★★★★ 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.
★★★★.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 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 ★★★★★
🩸🩸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 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘
“This is rock and roll that is going to change your fucking life!” — Lita Ford.
★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean you are not being watched.
★★★★ 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!
★★★ out of ★★★★★
The best defense is a good offense when you’re playing Bodies Bodies Bodies
★★.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.
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.
★★★ 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
★★★★.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 ★★★★★ 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.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★ “If you go in to the woods go with an open mind.” Famed Bigfoot videographer, Bob Gimlin.
