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horror movies

January 21, 2022

The Scariest Things Review: Scream (2022)

The movie that brought meta front and center to horror, and gave an adrenaline boost to a tired slasher genre is back with its fifth installment. The movie remains meta, and brings a fresh new group of victims... I mean characters... to the screen, along with a few old familiar friends. Is it any good? For a feature this significant it takes all three of the Scariest Things Podcasters to weigh in.

January 16, 2022

Mike’s Review: Beyond the Darkness (1979)

★★★.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.

December 30, 2021

Mike’s Review: Death Valley (2021)

★ out of ★★★★★ It’s always disappointing when someone takes one of your favorite horror sub-genres and brutally bastardizes it. The “we’re trapped in a secret military base and there’s only one way out” storyline takes some care and feeding. The situation is made even worse when it’s given the ham-fisted SyFy treatment. Little attention, little point, and little effort.

December 17, 2021

Mike’s Review: Bingo Hell (2021)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Last year brought us engaging septuagenarians battling it out the save their decrepit community center in VFW. Earlier this year saw the posthumous release of George Romero’s frightening PSA, Amusement Park. concerning the oft forgotten repugnance of elder abuse. Now, Amazon Studios is treating us to the latest in elder horror, Bingo Hell. The golden (girls) age is upon us with a new subgenera of horror, AARP horror. You heard it here first!

December 9, 2021

Mike’s Review: The Brilliant Terror (2021) (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.

December 6, 2021

Mike’s Review: The Whooper Returns (2021) (Another Hole in the Head Film Festival)

★★★.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.

November 30, 2021

Mike’s Review: Slumber Party Massacre (2021)

★.5 out of ★★★★★ Alright. Move along. Move along. There’s nothing to see here. Really, there’s nothing to see. A sad commentary on what should have been one of the most celebrated films this side of Halloween Kills. But, it’s true. The reimagining of the Slumber Party Massacre is a dull and uneven homage to its predecessor.

November 17, 2021

Mike’s Review: Martyrs Lane (2021)

👻👻👻 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.

October 18, 2021

Mike’s Review: Halloween Kills (2021)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ As demonic crooner Ronnie James Dio once famously opined “when you listen to fools, the mob rules.” Maybe this prescient piece of advice was being plied to the January 6 insurrection, maybe it was being plied to Halloween Kills, but just maybe Dio’s magical ways were sorting out many future truths.

August 17, 2021

Mike’s Review: The Last Matinee (Popcorn Frights 2021)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ The Last Matinee is a loving homage to film. More to the point it’s a loving homage and exploration of Argento, Fulchi, grindhouse cinema, slashers, grimy movie theaters, and quite possibly the great Lamberto Bava film Demons. Don’t be fooled though. While The Last Matinee pulls from many of the classics, it’s got its own unique style and flavor, and it’s cram-packed with EYEBALLS.

August 9, 2021

Mike’s Portland Horror Film Festival Review: Red River Road (2020)

★★★★ 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.

July 22, 2021

Movie News! New Jordan Peele Poster, Nope.

If you follow the ol' Scariest Things Podcast you know that we love our posters! No poster is too weird, too gory, too strange, too horrifying, or too vague.

June 1, 2021

Mike’s Review: Satan’s Slave (1976)

★★ 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.

December 22, 2020

Mike’s Review: Victim of Love (2019)

★★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.

October 3, 2020

Mike’s Review: Spiral (2020)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Horror movies really are the ultimate glimpse in to the soul of man. Society's reflection upon itself. Our most base thoughts, visions, hopes, dreams, and fears all laid bare for the universe to see. The historic period of time is largely irrelevant to the equation, because the result is always the same -- man's continued inhumanity to man.

January 20, 2022

Mike’s Review: Sssssss (1973)

★★★ 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.

January 1, 2022

Dead List: The Elderly in Horror Movies

It's hard enough being an older actor in the movies. In horror movies, it can be exponentially harder to make an impact, but there is a new and growing trend to feature older performers in horror movies. Is it a change in the movie culture? Is the audience growing older? The truth is probably that Horror films are casting a wider demographic net than ever, and Hollywood may now recognize that audiences who grew up as teens loving their '70s cult films and '80s slasher flicks are now in their 50s and 60s... and we still love our horror!

December 27, 2021

Movie Posters We Love: Top Ten Horror Movie Posters from 2021!

We warned you that we’d be back in the theaters in 2021 and we were! The Scariest Things Podcast, spread all across the globe, represented well in theaters far and wide. We were up close and personal for Conjuring III, Halloween Kills, Malignant, Candyman, and many, many others.

December 12, 2021

Mike’s Top 10 Horror Films of 2021!

In 2020, the global pandemic gave us an interesting dynamic in film. Stripped down productions. The re-rise of independent horror. Big budget films either shelved, delayed, or cancelled all together. Last year’s horror scene definitely had a peculiar and, well, dystopian quality. Enter 2021! The big budget films that coldly sat on the shelves for the last year, or in some cases years, or in other cases almost a half century, are now out in the theaters for us all to enjoy. And enjoy them we did! It shouldn’t be a terrible surprise that (often) the more money, time, energy, and talent you ply to your project the better quality you’ll receive in return. Mostly. Here's some of the best from another spooky year...

December 8, 2021

Mike’s Review: My Cherry Pie (2021) (Another Hole in the Head Film Festival)

★★.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.

December 3, 2021

Trailer Alert: Studio 666

When we caught wind of this (assuredly) horror comedy last month we weren't entirely clear if we were looking at an elaborate album hype, a hoax, or an actual film.

November 20, 2021

Mike’s Review: Ghostbusters Afterlife (2021)

👻👻👻 out of 👻👻👻👻👻 Now 37 years in to the franchise you probably have a good idea of what to expect from the latest installment of the Ghostbusters, AKA Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Every thing that you think you’re going to see is guaranteed to be seen. There are some sly and not so sly references to the original 1984 Ghostbusters film. But, at the end of the day, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is largely an exact duplicate of its 1984 grandfather.

November 8, 2021

Movie News: Studio 666 Coming Soon!

As ideas slowly become more and more (re) used and reworked filmmaking has progressively embraced the meta. In fact, things have become so meta sometimes it’s difficult to tell when one concept ends and the next begins. Enter the recently announced horror offering featuring…the Foo Fighters?

September 16, 2021

The Scariest Things Podcast Extra: The Greatest Movie Monster of All Time Bracket Fight!

A little extra treat for our Podcast Listeners. We had a live run through of one of our favorite activities: A Bracket Fight! A live audience of about 150 got to hoot and holler for their favorite monsters and selecting a creature feature champion. There were some great upsets and definite fan favorites. Who won? You'll have to listen in to find out.

August 17, 2021

Mike’s Review: Dashcam (Popcorn Frights 2021)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ The son of De Palma’s Blow-Out! The grandson of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up! A new vision of paranoid conspiracy theories as told through the latest fandangled piece of technology! Or in this case technologies.

July 27, 2021

Robert’s Review: Blood Red Sky (2021)

★★★ out of ★★★★★ Horror takes to the skies once again with Netflix's latest blood-soaked vampires-on-a-plane romp.

June 23, 2021

Mike’s Review: Fulci for Fake (2019)

★★ 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.

May 26, 2021

Trailer Alert! False Positive (2021)

Oh, Hollywood and your ever-clever marketing minions. You really had us at "...contemporary take on the classic horror film Rosemary’s Baby." That just makes our hardened horror heart go pitter-patter.

November 9, 2020

Dead List: Top 10 Horror Soundtracks of All Time

Can music make a film? Break a film? Raise the hairs on the back of your head? Make you curl up in a ball and weep? You bet your bottom dollar! Open you ears and tune in to the ten most evil soundtracks your little ears ever did hear!

September 5, 2020

Mike’s Review: Beyond the Woods (2018)

★★★.5 out of ★★★★★ Not all horror films need to be over-wrought. They needn't be filled with hyper-complex multi-layered lore. CGI has its time and place, but that time in place is not in every time and every place. On occasion horror is able to lean simply on human emotions, quaint spaces, and languid settings. If you need a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of 21st century horror then Beyond the Woods is waiting for you...just beyond the woods.

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