The Fantasia International Film Festival has outdone itself with today’s mind-warping second-wave announcement. Featuring horror titles such as #BLUE_WHALE, Ghosting Gloria, and Hellbender (to name but a few) along with a plethora of science fiction, dark comedy, thriller, and other horror-adjacent genres, Montreal’s premiere genre-film fest promises to be a blast, as it is every year.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
In 1984, an ambitious epidemiologist with flexible ethics is called on by the government of the USSR to investigate — and collect samples from — a top secret research site built inside the deepest hole ever drilled into the Earth.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
Where does Annie Clark end and her St. Vincent rock star persona begin? Her friend Carrie Brownstein attempts to document that until the answer to that question winds up in an absurd, sometimes surreal blur in this ambitious mockumentary.
★★ out of ★★★★★
Some will say the epicenter of the Fulci universe lie in the greatness of the gory triptych: The New York Ripper, The House by the Cemetery, and The Beyond. Others will point to the earlier, less gory but equally frightening confines of The Psychic, Don’t Torture a Duckling, and A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin. No matter where you fall on the Lucio Fulci spectrum it’s awfully hard to argue about his immense and ever-lasting output. Stanley Kubrik only directed 13 films. But Fulci? He directed 61.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Killer pants. Designer jeans to die for. Corporate greed meets its match in a pair of pants thirsting for vengeance.
The best way for you to learn about Horror Films is to read and listen to The Scariest Things. The next best thing to do is to watch a Horror Documentary. You will find a documentary that aligns with your favorite horror tropes. Giallo? Check! Grindhouse? Check! Classic Universal Monsters? That too. In Episode 125, the Scariest Things team reveals nine movies that will increase your knowledge and love of the genre.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Once a film franchise crosses over in to four, five, or six sequels, or god forbid a complete reboot, it deserves lampooning and a heaping dose of criticism. That many sequels is often a reflection of the imagination tank run completely dry. Take your original story/villain and wash, rinse, and repeat.
Washington’s North Bend Film Festival is back, and it is serving up a hybrid in-person and virtual version this July. […]
★★★ out of ★★★★★ Umm what just happened? Was that a dream? Did I just have a stroke? Did my ego and id simultaneously implode? Unclear on all fronts. One thing is certain. This is a film like no other and it’s not something you can ever unsee.
What’s summer without a shark attack movie? If you share this sentiment, check out the trailer and poster reveal for Great White, an Australian entry in the shark survival horror thriller subgenre headed our way in July.
Destined to be one of the most talked-about and divisive fright-fare films of the year, auteur Mickey (Climate of the Hunter) Reece’s possession-horror feature brings “But is it horror?” to a whole new level.
★★★ out of ★★★★★ Directed by Prano Bailey-Bond Enid (Niamh Algar) is a film censor in London who’s job it is […]
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Everyone gets old. It’s no more complicated than this little horrifying truism. The world of horror is filled with ghosts, homicidal nutcases, Pazzuzu, creepies, crawlies, and robot-monsters. But, nothing, repeat, nothing, is more frightening at the prospect of losing your mental and physical faculties and facing the sad and potential finite end of life.
Along with the terrific feature-film lineup from Twisted Dreams Film Festival’s 2021 virtual version, the festival serves up plenty of short-form fright fare, too. Here is a second set of capsule reviews of just a few of the short films on offer.
For a pantheon inhabiting monster, it is odd that a good Mummy movie a rarity. Unlike werewolves and vampires, Mummies got stuck in a same-story trope vortex of sameness. Fear not, though, The Scariest Things has found some buried treasures for you!
★★★ out of ★★★★★ Written and Directed by Ben Wheatley During the lockdown of 2020, while the rest of us […]
Along with the terrific feature-film lineup from Twisted Dreams Film Festival’s 2021 virtual version, the fest serves up plenty of superb short-form fright fare, too. Here are capsule reviews of just a few of the short films on offer.
★★★1/2 and ★★★★ out of ★★★★★
The highly anticipated return of the demonologist duo, The Warrens, has arrived on the big screen. It starts off with a ferocious roar of an opening scene, and largely holds its dramatic tension to the finish of this exorcism mystery meets courtroom drama.
Dolls are creepy. Ventriloquist dummies add on the extra creep factor. Finley takes advantage of all the established history of the evil dummy tropes that came before it and flips all expectations in the most amusing and satisfying way.
IFC Midnight has dropped the trailer for Neill Blomkamp’s newest offering, Demonic and it looks insane!
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
A worthy sequel to the science-fiction horror modern classic. A Quiet Place Part II is very much an extension of the first movie. It feels like one continuous story. Intense, expertly crafted, and wonderfully acted, this movie doesn’t break a lot of new ground but it builds upon what the original did so well. It’s a first-rate thrill ride!
★★ out of ★★★★★ Crack open the dusty dictionary parked over on your bookshelf and look up staid British horror film. We’ll wait. What’s it say? 1976’s Satan’s Slave? Yep, that’s what we thought.
The fine folks behind Milwaukee’s Twisted Dreams Film Festival have done it again, booking an incredible array of pulse-pounding cinema for the fest’s sixth edition, and its second virtual version. Following you will find what’s playing, how to see it, and more . . .
A man going through some difficult times discovers $3 million on his new property, but it comes with ever-heavier emotional baggage and a corpse that won’t stay buried in this well-crafted chiller.
Austrian film festival Slash ½, presented by the fine folks behind Slash Filmfestival, returns to cinemas after an absence last year, and the slate of 11 incredible films is highly impressive. The fest, which runs June 17–20, 2021 at Filmcasino in Vienna, Austria, features the gory trappings of The Stylist, the gross-out horror comedy Cyst, the supernatural shocker Son, and much more.
Edgar Wright channels his inner Argento with a dreamy giallo-noir trailer for his upcoming film Last Night in Soho starring Anya Taylor Joy, Tomasin McKenzie, and Matt Smith.
“What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” The most accursed of curse tropes is brought to hilarious proportions in one of our favorite horror shorts from the Portland Horror Film Festival in 2019, now released on Alter… and now The Scariest Things!
The Scariest Things sat down for a fun and lively discussion with director Ryan Barton-Grimley to break down his raucous horror-comedy Hawk and Rev: Vampire Slayers, one of our favorite movies from 2020.
★★ out of ★★★★★
Gone are the days of Bub from Day of the Dead. Gone are the days of the zombie nurse, the fat guy, and the Hare Krishna from Dawn of the Dead. Gone are the half-dogs and headless zombies from Return of the Living Dead. Most importantly, gone is a fun but serious dissection of societal woes and man’s modern day pitfalls. IInstead we’re now being fed a pile of ghastly super-hero zombies, that shriek like space aliens, set inside a hyper-realized video game construct. It’s a sad state of affairs to be sure. One might even say that the zombie genre has jumped the shark, or in this case the albino zombie tiger.
One of life’s highlights for me each year is attending South Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), which I […]
