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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!

A menacing black skull mask with glowing eyes held up by a person in a dark setting.

Whistle (2025) Review

⭐️⭐️ out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Ever wanted to watch a bunch of movies all at once? Whistle (2025) has you covered. Crack open your Final Destination franchise, It Follows (2014), and Smile 2 (2024) and pour them all into the blender. What comes out is a well-oiled, thoroughly entertaining horror smoothie that somehow forgets to add its most interesting ingredient.
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A woman with long, wavy hair looks thoughtfully at a man holding a knife in a lush, green outdoor se.

Send Help (2026) Review

★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Send Help is pure wicked entertainment. It borrows tropes from many genres. The ugly duckling turning into a swan. The horrible boss. Disaster survival. Obsession. All of these familiar elements are blended into something more than the sum of their parts. It's funny, brutal, and puts both of its main characters through real ethical paces. Your rooting interests may shift over the course of the movie, but it ends with a cynical twist that turns into the perfect sunset. (Fist pump!)

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Cognitive (2025) receives a Wide Streaming Release

One of our favorite films from the Another Hole in the Head Film Festival back in 2024 is now available streaming. AHITH is known for its quirky, proudly independent genre films, and this movie does not disappoint. It can be difficult for little independent films to get good distribution. Sometimes good things come to patient filmmakers who wait for the right deal. Now, Cognitive has received a proper launch. Cognitive had a limited theatrical release in Los Angeles last month and is now available to the general public on Tubi, Sling TV, and Fandango.
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Cassandra Naud in Influencers (2025).

Influencers (2025) Review

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Intensity: 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Writer/director Kurtis David Harder comes back to his Influencer... dare I say it? Franchise?! And he’s kicking things up a notch. Count this among the rarities where the sequel is better than the original.

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Presence (2025): Review

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Presence observes a family nearing a breaking point. The Paynes have just moved into a substantial craftsman home, and it came with a poltergeist. The audience watches from the ghost's perspective as it meanders around the house, ducking into closets and the shadows when necessary. This is a family drama first, with the apparition being the witness. You travel from room to room listening in on conversations intended to be private, and watch as certain decisions pull at the threads that threaten to undo the family. Presence is a quiet and beautiful film, though it is wrenching to watch. There is horror, but not in the traditional sense, and it arrives with a flourish at the conclusion of the movie.

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Night of the Zoopocalypse (2025): Review

★★★ out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Night of the Zoopocalypse is a zany, goopy gateway horror film inspired by a Clive Barker graphic novel. A meteorite crashes into the Culpepper Zoo and infects the animals trapped inside, turning them into gelatinous mutant monsters. A wily wolf and a cantankerous mountain lion team up to try to save their zoo, with the help of a wacky assortment of untainted zoo-mates. This is a simple story, but it is a fine introduction to light horror for kids who want something a little gross and a little spooky.

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The Top 10 Horror Movies of 2025: Episode 207

If it's January, you know it's time for our Top 10 Horror Movies of 2025. You might think there is a group consensus, in a year that had so many good horror movies... but you'd be wrong! The best part of having a great sampler platter of movies to pick from is that there is something for everybody. This year, the box office and the awards programs agree, 2025 had a lot to offer.
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1. Woman in distress after a disaster, outdoors, with bodies lying on the ground.

We Bury the Dead (2024): Review

★★★ out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Writer/director Zak Hilditch focuses on personal grief and loss in this dramatically gripping take on a zombie outbreak.

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Terrified woman filming herself in a mirror with a scared expression and messy hair.

V/H/S: Halloween (2025): Review

★1/2 out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Hot take: It's time to shelve the V/H/S franchise and do an autopsy scrub. V/H/S Halloween is the latest iteration of the venerable horror anthology franchise. V/H/S has become an enabler (and, by way of production, Shudder and Bloody Disgusting as well) of ugly, uninspired, and dull shaky-cam short films. With one exception, I don't think any of these segments would be good enough to make an average horror-film festival short-film block. It's a sad indictment of a once-proud series.

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Abandoned woman holding cat with a young boy with scars on face, emotional scene from The Scariest Things.

The Best Horror Movies of 2025: Eric Li’s List

The end of the year means delivering on our opinions of the Best Horror Movies of 2025. I have now been playing horror journalist for my ninth year at The Scariest Things. Every year, I exclaim that we are in the midst of a Horror Renaissance. Never has that feeling felt more impactful than this past year. 2023 was close, but 2025 delivers the box office rewards as well as the critical praise. This was a year for new, fresh stories, supported by the studios and justified by the audiences. It also helped that a few franchises performed well, and we are likely to see the fruits of their success come Oscar season. On with the list!
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A man with a shocked and scared expression, wide eyes and slightly open mouth.

Kombucha (2025): Review

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Kombucha brings body horror to the workplace. Symbio is a company that positions itself as a place where struggling Liberal Arts creative types can achieve the same professional success as those who went into the technical fields and prospered. Luke is a struggling musician who takes the bait. Soon, he will find out that Symbio's secret to success lies in the mysterious drink Kombucha.

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1. Bloodied football player with liquid blood running down torso in a horror scene.

Him (2025): Review

★★ out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

False start. Production team. Five-yard penalty. Retry third down. Him (2025) is a rare commodity: a sports horror film, and sadly, it fumbled the opportunity away. The production is artistically very ambitious, but it fails to make much of its visual assertiveness. Too weird for your average football fan. Too much football for your average horror fan. Him proudly bears the backing of horror mogul Justin Peele, has the cinematic flair of a Peele film, but it lacks the skilled storytelling that the producer is known for.

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Explosion on the Seattle Space Needle with fire and smoke during sunset, creating a terrifying spectacle.

Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025) : Review

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Final Destination has taught us that you can't cheat death. In Bloodlines, we reset the clock back to what might be the original sin for cheating death. It is 1969, and the site of the impending disaster is the Space Needle-like Sky View Tower. As is tradition for this series, a premonition of disaster saves all the would-be victims. Death is nothing if not patient, and it pursues the lucky survivors... and their descendants. This was a breath of fresh air into a series that had become stale.

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1. Men rescuing a person injured in a chaotic, bloody scene on a ship or dock.

Beast of War (2025): Review

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Australian shark shocker Beast of War balances its drama and creature feature elements impressively, boasting good performances and plenty of great-white gore.

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UPDATED! All the Silent Night Deadly Night Films Ranked!

Merry Christmas from the Scariest Things Podcast!!! In honor of 2025's Silent Night Deadly Night reboot we’re giving you the gift that no one asked for, ever expected, and certainly one that no one ever put on their Christmas wishlist. It’s free and it’s here waiting for you. Totally unwrapped and ready to go… We give you all seven of the Silent Night Deadly Night films ranked! And…you’re welcome.
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Blood-splattered axe with Christmas lights, horror-themed image for scary stories.

Silent Night Deadly Night review (2025)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Intensity 🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

A film that roils in equal parts gore, humor, and the paranormal, Silent Night Deadly Night is a true Yuletide crowd pleaser. By playfully pulling apart the most sacrosanct holiday figure of all time — Ol’ St. Nick — this film manages to have something for the entire family to enjoy on Xmas morning.

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I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025): Review

★★.5 out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸.5 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

We return to Southport in the reboot/sequel I Know What You Did Last Summer. A new crew of pretty teens is put through very similar paces to the 1997 cast. Bad decisions lead to murderous revenge from an assailant in a fisherman's slicker, wielding a meat hook. It's a better-looking movie than its predecessor, but it lacks the star power and charisma of the original. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. return to lend credibility to the film, and the writing struggles to effectively use the legacy cast. Unfortunately, like its source material, The Fisherman is an uninspired generic villain.

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The Rule of Jenny Pen (2025): Review

★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Judge Stefan Mortensen suffers a stroke during a trial and is sent to a nursing home to recover. As the wheelchair-bound judge struggles with his physical ailments, he encounters Dave Crealy, a psychopathic resident who bullies all of the other residents with a puppet-clad fist. Stefan clings to reason and rules but is overwhelmed by Dave's chaotic presence and has become the focus of the madman's rage. Two great actors, Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow, bring their A-games to this elder-care thriller.

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Keeper (2025): Review

★★★.5 out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

In Keeper, a dating couple takes the next step by going to the boyfriend's lodge in the woods, which, given the opening credit montage of screaming women, might not be the best idea. Osgood Perkins delivers a stylish modern thriller delivered on the bones of a folk horror skeleton. Tatiana Maslany is in top form as a horror actress, delivering quirk, pathos, and proper survivor smarts. The plot hides its secrets well. Perhaps too well, as you might leave the theater still trying to fill in the mental puzzle pieces.

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Predator: Badlands (2025): Review

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

The revisioning of the Predator franchise is in full swing and continues to impress. Dan Trachtenberg is revitalizing what was a brand that was stuck in neutral, and now bristles with excitement and fresh turns. In Predator: Badlands, we flip to the Yautja (the name now given to the Predators) point of view. Dek is a young Yautja looking to redeem his honor by claiming a trophy prize from an unkillable creature of legend. On his hunt, he partners with an unlikely android on a planet where every living thing is out to kill them. The movie is much more action-hero than horror, and it uses the Marvel M.O. of destroying lots of non-humans to stay in the PG-13 category. It's still plenty violent, despite the lack of human bloodshed. Predator: Badlands makes up for the lack of gore with a superior story and wonderful character interactions.

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Dangerous Animals (2025): Review

★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

The Dangerous Animals of the title are sharks, but they are the weapons, not the killers. Jai Courtney is Tucker, a serial killer who uses his shark dive boat as an excuse to take victims on a one-way trip out to sea. Zephyr is a target who proves to be a greater challenge than most of his prey, and Tucker likes a victim with some spunk. Oz horror is notoriously brutal, where happy endings are rare. The man who brought you The Loved Ones and The Devil's Candy has returned with a highly entertaining and original variant of the serial killer film.

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The Long Walk (2025): Review

★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

The Long Walk delivers exactly what it promises: a death march competition across the backroads of Americana, where fifty young men look to be the last one standing, where death awaits the rest of the competition. Themes of brotherhood and complacency within an autocratic society are explored. Primarily, however, it's a pretty thin plot bolstered by a pair of terrific leading young actors.

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Chain Reactions review (2025)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Intensity 🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Chain Reactions is an incredibly intellectualized love letter to one of the most gruesome films ever laid down on celluloid. Unlike the varied nature of many of Alexandre O. Philippe films — save for Leap of Faith William Friedkin on the Exorcist — the film is a straight forward and linear affair.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oval Portrait (2025) Review: H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival

★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★

Intensity: 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Edgar Allan Poe's The Oval Portrait is an adaptation of one of Poe's shortest works. It visits the intersection where life, art, and death collide. The story is brought to modern times, where a thief, an artist, and an art dealer are all drawn into the influence of a spirit bound to a remarkable portrait. As is the tradition for translations of Poe's stories, the film is suitably melancholy, but it injects some welcome humor into the proceedings, while maintaining the core theme of the original story.

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A Blind Bargain (2025) Review: H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

Intensity: 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Betrayal. At its core, A Blind Bargain is a movie about the worst kind of betrayal you can imagine. Desperation and greed convince a young and troubled Vietnam veteran to submit his own mother to the schemes of a mad scientist. This groovy '70s retro thriller takes a cosmic turn through life-extending experimentation. This was the centerpiece movie of the 2025 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

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Tribe (2025) Review: H.P Lovecraft Film Festival

★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★

Intensity: 🩸 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

Curiosity is a dangerous thing. In cosmic horror, the exploration of truths can lead to fates worse than death, and yet, people will still seek to know things they really should leave alone. In Tribe, a man lost in the remote badlands in the southern Sierras is going through a horrible physical transformation. His hope is that some media drives he found in his Airstream trailer will tell him why he is in the predicament he is in. His salvation may come in the form of his own found footage material, but it also may foretell his own doom.

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Felidae (1994) Review

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Intensity 🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 Animated German feature FELIDAE is a dark excursion into noir horror featuring a cast of cats.
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