The Invisible Raptor (2024) Review: Portland Horror Film Festival

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for copious comic gore

The Invisible Raptor is a crowd-pleaser, plain and simple. This spoof of Jurassic Park flips the script on the behemoth tentpole franchise by not trying to do digital dinosaurs at all. Instead, The team behind The Invisible Raptor did the monster movie without the monster, and it worked brilliantly. This is a meta-movie for the Easter Egg enthusiasts, but be warned, there is so much blood and shit in this movie that it isn't for the squeamish or the kiddos! (Though the twelve-year-old me would LOVE this movie.)

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Announcing the Portland Horror Film Festival 2024

Our good friends at the Portland Horror Film Festival have announced their 2024 film lineup! Once again, we are proud to sponsor one of the great little horror film festivals in the country. The festival will be held over five days and feature nonstop horror films, headlined by the West Coast premiere of Jill Gevargizian's (The Stylist) new film Ghost Game. This year TEN feature films will be presented, and as usual, some of the country's best curated horror short film blocks will be shown. Also, join The Scariest Things on Saturday, June 8 after the movies are done and play in our Horror Movie Greenlight Pitch!
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Trailer Alert: Never Let Go (2024)

Alexandre Aja's latest film, Never Let Go, stars Halle Berry in post-apocalypse survival mode with her two boys. This has strong A Quiet Place / Birdbox / Arcadian vibes going for it. The trailer for the September 27 release just dropped. You can check it out right here.
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The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024) Review

★★★ out of ★★★★★ The Strangers: Chapter 1 is an extremely faithful reboot of the 2008 thriller of the same name. The film follows nearly beat for beat with the original, which may be a good thing, as the original was a crackerjack scare ride. However, if you are familiar with the first movie, much of the starch is taken out of it. The predictability of the jump scares and the actions diminishes the scariness of it all. If you are new to this story, then game on!
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Prequel, Sequel, Reboot: Episode 183

It has become something of a Hollywood crutch. The cynical amongst us consider prequels, sequels, and reboots to be lazy storytelling. Franchise horror comes in all forms. When obvious profits are predicted, big-budget studio films and straight-to-streaming B-movies fall into the same formula. Rinse, repeat, and rinse again. We think we can do this a little better.
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Podcast Extra: An Interview with New Life Director John Rosman

At the Overlook Film Festival, The Scariest Things caught up with up-and-coming director John Rosman, who was on hand to present his debut feature film New Life. This thriller was a sleeper surprise at the festival. A political thriller that morphs into a toe-curling body horror show halfway through. The film is in limited theatrical release and can be streamed online now!
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Trailer Alert! ALIEN HUNT

New Sci-Fi horror Alien Hunt arrives on US digital tomorrow and we've got the poster and trailer to put in front of your eyeballs. The official press announcement follows.
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Roger Corman (1926-2024): A Farewell to the King

Roger Corman, the Godfather of Independent Horror Cinema, has passed away at the age of 98. He left behind an unmatchable legacy of production, advocacy, and inspiration to generations of filmmakers and fans. He produced 493 titles and directed 56 movies himself. Corman was the tastemaker who gave numerous important directors their early opportunities. Thank you, good sir, for all of your contributions to our community. Yours was a life well lived.
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Crypticon Seattle 2024 Wrap

Crypticon, the great Pacific Northwest horror convention was packed full of great events and thousands of fans. The Scariest Things was so busy over the weekend, moderating two panels, participating in four other panels, running The Horror Movie Greenlight Pitch, and last, but certainly not least, interviewing Bonnie "The Nun" Aarons on stage. Eric is still coming down from the buzz that was... Crypticon 2024.
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Spooky Time Episode 28: The Overlook Film Festival Overview

April means going to New Orleans for one of the best genre film festivals in the world and one of our favorites: The Overlook Film Festival. This year was a challenge for the festival as the 2023 SGA and WGA strikes had a diminishing effect on studio releases, the fest managed to pull in some terrific foreign films, and the short films shined too.
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Red Rooms (2024) Review (Overlook FF)

★★★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.

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Kill Your Lover (2024) Review (Overlook FF)

★★★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.

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In a Violent Nature (2024) Review (Overlook FF)

★★★ out of ★★★★★

Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

The Canadian slasher film, In a Violent Nature, roared out of the gates with much buzz from The Sundance Film Festival and was bolstered by a menacing trailer. It has a great-looking monster, and a few spectacularly gory kills will make this movie pop and evoke fond old memories. The advance word on this movie was that it reinvented the slasher film. It's different, to be sure. The odd pacing, however, cannot be ignored, and the movie plods along with its villain for far too much of the movie. It felt like a shorter film padded to make a feature-length time. High highs. Low lows.

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New Life (2024) Review (Overlook FF)

★★★★ 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.

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Infested (2024) Review (Overlook FF)

★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★

Intensity 🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

🕷🕷🕷🕷🕷 out of 🕷🕷🕷🕷🕷 if you fear spiders!

Arachnophobes beware! Infested (Vermines, En français) is the pinnacle of spider horror. It is also an expertly done class struggle diatribe, using a scrappy group of young survivors of the French underclass pitted against both an infestation of fast-breeding and fast-growing venomous spiders and the law enforcement that should be protecting them.

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Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Human (2024) Review (Overlook FF)

★★★★★ 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.

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Abigail (2024) Review (Overlook Film Festival)

★★★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.

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Cuckoo (2024) Review (Overlook Film Festival)

★★★★ 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.

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The First Omen (2024) Review

★★★★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.

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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Review (2024)

★★ 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.

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