CategoryReviews
Honest horror reviews of films, series, games and books — no hype, no spoilers, just whether it is worth your time and your nerves.
3,462 stories
MoviesPeacockReviewsStreaming TVTrailers
Halloween Kills has just premiered exclusively on Peacock. Those who aren’t subscribers will have to sign up for the service at the cost of $4.99 a month which isn’t bad. It’s cheaper than a rental or a ticket to theaters. WARNING SOME SPOILERS The last we saw the Strode women in Halloween, they had trapped Michael in Laurie’s basement and set the house on fire. But in true Myers fashion, “the shape” found his way out as firefighters converged on the house which was completely engulfed in flames. Laurie has survived Michael’s attack and is in the hospital when all hell breaks loose as crowds of residents gather chanting “Evil dies tonight!” led by Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) who survived Michael as a boy. We actually see quite a few characters return from the franchise, only to quickly see them be killed off. The movie features more kills than any other installment of the franchise, but that doesn’t mean
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Netflix’s new vampire movie Night Teeth debuts this October. I sank my teeth into it to answer an important question, does it have a bite or does it suck? In the movie, Benny (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) agrees to fill in as a chauffeur for his brother. His fare for the night happens to be two beautiful young women, Zoe (Lucy Fry) and Blaire (Debby Ryan). But as Benny drives them from place to place he notices strange things, until he discovers their secret, and their fangs, and that they are in a city-wide battle for power among the vampire elite. Quite a few stars make cameos including Megan Fox, Sydney Sweeney, “Game of Thrones” actor Alfie Allen, and “Vikings” star Alexander Ludwig, all as vampires. Here’s the thing, a lot of the advertising teased Fox would play an important role in the movie, but she gets maybe five minutes of screen time (at the most), which made me feel a
Continue reading →
GamingProductReviews
When it comes to first-person shooters, you have over-the-top games and ones that fly under the radar (for good reasons) and then you have some that capture the old-school FPS feel that’s slowly going away in the industry, “Crysis” is the latter and in its own right has become a cult classic for keeping true to what FPS games are and thankfully with the market getting flooded with many FPS single-player games starting to focus more on online battle royal style gaming that’s coming out this year thankfully Crytek and Saber Interactive have brought “Crysis” back, not just the first game but the entire trilogy! A big thank you to Crytek and Saber Interactive for the opportunity to check out the Crysis Remastered Trilogy that brings all three games back and in HD. for those not familiar with the game series, Crysis centers around the player playing as a soldier wearing a Nanosuit that allows them to cloak, build impenetrable
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Masking Threshold and Blood Moon screened as part of the 26th annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, which ran in-person in Portland, Oregon from October 1–3, 2021 and had a streaming edition October 8–12. Masking Threshold Director Johannes Grenzfurthener’s Austrian film Masking Threshold mashes up elements of Lovecraft and Poe with modern technology and social media, resulting in a highly disturbing, utterly unique take on the “descent into madness” subgenre of psychological horror. An unnamed IT professional (played by Grenzfurthener with voice acting by Ethan Haslam) — of whom viewers see only rare, partial glimpses — takes time off from work to do home experimentation in an attempt to find a cure for his rare form of tinnitus. Medical professionals, of whom he is skeptical, have been unable to help him, and as his research goes on, they combine with scientists to decry him as a crackpot conspiracy theorist. The nameless man is undeterred by such skepticism, and his rants become
Continue reading →
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EventsFilm FestivalsReviews
Cosmic Dawn In the science fiction/mystery feature Cosmic Dawn, as a child, Aurora saw her mother abducted by aliens. As a young adult, Aurora (Camille Rowe) has long been faced with psychological and medical professionals, along with those close to her, being highly skeptical about her claims. She has visions of a woman that lead her to a bookstore where employee Natalie (Emmanuelle Chriqui) explains about the woman, Elyse (Antonia Zegers), and invites her to a gathering of what turns out to be a UFO cult led by Elyse. Writer/director Jefferson Moneo’s Cosmic Dawn takes place in three different time periods — the time of Aurora’s close encounter, her initial time with the cult about a decade after that, and four years later, when cult member Dieter (Philip Granger) locates her and insists she needs to return to the cult. The transitions during this nonlinear approach are not always smooth, but everything starts blending together at a certain point and
Continue reading →
EventsFilm FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Australian folk horror feature Alison’s Birthday (1981) is receiving its first release with the online NIGHTSTREAM film festival since its original VHS release. It’s a supernatural chiller that offers plenty of intriguing sequences and is worthy of finding a new audience. Writer/director Ian Coughlan’s film opens with 16-year-old Alison (Joanne Samuel of Mad Max) and two friends experimenting with a makeshift Ouija board, which results in Alison’s dead father contacting her by possessing one of the other girls, warning Alison to beware of her 19th birthday, before a bookshelf falls on the girl and kills her. If that’s not enough to hook you, parentless Alison reluctantly goes back to her hometown with her disc jockey boyfriend Peter (Lou Brown) to visit her Aunt Jennifer (Bunney Brooke) and Uncle Dean (John Bluthall) to celebrate said 19th birthday, and discovers a Stonehenge-like structure in the land behind their backyard. You can guess that business picks up from there, and you would be
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
I have seen my share of strange films but Valdimar Jóhannsson’s Lamb takes the cake. I have never seen anything else like it. When a couple (Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason) discovers one of the sheep on their farm has given birth to something not completely human, not completely animal, a baby with a human body and a lamb’s head. They set their eyes on the creature they respond with a deadpan reaction like it was an everyday occurrence, and silently go about raising it in a bid to soothe their sorrow for their lost child. The couple’s reactions to the events throughout the movie are downright odd. The first sight of the child they have named Ada is not the only “meh” reaction they have. The two spend much of the film silently going about their business of farming like they are numb. The film’s location is stunning. It plays out in a remote area of Iceland. The
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
A mother and her offspring murder a little girl (that damn Jimmy Peterson’s sister) caught in a bear trap because they think she’s a demon, and then perform a satanic ritual on the body… “pot, kettle, black” there, eh cats n’ creeps? Anyway, so begins John Russo’s 1982 opus Midnight, which just so happens to have recently had a spiffy Blu-ray release from the fine fiends over at Severin. Cheering up the proceedings, young Nancy (Melanie Verliin) catches static from her priest in confessional for admitting she likes to fuck, then heads home where she has to fend off the advances of her drunken, police officer step-father (played to the horny hilt by Reservoir Dogs‘ Lawrence Tierney)… because fucking is reserved for her boyfriend and not old-ass character actors (wisely so). Heading out, she’s harrassed by a dude in a car who wants to pay her for sex, before becoming the object of affection for two horny dudes in a
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
Dan Potter (The A-Team‘s Howlin’ Mad Murdock himself, Dwight Schultz in a milquetoast turn) has recently taken a job as a doctor in Dr. Leo Bain’s (Halloween‘s Donald Pleasence) unorthodox lunatic asylum called the Haven. Speaking of the ol’ Haven, those hallowed halls are also home to some real Grade-A psychos: deranged army vet Frank (Jack Palance), church burner Byron “Preacher” Sutcliff (Martin Landau), mountain-sized pedo Ronald (The Running Man‘s opera-singing one man E.L.O.; Dynamo, Erland van Lidth), and selfie-adverse serial killer nicknamed “the Bleeder” (Phillip Clark, who’s character dons a hockey mask to do his dirty dealings… just like Jason Voorhees did in Friday the 13th: Part 3-D, released just a few months earlier…but who was first is a topic of debate); a qwazy quartet that believe Potter murdered their former doctor (whom they all loved), but who in truth took another job. As fate would have it, a major power outage looms in Potter’s future, and the resulting
Continue reading →
BooksReviews
Plot In his novel The Encanto: LA Fog Part 1, Arthur Swan gives us an extremely fascinating and uniquely imagined plot. “An ancient Mayan artifact, smuggled into Los Angeles, unexpectedly alters three lives in bizarre ways.” The plot unfolds as it follows the three characters and the journey is a great mix of horror, mystery, humor, and suspense. Swan has an extremely well-developed story here and it is a plot with real depth and strength. Characters This is where Arthur Swan really shines. His character development is shockingly phenomenal. The way he not only builds his characters, but how he breathes life into them is impressive. Whether main, supporting, or one-off characters, each is wonderfully developed and wonderfully important. Gray Wilson, his wife Claire, and Ashley York, are the three characters affected by the Mayan artifact. Even before their lives spiral into chaos, their struggles feel real. The weight they feel is tangible. Gray’s life-sucking boredom at his job feels
Continue reading →
More from Reviews
MoviesPeacockReviewsStreaming TVTrailers
Halloween Kills has just premiered exclusively on Peacock. Those who aren’t subscribers will have to sign up for the service at the cost of $4.99 a month which isn’t bad. It’s cheaper than a rental or a ticket to theaters. WARNING SOME SPOILERS The last we saw the Strode women in Halloween, they had trapped Michael in Laurie’s basement and set the house on fire. But in true Myers fashion, “the shape” found his way out as firefighters converged on the house which was completely engulfed in flames. Laurie has survived Michael’s attack and is in the hospital when all hell breaks loose as crowds of residents gather chanting “Evil dies tonight!” led by Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) who survived Michael as a boy. We actually see quite a few characters return from the franchise, only to quickly see them be killed off. The movie features more kills than any other installment of the franchise, but that doesn’t mean
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Netflix’s new vampire movie Night Teeth debuts this October. I sank my teeth into it to answer an important question, does it have a bite or does it suck? In the movie, Benny (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) agrees to fill in as a chauffeur for his brother. His fare for the night happens to be two beautiful young women, Zoe (Lucy Fry) and Blaire (Debby Ryan). But as Benny drives them from place to place he notices strange things, until he discovers their secret, and their fangs, and that they are in a city-wide battle for power among the vampire elite. Quite a few stars make cameos including Megan Fox, Sydney Sweeney, “Game of Thrones” actor Alfie Allen, and “Vikings” star Alexander Ludwig, all as vampires. Here’s the thing, a lot of the advertising teased Fox would play an important role in the movie, but she gets maybe five minutes of screen time (at the most), which made me feel a
Continue reading →
GamingProductReviews
When it comes to first-person shooters, you have over-the-top games and ones that fly under the radar (for good reasons) and then you have some that capture the old-school FPS feel that’s slowly going away in the industry, “Crysis” is the latter and in its own right has become a cult classic for keeping true to what FPS games are and thankfully with the market getting flooded with many FPS single-player games starting to focus more on online battle royal style gaming that’s coming out this year thankfully Crytek and Saber Interactive have brought “Crysis” back, not just the first game but the entire trilogy! A big thank you to Crytek and Saber Interactive for the opportunity to check out the Crysis Remastered Trilogy that brings all three games back and in HD. for those not familiar with the game series, Crysis centers around the player playing as a soldier wearing a Nanosuit that allows them to cloak, build impenetrable
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Masking Threshold and Blood Moon screened as part of the 26th annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, which ran in-person in Portland, Oregon from October 1–3, 2021 and had a streaming edition October 8–12. Masking Threshold Director Johannes Grenzfurthener’s Austrian film Masking Threshold mashes up elements of Lovecraft and Poe with modern technology and social media, resulting in a highly disturbing, utterly unique take on the “descent into madness” subgenre of psychological horror. An unnamed IT professional (played by Grenzfurthener with voice acting by Ethan Haslam) — of whom viewers see only rare, partial glimpses — takes time off from work to do home experimentation in an attempt to find a cure for his rare form of tinnitus. Medical professionals, of whom he is skeptical, have been unable to help him, and as his research goes on, they combine with scientists to decry him as a crackpot conspiracy theorist. The nameless man is undeterred by such skepticism, and his rants become
Continue reading →
EventsFilm FestivalsReviews
Cosmic Dawn In the science fiction/mystery feature Cosmic Dawn, as a child, Aurora saw her mother abducted by aliens. As a young adult, Aurora (Camille Rowe) has long been faced with psychological and medical professionals, along with those close to her, being highly skeptical about her claims. She has visions of a woman that lead her to a bookstore where employee Natalie (Emmanuelle Chriqui) explains about the woman, Elyse (Antonia Zegers), and invites her to a gathering of what turns out to be a UFO cult led by Elyse. Writer/director Jefferson Moneo’s Cosmic Dawn takes place in three different time periods — the time of Aurora’s close encounter, her initial time with the cult about a decade after that, and four years later, when cult member Dieter (Philip Granger) locates her and insists she needs to return to the cult. The transitions during this nonlinear approach are not always smooth, but everything starts blending together at a certain point and
Continue reading →
EventsFilm FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Australian folk horror feature Alison’s Birthday (1981) is receiving its first release with the online NIGHTSTREAM film festival since its original VHS release. It’s a supernatural chiller that offers plenty of intriguing sequences and is worthy of finding a new audience. Writer/director Ian Coughlan’s film opens with 16-year-old Alison (Joanne Samuel of Mad Max) and two friends experimenting with a makeshift Ouija board, which results in Alison’s dead father contacting her by possessing one of the other girls, warning Alison to beware of her 19th birthday, before a bookshelf falls on the girl and kills her. If that’s not enough to hook you, parentless Alison reluctantly goes back to her hometown with her disc jockey boyfriend Peter (Lou Brown) to visit her Aunt Jennifer (Bunney Brooke) and Uncle Dean (John Bluthall) to celebrate said 19th birthday, and discovers a Stonehenge-like structure in the land behind their backyard. You can guess that business picks up from there, and you would be
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
I have seen my share of strange films but Valdimar Jóhannsson’s Lamb takes the cake. I have never seen anything else like it. When a couple (Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason) discovers one of the sheep on their farm has given birth to something not completely human, not completely animal, a baby with a human body and a lamb’s head. They set their eyes on the creature they respond with a deadpan reaction like it was an everyday occurrence, and silently go about raising it in a bid to soothe their sorrow for their lost child. The couple’s reactions to the events throughout the movie are downright odd. The first sight of the child they have named Ada is not the only “meh” reaction they have. The two spend much of the film silently going about their business of farming like they are numb. The film’s location is stunning. It plays out in a remote area of Iceland. The
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
A mother and her offspring murder a little girl (that damn Jimmy Peterson’s sister) caught in a bear trap because they think she’s a demon, and then perform a satanic ritual on the body… “pot, kettle, black” there, eh cats n’ creeps? Anyway, so begins John Russo’s 1982 opus Midnight, which just so happens to have recently had a spiffy Blu-ray release from the fine fiends over at Severin. Cheering up the proceedings, young Nancy (Melanie Verliin) catches static from her priest in confessional for admitting she likes to fuck, then heads home where she has to fend off the advances of her drunken, police officer step-father (played to the horny hilt by Reservoir Dogs‘ Lawrence Tierney)… because fucking is reserved for her boyfriend and not old-ass character actors (wisely so). Heading out, she’s harrassed by a dude in a car who wants to pay her for sex, before becoming the object of affection for two horny dudes in a
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
Dan Potter (The A-Team‘s Howlin’ Mad Murdock himself, Dwight Schultz in a milquetoast turn) has recently taken a job as a doctor in Dr. Leo Bain’s (Halloween‘s Donald Pleasence) unorthodox lunatic asylum called the Haven. Speaking of the ol’ Haven, those hallowed halls are also home to some real Grade-A psychos: deranged army vet Frank (Jack Palance), church burner Byron “Preacher” Sutcliff (Martin Landau), mountain-sized pedo Ronald (The Running Man‘s opera-singing one man E.L.O.; Dynamo, Erland van Lidth), and selfie-adverse serial killer nicknamed “the Bleeder” (Phillip Clark, who’s character dons a hockey mask to do his dirty dealings… just like Jason Voorhees did in Friday the 13th: Part 3-D, released just a few months earlier…but who was first is a topic of debate); a qwazy quartet that believe Potter murdered their former doctor (whom they all loved), but who in truth took another job. As fate would have it, a major power outage looms in Potter’s future, and the resulting
Continue reading →
BooksReviews
Plot In his novel The Encanto: LA Fog Part 1, Arthur Swan gives us an extremely fascinating and uniquely imagined plot. “An ancient Mayan artifact, smuggled into Los Angeles, unexpectedly alters three lives in bizarre ways.” The plot unfolds as it follows the three characters and the journey is a great mix of horror, mystery, humor, and suspense. Swan has an extremely well-developed story here and it is a plot with real depth and strength. Characters This is where Arthur Swan really shines. His character development is shockingly phenomenal. The way he not only builds his characters, but how he breathes life into them is impressive. Whether main, supporting, or one-off characters, each is wonderfully developed and wonderfully important. Gray Wilson, his wife Claire, and Ashley York, are the three characters affected by the Mayan artifact. Even before their lives spiral into chaos, their struggles feel real. The weight they feel is tangible. Gray’s life-sucking boredom at his job feels
Continue reading →
