★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Regicide is one of those awesome $5 dollar SAT words. You’d swear you know what it means, but always end up having to look it up online. We’ll save you they trouble. Regicide is the killing of a monarch or king. In the case of 2022’s uber-indy flick Regicide, this kind of makes sense, but it takes the film an awfully long time to find the metaphor.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
While no one on the Scariest Things Podcast is a licensed cryptozoologist, it’s fair to say that we all have an interest in this murky science. There’s even a few of us — gasp — that might actual believe in the cryptids! When this most recent offering popped up at the Another Hole in the Head Film fest we knew we had to search it out.
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
An evocative film name for an equally evocative true story. Pig Killer should not be taken lightly and nor should the horrible tale of Willy Pickton who killed and killed until he made his way in to Canadian history books as the most prolific serial killer in the country’s history.
Cognitive ★★★★ out of ★★★★★
The Keys ★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
A King in Yellow ★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Joseph reviews three thrilling slices of fear-fare from Another Hole in the Head Film Festival.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
To be clear, horror is the human condition. Sure there’s ghosts, robots, cannibals, witches, and Jason Voorhees, but all these finely finessed sub-genres are really just an extension of the human condition. Much ink has been poured over this subject, but rarely does a horror documentary get at this hyper-simple truism.
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
There’s no telling if 2021’s My Cherry Pie qualifies as Oz-spoitation, but it sure looks, sounds, and feels like something straight off of 42nd street. It’s not the pastoral Picnic at Hanging Rock, nor is it the ever-haunting Lake Mungo. Think Wolf Creek with little-to-no-budget, an extra bit of nastiness, and a pinch of grindhouse.
Joseph reviews two films from Another Hole in the Head Film Festival: “The Last Frankenstein” and “Night, Knight Teddy.”
★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
It’s always fascinating to see how something of little-to-no-value can bring out the worst in people as soon as they realize that someone else is interested in the same valueless item. This dynamic is made all the worse when it’s families fighting over the same scrap of trash. Worse yet? When that scrap of trash is the site of a 1979 horror film, the Whooper.
![Eric’s Review: The Last Thanksgiving (2020) [Another Hole in the Head FF]](https://scariesthings.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Last-Thanksgiving-Cleaver.jpg)
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
The Last Thanksgiving is a gory ’80s style slasher film that works on the decidedly soft premise that the Pilgrims succumbed to cannibalism to make it through the first Thanksgiving, and their descendants continue that tradition 400 years later. It delivers well on the hyper-violence, but it falls rather flat with character and plot. This is an empty calorie Thanksgiving feast.
★1/2 out ★★★★★ If you have a conventional sense of social norms.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ if you are a Troma fan and appreciate trashy and depraved satire.
Lloyd Kaufman and team Troma return to their Shakespearean roots and turn this loose-bowel take on The Tempest into a skewering of the social norms of today’s culture. This is the strongest, funniest, and most consistent Troma film I have seen since the ’80s Troma glory days but it also pushes the censorship limbo bar so low that there may not be room to go more lowbrow than this.
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
A grieving widower performs a dark ritual with consequences that lead to An Unquiet Grave
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
More fun then you can stuff in a duffle bag!
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Sharks, rotting corpses/ghosts, and a survivor guilt haunt a young woman in this psychological horror.
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
After failing to crowd-fund their board game “Murder Bury Win”, three young game designers get the opportunity of a lifetime to present their ideas to a scion of the game industry and finally get the big break they have been looking for. After initial fun and games, their dream pitch turns into a nightmare with tragic (and comic) consequences. Great characters + unique concept + greed motives = cinema gold!
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Is it a ghost story? A time travel story? The Return is a bit of both. Director BJ Verot’s first feature film is a tightly scripted sci-fi and haunted horror production, and it was one of the highlights of 2020’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
There’s literally something fishy about this little beachside community, as a vacationing couple get entangled with a strange beachside community ritual. This is what you get if you mashup Rosemary’s Baby with Humanoids from the Deep. The film telegraphs its punches, but it is clearly for fans who like their Lovecraft stories with a thin slice of sleazy.
An intimidating humanoid robot, a preteen horror movie fan bent on terrorizing her babysitter, and a woman pursued by a debt collector during a zombie apocalypse were the subjects of three fantastic short films that recently screened at Another Hole in the Head Film Fest in San Francisco.
★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ An esoteric recording from the 1970s finds two sisters pitted against the physical manifestations of their […]
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ An evil entity is loosed, bringing death and terror to a graduate student, her ex-boyfriend, and […]
