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.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 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.
⭐️⭐️⭐️ 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!
★★★ out of ★★★★★
The Quantum Devil
★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Darker
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Virgil
Reviews of three films from Romford Horror Festival.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 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!
⭐️⭐️1/2 out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
🩸🩸🩸
From the writer/director of Nati Morti (2022) comes horror straight out of an Albanian bunker!
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.
★★★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.
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.
Joseph reviews three ★★★★ out of ★★★★★ horror shorts from the U.K.'s Romford Horror Festival.
★ 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.
★★.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.
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.
World War I-set horror feature The Bunker, which I listed in my “Top 10 Horror Films of 2022” article, is...
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!
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.
★★★.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.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
This claustrophobic chiller provides viewers with plenty of meat to mull over while delivering a nerve-wracking battle of wills between a kidnapper who heads up a twisted family unit and his victim.
Just how popular is Horror? Data analyst Bo McCready has done a fascinating Tableau (An excellent infographics generator!) analysis of the history of film, and the relative popularity of each movie genre. The trick here is to recognize what the context of "popular" is here. For this table, this is the number of films produced in any given year, for EVERY year since 1910, according to our favorite resource, IMDb.
THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
A bit of clear eyed truth here. Within our beloved horror genre, we will get subjected to some pretty lousy films. Though we believe in 2022 there were more good movies than bad, some of the bad movies really disappointed, and some had a stink that will be hard to be rid of. What movies you ask? Listen and find out in Episode 161!
All the new buzz from your friends at The Scariest Things! Our new weekly format continues, as we do a quick session of weekly musings on happenings in horror this week! Check out Episode 2, now in both a YouTube and Podcast format!
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
The latest from renowned director Brad Anderson, Blood takes the familiar horror story of a parent who will go to any lengths to save a dying child and succeeds in setting itself apart from the pack thanks to solid direction and acting.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
Put on your bathing suit and jump into the Infinity Pool with Brandon Cronenberg.
★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
For those of you curious and wondering about M. Night's latest offering? Fear not (or fear a lot)... Knock at the Cabin is good. REALLY good. A cabin in the woods home invasion with an and of the world apocalypse central theme with undercurrents of LGBT targeting, and the emotional fortitude of what it means to be a family. It's all there, and the plot twist is not a surprise, but a promise, this time.
⭐️⭐️1/2 out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
An experimental, kaleidoscope of shaky-cam weirdness. Lovers of slow burning, stream of consciousness film making, this one's for you!
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
You Won't Be Alone is a Brooding story of a young witch cast into a 19th Century Village and learns about humanity by assuming the form of the agrarian townsfolk. A smart and melancholy tale, for those who love a good story and have a lot of patience.
New Years Resolution time! The Scariest Things has resolved to get you MORE CONTENT. So, we are introducing Spooky TIme with the Scariest Things. It's a shorter format of news, reviews, and musings. PLUS: VIDEO CONTENT! (Check out our YouTube as well!) A caution though, this recording has a bit of a weird dynamic to it, so
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
HP Lovecraft dug writing short stories. Edgar Allen Poe did too. Even the great Stephen King has been known to clack out a short story or two (hundred). Most horror writers have the keen ability to take a simple concept and extemporarily expound the idea in fairly concise and confined was. Sometimes this works and sometimes there’s a lot of questions begged and a lot more exposition that’s required.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
M3GAN brings fun, scares and great dance moves from the uncanny valley to the big screen.
The temptation of producers to rinse and repeat and cash in has a long and dubious history with horror. But, horror also provides the opportunity for filmmakers to take BIG chances. Smaller budgets not only provide better profits, but also the opportunity for allowing bigger chances and bolder ideas. If you are a creative mind starting out in Hollywood and are looking for a conduit for wild ideas, go for the weird. Go for horror.
Check out this Dead List for the Weird and Wonderful Horror from 1990 to 2023!