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)

★★★★ 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)

★★.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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Spooky Time Episode 7

The Scariest Things is heading down to Austin for SXSW and The Overlook Film Festival, two of the most influential festivals in America and we are previewing them for you in Episode 7 of Spooky Time!
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The Scariest Things Podcast Episode 163: Hotel-Motel-BnB Horror

Hello? I'd like a room for the night. Famous. Last. Words. If you are tired and driving down a remote desert highway, and are feeling a bit tired, you will know that the last thing you should do is check into a skeevy Motel at the side of the road. The Scariest Things pulls off on the side of the road to scout the dodgy lodging in advance for you in Episode 163: Hotel-Motel-BnB Horror.
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Mike’s Review: Spoonful of Sugar (2022)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild gore and a frayed family. Weird babysitter. Weird kid. Weird parents. A deeply weird connection to regular usage of LSD. And to top it off a weird poster. Spoonful of Sugar definitely traffics in the world of weird. Not Skinamarink weird mind you, but still firmly in the weird camp. 
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March Madness Zombie Bracket with The Jersey Ghouls!

It's time for a zombie March Madness bracket fight! The scary ladies of The Jersey Ghouls, Marissa and Jacki, abducted Eric and Liz and forced us to participate in this fiendish experiment. And we had a BLAST! Check out the Jersey Ghouls Podcast, or click on the streaming feed on this post!
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Cocaine Bear (2023): Review

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ 🩸🩸🩸 This is a grisly (not grizzly... the bear is a black bear) romp through the forest, amped up with narcotics and has some wildly entertaining moments. Elizabeth Banks continues her transformation from in front of the camera star to behind the camera, and she hit the comedic and gory tone just right with Cocaine Bear.
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Mike’s Review: Craving (2023)

★★★ out of ★★★★★ 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for lots of gore. Nothing’s better when a small indy production punches WAY above its weight class — especially in the visual effects department. Sometimes the effort is a miserable failure and sometimes, yes sometimes, its indy deficiencies don’t even show for a minute. 
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Spooky Time Episode 6

It's the age old debate: Book vs. Movie. Which did it better? In the spotlight in Episode 6 of Spooky Time: Paul Tremblay's novel: The Cabin at the End of the World vs. M. Night Shyamalan's Knock at the Cabin.
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Abruptio (2023) Review

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸🩸

What do you get when you combine the voice talents of Sid Haig, Jordan Peele, and Robert Englund with a cast of creepy life-size puppets and a story that might as well have been written by Philip K Dick? It’s called Abruptio.

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Robert’s Review: Mind Leech (2023)

⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 🩸🩸🩸 What happens when you get a bunch of Canadian SFX folks together and let them loose in the snowy back-country of rural Canada? You get a giant mutant leech sucking onto people's heads, that's what!
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Robert’s Review: Ghost Mansion (2021)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 🩸🩸 A fantastic ghost story anthology about a very haunted apartment building in South Korea. Expertly interwoven tales that turn the spookiness up to 11!
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Spooky Time Episode 5

It's SPOOKY TIME! In this week's episode: Liz returns from Rome, with a report on the Profondo Rosso Store. Robert found a highly curated horror book subscription service. Eric announced a team up with the Jersey Ghouls for a Zombie March Madness Bracket Dance. And... Mike was on a train to the great white oblivion.
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Bunker (2023) Review

★★★1/2out of ★★★★★

🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

The WWI trench warfare horror film Bunker follows a mixed squad of British and American doughboys who are trapped in a deserted German bunker and encounter something far more sinister than enemy forces waiting for them. With the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, it's only appropriate that movie goers return to the horror of trench warfare.

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The Scariest Things Intensity Scale 🩸

We now have a Gore Intensity Rating for our reviews! Being that we are your gateway to the trends and tropes of the horror genre, we need to be able to convey to the newcomers (and our gore hounds) what to expect with these movies. Keep an eye out for the 🩸 on forthcoming reviews.
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Mike’s Review: Friday the 13th (2009)

★ out of ★★★★★ Because of money grubbing, legal hassling, and Hollywood head-butting, we haven’t seen a Friday the 13th film since 2009. Word on the street is that the 1980 Friday the 13th originator Sean Cunningham is BACK. Just like Jason never died!!! He’s teaming up with the writer and the director from a new horror flick, the Night Driver, and they’re making a reboot/sequel/requel happen. 
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Mike’s Review: Corona Zombies (2020)

★★.5 out of ★★★★★ Part joke. Part satire. Part experimentation. Part loving homage to the Grindhouse era. A dash of RiffTrax. ALL Full Moon and Charles Band lunacy. Corona Zombies has many of these things and weirdly more. 
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Spooky Time Episode 4

Liz flees to Rome to escape the oncoming hordes of Mardi Gras invaders (and to go on a Dario Argento Pilgrimage), leaving Robert, Eric, and a freshly shaven Mike Campbell sans beard to carry on with Spooky Time. Topics Include: Deadstream, The Last of Us, Children of the Corn, and a Cronenberg TV Conversion.
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The Scariest Things Podcast Episode 162: Slow-Burn Horror!

Behold, the Horror Movie Mullet: Slow-Burn Horror! It's business (plot building) in the front, and a party (big third-act finish). You can thank Liz Williams for that analogy! The concept of the slow-burn horror movie is not new, but it is a prominent description for many contemporary horror movies. Break out the coffee, and try not to spill it in the shocking third act of Episode 162: Slow-Burn Horror!
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Spooky Time Episode 3

In Spooky Time, our weekly roundup of horror musings from the world of film, TV, Books and games, this weeks topics are: Eric talks about a really scary PC Video Game. Robert found a collection of overseas Lovecraft graphic novels. Mike recommends two movies with the word "DEATH" in the title. Liz reviews Brett Easton Ellis's (American Psycho) new book The Shards. And as a bonus talks about a movie she had to bail on.
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Mike’s Review: House of Usher (1960)

★★★.5  out of ★★★★★ Since Netflix recently teased out a new Mike Flanagan series based upon Edgar Allen Poe’s haunting short story, the Fall of the House of the Usher, we decided it was high time to jump in the way-back machine and give its 1960 forefather a discerning look. Turns out Flanagan may be on to something by following this chilling story.
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