Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category
Monday, November 2nd, 2026
To quote Bushwick Bill, this year Halloween fell on a weekend. I’m sorry that I’m a few days late on my annual essay, but it’s like I always say: the veil should logically be just as thin a couple days after Halloween as it was a couple days before. So if we’re celebrating all October there should be no problem doing it in November.
This year I decided to write about not only one of my favorite horror movies, but the one I credit with making me fall in love with the genre in the first place. I can’t pinpoint when the fascination started; I remember watching THE SHINING at a friend’s house in elementary school without thinking of it as “my first horror movie” or anything like that. But I have this memory of hearing ads for A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS on K-Plus FM when I was in sixth grade. Around this time I was also fascinated with Gumby, who had been revived as a surfer in the medium of puff-paint t-shirt, and I remember drawing a picture of “Gumby Krueger.” I think I got it wrong and gave him blades on both hands.
I didn’t see DREAM WARRIORS until video, but those ads must’ve been what inspired me to rent A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. I know I had seen and loved the first three by the next year when A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER came out, because that one was a theatrical event and a formative experience. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brooke Bundy, Bruce Wagner, Chuck Russell, Craig Wasson, Frank Darabont, Greg Cannom, Heather Langenkamp, Jennifer Rubin, John Saxon, Laurence Fishburne, Nan Martin, Patricia Arquette, Priscilla Pointer, Robert Englund, Stacey Alden, Wes Craven
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 8 Comments »
Friday, October 30th, 2026
For two decades, as a non-gamer, I have believed that Christophe Gans’s SILENT HILL is the best video game movie. I have a friend who likes the games and thinks it’s a good adaptation, but that was never a factor for me. I just thought that whatever they were doing as far as translation really worked to create a unique horror movie with a strong atmosphere, bizarre creature designs, excellent FX work and an admirable preference for dream logic over boring reality. Even the characters’ numerous illogical choices and what I deemed to be “terrible” dialogue according to my Ain’t It Cool News review at the time added to the surreal feeling, and reminded me of the dubbed Italian horror movies I enjoyed.
It really felt different from the mainstream horror movies of the time, which made me like it, but also helped make it unpopular. I remember seeing it at a preview screening with most of the crowd in open, loud revolt from early on. I went with my now wife and another couple, who were talking about how terrible it was as we left. When I admitted I liked it they all looked at me like I was insane. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alice Krige, Christophe Gans, Deborah Kara Unger, Jodelle Ferland, Kim Coates, Laurie Holden, Radha Mitchell, Roger Avary, Sean Bean, video games
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 9 Comments »
Tuesday, October 27th, 2026
CLAYFACE is the latest motion picture from the Detective Comics movie universe. It’s set mostly in Gotham City, retelling the origin of one of the great Batman villains, but it’s R-rated horror, and not much like a comic book movie, for good and bad. The good – it stands completely on its own, with none of the little movie universe connections, cameos or credit sequences that people used to demand but now get so mad about. The bad – I’d say it could use more of that heightened feeling of the best movies based on drawings. It doesn’t stand out that much from all the other horror movies that are not based on comic books. But I liked it. It has some clunkiness that will probly draw fire under the heightened scrutiny of comic book shit, but that I can forgive.
Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries, DRAGONHEART: BATTLE FOR THE HEARTFIRE) is an actor on the rise. He famously had a hard childhood on the rough side of Gotham City, but now he’s a popular heartthrob who just got nominated for an Oscar (or unnamed Oscar-type award) for best actor.
(If you know comic books you can forgive that the famous actor Clayface was Basil Karlo and Matt Hagen was a different character, because they combined them so well in the classic Batman: The Animated Series episodes. But if you know Oscars you don’t like that this shows the nominations announced in the middle of the afternoon and not in alphabetical order. Come on guys, that’s not canon.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Dencik, DC Comics, James Watkins, Joana Ribeiro, Joshua James, Max Minghella, Mike Flanagan, Naomi Ackie, Tom Rhys Harries
Posted in Reviews, Comic strips/Super heroes, Horror, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 2 Comments »
Monday, October 26th, 2026
BLOOD FRENZY (1987) was a perfect Slasher Search suggestion from Mr. Majestyk. It’s exactly the type of movie I was digging through for years and I don’t know how I missed it, since it’s one of the remaining VHS tapes in the “Stalkers and Slashers” section at Scarecrow Video. My only guess is maybe I was scared off by the story credit for Ray Dennis Steckler. But also I really don’t know that guy’s movies so I maybe would’ve had to be mixing him up with Jim Wynorski or somebody.
Anyway I would classify it as a bad movie, but the type of bad movie that brings me comfort. It’s shot without any grace or sense of style, in a bland location, and most of the cast either read the lines like they’re not clear which word to emphasize in any given sentence, or like they’re a hungry community theater actor throwing their entire being into every squint or turn of the head. Each of their characters is introduced with one psychological condition that determines most of what they do in the movie. There’s not much thought of doing anything else with them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Hal Freeman, Hank Garrett, Lisa Loring, Ray Dennis Steckler, Slasher Search, slashers, Ted Newsom, Wendy MacDonald, whodunit slashers
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, October 21st, 2026
As usual October is passing me by and I feel like I’ve barely started with the horror movies. But also as usual I’m gonna watch them year ‘round anyway so what am I worried about? Stay tuned for many more, but today I’m dipping into two new releases on Shudder.
I wanted to watch HALLOWARRIOR since, as the title implies, it is season. It’s about a young woman who calls herself Pumpkin (Milly Shapiro, Tony winner from Matilda who had a memorable fate in HEREDITARY). She lives in the house she grew up in, all alone now because four years ago a virus killed much of the population and all of the crops.
But somehow she’s still hanging in there, it’s October 31st, she loves Halloween, and she’s damn sure gonna celebrate. She explains this over a radio, begging for someone to come trick or treat, or see the haunted house she made. She found a candy store to loot so she has more than enough to fill a bowl, and she carved jack o’lanterns out of a basketball and a gas can and some other stuff. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A.J. Bowen, Ajani Russell, Ben Sottak, Elina Lowensohn, Helena Zengel, Nikias Chryssos, Shannyn Sosamon, Shudder, tennis, Tracy Gotoas, Vincent Romeo, Zlatko Buric
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 2 Comments »
Monday, October 19th, 2026
I finally watched Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 film PULSE (Kairo). I don’t think I’ve seen any of this acclaimed director’s 30+ films, but this is the one people seem to mention most. And I get it now. There’s something very distinct about the potency of its forlorn, foreboding mood and the unusual way it combines a ghost story with an early internet thriller that then dissolves into a surreal apocalypse. The overcast skies, small, impersonal apartments and emphasis on staring at chunky turn-of-the-millennium computer monitors is already depressing before it starts to feel like depression may be its primary subject.
Michi Kudo (Kumiko Asō, CASSHERN) works with a couple other people at a small nursery in Tokyo. She’s waiting for her co-worker Taguchi (Kenji Mizuhashi, TOMIE, GODZILLA MINUS ZERO) to get her a computer disk he was supposed to prepare for her, and he hasn’t shown up for a few days, so she goes to check on him at his apartment. He’s there, but acting kind of weird, and then out of the blue he goes into the other room and hangs himself. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Haruhiko Kato, Japanese horror, Kenji Mizuhashi, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Koyuki, Kumiko Aso
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 7 Comments »
Thursday, October 15th, 2026
PSYCHO KILLER (2026) was written by Andrew Kevin Walker (BRAINSCAN, David Fincher’s THE KILLER), so obviously it was advertised as “FROM THE WRITER OF SE7EN.” But it’s not that type of movie. It reminded me more of HIGHWAYMEN – an odd, mostly quiet, sometimes audacious serial killer thriller, with a determined protagonist chasing a mysterious weirdo across the country. Its tone is grim and serious while its premise invites you to take part in satanic panic, and maybe if I thought it was trying to convince me that was real I would be bothered by it. Like if it came from Angel Studios. But I was not bothered. I had fun with it.
If you’re expecting something like SE7EN, the cool opening titles don’t necessarily dissuade you. I checked and they are not designed by Kyle Cooper/Imaginary Forces, but by Alexei Tylevich (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2022, BARBARIAN, REBEL MOON – PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE, and ALIEN: ROMULUS). Their film scratches and strobes may owe a debt to Cooper’s work, but they’re tinted red to tell us this is the Devil variant. We see pentagrams, pills, bullets, inverted crosses, negative images of newspaper articles with headlines like “WAVE OF HORRIFIC MUTILATION.”
These are a few of the title character’s favorite things. The movie opens inside his noisy car roaring down the highway, close up on his mirrored glasses (we will never see his face). Played by 6’ 6” ex-WWE wrestler James Preston Rogers (OUTLANDER, DEFENDOR, BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F, Hulk Hogan in WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY), he’s a big muscle guy with long hair, trenchcoat, boots, sometimes enjoys a custom gas-mask type mask (pretty cool), always has his voice lowered like he’s a whistleblower having his identity protected in a tv interview. That’s even with the mask off – I’m not sure how he does it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Kevin Walker, Gavin Polone, Georgina Campbell, James Preston Rogers, Logan Miller, Malcolm McDowell, Stephen Adekolu
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, October 14th, 2026
The V/H/S brand property franchise has been going for 14 years now. Its previous entries are V/H/S, V/H/S/2, V/H/S: VIRAL, V/H/S/94, V/H/S/99, V/H/S/85, V/H/S/BEYOND, V/H/S/HALLOWEEN, and also a “Snapchat-released miniseries” called V/H/S: VIDEO HORROR SHORTS. But until the new one V/H/S/MIXTAPE I had never seen any of them (unless you count Jason Eisener’s KIDS VS. ALIENS, spun off from a segment in V/H/S/2).
I’ve just been stubborn, I guess. There’s no real reason not to give them a shot. I’ve just been skeptical because I think the anthology format almost by definition creates a half-weight, insubstantial movie, almost guaranteed to be a mixed bag at best. And I am much less fond of found footage horror than of anthologies, so combining the two sounded like the worst of both worlds.
Still, I can understand why it’s been an enduring series, since the relative ease of making a V/H/S segment vs. making a real movie or even a short that anybody would ever see makes it appealing for up-and-coming directors as well as established ones looking for something fun to do. Some of the directors who have taken part who I have enjoyed movies from include Adam Wingard (THE GUEST), Ti West (PEARL), Chloe Okuno (WATCHER), Nacho Vigalondo (COLOSSAL), Johannes Roberts (THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT), Scott Derrickson (THE GORGE) and Casper Kelly (THE FIREPLACE).
And yes, of course, I know that Timo Tjahjanto (THE NIGHT COMES FOR US) & Gareth Evans (THE RAID) famously did one in part 2 that is the only thing every single person who has ever tried to justify V/H/S ever points to. The Daredevil-hallway-fight of V/H/S. Okay, I will at least watch that one. I’m sorry. The way they finally got me to watch one, though, is to say it’s music themed and it has segments by RZA and Flying Lotus and features GWAR. Sounded fun. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: anthology, Barbara Crampton, David Moreau, Flying Lotus, found footage, Gwar, Jim Henson Creature Workshop, Neela Jolene, Renee Zhan, RZA, Tobias Forge, Zoe Cooper
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, October 13th, 2026
Cindy Sherman is an artist known for her photographic self portraits. A bio on the Museum of Modern Art websight calls her “among the most significant artists of the Picture Generation, who came of age in the 1970s and responded to the mass media landscape surrounding them with both humor and criticism.” Madonna sponsored (whatever that means) MoMA’s 1997 exhibition of Sherman’s most famous series, Untitled Film Stills. It’s comprised of 69 black and white photos shot between 1977 and 1980, in which she’s posed playing various characters in fictional movies from the ‘50s and ’60s. That same year she also made her one actual movie, OFFICE KILLER.
This time Sherman pointed her camera at someone else: Carol Kane (THE PALLBEARER) as Dorine Douglas, sort of the Milton-from-OFFICE-SPACE of the Constant Consumer Magazine staff. Her late father (briefly seen as Eric Bogosian in flashbacks – a huge get since he’d already done UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY and BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA) was one of the founders, but she’s kind of an under-appreciated misfit in the office, tucked away in a cluttered corner doing her copy editing. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alice Drummond, Barbara Sukowa, Carol Kane, Christine Vachon, Cindy Sherman, David Thornton, Elise MacAdam, Eric Bogosian, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Michael Imperioli, Mike Hodge, Molly Ringwald, Todd Haynes, Tom Kalin
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 1 Comment »
Monday, October 12th, 2026
“What the fuck was our daughter doing in a 3,000 year old sarcophagus!?”
Yeah, I know, it’s real funny that LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY is called LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY. I’m not normal, so I saw that title and knew Lee Cronin was the director of an okay movie called THE HOLE IN THE GROUND (2019) that got him the job on EVIL DEAD RISE and now this is his third movie. Normal people see that title and think I don’t know who the fuck that is. So it’s funny that they wouldn’t let him just call his mummy movie THE MUMMY and made him put his name on it. This is true. But let’s move on.
Now, to the important business: this is a good movie! Research confirms it got mostly bad reviews, but I’m telling you, there are delights to be had here. I had heard people say it was more like an EVIL DEAD movie than a mummy movie, sometimes meaning that as a complaint, but obviously it’s a selling point for me. To me the worst EVIL DEAD movie (Lee Cronin’s) is better than the best modern mummy movie (the Tom Cruise one). But now this is the best modern mummy movie precisely because it uses some mummy tropes but with the energy, momentum, style and outrageousness of an EVIL DEAD. It’s very gross, it takes itself seriously but has a great sense of absurdity and dark humor, it has a momentum to it even though it’s over two hours. (I’m sure it helps that they have Bryan Shaw, editor of EVIL DEAD 2013, EVIL DEAD RISE and nine episodes of Ash vs. Evil Dead. Director of photography David Garbett is also a veteran of RISE and Ash vs.) LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY quite firmly fits into the spookablast category, so I recommend it to fellow aficionados of such blasts. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aisha Laouini, Billie Roy, Dean Allen Williams, Emily Mitchell, Hayat Kamille, Jack Reynor, James Wan, Laia Costa, Lee Cronin, Mark Mitchinson, May Calamawy, mummies, Shylo Molina, Veronica Falcon
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 23 Comments »
