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.
You love ’em. You hate ’em. You don’t know where to start. You worship at their altar. All these things are true. One of the most polemic (and satisfying) devices in the horror genre — shaky cam/found footage flics.
★★ out of ★★★★★ At Rob Zombie’s darkened dirtbag core is a full and unfiltered embrace of the age-old adage “if it ain’t broke, don't fix it.” Slow motion. Hyperbolic acting (or in some cases no acting). Closeups so close you can count individual pores Captain Spaulding’s grease-paint soaked forehead. Weirdly rare and off-putting selection of non-Joe Walsh James Gang tracks. If you’ve seen House of a Thousand Corpses and Devil’s Rejects then you’ve been thoroughly exposed to Mr. Zombie’s cinema trickery.
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ Word has it that the kids are in to mash-ups. Girl Talk, Danger Mouse, a little Jay Z, a little Beatles. Throw it all together and see what sticks. 2020’s the Marsh (originally released in 2018 in Australia) does just that -- but maybe a little too much.
🔪🔪🔪🔪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.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
The joy of youth. The post-college road trip. Finding your way in vast spaces. Unconstrained, unconfined, uncontrolled. The world is your oyster, until it isn’t.
★★.5 out of ★★★★★ Is this really too good to be true? Too bad to be believed? So ridiculous we all laugh with it? Or so horrible we curl up in a cringe-worthy ball of shame? Answer: All of ‘em.
Horror is a big, broad, wide, deep and inviting genre. Everybody is welcome to hang out, have some chips, try...
❄❄❄❄❄ out of ❄❄❄❄❄
2017 gave us Get Out. 2018 gave us Heriditary. 2019’s dive in to intellectual terror is the Lodge. Just as its forefathers were dark, brooding, thought-provoking, and terrifying, so is this year’s entry in to the new age of thinky-horror. Note: thinky-horror is not yet an industry-accepted term, but you heard it here first.
🦇 out of 🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇
Just because you thought A Quiet Place was cool doesn't mean it needs to be remade six months later.
The art world is a tough nut to crack. The politics, the sexuality, the fortunes, the fame, the critics, the notoriety, the legacy -- oh, yeah, and we almost forgot, the art. Art is often a vessel for missing elements in society, wanting, longing, and a respite from the day to day hum/drum attributes of life. Art can subjugate the mundane and keep our darker and more horrifying desires at bay. That is, when art is obeyed and respected. When it’s not...watch out.
Man, trailers are a tough bit to pull off. They’re almost a movie within a movie, or rather a movie...
HAPPY NEW YEAR’S Scariest Things Podcast fans!!! Hoping 2019 will be just as terrifying at 2018! 🔪🎥💀👻🧛♂️🧟♀️⚰️ P.S. Don’t watch...
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ There exists that great space in documentaries that take place decades after the event occurred. It's this beautiful melange of revisionist history, lucid thoughts, purposeful sleepwalking, and repressed memories. All answers are correct and infallible when the documentary is filtered through the iconic lens of a single and thoughtful directorial darling. THE William Friedkin is the ultimate bridge between Hollywood's glorious beginnings and the revolutionary young guns of the 1970s. It should come as no surprise the Friedkin has some rather insightful things to say about one of the greatest films of the 1970s, possibly the greatest horror film of all time, and in some camps, THE greatest film ever put down on celluloid -- the Exorcist.
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★ There exists this exquisite location somewhere right between a documentary, a dramatization, found footage, a fictionalized accounting of events, and a full on horror show. This venn diagram of a locale is a rather tough place to pinpoint and few films ever wandered there. That was of course until 2008 when Lake Mungo was released.
★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ 1983 just called. Your VHS tape is overdue!
🤡🤡.5 out of 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 Writing is a struggle. Too much exposition gives the appearance of being a churlish jerk who sucks all of the oxygen out of a room. While too little exposition has the air of being aloof, uncaring, and unwilling to let the audience in on the scares. Weirdly, Haunt vacillates between both words, but manages to tell this spooky story in the most ineffective way possible.
★★.5 out of ★★★★★ As we’ve all come to learn in the horror game, a haunted house, no matter how haunted, does not a movie make. For that matter, a bunch of spooky trappings within a haunted house, also does not a movie make.
🐷🐷.5 out of 🐷🐷🐷🐷🐷
The planet is running out of animals. Literally and figuratively. Hollyweird has given us sharks (Jaws 1-4), rabbits (Night of the Lepus), bears (Grizzy), fish (Piranha), and man’s best friend (Cujo). There’s even been birds, wolves, snakes, rats, and gators, and whatever the hell a sharktopus is supposed to be. One of the things that Hollyweird hasn’t gotten its money-grubbing paws on is the pig, javelina, or boar – until now.
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UFOs are real! Well, they might be real. Or, they’re probably imagined. Rather, we’re all crazy and we’re collectively imagining them. Or, maybe, just maybe, they really are real and the space aliens are making us crazy in an attempt to make us believe/not believe that they’re real/not real. All are real possibilities and 2019’s The Vast of the Night lays all of them on the table for us to sort out.
We’ll just park this over here in the What the What!?!?!? category. Apparently, and justifiably, unsatisfied with the 2006 remake...
🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲 out of 🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲
Ah...the holidays. Yes. Those holidays. The Christmas-y ones. The holidays that fill you full of joy, happiness, togetherness, peace, family...frustration, long lines, anger, resentment, hatred, and, AND, AND....CHRISTMAS TREES! The bane of the past, present, and the future. Commercialism mixed with a toxic cocktail of entitlement, greed, waste, and environmental cynicism and acrimony. Just a plain ol’ dislike for mother earth.
Peter Cushing! Christopher Lee! Oh my! This one's got it all. Most importantly it's got two of the giants of 1960s horror. The boys had a corner on the market for sure.
We'll just park this little 54 second trailer right on over here in the "huh" category. The Scariest Things Podcast challenges you to find a weirder, more off-putting, and more kick-ass fun trailer. Just try it. You won't succeed. We promise you.
Say it ain't so...the fine folks that brought us the 2014 smash hit, Zombeavers, are coming the theaters with a brand new flick, the Drone.
Your official Scariest Things guide to our favorite horror movies!