CategoryReviews
Honest horror reviews of films, series, games and books — no hype, no spoilers, just whether it is worth your time and your nerves.
3,430 stories
ConventionsHalloweenHoliday HorrorProductReviews
Sometimes you need something like gloves to bring your outfit together, whether casual, cosplay, on the job, hanging out, serving our country, or riding your steel steed. Leather gloves are the best but there are so many kinds out there to choose from that fit your uniqueness. An unsuspecting ally is here for this need, meet Maroon Bell Outdoor which specializes in leather goods for the outdoors. I want to thank Jeremy, the founder of Maroon Bell Outdoor for sending over some of their Lion Guard Motorcycle gloves and making this review possible! Right away the gloves look awesome with the skeletal patchwork sewn onto the glove, which I really like as it reminds me of my favorite wrestler growing up, La Parka (L.A. Park). The gloves are made with water buffalo leather, which is said to be three times stronger than cow leather meaning they’ll last longer and will over time mold to your hand thanks to the use
Continue reading →
Reviews
It’s a Hammer film, for better and worse. A modern reimagining of Louis Stevenson’s classic novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hammer’s DOCTOR JEKYLL manages to entertain, but fails to stick the perfect landing. Spoilers follow. I’ll try to keep them light. Writers: Dan Kelly-Mulhern/Robert Louis Stevenson Director: Joe Stephenson Cast: Eddie Izzard, Scott Chambers, Lindsay Duncan, Simon Callow, Jonathan Hyde, Morgan Watkins, Robyn Cara Run Time: 89 Mins The film is an interesting take on the well-known Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dynamic. Eddie Izzard plays our titular character, Dr. Nina Jekyll. A pharmaceutical tycoon who’s made a fortune in the business. When scandal hits, it’s all placed in immediate jeopardy. The idea of an evil pharmaceutical mogul is anything but new, but it works in this setting. Paced well, and never too grandiose, the story manages to keep your attention, feeding you just enough to keep you invested, without giving everything away too early.
Continue reading →
GamingIndieProductReviews
With what happened a couple of years ago with the lockdowns, many people became fascinated with how diseases work, and how they affect people. Call it morbid curiosity, or call it legitimate understanding, either way, part of you wonders what it would be like to create or fight diseases. Well, the folks over at DryGin Studios have been answering this question with their “Bio Inc.” game series. They were awesome enough to send over their latest title to their series (Big thank you, by the way!) for me to check out. This is Bio Inc. Redemption. Bio Inc. Redemption is a strategy medical simulator where you are either the virus or the doctor trying to save the patient. For this review, I chose the side of death, because I’m a morbid twerp like that, so this is based mainly on that playthrough. The controls are straightforward though I feel the tutorial for console versions could be a bit clearer. Be
Continue reading →
GamingIndieParanormalProductReviewsSci-Fi
Who says the zombie apocalypse has to be hard, scary, and gloomy? Why fear zombies when you can hack into (what’s left of) their brains and make them your buddy? That’s what EKO Software and NACON’s Welcome to ParadiZe, where survivors can enslave zombies and survive the zombie apocalypse. Welcome to ParadiZe is set in the middle of a global zombie takeover and the only beacon of hope is a place called ParadiZe, a community where zombies work for the humans and protect them from other zombies. After you arrive, it becomes clear that you need to make it what the ads promised. Now, onto the game itself! Give yourself some time to get used to the controls as the tutorial machineguns instructions at you almost right away. There’s a codex that you can refer to at any time to look at past tutorials, always a nice touch when a game does that. The game is in 3rd person, unfortunately,
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsShort Films
THE ACTIVATED MAN (U.S., 2023) Writer/director Nicholas Gyeney’s feature The Activated Man is an interesting variation on the “shadow people” subgenre. The film goes all-in on its exploration of psychic power and supernatural forces. Leaning perhaps slightly more toward tugging at the heartstrings than delivering full-blown horror, the film does serve up a decidedly frightening new character in The Fedora Man (Edward Michael Scott), whose appearance should inspire cosplay and Halloween costumes aplenty. The Activated Man is loaded with ideas, perhaps almost too many for a single film, including a late reveal that I won’t spoil here. Unemployed Ors (Jamie Costa) is suffering from depression after the loss of his dog Louie to cancer, and his police detective significant other Sarah (Ivana Rojas) is supportive of him, while she herself investigates local cases of murder–suicides, an epidemic of which is sweeping the United States. Ors begins to see ghostly visions of Louie, as well as unwelcome appearances from The Fedora
Continue reading →
MoviesParanormalReviewsThriller
After the tragic drowning death of their daughter, John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) and his wife Laura (Julie Christie) head to Venice from their home in England as John has been hired to restore an ages-old church to it’s former glory. I’m sure all that water in Venice will help them forget the soggy misery of the past… Even if a change of location would help them, the psychic visions of blind Heather (Hilary Mason… a familiar face to fans of Charles Band’s pre-Full Moon outfit Empire Pictures for her appearances in Stuart Gordon’s Robot Jox and Dolls) will bring those memories right back as she claims she can see their daughter, whom she describes with chilling accuracy. This begins taking a toll on Laura, which isn’t really helped by the continued presence of Heather and her sister Wendy (Clelia Matania) who hold a séance to help Laura communicate with her daughter beyond the veil. Soon Laura is shipped back to
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
A child is cornered by hunters before being rescued by a large, wolf-like creature (I could have just said werewolf, but I like making shit hard on myself) who rips them hombres a new asshole real speedy-like! Next up we meet Dr. Dan (Bill Sykes); a former hot-shot surgeon/drunk, now self-exiled to a small rural town where he is allowed to practice medicine as long as he attends local AA meetings. Along the way, his son Stewart (Ryan O Roy) is bitten by an overly-horny townie girl, Sarah (Libby Collins), and before long turns real hairy… and fang-y… because unbeknownst to Dan’s family, he has escaped his troubles only to find himself doctoring smack-dab in the middle of a town of werewolves… werewolves who mostly want to live in peace with humanity… but of course there is a certain number among them that are more than happy to use human’s as cattle… chief among them pub owner Zev (Steve Pascucci
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Somewhere in director Lars Janssen’s Underground (U.K., 2023) is a good horror short, but at feature-film length, the project feels heavily padded. Ella (Maaike Tol) is about to get married, and her friends Riley (Charlotte Dawn Potter, who cowrote the screenplay with Janssen), Ziggy (Sapphire Brewer-Marchant), Claire (Nadia Dawber), and Jessica (Caitlyn Barber) are throwing her a hen party (a bachelorette party, as it is called in the U.S.), with plenty of drinking as part of the festivities. Their wacky (to this point) evening gets them kicked out of a taxi cab by the driver, and the friends are left to their own devices on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. Armed only with their smartphones, the quintet gets into further trouble when one of them falls down a hole, and the others come to her aid and find themselves trapped in a bunker. Underground starts off by introducing us to the protagonists, which at first is a
Continue reading →
MoviesReviewsThriller
Opening like a live-action adaptation of the classic video game Paperboy, the daily news is shown kissing pavement accompanied by the sound of a sack of bricks hittin’ a dirt road. Why do I mention it? Well One, it comes back later loud n’ proud to signify all manner of things getting tossed to the ground, and Two I found it funny as balls. What does any of that have to do with the plot synopsis of the film that usually appears ‘round these parts? Absolutely nothing. Moving on… Oh wait, yes it does… said newspapers contain a headline about a local boy being released from ye olde asylum and apparently a killing was involved… we’ll get back to that one soon, believe you me! Coincidentally, District Attorney William Carson III (Martin Mull, Clue) is murdered on a camping trip. This is of course unbeknownst to his daughter Paula, portrayed by popular late ‘80s scream queen Jill Schoelen (The Stepfather,
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsShort Films
THE FOREBODING: FRACTURED (U.K., 2024) In director Kemal Yildrim’s short The Foreboding: Fractured, four university friends go camping in the woods, which is never a good idea when it comes to horror movie characters. Neither is telling scary stories by the campfire, but that happens here too. The elements are set for some forest-bound fear fare, and though I will avoid going into spoiler territory, suffice it to say that what the quartet runs afoul of is not a slasher nor a cryptid, but something of the supernatural variety. The ensemble cast — Eve Kathryn Oliver, Alexander Staunton-Hill (who also wrote the screenplay), Olivia Bennett, Peter Tilley, and Sienna Shih — all turn in fine performances playing believable characters, and Yildrim does an admirable job of setting an eerie atmosphere and building suspense. SOUR MILK (U.K., 2024) A homeless shelter offers a terrifying choice for a young woman in writer/director Joe Duncombe’s Sour Milk. Cassie’s (Molly Grainger) first night at
Continue reading →
More from Reviews
ConventionsHalloweenHoliday HorrorProductReviews
Sometimes you need something like gloves to bring your outfit together, whether casual, cosplay, on the job, hanging out, serving our country, or riding your steel steed. Leather gloves are the best but there are so many kinds out there to choose from that fit your uniqueness. An unsuspecting ally is here for this need, meet Maroon Bell Outdoor which specializes in leather goods for the outdoors. I want to thank Jeremy, the founder of Maroon Bell Outdoor for sending over some of their Lion Guard Motorcycle gloves and making this review possible! Right away the gloves look awesome with the skeletal patchwork sewn onto the glove, which I really like as it reminds me of my favorite wrestler growing up, La Parka (L.A. Park). The gloves are made with water buffalo leather, which is said to be three times stronger than cow leather meaning they’ll last longer and will over time mold to your hand thanks to the use
Continue reading →
Reviews
It’s a Hammer film, for better and worse. A modern reimagining of Louis Stevenson’s classic novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hammer’s DOCTOR JEKYLL manages to entertain, but fails to stick the perfect landing. Spoilers follow. I’ll try to keep them light. Writers: Dan Kelly-Mulhern/Robert Louis Stevenson Director: Joe Stephenson Cast: Eddie Izzard, Scott Chambers, Lindsay Duncan, Simon Callow, Jonathan Hyde, Morgan Watkins, Robyn Cara Run Time: 89 Mins The film is an interesting take on the well-known Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dynamic. Eddie Izzard plays our titular character, Dr. Nina Jekyll. A pharmaceutical tycoon who’s made a fortune in the business. When scandal hits, it’s all placed in immediate jeopardy. The idea of an evil pharmaceutical mogul is anything but new, but it works in this setting. Paced well, and never too grandiose, the story manages to keep your attention, feeding you just enough to keep you invested, without giving everything away too early.
Continue reading →
GamingIndieProductReviews
With what happened a couple of years ago with the lockdowns, many people became fascinated with how diseases work, and how they affect people. Call it morbid curiosity, or call it legitimate understanding, either way, part of you wonders what it would be like to create or fight diseases. Well, the folks over at DryGin Studios have been answering this question with their “Bio Inc.” game series. They were awesome enough to send over their latest title to their series (Big thank you, by the way!) for me to check out. This is Bio Inc. Redemption. Bio Inc. Redemption is a strategy medical simulator where you are either the virus or the doctor trying to save the patient. For this review, I chose the side of death, because I’m a morbid twerp like that, so this is based mainly on that playthrough. The controls are straightforward though I feel the tutorial for console versions could be a bit clearer. Be
Continue reading →
GamingIndieParanormalProductReviewsSci-Fi
Who says the zombie apocalypse has to be hard, scary, and gloomy? Why fear zombies when you can hack into (what’s left of) their brains and make them your buddy? That’s what EKO Software and NACON’s Welcome to ParadiZe, where survivors can enslave zombies and survive the zombie apocalypse. Welcome to ParadiZe is set in the middle of a global zombie takeover and the only beacon of hope is a place called ParadiZe, a community where zombies work for the humans and protect them from other zombies. After you arrive, it becomes clear that you need to make it what the ads promised. Now, onto the game itself! Give yourself some time to get used to the controls as the tutorial machineguns instructions at you almost right away. There’s a codex that you can refer to at any time to look at past tutorials, always a nice touch when a game does that. The game is in 3rd person, unfortunately,
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsShort Films
THE ACTIVATED MAN (U.S., 2023) Writer/director Nicholas Gyeney’s feature The Activated Man is an interesting variation on the “shadow people” subgenre. The film goes all-in on its exploration of psychic power and supernatural forces. Leaning perhaps slightly more toward tugging at the heartstrings than delivering full-blown horror, the film does serve up a decidedly frightening new character in The Fedora Man (Edward Michael Scott), whose appearance should inspire cosplay and Halloween costumes aplenty. The Activated Man is loaded with ideas, perhaps almost too many for a single film, including a late reveal that I won’t spoil here. Unemployed Ors (Jamie Costa) is suffering from depression after the loss of his dog Louie to cancer, and his police detective significant other Sarah (Ivana Rojas) is supportive of him, while she herself investigates local cases of murder–suicides, an epidemic of which is sweeping the United States. Ors begins to see ghostly visions of Louie, as well as unwelcome appearances from The Fedora
Continue reading →
MoviesParanormalReviewsThriller
After the tragic drowning death of their daughter, John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) and his wife Laura (Julie Christie) head to Venice from their home in England as John has been hired to restore an ages-old church to it’s former glory. I’m sure all that water in Venice will help them forget the soggy misery of the past… Even if a change of location would help them, the psychic visions of blind Heather (Hilary Mason… a familiar face to fans of Charles Band’s pre-Full Moon outfit Empire Pictures for her appearances in Stuart Gordon’s Robot Jox and Dolls) will bring those memories right back as she claims she can see their daughter, whom she describes with chilling accuracy. This begins taking a toll on Laura, which isn’t really helped by the continued presence of Heather and her sister Wendy (Clelia Matania) who hold a séance to help Laura communicate with her daughter beyond the veil. Soon Laura is shipped back to
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
A child is cornered by hunters before being rescued by a large, wolf-like creature (I could have just said werewolf, but I like making shit hard on myself) who rips them hombres a new asshole real speedy-like! Next up we meet Dr. Dan (Bill Sykes); a former hot-shot surgeon/drunk, now self-exiled to a small rural town where he is allowed to practice medicine as long as he attends local AA meetings. Along the way, his son Stewart (Ryan O Roy) is bitten by an overly-horny townie girl, Sarah (Libby Collins), and before long turns real hairy… and fang-y… because unbeknownst to Dan’s family, he has escaped his troubles only to find himself doctoring smack-dab in the middle of a town of werewolves… werewolves who mostly want to live in peace with humanity… but of course there is a certain number among them that are more than happy to use human’s as cattle… chief among them pub owner Zev (Steve Pascucci
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Somewhere in director Lars Janssen’s Underground (U.K., 2023) is a good horror short, but at feature-film length, the project feels heavily padded. Ella (Maaike Tol) is about to get married, and her friends Riley (Charlotte Dawn Potter, who cowrote the screenplay with Janssen), Ziggy (Sapphire Brewer-Marchant), Claire (Nadia Dawber), and Jessica (Caitlyn Barber) are throwing her a hen party (a bachelorette party, as it is called in the U.S.), with plenty of drinking as part of the festivities. Their wacky (to this point) evening gets them kicked out of a taxi cab by the driver, and the friends are left to their own devices on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. Armed only with their smartphones, the quintet gets into further trouble when one of them falls down a hole, and the others come to her aid and find themselves trapped in a bunker. Underground starts off by introducing us to the protagonists, which at first is a
Continue reading →
MoviesReviewsThriller
Opening like a live-action adaptation of the classic video game Paperboy, the daily news is shown kissing pavement accompanied by the sound of a sack of bricks hittin’ a dirt road. Why do I mention it? Well One, it comes back later loud n’ proud to signify all manner of things getting tossed to the ground, and Two I found it funny as balls. What does any of that have to do with the plot synopsis of the film that usually appears ‘round these parts? Absolutely nothing. Moving on… Oh wait, yes it does… said newspapers contain a headline about a local boy being released from ye olde asylum and apparently a killing was involved… we’ll get back to that one soon, believe you me! Coincidentally, District Attorney William Carson III (Martin Mull, Clue) is murdered on a camping trip. This is of course unbeknownst to his daughter Paula, portrayed by popular late ‘80s scream queen Jill Schoelen (The Stepfather,
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsShort Films
THE FOREBODING: FRACTURED (U.K., 2024) In director Kemal Yildrim’s short The Foreboding: Fractured, four university friends go camping in the woods, which is never a good idea when it comes to horror movie characters. Neither is telling scary stories by the campfire, but that happens here too. The elements are set for some forest-bound fear fare, and though I will avoid going into spoiler territory, suffice it to say that what the quartet runs afoul of is not a slasher nor a cryptid, but something of the supernatural variety. The ensemble cast — Eve Kathryn Oliver, Alexander Staunton-Hill (who also wrote the screenplay), Olivia Bennett, Peter Tilley, and Sienna Shih — all turn in fine performances playing believable characters, and Yildrim does an admirable job of setting an eerie atmosphere and building suspense. SOUR MILK (U.K., 2024) A homeless shelter offers a terrifying choice for a young woman in writer/director Joe Duncombe’s Sour Milk. Cassie’s (Molly Grainger) first night at
Continue reading →
