Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category
Tuesday, May 27th, 2025
Peter Andrews
is
PRESENCE
Somehow in the last several years Steven Soderbergh became mostly a streaming guy. MAGIC MIKE’S LAST DANCE played theatrically, but other than that since 2019 it’s been HIGH FLYING BIRD and THE LAUNDROMAT on Netflix, LET THEM ALL TALK, NO SUDDEN MOVE, KIMI, the great mini-series Full Circle and the… app (?) Mosaic on HBO MAX, plus a web series called Command Z. So it’s good to have him (briefly) back on the big screen. PRESENCE was the first of two Soderbergh joints released in theaters this year. I caught BLACK BAG but this one came and went too fast for me despite being released by Neon.
That’s okay, it’s not one of his crowdpleasers, it’s one of his Soderbergh-wants-to-try-something movies. Small, simple, kinda raw, built around a simple conceit: a ghost movie from the point of view of the ghost. If you’re thinking “Oh shit, Soderbergh did his first horror movie!” I’d ask you to hold on a second. Technically I think it qualifies, but he’s definitely not aiming for the cover of Fangoria.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Callina Liang, Chris Sullivan, David Koepp, Eddy Maday, Julia Fox, Lucy Liu, Steven Soderbergh, West Mullholland
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Horror | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, May 21st, 2025
May 13, 2005
I think it’s fair to say that, at least at one time, Renny Harlin’s MINDHUNTERS held a revered status around here. When I reviewed it a couple years after it came out I was thoroughly won over by what I described as “a movie that is really fuckin dumb, but in a good way.” Many readers shared my joy and when, on some other review I can’t find right now, a commenter mentioned being a stand-in the the legendary liquid nitrogen kill scene, we treated him like a superstar. I hold much of this movie in my treasured cinematic memories that I bring up from time to time, but have I ever watched it a second time before now? Not that I remember. So this retrospective was a good idea.
(Note: I didn’t re-read the old review until after writing this one, so forgive me if there’s a little overlap.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christian Slater, Clifton Collins Jr., Ehren Kruger, Eion Bailey, Kario Salem, Kathryn Morris, Kevin Brodbin, LL Cool J, Lucas Harper, Patricia Velasquez, Renny Harlin, Val Kilmer, Wayne Kramer, Will Kemp
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Horror, Mystery | 8 Comments »
Monday, May 19th, 2025
Summer is headed our way, there’s actually a slate of incoming would-be blockbusters I’m excited for this year, and this is also the season when I like to look back thoughtfully and/or nostalgically at memorable summers of the past. As with so many things I get in the habit of doing annually, I’ve painted myself into a corner – I’ve already written about so many movies and so many specific years that it becomes harder to find fresh ground. But on the positive side I’ve been reviewing movies for so god damn long that I can look back at a summer from during my career and realize that enough time has passed that I really could look at most of those movies with new eyes.
Case in point: the summer of 2005. Doesn’t sound like that long ago when I say it. I was definitely a grown adult at the time, and I’d been a self-appointed film critic for 5+ years, even self-published a best-of collection. But I have run the numbers and though of course I’m open to corrections on this I do believe that particular year was 20 (twenty) whole years ago at this time. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Van Holt, Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes, Chad Michael Murray, Damon Herriman, Dark Castle, Elisha Cuthbert, Jared Padalecki, Jaume Collet-Serra, Jon Abrahams, Paris Hilton, remakes, Robert Ri'chard
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 8 Comments »
Friday, April 25th, 2025
SINNERS is the first original story from writer/director Ryan Coogler. Not that it matters. After the true story of FRUITVALE STATION he added to fictional worlds and characters created by other people – CREED, BLACK PANTHER and BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER – but he sure seemed like a visionary to me. Working in such worn-out modern formats as “the legacy sequel” and “the MCU” didn’t stop him from constructing crowd-pleasing but deeply personal movies that transcend those categories.
So shit yeah I was excited for him to do a vampire movie. Say no more.
It’s set in the Mississippi Delta, 1932. After some years of infamy working for Al Capone in Chicago, “the Smokestack Twins,” Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore have returned to their home town of Clarksdale. Both are played by Michael B. Jordan (WITHOUT REMORSE), and they’re introduced passing a cigarette back and forth. Later one tosses his knife for the other to stab a rattlesnake through the throat with. After that they’re often separated, but the illusion has been established seamlessly.
I like that it takes its time getting to the vampires, instead making me really invested in the twins’ plan to set up a new juke joint (with the generic name “The Juke”) in one day. They buy an old saw mill from a very iffy white man (David Maldonado, CAT RUN 2), then split up and go around to people with the resources and talents they need, friends from way back who seem a little bitter or suspicious and hesitate before they see how much it pays but still seem to love them. Family, basically. Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller, HOMEFRONT), for example, just wants to stay picking cotton on the field he share crops, but seems very happy once he’s there watching the door. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: blues, Buddy Guy, Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O'Connell, Jayme Lawson, Ku Klux Klan, Li Jun Li, Lola Kirk, Ludwig Goransson, Michael B. Jordan, Nathaniel Arcand, Omar Benson Miller, Saul Williams, vampires, Yao
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 22 Comments »
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025
Recently I rewatched PRIEST (2011) for a podcast – I’ll link to it when the episode goes up (here it is: Vampire Videos #109). Do you remember that movie, though? Few do, but it’s one I really like, a post-apocalyptic vampire western action movie based on a Korean comic book. The director was Scott Stewart, a visual FX veteran (MARS ATTACKS!, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, THE HOST, RED CLIFF, co-founder of The Orphanage) who broke into directing with the weird angel-related action-horror movie LEGION (2010). Since then he’s directed the pilot for a TV continuation of LEGION called Dominion and a segment of the anthology HOLIDAYS, but only one full length feature: the close encounter movie DARK SKIES (2013). (I almost called it a UFO movie, but that’s not accurate, because we never see a space ship.)
This is the story of a middle class suburban family, the Barretts – real estate agent mother Lacy (Keri Russell, HONEY I BLEW UP THE KID), trying-to-find-a-new-job father Daniel (Josh Hamilton, MAESTRO), teenage son Jesse (Dakota Goyo, DEFENDOR, REAL STEEL) and younger brother Sammy (Kadan Rockett, “Mini Howie Mandel,” America’s Got Talent). They all have their normal human difficulties they’re going through and then one night Lacy gets up and finds the kitchen completely trashed, like an animal got in. Then another night she finds all the objects in the kitchen perfectly stacked and balanced, like a brilliant installation artist got in. And then all the family photos disappear, like a… I don’t know. Like something weird is going on here.
Increasingly bizarre things happen and what else can they do but in the moment be horrified by the inexplicability then in the sunlight the next day try to treat it like a normal problem with a normal way to deal with it. They talk to the cops, re-up their lapsed security system, add cameras. Surely something will work. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: aliens, Annie Thurman, Blumhouse, Dakota Goyo, J.K. Simmons, Josh Hamilton, Kadan Rockett, Keri Russell, L.J. Benet, Myndy Crist, Scott Stewart
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 8 Comments »
Thursday, March 27th, 2025
Today instead of one regular-sized review I have two fun-sized looks at movies I saw in theaters last week. They are not making much money and might not last long, but I support the theatrical experience (please clap).
ASH is a low budget sci-fi movie produced by Shudder and directed by Flying Lotus, who I’m a little familiar with as a musician, but I have to confess I couldn’t make it very far into his previous cinematic effort, KUSO (2017). This doesn’t happen to me often but it was just too gross with its pervy opening segment about pustules and stuff. By comparison this one is normal and tolerable, but it still makes sense coming from the same director.
Eiza González (BLOODSHOT, CUT THROAT CITY, AMBULANCE) stars as Riya, a space traveler of some kind who wakes to find her ship in emergency mode, her entire crew dead (including one with a kitchen knife in his chest), not remembering what the fuck happened, or even who she is at first. She medicates herself to calm down (a patch that lights up when she puts it on her neck – nice future tech), wanders out onto the desolate planet where they’ve landed, looks up at cosmic mandalas in the sky, has little scary blips of flashbacks and begins to slowly remember some of the events leading up to this, including bonding with crew members Clarke (Kate Elliott, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT), Kevin (Beulah Koale, DUAL), Davis (Flying Lotus himself), and the captain, Adhi (oh shit, it’s Iko motherfuckin Uwais, MERANTAU, THE RAID, HEADSHOT, BEYOND SKYLINE, THE NIGHT COMES FOR US, TRIPLE THREAT, SNAKE EYES, FISTFUL OF VENGEANCE). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Paul, Beulah Koale, Eiza Gonzalez, Flying Lotus, Iko Uwais, Kate Elliott, Looney Tunes, Shudder
Posted in Reviews, Cartoons and Shit, Horror, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 14 Comments »
Wednesday, March 26th, 2025
THE WICKED CITY (1992) is the Hong Kong version of WICKED CITY. I’m honestly not sure if it’s meant to be based on the anime or on the novels that the anime is based on, because it’s pretty different. It’s written and produced by the great Tsui Hark in a prolific year; 1992 saw the release of three movies he wrote, produced and directed (TWIN DRAGONS, ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA II and THE MASTER) and two others that he wrote and produced (SWORDSMAN II and NEW DRAGON GATE INN). Jeez, man, slow down.
As usual, there are claims that Tsui directed some of this himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if he second unit-ed some of the crazy action shit, but let’s not POLTERGEIST the actual director, who is Mak Tai Kit, a.k.a. Peter Mak (THE LOSER, THE HERO).
It opens in Japan (city unspecified in English subtitles of the DVD I watched), with a pared down remix of the anime’s opening. It skips the hero picking up the woman in a bar, replacing that character with a demon disguised as a prostitute named Perrier (Reiko Hayama, FEMALE NINJA MAGIC CHRONICLES), who does the kissing-while-going-up-an-elevator shot. In this version the john (Leon Lai from Ronny Yu’s SHOGUN & LITTLE KITCHEN) already knows what she is, goes into the bathroom and loads a gun before she sprouts claws and long legs – it’s genuinely very cool monster FX, though they’re unable to move her around enough to be nearly as creepy as in the animated version. Also there’s no venus flytrap snatch snapping at him. The same mistake most movies make. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jacky Cheung, Leon Lai, Lisa Be, live action anime, Mak Tai Kit, Michelle Reis, Reiko Hayama, Roy Cheung, Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsui Hark, Yuen Woo-Ping
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, March 25th, 2025
After enjoying NINJA SCROLL I thought I should go back and check out the first feature film from writer/director/designer Yoshiaki Kawajiri, WICKED CITY (1987). This one takes place in the then-future of the late ‘90s, but it has kind of a noir feel – the hero wears a tie, smokes often, drives around at night and falls for beautiful, dangerous women (in this case they are literally demons).
I thought from the title it would be a dystopian hellscape type city, but it’s more like idealized ‘80s yuppie Shibuya, with our handsome hero Taki going to a nice little bar where he knows the bartender well and both are surprised that a beautiful regular named Kanako has agreed to leave with him.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: anime, Hideyuki Kikuchi, Madhouse, Yoshiaki Kawajiri
Posted in Reviews, Cartoons and Shit, Horror | 5 Comments »
Thursday, March 6th, 2025
THE VOURDALAK is a 2023 French vampire film that’s pretty simple and classical but it has this one fucking fantastic choice that jumps out at you: the vampire is portrayed by a puppet. Not a muppet, but a human sized rod puppet or something that kinda looks like how Hellboy‘s Mike Mignola draws desiccated corpses. He’s a spindly nosferatu type but he’s in his ‘80s so he tries to act like that’s all it is. No, hey guys, I’m fine. I didn’t become a vourdalak (type of vampire from Slavic folk tales) during that dangerous trip where I told you if I return after six days I’m a vourdalak. I just look this way ’cause I’m old.
The protagonist is a goofy dork and diplomatic envoy for the king of France named Marquis Jacques Saturnin d’Urfe (Kacey Mottet Klein, GAINSBOURG: A HEROIC LIFE). I love how he’s unseen in the opening sequence, seeking shelter after losing his horse and companions during a robbery. He’s being turned away from shelter through the barred window on a door, but every time lightning strikes we see the shadow of his big ol’ historical-French-guy hat.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A.K. Tolstoy, Adrien Beau, Ariane Labed, Claire Duburcq, French horror, Gregoire Colin, Hadrien Bouvier, Kacey Mottet Klein, puppets, vampires, Vassili Schneider
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 7 Comments »
Monday, March 3rd, 2025
THE GORGE is a movie with an appealing, simple premise, strong execution, great tone, and a fun mix of elements you don’t usually see together but that feel perfectly natural. It’s a romance within a monster movie, or vice versa, but not in a a jokey way at all (though that worked for LOVE AND MONSTERS). It’s funny because its two main characters know how to make each other laugh, but its outlandish situation is taken seriously.
It’s also a movie star movie, as most good romances are, with its two leads reaching new levels of onscreen charisma, though for some reason Apple made this for the small screen only. I guess that’s none of my business. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anya Taylor-Joy, Atticus Ross, C. Robert Cargill, Miles Teller, Scott Derrickson, Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu, Trent Reznor, William Houston, Zach Dean
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror, Monster, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 12 Comments »
