★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
A young woman abandoned in the forest falls in with a pair of bank robbers in Canadian thriller A SAFE DISTANCE.
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Here's a trio of short horror shorts premiering at SXSW 2026.
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Intensity: 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Good Boy is a ghost story told from a dog's perspective. If you have ever wondered why your dog has been barking at shadows or unheard sounds, you will understand the mechanics of this film. Our furry best friends know things that we can't fathom. Indy is a loyal pet to his ailing owner, who has moved into an old home with a cursed reputation.
SXSW review of the superb short horror film VIDOE BARN, a valentine to video rental stores and a fine entry in the cinematic subgenre of high strangeness involving videotapes.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
The stakes are as high as the coke-snorting estate agent protagonist in director Gerard Johnson’s suspenseful thriller ODYSSEY.
The 32nd Annual SXSW lineup is here!
The Scariest Things Podcast had the honor of sitting down with one of the most inventive voices in horror today, Bomani J. Story, to talk about his new film the Angry Black Girl and Her Monster. The film had its premiere at SXSW and the Scariest Things Podcast was there to take it all in!
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸for some gnarly gore, eye gouging, and repeated head wounds.
Each and every year there’s THAT horror film that shakes things up. Hits the festival circuit and creates tidal wave-sized buzz. Sometimes it’s deserved and sometimes it’s not. In the case of 2023’s festival darling Talk to Me, the buzz is profoundly deserved.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild gore.
If you’ve even run across Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, or Dinah Shore you’ll know that they all roiled in a very specific talk show space in the 1970s. Talk shows were smarmy, boozy, and informal affairs that gave audiences time each day to let their hair down and forget about the doldrums of the Viet Nam War and the crushing presence of socio-economic injustice in America.
These talk shows were also incredibly competitive. Johnny Carson was king, but there was a lot of room under him to vie for advertisers and Neilson ratings. Late Night with the Devil follows that exact story line, by exploring frustrated talk show host Jack Delroy played pitch perfectly by David Dastmalchian.
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean you are not being watched.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
The best defense is a good offense when you're playing Bodies Bodies Bodies
Along with SXSW Online 2021’s incredible horror feature-film lineup, the festival offered plenty of fear fare in short form, too. Here are capsule reviews of four of these short-length shudder makers.
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★ Don’t. Turn. This. Movie. Off. Seriously, it’s a slow burn in grand tradition of slow burn horror films, but the payoff off is so deliciously evil and filling. If you stop after the aspic and the salad course you’ll miss a rather grisly desert.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ “If you go in to the woods go with an open mind.” Famed Bigfoot videographer, Bob Gimlin.
The Scariest Things has four more SXSW 2026 feature film recommendations for you!
★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Clown in a Cornfield is a return-to-basics teen slasher movie that gets all the little things right, but shares the same narrative limitations as its precedent source material. Sometimes hilarious, often bloody, this adaptation of a popular YA novel by Adam Cesare is tonally pitched still at a younger audience, and will likely be quite popular with the teen scene.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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How far will you go to protect your children from poor decision-making? Hallow Road hits the streets as a one-room black box stage thriller set in an automobile. Two parents race to the scene of an accident involving their daughter, as panic sets in and additional levels of tragedy are revealed. This movie will put you through the emotional wringer and has some cryptic plot twists hiding in the shadows.
Memories of abuse are not the only things haunting an elderly mother and her adult son in the disquieting supernatural chiller THE HOME.
Here are some more films we can't wait to watch for SXSW 2025!
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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Come for the kidnapping, stay for the teriyaki! Dead Mail...delivers the weird.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
🚫 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
If you know horror you know Satan. You might even say horror and Satan are best pals. They’ve been hanging around for a long time always pushing boundaries and always trying something cheeky and new.
Sometimes this friendship is on the down-low and sometimes Satan gets a pinch uppity and decides to out the entire relationship. Or at least his (or her) relationship to the general public. When that happens it’s a messy and ugly affair.
★★★★ 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.
🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘 out of 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘
“This is rock and roll that is going to change your fucking life!” — Lita Ford.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Hypochondriac is really a film that hits the right place and the right time. Mental health, familial relationships, concern about physical health and well being, and our collective sense that we just might be lost in the universe. Hypochondriac delivers on all these fronts and manages to sneak in a couple legitimate scares!
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
Horror comedy is a tricky bit of business. Too far in either direction can produce blood curdling, or alternatively, cringe inducing results. While it’s pure joy to dabble in both, sometimes films need to pick a figurative lane.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
A young woman who saw her family murdered tries to recreate through music the feeling that occurred at that time in this horror outing that is heavy on human suffering but light on logic.
Directed by Alex Noyer
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Right around the corner from Horror Street, just next to Parallax View Way, and right near Marathon Man Drive, is a fascinating analog look at the lengths obsessives will go to in feeding their obsessions.