Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category
Tuesday, May 5th, 2026
THE CRAFT: LEGACY is, in my opinion, a remaquel. It technically takes place after the events of the 1996 film, with new characters, but the basic setup is intentionally a repeat, and the sequel part plays like it was meant to be a surprise at the very end. I believe that if they cut that scene and the subtitle then everyone would’ve accepted this as just a remake with some nice twists and changes in details.
Whatever you want to call it, it works best as a companion piece, a compare-and-contrast exercise, and there’s quite a bit that lines up. Once again we have a new girl moving to town with her single parent, she befriends the three outsider girls who are in need of a fourth person for their witch’s circle, they successfully cast some spells on their tormenters, including a mean jock boy who she causes to start following her around being nice to her. A small difference is that it’s not a Catholic school this time, so they get to be straight up goth without taking liberties with the school uniform. A bigger difference is that the newcomer’s family is central to the story. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Blumhouse, Cailee Spaeny, Charles Vandervaart, David Duchovny, Gideon Adlon, legacy sequel, Lovie Simone, Michelle Monaghan, Nicholas Galitzine, remaquel, witches, Zoe-Lister Jones, Zoey Luna
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 3 Comments »
Monday, May 4th, 2026
I saw THE CRAFT when it came out 30 years ago. I’m a little younger than the actors, so I was a little older than the characters, and thought I was above it, going to see it for a laugh. This is what they think teens think is cool, ha ha ha. But I was not as removed from that life as I imagined I was. I was practically the target audience, I just didn’t want to admit it.
Watching it now, of course, there’s an added layer of nostalgia: for when music sounded like that, even though that wasn’t the stuff I was listening to; for when I would definitely have had a crush on Nancy, even though she’s a psycho and Rochelle is way nicer and prettier; for when they made movies like this, which is code for when I was young and the horizon was widening instead of narrowing. The good old days. Obviously.
I know I’ve seen bits of it on cable over the years, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen it in full since the theater. It’s an interesting type of teen horror because it’s not a body count movie, and it doesn’t exactly have an antagonist. It’s timeless teenage girl material like the sisterhood of girls who don’t fit in at school, revenge against bullies and exploitative boys, etc., and then they add the supernatural into that. I guess you could say some of that about CARRIE, though, couldn’t you? So maybe it was nothing new. But in 1996 it felt a little different to not have a Freddy to worry about. We are the Freddys, mister. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Fleming, Breckin Meyer, Christine Taylor, Cliff De Young, Fairuza Balk, Helen Shaver, John Kapelos, Neve Campbell, Peter Filardi, Rachel True, Robin Tunney, Skeet Ulrich, witches
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 20 Comments »
Thursday, April 30th, 2026
APEX is a solid made-for-Netflix picture – nice looking, to-the-point, occasionally surprising, and a good showcase for its star, who happens to be one of my favorites. When I revisited ÆON FLUX recently I mentioned how ever since that movie I’ve thought of Charlize Theron as one of those rare actors who’s exactly as serious about the physical performance as the emotional, and excels at both. So, you know, she wins an Oscar for throwing herself into MONSTER and then when she does ATOMIC BLONDE she goes just as hard at fight training and stunt work as she did at portraying the inner life of a serial killer. Here she says you know what? I’m gonna learn how to climb rocks. I’m gonna climb so many rocks in this movie.
Not that that’s the entire topic. Her character Sasha enjoys extreme sports. In the opening she and her husband Tommy (the motherfuckin HULK Eric Bana!) are tandem climbing the Troll Wall in Norway. You know, climbing until they get tired, hanging a tent from the side at night, it’s fucking terrifying, who does that? Sasha and Tommy, that’s who. Though Tommy is getting wary that maybe he’s past his prime. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australia, Baltasar Kormakur, Charlize Theron, Eric Bana, Jeremy Robbins, Taron Egerton
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror, Thriller | 11 Comments »
Thursday, April 23rd, 2026
NIGHT PATROL is a movie released by Shudder (first in theaters, now on their service) that has a promising premise. It’s kinda like TRAINING DAY but the corrupt cops are also vampires. In fact, I didn’t catch it until reading the credits but the main character’s name is “Ethan Hawkins.” The tagline is “Defang the police.” That’s good. I like that.
It has a cool, grainy look to it (cinematographer: Benjamin Kitchens) and an ominous, synthy score by Pepijn Caudron (CAMINO). It even has David S. Goyer’s name in the credits as a producer, so there is a distant connection to the greatest vampire movie that ever has been or will be made. So I was ready for this thing to really rip. And then it didn’t really, and I went on with my life, but here’s my review.
Hawkins (Justin Long, still not thought of as a horror guy even though he’s in JEEPERS CREEPERS, DRAG ME TO HELL, TUSK, BARBARIAN and COYOTES) is an LAPD officer who’s about to join the titular gang-like police task force. For the initiation they make him shoot a young Piru Blood named Primo (Zuri Reed, 2 episodes of The Get Down). At the time she’s with a guy named Wazi (RJ Cyler, POWER RANGERS, THE HARDER THEY FALL), who manages to escape. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: C.M. Punk, David S. Goyer, Dermot Mulroney, Flying Lotus, Freddie Gibbs, Jermaine Fowler, Justin Long, Nick Gillie, Nicki Micheaux, RJ Cyler, Shudder, vampires, YG, Zuri Reed
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, March 31st, 2026
PRIMATE is a 2026 horror movie that I enjoyed for very straight forward reasons: it has a simple premise, executed well, but a little smarter than I expected, and also with some flair. You almost don’t have to mention that it’s a premise with high difficulty to pull off, because the villain is an animal. They always say it’s hard to work with kids or villainous animals.
It’s in the grand tradition of studio horror in that it’s very slick and about pretty young people trying to have a party at Dad’s killer pad while he’s away on business, but it’s much meaner than some of the audience wants these days. It likes most of its characters but doesn’t see that as a reason to spare them. It never felt to me like it was copping out. It means business.
It plays out like a slasher, but it’s also an animal attack movie. At a very basic level it’s CUJO – family pet gets rabies, and is no longer himself. But of course the family pet is a chimpanzee named Ben. His linguist owner taught him ASL, but she died of cancer. Luckily her widower Adam (Troy Kotsur, Academy Award winner for CODA) is a famous novelist who can afford to keep Ben in an enclosure at their beautiful Hawaii estate. His daughters, visiting college student Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah, Dexter: New Blood) and teenage Erin (Gia Hunter, Sherlock & Daughter) treat Ben as a family member and aren’t intimidated by being left alone with him. And when he starts acting up they don’t want to fight him like their visitor does. He’s their brother. They want to talk some sense into him. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: apes, Charlie Mann, Ernest Riera, Gia Hunter, Jess Alexander, Johannes Roberts, Johnny Sequoyah, killer animals, Rob Delaney, Tienne Simon, Troy Kotsur, Victoria Wyant
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 9 Comments »
Monday, March 30th, 2026
THEY WILL KILL YOU is one of those rare cases where the first time I saw the trailer was the first time I heard of it, and before it was over it had become one of my most anticipated movies. What it conveyed was that Zazie Beetz (GEOSTORM) would play a maid at a hotel that’s run by satanists, they try to sacrifice her, she runs around with a sword chopping them up in spectacular, stylized action scenes. It looked like KILL BILL meets READY OR NOT, and that shorthand does capture some of it. But happily the trailer was also holding back some of the other ingredients in the pot, and they all add up to a fun time at the motion picture house.
Beetz plays Asia Reaves, who ten years ago was on the streets with her little sister Maria (I think there’s a young version whose name I can’t find, but the grown up Maria is Myha’la, BODIES BODIES BODIES). They were running from their abusive father when Asia landed herself in prison. Now she’s out, showing up on a stormy night for a job as a maid at a historic apartment building called The Virgil. I would say this was secretly a sinister place, but they’re pretty open about it – there’s a big pentagram and devil sculptures on the exterior. The characters don’t try to be subtle any more than the movie does. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Litvak, Angus Sampson, Carlos Rafael Rivera, Heather Graham, James Remar, Kirill Sokolov, Myha'la Herrold, Paterson Joseph, Patricia Arquette, Tom Felton, Zazie Beetz
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 7 Comments »
Monday, February 23rd, 2026
The idea of a horror movie called RUMPELSTILTSKIN seemed funny enough to me in the 1990s that I got a poster for it in the free bin at the video store (“1996 THEATRICAL RELEASE!” it exclaimed) and hung it on my wall, but not enough that it ever occurred to me to actually watch it. Then a couple years ago the eccentrically curated label Terror Vision put out a fancy 4K/blu-ray special edition, and I thought, “Could it actually be good?”
Well, that depends on how you define “actually good.” I’d say I got more out of JACK FROST, which had almost the same trajectory for me. But RUMPELSTILTSKIN is one of those movies, scarcer and arguably more charming now, that take an absurd horror concept and go to town with it, knowingly silly and with some jokes but with at least a main character who treats it with complete sincerity. At the time it was easy to hate, but now it’s easier to at least get a smile out of it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Allyce Beasley, fairy tale horror, fairy tales, Jay Pickett, Joe Ruby, Kevin Yagher, Kim Johnston Ulrich, Kool Moe Dee, li'l bastards, Mark Jones, Max Grodenchik, Ruby-Spears, Tommy Blaze
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 5 Comments »
Thursday, February 12th, 2026
Last year there was a well-reviewed Valentine’s Day slasher movie playing in theaters. Normally I’d be all over that shit, but I boycotted for political reasons. You see, the production company behind it, Spyglass Media Group, were the assholes who fired the star of SCREAMs 5 and 6 from SCREAM 7 for posting about the Gaza genocide. (And being against it.) I grew up on ‘80s horror sequels, so obviously I can roll with the loss of a main character and the derailing of a storyline, but doing it for that reason was too much. They not only fired her but smeared her as having written anti-semitic hate speech and “false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion.” I’d say they’re fucking cowards for not having publicly apologized yet, now that it’s a couple years later and the genocide and ethnic cleansing continue, but I suspect they have no guilt about it whatsoever.
I think back to 2003, when the band then known as the Dixie Chicks got into trouble for saying they were against invading Iraq and embarrassed to be from the same state as George W. Bush. If there had been a SCREAM 4 in the works at that time and then one of the stars criticized the war and got fired for it, I’m positive SCREAM would’ve been dead to me then. So it’s dead to me now. I love my “horror franchise” completism bullshit but not enough, it turns out, to stomach something like this. That’s just my personal decision for myself, I’m not telling anyone else what to do.
For that Valentine’s Day movie though I decided it was okay to watch and review now because I didn’t pay money and it’s not vying for box office dollars. So here’s my right-on-time late review of HEART EYES, which is directed by Josh Ruben (WEREWOLVES WITHIN) and written by Phillip Murphy (HITMAN’S WIFE’S BODYGUARD), Michael Kennedy (IT’S A WONDERFUL KNIFE) and Christopher Landon (HAPPY DEATH DAY, FREAKY, DROP, was going to direct SCREAM 7 but left after the firing). It’s about an infamous murderer known as the “Heart Eyes Killer,” who kills couples on Valentine’s Day, and the idea is to combine a slasher movie with a romantic comedy. In my opinion they were partially but not fully successful with each side of that coupling. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Black, Christopher Landon, Devon Sawa, Gigi Zumbado, Jordana Brewster, Josh Ruben, Latham Gaines, Mason Gooding, Michael Kennedy, Michaela Watkins, Olivia Holt, Phillip Murphy, set in Seattle, Tony Gardner, Valentine's Day
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Romance | 20 Comments »
Wednesday, February 11th, 2026
QUEENS OF THE DEAD is a 2025 zombie comedy written and directed by Tina Romero. Yes, that Tina Romero. The one who was in LAND OF THE DEAD.
Oh shit, yeah — and also George Romero’s daughter. She’s continuing the family business in the sense that she made a movie and it’s zombies and it’s a diverse cast and it contains commentary about our times. But she’s got her own thing going stylistically and tonally – this is flashy, neon, and undeniably a comedy. It cares about its characters and the deaths can hurt, but laughs are the priority, scares are not.
Now, I don’t want this to sound wrong, but just for context I don’t really follow or get drag. I did recently enjoy THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT and I think that gave me some appreciation for the artistry and humor of it, but it’s not really a tradition I relate to I guess. So I have no clue how this plays to people who are closer to that world. I tried to sell a drag-savvy co-worker on it and he seemed skeptical.
But personally I was very impressed by the character credited as “ZombiQueen” (Julie J, whose IMDb “Known for” section includes Bang Bus and Street Blowjobs). She opens the movie strutting into a church, meticulously decked in gaudy rhinestones, giant blue hair, silver boots and nails, on a mission to pray to God because “after the day I’ve had I need a word with Her.” But her day gets worse. She gets a chunk of her shoulder (and costume) bit off by a zombified priest. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dominique Jackson, drag queens, Easter, Easter horror, Jack Haven, Jaquel Spivey, Julie J, Katy O'Brian, Kimball Farley, Margaret Cho, Nina West, Quincy Dunn-Baker, Riki Lindhome, Sarah Coffey, Tina Romero, Tom Savini, Tomas Matos
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, February 4th, 2026
I always kinda wanted to see QUEEN OF THE DAMNED and I think we can all be proud of me that I managed to get it in before it turned 25. Pretty much still a new release! If you’ve forgotten though, it’s basically a new cast, new filmmakers sequel to INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, with Tom Cruise’s vampire character Lestat now played by Stuart Townsend (SIMON MAGUS). He also narrates the movie and man does it make for a funny opening. He explains how he got sick of immortality “So I went to sleep, hoping that the sounds of the passing eras would fade out, and a sort of death might happen.” He’s Dracula-ing inside a coffin in a crypt with a cool skeleton sculpture on the lid.
“But as I lay there, the world didn’t sound like the place I had left, but something… different. Better.”
Cut to a series of close ups: a kick drum, guitars, tattoos, nipple rings, etc., as rocking out occurs. A band is jamming in his old mansion and the sound wakes him up. He slips into their jam session and appoints himself lead vocalist. You gotta just assert yourself, right? Fake it ’til you make it. When they ask him “Who the hell are you, man?” he says “I am the vampire Lestat.” They laugh and then realize he’s serious and then he turns them.
“From that moment on they were my friends, my children, my band. Giving the world a new god. Me.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaliyah, Anne Rice, Lena Olin, Marguerite Moreau, Michael Petroni, Michael Rymer, nu metal, Paul McGann, Richard Gibbs, Scott Abbott, Serena Altschul, Stuart Townsend, Vincent Perez
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 8 Comments »
