Horror Fuel
☰ Browse the Crypt
Category

Reviews

3,430 stories

Spoiler-Free Film Review: “Natatorium” (SXSW)

Writer/director Helena Stefansdottir’s Icelandic thriller Natatorium is the type of film where you just know that something is off from the onset, and the mystery as to what exactly is happening keeps you wrapped up until the climactic reveal. The dark family drama at the heart of this feature is thoroughly gripping. With dreams of traveling the world in a performance troupe, 18-year-old Lilja (Ilmur María Arnarsdóttir) stays at the home of her grandmother Áróra (Elin Petersdottir) and grandfather Grimur (Valur Freyr Einarsson) for an audition being held in their town. She has arrived at their home without announcing it in advance to her father Magnús (Arnar Dan Kristjánsson). He calls his sister Vala (Stefanía Berndsen) and asks her to check in on Lilja, and viewers learn right away that the older siblings have problems with Lilja staying there. The titular swimming pool seems to be one of the big reasons for their concerns. Áróra’s other son Kalli (Jónas Alfreð

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Mar 14, 2024

Movie Review: ‘Damsel’ Starring Millie Bobby Brown

As a fan of “Stranger Things,” I was thrilled to hear last year that Millie Bobby Brown would be playing the lead in the fantasy film Damsel. It’s finally out on Netflix, so I had to check it out and of course, I want to talk about it. Brown is no longer the talented kid we became familiar with in “Stanger Things.” She is all grown up, and her talent continues to grow. She gives an excellent performance filled with emotion. The Story Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, best known for 28 Weeks Later, and penned by Dan Mazeau (Fast X), the film starts like most fairy tales do. A young woman promises to marry a prince to save her kingdom, encouraged by her father and stepmother to do her duty. Upon meeting the royal family in their stunning castle, Elodie quickly grows fond of the prince and him of her. Unfortunately, a happily ever is not in the cards

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Mar 11, 2024

Spoiler-Free Film Reviews: “The Funeral” and “Custom” (FrightFest Glasgow)

THE FUNERAL (CENAZE; Turkey, 2023) Hearse driver Cemal (Ahmed Rifat Sunger) takes a job of which he is leary from the start: driving away with the body of a murdered young woman named Zeynep (Cansu Türedi) and hiding away with the corpse for a month until her family is ready to claim it. Matters become instantly complicated when Cemal checks into a motel and hears breathing coming from Zeynep’s casket. I don’t want to give away too much more of the plot, so suffice it to say so that in the first act, viewers learn that Zeynep is indeed quite dead — sort of — and that she develops a particular hunger, and that Zeynep’s feelings toward her drive him to do whatever it takes to feed her. Director Orcun Behram delivers a highly unique take on the living dead subgenre that boasts terrific lead performances from Sunger and Türedi. Engin Özkaya’s cinematography splendidly portrays the bleak tone of Behram’s

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Mar 11, 2024

Movie Review: Burial Ground (1981) – Severin 4k/Blu-ray

You know how when you are a connoisseur of something, let’s say for instance; Italian fright flicks, there tends to be tiers of quality? I mean you got your Suspiria and your The Beyond, then you get a bit further out and you have your Buio Omega and other delightfully hardcore shit… then things get a bit cheaper with the likes of Bruno Mattei and titles like Hell of the Living Dead… and then you get right down there towards the bottom and you find things like the flick we are taking a look at today, Burial Ground, and well… that’s the type of unadulterated nonsense that yours cruelly can really sink his fangs into! After an opening where the European equivalent of Rick Rubin attempts to stave off a zombie attack with this bon mot; “Wait, stand back; I’m your friend!” we get into the story proper of ol’ Burial Ground… and by that I mean a bunch of

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Mar 9, 2024

Movie Review: The Terror (1963)/The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) – Film Masters Blu-ray

You may remember 1963’s Roger Corman fright flick The Terror from a shit-ton of bargain basement “horror collection” DVDs… hell you may even remember it’s presence in the discount VHS bins of decades past… but yeah, it’s been around the block a few million times, which brings us the newest release of the picture courtesy of Film Masters… The long and the short of The Terror goes as follows: in 1806, a French soldier named André Duvalier (Jack Nicholson, The Shining) encounters, and becomes enchanted by, a dark-haired, mysterious beauty named Helene (Sandra Knight) who bares a striking resemblance to a woman named Ilsa; the dead wife of a local known as Baron Victor Frederick von Leppe (Boris Karloff, 1931’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). Attempting to learn more about Helene, Duvalier encounters the town’s witch, Katrina (Dorothy Neumann) before arriving at the door of the Baron’s Gothic castle… and come to find out he’s haunted by Helene/Ilsa as well,

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Mar 9, 2024

Movie Review: Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) – Synapse

While vacationing, Virginia (María Elena Arpón), and her pal Roger (César Burner) bump into Virginia’s former boarding school chum/former lover Betty (Lone Fleming) decide to take a train ride. Whoopie-shit you may say, but wait… Virginia gets super jealous of Roger’s interest in Betty and decides to hop of that train and goes for a stroll where she ends up wandering in the wind-swept ruined town of Berzano. While that would be creepy enough on it’s own, this location was once home to a cadre of Knights Templar in the Middle Ages… but they were executed by hanging for crimes of cavortin’ with the Devil… oh, and performing ritual, cannibalistic sacrifice… but unfortunately for our good friend Virginia, they are more of the walking dead-style of deceased… and at night they rise as rotted, eyeless, hooded cloak wearing zombie mother fuckers… and their horses too! Being the supernatural menace that they are, the knights dispatch Virginia by biting the living

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Mar 7, 2024

Game Review: ‘REVEIL’

A circus and traumatic experience should go hand in hand with horror, right? Well if done right yes. But then there’s Daedalic Entertainment and Pixlesplit’s first-person psychological horror REVEIL. REVEIL follows a circus handyman by the name of Walter as he’s constantly waking up in his house but finding himself still in a dreamlike world that keeps taking him back to the circus where he and his circus performer wife and daughter work. When it comes to the game’s controls, the layout is…wired, there’s no other way to say it. The controls don’t feel natural and I found myself most of the time messing up. The voice acting for the game is good but the soundtrack gets annoying with the droning sound effects used in songs that are reminiscent of another game (I’ll get to that shortly). The gameplay for REVEIL is what you would expect in a game like this, you walk around, solve a puzzle to advance, and

Continue reading →
Daniel S. Liuzzi
Mar 4, 2024

Movie Review: No Way Up a Survival Thriller You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

The new survival thriller No Way Up has just been unleashed on VOD. So, let’s talk about it. No Way Up is directed by Claudio Fäh. In the movie, the journey of a group of passengers on a flight to an exotic location takes a horrifying turn when disaster strikes mid-flight, sending the aircraft plummeting into the unforgiving Pacific Ocean. Amidst the wreckage, a handful of passengers find themselves clinging to hope in the plane’s galley, the only remaining air pocket of the plane. As the immense pressure of the deep intensifies, panic consumes the survivors. With dwindling oxygen, the threat of flooding, and sharks circling in the darkness, hope seems to dwindle with each passing second. An Indie Film Before we delve too deep into the film, you need to understand that it is an indie film, which makes the quality of Now Way Up even more impressive. Also, at this point, I should probably tell you that the

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Mar 3, 2024

Movie Review: Pandemic Thriller ‘Contagion’ Remastered For 4Kk Ultra

Years before the true-life horrors of the pandemic, a film would be unleashed that explores the horrifying possibilities that come with a deadly outbreak, 2011’s Contagion. Contagion meticulously depicts the rapid spread of a deadly virus. It highlights our world’s interconnectedness and society’s fragility in the face of such a threat. The film, written by Scott Z. Burns, was lauded for its realistic portrayal of disease outbreaks and its prescience in capturing the anxieties surrounding global health emergencies. A terror that became all too real when the COVID pandemic consumed the world. First, let’s look at the film’s massive, award-winning cast featuring talents from stars such as Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, and Gweneth Paltrow. At the time of its making, this was, and mostly still is, a who’s who of Hollywood. The fact that Steven Soderbergh directed Contagion doesn’t hurt. He is the same filmmaker behind Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Sex, Lies, and Video Tapes,

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Mar 2, 2024

Movie Review: Videodrome (1983) – Criterion 4K/Blu-ray

Max Renn (James Woods, John Carpenter’s Vampires) is the president of tiny UHF station CIVIC-TV; a channel that stays afloat thanks to it’s regular broadcasts containing ample amounts of those hoary ol’ chestnuts, sex and violence! Bored with the normal softcore smut he’s is offered for broadcast, Mmax turns his eyes skyward for inspiration… namely by using CIVIC-TV’s big-ass satellite dish to find new programs that’ll excite both himself and his viewers. To that end, he gets turned on to Videodrome; a plot-less torture program… most likely unsimulated… that is broadcast from Pittsburgh. Along the way he gets his new sadomasochistic girlfriend, the radio host Nicki Brand (Blondie’s Debbie Harry) who gets it in her head that she wants to try and audition for the show. His investigation as to the show’s origin brings him to The Cathode Ray Mission; a homeless shelter that seeks to rehabilitate derelicts through constant exposure to television… and was the home of the TV-based

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Mar 1, 2024

More from Reviews

Spoiler-Free Film Review: “Natatorium” (SXSW)

Writer/director Helena Stefansdottir’s Icelandic thriller Natatorium is the type of film where you just know that something is off from the onset, and the mystery as to what exactly is happening keeps you wrapped up until the climactic reveal. The dark family drama at the heart of this feature is thoroughly gripping. With dreams of traveling the world in a performance troupe, 18-year-old Lilja (Ilmur María Arnarsdóttir) stays at the home of her grandmother Áróra (Elin Petersdottir) and grandfather Grimur (Valur Freyr Einarsson) for an audition being held in their town. She has arrived at their home without announcing it in advance to her father Magnús (Arnar Dan Kristjánsson). He calls his sister Vala (Stefanía Berndsen) and asks her to check in on Lilja, and viewers learn right away that the older siblings have problems with Lilja staying there. The titular swimming pool seems to be one of the big reasons for their concerns. Áróra’s other son Kalli (Jónas Alfreð

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Mar 14, 2024

Movie Review: ‘Damsel’ Starring Millie Bobby Brown

As a fan of “Stranger Things,” I was thrilled to hear last year that Millie Bobby Brown would be playing the lead in the fantasy film Damsel. It’s finally out on Netflix, so I had to check it out and of course, I want to talk about it. Brown is no longer the talented kid we became familiar with in “Stanger Things.” She is all grown up, and her talent continues to grow. She gives an excellent performance filled with emotion. The Story Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, best known for 28 Weeks Later, and penned by Dan Mazeau (Fast X), the film starts like most fairy tales do. A young woman promises to marry a prince to save her kingdom, encouraged by her father and stepmother to do her duty. Upon meeting the royal family in their stunning castle, Elodie quickly grows fond of the prince and him of her. Unfortunately, a happily ever is not in the cards

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Mar 11, 2024

Spoiler-Free Film Reviews: “The Funeral” and “Custom” (FrightFest Glasgow)

THE FUNERAL (CENAZE; Turkey, 2023) Hearse driver Cemal (Ahmed Rifat Sunger) takes a job of which he is leary from the start: driving away with the body of a murdered young woman named Zeynep (Cansu Türedi) and hiding away with the corpse for a month until her family is ready to claim it. Matters become instantly complicated when Cemal checks into a motel and hears breathing coming from Zeynep’s casket. I don’t want to give away too much more of the plot, so suffice it to say so that in the first act, viewers learn that Zeynep is indeed quite dead — sort of — and that she develops a particular hunger, and that Zeynep’s feelings toward her drive him to do whatever it takes to feed her. Director Orcun Behram delivers a highly unique take on the living dead subgenre that boasts terrific lead performances from Sunger and Türedi. Engin Özkaya’s cinematography splendidly portrays the bleak tone of Behram’s

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Mar 11, 2024

Movie Review: Burial Ground (1981) – Severin 4k/Blu-ray

You know how when you are a connoisseur of something, let’s say for instance; Italian fright flicks, there tends to be tiers of quality? I mean you got your Suspiria and your The Beyond, then you get a bit further out and you have your Buio Omega and other delightfully hardcore shit… then things get a bit cheaper with the likes of Bruno Mattei and titles like Hell of the Living Dead… and then you get right down there towards the bottom and you find things like the flick we are taking a look at today, Burial Ground, and well… that’s the type of unadulterated nonsense that yours cruelly can really sink his fangs into! After an opening where the European equivalent of Rick Rubin attempts to stave off a zombie attack with this bon mot; “Wait, stand back; I’m your friend!” we get into the story proper of ol’ Burial Ground… and by that I mean a bunch of

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Mar 9, 2024

Movie Review: The Terror (1963)/The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) – Film Masters Blu-ray

You may remember 1963’s Roger Corman fright flick The Terror from a shit-ton of bargain basement “horror collection” DVDs… hell you may even remember it’s presence in the discount VHS bins of decades past… but yeah, it’s been around the block a few million times, which brings us the newest release of the picture courtesy of Film Masters… The long and the short of The Terror goes as follows: in 1806, a French soldier named André Duvalier (Jack Nicholson, The Shining) encounters, and becomes enchanted by, a dark-haired, mysterious beauty named Helene (Sandra Knight) who bares a striking resemblance to a woman named Ilsa; the dead wife of a local known as Baron Victor Frederick von Leppe (Boris Karloff, 1931’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). Attempting to learn more about Helene, Duvalier encounters the town’s witch, Katrina (Dorothy Neumann) before arriving at the door of the Baron’s Gothic castle… and come to find out he’s haunted by Helene/Ilsa as well,

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Mar 9, 2024

Movie Review: Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) – Synapse

While vacationing, Virginia (María Elena Arpón), and her pal Roger (César Burner) bump into Virginia’s former boarding school chum/former lover Betty (Lone Fleming) decide to take a train ride. Whoopie-shit you may say, but wait… Virginia gets super jealous of Roger’s interest in Betty and decides to hop of that train and goes for a stroll where she ends up wandering in the wind-swept ruined town of Berzano. While that would be creepy enough on it’s own, this location was once home to a cadre of Knights Templar in the Middle Ages… but they were executed by hanging for crimes of cavortin’ with the Devil… oh, and performing ritual, cannibalistic sacrifice… but unfortunately for our good friend Virginia, they are more of the walking dead-style of deceased… and at night they rise as rotted, eyeless, hooded cloak wearing zombie mother fuckers… and their horses too! Being the supernatural menace that they are, the knights dispatch Virginia by biting the living

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Mar 7, 2024

Game Review: ‘REVEIL’

A circus and traumatic experience should go hand in hand with horror, right? Well if done right yes. But then there’s Daedalic Entertainment and Pixlesplit’s first-person psychological horror REVEIL. REVEIL follows a circus handyman by the name of Walter as he’s constantly waking up in his house but finding himself still in a dreamlike world that keeps taking him back to the circus where he and his circus performer wife and daughter work. When it comes to the game’s controls, the layout is…wired, there’s no other way to say it. The controls don’t feel natural and I found myself most of the time messing up. The voice acting for the game is good but the soundtrack gets annoying with the droning sound effects used in songs that are reminiscent of another game (I’ll get to that shortly). The gameplay for REVEIL is what you would expect in a game like this, you walk around, solve a puzzle to advance, and

Continue reading →
Daniel S. Liuzzi
Mar 4, 2024

Movie Review: No Way Up a Survival Thriller You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

The new survival thriller No Way Up has just been unleashed on VOD. So, let’s talk about it. No Way Up is directed by Claudio Fäh. In the movie, the journey of a group of passengers on a flight to an exotic location takes a horrifying turn when disaster strikes mid-flight, sending the aircraft plummeting into the unforgiving Pacific Ocean. Amidst the wreckage, a handful of passengers find themselves clinging to hope in the plane’s galley, the only remaining air pocket of the plane. As the immense pressure of the deep intensifies, panic consumes the survivors. With dwindling oxygen, the threat of flooding, and sharks circling in the darkness, hope seems to dwindle with each passing second. An Indie Film Before we delve too deep into the film, you need to understand that it is an indie film, which makes the quality of Now Way Up even more impressive. Also, at this point, I should probably tell you that the

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Mar 3, 2024

Movie Review: Pandemic Thriller ‘Contagion’ Remastered For 4Kk Ultra

Years before the true-life horrors of the pandemic, a film would be unleashed that explores the horrifying possibilities that come with a deadly outbreak, 2011’s Contagion. Contagion meticulously depicts the rapid spread of a deadly virus. It highlights our world’s interconnectedness and society’s fragility in the face of such a threat. The film, written by Scott Z. Burns, was lauded for its realistic portrayal of disease outbreaks and its prescience in capturing the anxieties surrounding global health emergencies. A terror that became all too real when the COVID pandemic consumed the world. First, let’s look at the film’s massive, award-winning cast featuring talents from stars such as Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, and Gweneth Paltrow. At the time of its making, this was, and mostly still is, a who’s who of Hollywood. The fact that Steven Soderbergh directed Contagion doesn’t hurt. He is the same filmmaker behind Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Sex, Lies, and Video Tapes,

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Mar 2, 2024

Movie Review: Videodrome (1983) – Criterion 4K/Blu-ray

Max Renn (James Woods, John Carpenter’s Vampires) is the president of tiny UHF station CIVIC-TV; a channel that stays afloat thanks to it’s regular broadcasts containing ample amounts of those hoary ol’ chestnuts, sex and violence! Bored with the normal softcore smut he’s is offered for broadcast, Mmax turns his eyes skyward for inspiration… namely by using CIVIC-TV’s big-ass satellite dish to find new programs that’ll excite both himself and his viewers. To that end, he gets turned on to Videodrome; a plot-less torture program… most likely unsimulated… that is broadcast from Pittsburgh. Along the way he gets his new sadomasochistic girlfriend, the radio host Nicki Brand (Blondie’s Debbie Harry) who gets it in her head that she wants to try and audition for the show. His investigation as to the show’s origin brings him to The Cathode Ray Mission; a homeless shelter that seeks to rehabilitate derelicts through constant exposure to television… and was the home of the TV-based

Continue reading →
DanXIII
Mar 1, 2024
Next →