) (SXSW Festival)
★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Alien on Stage is a documentary about a troupe of bus drivers turned community theater actors who got the opportunity of a lifetime to perform their production on stage in a theater in the famed West End of London. Though you sweat out whether these charming neophytes can pull it off, there is enough of an inkling that they’ve got something special that this endeavor is so crazy that it just… might… work!
Mike’s Review: The Feast (2021) (SXSW Festival)
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★ Don’t. Turn. This. Movie. Off. Seriously, it’s a slow burn in grand tradition of slow burn horror films, but the payoff off is so deliciously evil and filling. If you stop after the aspic and the salad course you’ll miss a rather grisly desert.
Joseph’s Review: Witch Hunt (SXSW Online 2021)
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Teen horror and social commentary make for a fine union in this feature about a deadly U.S. government clampdown on witchcraft and the women who practice it.
Directed by Elle Callahan
Eric’s Review: Jakob’s Wife (2021) (SXSW Festival)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Jakob’s Wife is an essay on a mid-life menopausal crisis, by way of vampirism. Jakob’s Wife delivers great character arcs and engaging acting. Barbara Crampton has been given a meaty role, and she delivers perhaps her best screen performance in memory. Larry Fessenden also is stellar as the well intentioned minister Jakob.
Mike’s Review: Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021) (SXSW Festival)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Right around the corner from Horror Street, just next to Parallax View Way, and right near Marathon Man Drive, is a fascinating analog look at the lengths obsessives will go to in feeding their obsessions.
Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1982)
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
To describe this film, one must invoke the voice of Bill Hader’s Saturday Night Live character, Stefon. The audience cheers as Stefon slides in from stage right. Hands rise to face. Breathe deep. And release.
Mike’s Review: Woodlands Dark Days Bewitched A History of Folk Horror (2021) (SXSW Festival)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Make no mistake, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror is not a generalist survey course and this is not a casual hike in the woods. This is a full on PHD thrill ride in to one of the most mercurial of all horror genres, folk horror.
Eric’s Review: Gaia (2021) (SXSW Festival)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Mother Earth just may have it in for us, according to the South African Eco-Horror showcase Gaia, which had its World Premiere at the SXSW film festival. It’s beautiful, quiet, creepy, and full of spores. (Cough! Cough!)
Mike’s Review: Sasquatch (2021) (SXSW Festival)
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ “If you go in to the woods go with an open mind.” Famed Bigfoot videographer, Bob Gimlin.
Robert’s Review: Darkfield Radio’s Immersive Audio Experiences
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
These unsettling vignettes involving clever audio effects may be just the “something different” you’ve been looking for.
Mike’s Review: Shook (2021)
★★ out of ★★★★★ The tried and true tattered family dynamic. Kids love their Mom. Dad’s nowhere to be found. Sisters vigorously fight for their Mom’s love. Resentments emerge. The sister’s commitments to the family quickly fall to the insidious and ever-present need to feed the social media beast. We’ve all heard this tale before. Or have we?
Eric’s Review: Freaky (2020)
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Freaky takes the body swap idea from Freaky Friday, and gives it a slasher film twist. It’s a fun concept, and is off and on entertaining, but the film’s sloppy and predictable plot keep it from reaching the standard for similar Blumhouse fare like Happy Death Day.