I don’t know why it took me this long, but I finally decided to catch up with the two Mike Flanagan joints I hadn’t seen yet (not counting the dramas he made during and immediately after college, or the TV series The Firefighter Combat Challenge). He made his entry into horror in 2006, with a shot-on-video-in-one-room short called Oculus: Chapter 3 – The Man with the Plan. Like George Lucas with STAR WARS, his story was bigger than his resources so he started with the most exciting chapter and filled in the rest later.
The short is about a guy who has obtained a haunted mirror that he plans to destroy. It’s a cool idea for a short with acting and visuals that require a certain level of forgiveness. But it apparently went over well at film festivals and inspired some interest in a feature version. The trouble was that producers all wanted to make it a found footage movie and/or give it to a director other than Flanagan. So instead he set the evil mirror aside and did a Kickstarter campaign to finance his $70,000 debut horror feature, ABSENTIA (2011). And once that was under his belt he got Intrepid Features (WAIST DEEP, THE STRANGERS) to let him direct a non-found-footage OCULUS, which filmed in 2012. And they must’ve been pretty happy with it, because now he’s a partner in the company. (read the rest of this shit…)
I just made my second appearance on “‘I Must Break’ This Podcast,” where I seem to go to discuss movies that Dolph Lundgren is briefly in. 
After having a great time with Rob Zombie’s new DTV movie 
MUNSTER, GO HOME! came out in the summer of 1966, a few months after the series ended, and the same day as THE ENDLESS SUMMER. (I hope somebody made that a double feature. I don’t know why.) Like the show, it was released by Universal Pictures, which is why Herman (Fred Gwynne, 
Every once in a while the streaming service Shudder does a “secret screening” – a one time only showing on their live feed of a movie they’re not gonna have available until later. I think this is a really cool idea, and something they can do specifically because they’re one of the more lovingly put together services, run by actual programmers trying to curate horror movies they think their subscribers will be excited about.
It seems like a fluke that PEARL even exists. It’s director Ti West’s prequel to his previous movie 
Well whaddya know, Rob Zombie made a PG-rated movie version of The Munsters. It’s a Universal direct-to-DVD-and-blu-ray movie, also released to Netflix on the same day, and to be honest the trailer looked pretty cheesy to me. Pre-release word I’d seen had been dire, and a pretty dull opening stretch had me worried, despite it immediately capturing a strong classic horror look.
Just as the Weird Summer of 1992 was wrapping up, New Line Cinema gave us arguably the season’s weirdest wide release. Sure, it played half as many screens as its fellow August 28, 1992 releases 
And at first it really does fit into the indie releases of ’92 – it makes sense as a contemporary of 
HONEYMOON IN VEGAS (released August 28, 1992) is pretty mediocre, but definitely more watchable than some of the other stuff I’ve been reviewing lately. That mainly comes down to it being a romantic comedy with Nic Cage playing the protagonist, and going a little mega at times, dipping into those skills from 
Many of these August ’92 movies I’ve been reviewing have been grueling, but there are some good ones among them, even great ones. To make up for the toil of watching 
Although the weird blockbusters like 
