Authenticity. Ithaqua oozes authenticity. In an era where low-budget films can't afford the real thing, and big studio projects use digital effects or even (shudder... AI...) to make the movie magic happen, director Casey Walker delivered a movie that feels tangibly real. It's cold because it truly is Hoth-level cold outside. Walker's labor of love, which took 14 years from concept to cinema, delivers one of the best horror films in a growingly stacked year for genre films. Casey was generous to share his thoughts on his movie with The Scariest Things.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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In Oddities, two young addicts flee from the scene of a crime and take shelter in a roadside antique store that they expected to be a refuge. It's not. The shopkeeper is more than she seems. This film hides its cosmic-horror roots until well into the third act, but it builds tension tightly from the start. The movie overcomes some unlikeable protagonists by developing a clever, ever-evolving story. Adrienne Barbeau and Xander Berkeley add star power and gravitas that elevate the production.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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The Frogman is back! The first Frogman was something of a found footage cult hit. Now, both the actual film and the film within the film have a bigger budget this time out, and the results go gonzo crazy. Forget the cryptids; this sequel takes the concept into cosmic insanity. See this in a full theater, as the audience I saw it with went completely bananas. It starts out like a natural extension of the first film, but expands the story into realms practically unthinkable. This feature won the Horde Award at the Portland Horror Film Festival as the audience choice for best film.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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Curiosity is a dangerous thing. In cosmic horror, the exploration of truths can lead to fates worse than death, and yet, people will still seek to know things they really should leave alone. In Tribe, a man lost in the remote badlands in the southern Sierras is going through a horrible physical transformation. His hope is that some media drives he found in his Airstream trailer will tell him why he is in the predicament he is in. His salvation may come in the form of his own found footage material, but it also may foretell his own doom.
★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
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The Letter sumptuously recreates the era of H.P. Lovecraft's 1930's New England. This languidly paced mystery feels like a Call of Cthulhu adventure, set in an elaborate mansion, and stocked with scheming characters with old grudges. This little indie film has big aspirations and ambitions but could have used a little streamlining. Prepare yourselves for lots of exposition and dark musings in period dialogue, while appreciating the fine details and rich textures.
★★★★★out of ★★★★★
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Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire documents a string of unsolved grisly murders in California's Inland Empire. This faux documentary is at once both sensational and plausible, treated as a real account of a heinous cosmically influenced serial killing spree. This film is hugely disturbing and is coated with a thick layer of bloody possible sauce.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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The Daemon was a perfect vessel to be unleashed at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. The debut feature from Devino and Yohe taps into all of the key tropes of Cosmic Horror: coping with inner demons, battling psychoses and grief, dreams from the underworld, and elder gods rising from the deep. Add in some wonderfully grotesque body horror and you get a banger of a movie. Plus: we get Azathoth. If you know, you know.
★★ out of ★★★★★
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Gods of the Deep (2023) takes a group of intrepid explorers into the depth of an Antarctic trench to discover why there is an Ancient Temple. This HP Lovecraft World Premiere was unintentionally silly, and full of bad logic and cheap sets, but might qualify as so bad it's good.
Cosmic Horror screenwriting legend Dennis Paoli joined Eric Li to discuss his collaborations with Stuart Gordon, Barbara Crampton, and the new film Suitable Flesh. The master storyteller is not surprisingly a real fun interview. Enjoy this special Podcast Extra!
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Cosmic Horror fans rejoice! Suitable Flesh is a sexy and gory return to the fun Lovecraftian films of Stuart Gordon. This time, with Joe Lynch at the Helm, and a terrific cast with Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, and Barbara Crampton, this is a naughty and wicked body-swap romp.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Fear the Pythagorean Theorem! Wait... what? The latest film from trendsetting actor/directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson explores the fear of pattern languages. Math can be a frustratingly daunting experience at best and mind-bogglingly cryptic at the extremes. Think of it. Irrational numbers. ∞. Triskadecaphobia. π. Abstract numbers. Dividing by zero. What does it all mean? The laws and rules of mathematics that govern our lives can be twisted. Oh, the Horror!
★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
A cosmic horror odyssey that never leaves the bathroom! Glorious is one hell of a film!
★★★★ 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.
Inexplicable, unfathomable, abominable, and utterly incomprehensible: Cosmic Horror is designed to blow your mind. The concepts are vast and often come with a metric ton of tentacles. Behold and beware, it's Episode 105! The Stars are Right and your fates have been sealed. You MUST listen to this podcast!
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity:🩸🩸 for some harrowing chase scenes and violence
The Beach House is a compact and well-paced Cosmic Horror tale. A young couple trying to sort out their relationship go to a New England beach house to address their issues, only to find something very sinister is brewing on the beach.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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The Brazilian cosmic action/horror film Warhead: The World is No Longer Ours feels like it stepped out of Heavy Metal Magazine. It vacillates between stunning visuals and scenes that show the limits of a micro-budget. The story is a post-apocalyptic tale in media res that, overall, feels like the middle of a much larger story. It offers familiar science fiction beats and some terrific, escalating monster moments, but rushes to a very open-ended conclusion.
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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The Deep Dark takes a trip into a coal mine in France, where an ancient evil being awaits. An overzealous archaeologist hires a group of miners to unknowingly help him find the crypt. Stylish but stiff, this subterranean horror show utilizes stock characters and subjects them to a predictable script. The monster is visually impressive until it moves and reveals itself to be an awkward puppet. On the plus side, the production team at least tries to apply actual mining terminology. (Though I am no expert in such things.) The film can be entertaining at times, as a generic monster movie, but it can't elevate itself beyond a semi-mummy trope.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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Buffet Infinity is a film as strange as its name. This lo-fi cosmic-horror oddity spins its story through local advertisements that slowly escalate from commercial competition to societal domination. It is a clever concept that takes a while to comprehend, but it manages to combine initially incongruent media into a cohesive story of dread and destruction.
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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Ash is a big, bombastic science fiction horror film that wears its influences on its sleeves. It offers a thrilling opening sequence and a monstrous conclusion but gets completely lost in its storytelling. Director/composer Flying Lotus crafted lovely psychedelic visuals and composed a soundtrack that thunders with propulsive energy, but unmemorable characters prove to be this film's undoing.
Aaron Moorhead is one half of the prolific writing/acting/directing duo of Moorhead and Benson. The acclaimed duo produced some of the past decade's most mind-bending cosmic horror movies. It was only appropriate that he would serve as the keynote speaker at this year's H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, and he took some time out of his busy festival schedule to talk with Eric Li about his Cosmic theories and theses.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Cosmic Horror meets found footage in the parasomnia-infused Dream Eater. Documentarian Mallory and her boyfriend Alex retreat to a snowy cabin, celebrating Alex's 30th birthday. There, they hope to relax and get relief from Alex's violent sleepwalking episodes. Unfortunately, fate would have it that something ancient and evil is behind his psychological traumas, and Mallory struggles to make sense of it before it destroys them both.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Tentacled cosmic horrors besiege a seaside Greek town, and it's up to the patrons of a local taverna to save the city. The directors refer to this as "My Big Fat Greek Monster Movie." Minore punches well above its weight class, featuring top-shelf cinematography, complimented with high-end visual FX and an excellent ensemble cast.
Dr. Rebekah McKendry is a Renaissance Woman in Horror Cinema. She carries the unique position of not only being a director, but also is a professor of film at USC (Just the best film school in the world, right?) Dr. McKendry was the keynote speaker at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, and we got an opportunity to talk with her backstage to talk all things Cosmic, including her terrific film Glorious.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Frogman injects some fresh air into the somewhat stale shaky cam horror sub-genre. A trio of friends go in search of the elusive cryptid, the Frogman of Loveland Colorado, and manage to uncover something sinister. Well drawn characters and properly edited shaky cam standards combine for one of the best found footage films in years.
★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Cosmic Horror served two ways in the same book. John Langan's Bram Stoker Award winning novel The Fisherman serves a unique nested story structure to deliver the tale of how two widowed men deal with grief and loss by fishing, but are being drawn into literally hellish decisions.
When the calendar turns from September to October, that means it's time for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, one of the premiere horror events in the Pacific Northwest. This year there are some big-time guests who will be at the event in person to represent their iconic films, so if you are within driving distance (or if you want to fly in) you should come to the Hollywood Theater in Portland, and check it out! It is one of the best-curated horror festivals in the country, and you will not find a finer group of short films anywhere.
The thrilling horror short "The Relic" manages to pull off the incredible in satisfying both the academic Lovecraft purists and those who want a spectacular body horror showcase. For those in the know, this may be the definitive screen depiction of the crawling chaos, the old God, Nyarlathotep.
★★★ 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.
★★ out of ★★★★★
The Yellow Night indicated it might be a psychedelic cosmic horror show. Nope! It is a teen-angst movie full of banal and unconvincing dialogue among a group of Brazilian high school grads. And, there might be a cosmic gate in the creepy shed at the beach house they are staying in, but the characters pay it no mind, and neither does the plot.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
A wildly original, but often difficult to follow cosmic horror tale about dreams and destiny, from an emerging Turkish horror auteur director.






























