The Scariest Things is heading down to Austin for SXSW and The Overlook Film Festival, two of the most influential festivals in America and we are previewing them for you in Episode 7 of Spooky Time!
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Get ready to join the SWARM...this is the future of horror, y'all.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Raging Grace breathes new life into classic gothic horror.
★★★★ 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.
★★★★.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 ★★★★★
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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 horrific gun violence, some torture, and some crunchy re-animated dead.
Ted Geoghegan wrote and directed a nifty mystery box of a film wherein a group of WWII army officers support their friend, Lt. Colonel Hockstetter (Larry Fessenden) in his attempts to to reconnect with his recently deceased wife. A terrific veteran cast delivers the drama in this well constructed (and occasionally bloody) ghostly escape room of a story.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Want to see a teenage girl completely wreck a cell of right wing domestic terrorists? If you do, the Wrath of Becky will satisfy your soul. You just don't go stealing a girl's mastiff. Light on logic but full of bloodshed, The Wrath of Becky has been featured at both SXSW and Overlook.
★★★ out of ★★★★★
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What happens when the voices inside you head start to show on the outside? You grow an Appendage!
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild comedic gore.
Midway through Only the Good Survive the local sheriff and Dennis Miller impersonator (Frederick Weller) is interrogating young Brea Dunlee (Sidney Flanigan) about her involvement in a string of ritualistic murders and asks “…is this a comedy or a horror?” While the film chugs along like an Edgar Wright-inspired effort, this very sentiment is really the film’s problem. It wants to be both. Unfortunately, juggling these two juxtaposed art forms is a tricky bit of business that is almost never accomplished.
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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.
In Episode 8 of Spooky Time:
- Mike and Liz Report back from their experiences at SXSW
- Mike, got a chance to do some Texas Chainsaw Massacre touring .
- Eric comes to the table with his review of the Variety Top 100.
- Liz finds another favorite book of hers that is being given the chance at a premium TV series.
- Eric reports on Guillermo Del Toro's next Horror Movie. (It's familiar)
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Surreal sci-fi in bite sized pieces, Shatter Belt will shatter your expectations!
★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for constant pervasive gore, grotesque transformations, and severe violence against children
Evil Dead Rise is everything you would want a film in this franchise to be. It gets to the bloody action right from the start, and does not let up once it gets rolling. This incredibly gory film reconstructs the fundamental Evil Dead script in by making it a family-forward story, but it still walks a familiar path.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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It Lives Inside is a fresh look at the assimilation of an Indian family into the United States that pits a teenage girl against a demon that feeds on loneliness and despair. The story is resonant, and the examination of Southern Asian -American culture is nicely done. The scares are as much as you can hope for in a PG-13 film, and the non-cultural elements feel a bit mechanical. Still, for those of us who have lived this experience, it is a welcome entry into the genre.