★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Many horror films try, but equally, many films fail to concoct the perfect period piece. Often times concepts for period pieces in the world of horror seem to be centered around someone’s uncle who has a really mint 1977 Trans Am. Seems like an easy tasked to build an entire film around some funky vintage clothes and a sweet ride, but more often than not it’s a task where many fail.
★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Come for the insane 1970s Italian gore! Stay for the superb Goblin soundtrack! It’s all here! Frankly, is there anything more you could ever ask from a horror film? Well, maybe.
🔪🔪🔪🔪1/2 out of 🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪 The rules surrounding Giallo have been firmly established. Beginning somewhere around 1964 with Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace and continuing to the present with such color-soaked homosexual freakouts as 2019’s Knife+Heart, Giallo has been around the block.
Well you knew it was a matter of time before Hollywood ran out of ideas. Or, maybe, just maybe, it’s...
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
In the latest installment to the cringe-inducing horror sub-genre, Home Invasion Horror, we get a fair-to-midland entry with a little heart. Think Funny Games, but less terror, suspense, and sadism. Just some light torture and some fun cameos.
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You either love the Cenobites or you don’t. You’re either interested in freaky BDSM emo-demons or you’re not. You either like non-linear otherworldly sci-fi based horror or it holds little interest to you. It’s possible there’s a third category — indifference — and that’s probably where I fall on the Hellraiser spectrum.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
Don’t say it…hissss it! The tagline from the trailer for the most unusual horror film ever made really hits the nail on the head.
★★ out of ★★★★★
It’s a new form of vampirism! It’s vampirism without vampires! Morbius is that oh-so-special vampire that’s content with Gatorade mountain blueberry blast-looking blood and who doesn’t burst in to flames every time he sees a crucifix. The dawning of a new and decidedly less malevolent Dracula.
★★★ out of ★★★★★ Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis There has to be a “first” everything. First to the moon. ...
Babysitters and horror go together like peanut butter and chocolate. You just can’t have one with out the other. This...
★★★ out of ★★★★★
Everybody had to start somewhere. Alien ripped off The Green Slime. Child’s Play ripped off Magic. Piranha ripped off Jaws. And everyone ripped off Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It should come as no surprise that this year’s weirdo “it” film Malignant is a ripoff, but we’re here to tell you it is.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
Is the ultimate test of a director the ability to grow, mature, and evolve? Pick up new tricks, devices, and viewpoints? Create new and unique takes on the film medium? OR, is it the director’s job to figure out what formula works, stick with that, and never grow, mature, and evolve. Sort of a “greatest hits” approach to filmmaking.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild gore and violence.
A hundred years on we’ve been blessed and not-so-blessed with hundreds, or maybe thousands or Frankenstein-related films. Remakes, reboots, re-imaginations, reworking of the Mary Shelley source material, and even re-re-working of Shelley’s book. The Frankenstein mythos has comfortable slipped into our collective horror zeitgeist.
What do we now know? Well, we now know we have a trailer and we have three pretty decent, if not a little odd, posters. The other thing we know is that Pazuzu is back to inhabit the bodies of not one, but two little girls. Take that Regan MacNeil!
Another year and another dollar! Once again Hollyweird cranked up the hype machine and had us parking our collective butts back in the theaters. What got your butt back in the theater? What got you to risk exposure to another Covid variant? What got you to shell out $14 bones for a mountain of greasy popcorn?
The POSTER! That’s what did it.
👻👻👻 out of 👻👻👻👻👻
The go-to move for horror filmmakers in the modern era is the tortured family dynamic. It’s creepy, hidden, sinister, and above all tragic. When you mix in a heaping dose of the death of a child, tragic can take a very dark complexion and make it, well, darker.
Seems simple enough. Just shut your eyes…and scream. According to the brain trust over at IMDB this little chiller was...
Um...we're not exactly sure where to park this, but here it is...Lindsay Lohan is in a werewolf movie.
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
On the edge of the 40th anniversary of the seminal John Carpenter-Stephen King mashup it’s high time we pay proper due to a legitimate horror classic. Coupled with the fact that Blumhouse is in the works of producing a questionable remake — due in 2022/2023 — and the fact that this 1983 joint is now streaming on Netflix in UHD, it makes it the perfect time to consider where this fits in to the pantheon of horror greats.
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
We've all been waiting patiently for the new work by masterful filmmaker Jordan Peele. He has yet to disappoint with his previous cinematic efforts and continues to push a rather visionary envelope. Shrouded in years of mystery comes another enthralling horror entry with NOPE.
As we've already previously noted, UFO films are usually mostly in the science fiction camp, with maybe a toe in the horror genre. Trying to find the ones that firmly place two feet over into the horror side is no easy feat. NOPE is that film that harmoniously brings these camps together.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ When true film auteurs wander outside of their staid and classical lines and in to the horror genre there’s always the potential for some serious magic. Kubrick with the Shining, Freidkin with the Exorcist, Spielberg with Jaws, and even Danny Boyle with 28 Days Later. All these major film think-o-logists had a crack at horror and walked away proud at what they had accomplished, or so ashamed at the terror they had brought to the cineplex, they never came back to the genre. One of the greatest film auteurs of all time, Robert Altman, wandered in to horror with aplomb, but sadly his seminal effort has been forgotten in the sands of time.
Here’s the poster for one of the rarer and apparently one of the last of the Hammer horror freakouts. This...
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
This might seem like a stretch, but you’ve never seen a film quite like 2022’s Men. Really. It’s in a pretty singular place in the world of psychedelic horror. Frankly, there’s nothing that really compares to this shocking bit of A24 business. Unless you count David Cronenberg’s 1979 classic the Brood as a contemporary — but that was 43 years ago.
Men, directed by friend of horror, Alex Garland (28 Days Later and Annihilation) is exactly the film that 2022 needed, nay required. By managing to expertly weave through a minefield of trauma, sexual repression, male insecurity, and post-#metoo movement dynamics, Garland turns in one of the best horror films of the year.
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ A super stylish and exceptionally well-scored film that’s partially in Danish and partially in English and…wait for it…features a character who’s half Danish and half American.
★★ out of ★★★★★
In 1974 we were treated to a gory nightmare that served as a haunting metaphor for the Viet Nam War. Now, 48 years later we’re being served a vile and equally nightmarish metaphor for class war and the cultural disposability of the elderly. There’s even a nice treatise on the perversion of the current real estate market in the United States.
Director David Blue Garcia even throws in a discussion of gun violence in America, the growing tension between red and blue states, and some light rumination the country’s history of racial injustice. Sound like too much? Well, it is.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
This hop, skip, and jump down memory lane provides an incredible gory realization that horror films from the 1980s were silly, confusing, and nasty bits of business. Sure they were rather amateur-ish, but they were also exciting jumping off points for the masters of horror for decades to come! There’s Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi, Greg Nicotero, Bruce Campbell, Renée Estevez, and even famed Tarantino producer, Lawrence Bender. Some parts are smaller than others, but rest assured, they’re all there!
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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You know the story. You’ve got the gist of the Catholic Church’s involvement in exorcisms. Little kids probably freak you out. You either terrified of demonic possession or you’re not. Point is, you probably have a well-defined idea of what the Exorcist: Believer is going offer.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
It’s fair to say that we might not know the full impact of the global pandemic tragedy for years or even decades. Some have been tragically impacted by the pandemic, some have wandered in a face-covered fog, and others have irresponsibly stuck their heads in the sand. Everyone has had choices to make during the pandemic and those choices have manifested in the horrible, but they’ve also been used for creativity and good.
★★.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.
★★ out of ★★★★★
Tucked neatly between two pretty cool holidays is a celebration that’s pretty mundane. Face it Thanksgiving ain’t all that great, nor is gluttony. It’s definitely a tough spot to be in. The equivalent in the world of horror is being unfortunately stuck between horror and comedy. That’s exactly where the 2019 Blumhouse/Hulu film Pilgrim fits.
Sort of funny. Sort of horror. But really neither.