CategoryReviews
Honest horror reviews of films, series, games and books — no hype, no spoilers, just whether it is worth your time and your nerves.
3,432 stories
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Special Delivery A fun horror comedy that could also serve as a tongue-in-cheek educational birth control film, director Andrew Melzer’s short Special Delivery (2022) finds a couple having their lives as they know them threatened by the news of a certain bundle of joy on the way. As they fight through their emotions, a stork intent on delivering its traditional package looms eerily nearby. The laughs come hard and fast here, with a subject highly relatable to parents and anyone who ever considered — or freaked out about — becoming one. Stuck Sophia (Ianua Coeli Linhart) is having second thoughts about moving into a new home with her significant other, and the demonic discovery she makes in the attic isn’t going to help matters any. With Stuck (Italy, 2022), writer/director David A. Roncone has crafted an eerie supernatural short that wrings a good deal of suspense from its classic set-up of a person alone in a new house who finds
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MoviesReviews
Writer/director Zac Locke’s #FLOAT (2022) combines survival horror and the supernatural for a river trek involving a group of young people who plan to scatter the ashes of a friend who died in the same body of water. Though an interesting exercise, #FLOAT ultimately leaves viewers adrift regarding story details after spending time with characters to whom it isn’t easy to warm up. Aspiring but struggling vlogger Kali Fyre (Kate Mayhew) and her boyfriend Jackson (Miguel Muñoz) go on the river trip with friends Madison (Scarlett Sperduto), Dee (Kaya Coleman), Blake (Grant Morningstar), and Zola (Christina Nguyen), along with Blake and Zola’s young daughter Thea (Ophelia Lichtenstein). The group plans to pay respect to their deceased friend Chuy (Cristobal Reyes), but first comes heavy drinking and plenty of bickering amongst members who are nonsupportive of each other, harbor sexual crushes, and the like. Once the river float starts, Thea suddenly disappears underwater and her panic-stricken parents spy her on shore
Continue reading →
HalloweenHoliday HorrorProductReviews
It’s that time of year again when ugly Christmas sweaters are back in style for a few weeks, and with that is the want and need to find a sweater that’s not just right for the season, but shows off your fandom. This is where the awesome folks over at Merchoid come to the rescue! A big thank you to Merchoid for making this review possible! Merchoid was awesome enough to send me a The Nightmare Before Christmas ugly Christmas sweater, and it’s anything but ugly! First off, this is an actual sweater, while most sites right now sell ugly Christmas “sweaters” that are just designs printed on polyester and spandex material and then have the gull to charge you a lot for it, Merchoid gives you an actual woven sweater! If you’re wondering if it keeps you warm, YES it does. How do I know? Remember that snowstorm that hit Buffalo back in November? Guess who was wearing an
Continue reading →
GamingProductReviewsSci-Fi
From the first moment I got a cryptic email telling me about a new game coming from Glen Schofield (creator of Dead Space) called The Callisto Protocol, I was in from the word go! After the first trailer, I was very interested and I brought you guys along for the ride. I’m pleased to say that the awesome folks at Krafton and Striking Distance were awesome and allowed me to take a trip to Black Iron Prison and for this, I thank them for the early Christmas gift! The Callisto Protocol follows a freight transporter named Jacob Lee who while transporting cargo to the moon of Callisto, has his ship pirated by a terrorist organization and causing him to crash onto the planet that is also a maximum security prison, and in a Kafka twist, he’s arrested and made into the prisoner of the planet for no reason. Shortly after becoming a prisoner, Jacob awakes to find the prison falling
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Ringworms Director Will Lee’s Ringworms (2022) is a blast — an insane, splatterific, mind-boggling trip that finds a young woman named Abbie (Faye Nightingale) on what was supposed to be a romantic weekend trip to a cabin with her boyfriend Jacob (Skylar Okerstrom-Lang). When she discovers that he plans to propose, she goes through doubts about whether she wants such a commitment with him. Meanwhile, something’s going on in the cabin basement that will make her worries about marriage seem miniscule in comparison to what goes down. Lee, who cowrote the screenplay with Ian Hedman, packs plenty of thrills, grue, and even some laughs into this high-energy affair that boasts solid direction and acting, along with some fantastic practical effects. Shadowban The modern phenomenon of social influencing crashes headlong into folk horror traditions in writer/director Shane W. Brennan’s solid Irish horror short Shadowban (2022). Fiona (Fiona Bergin) is livestreaming her side hustle deliveries on a lonely country road on Halloween
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Film FestivalsMoviesReviews
You would think that a film giving away its body count in its title and told by way of nonlinear fashion in which the fate of its characters are shown early on would be lacking in suspense, but 8 Found Dead defies the odds. Director Travis Greene, working from a screenplay by Jonathan Buchanan, wrings tension from an initially awkward situation that escalates to chilling, thanks in large part to characters that create highly uncomfortable edginess throughout. Four twenty-something friends with uncomfortable ties in both the present and the past plan a weekend retreat so that social influencer Sam (Alisha Soper) can make a big announcement to her boyfriend Dwayne (William Gabriel Grier) and couple Carrie (Aly Trasher) and Ricky (Eddy Acosta). The group books a short-term rental house only to find, as they arrive in separate pairs, that older couple Richard (Tim Simek) and Liz (Roseanna Limeres) are already ensconced and have no plans to leave. As the younger
Continue reading →
GamingIndieParanormalProductReviewsSci-Fi
During the pandemic, there were a lot of changes going on that some people adjusted well to while others had no coping skills and made simple solutions painfully difficult to enforce. Game developers were also affected by the pandemic and like the aforementioned groups of people, felt fear, isolation, and uncertainty about the future. Indie game publisher and developer HOOK was inspired by this and made Edengate: The Edge of Life. I want to give thanks to HOOK for the reviewing opportunity! In Edengate: The Edge of Life players take on the role of Mia, a biologist, who has awakened in the hospital with little to no memory of what or how she got there, even more, she’s all alone, and not just in the hospital but in the entire city of Edengate. Now onto the game itself. When it comes to Edengate: The Edge of Life‘s controls, they’re literally just movement, zoom, and interaction, that’s it, pretty much impossible
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![Movie Review: Coraline (2009) and ParaNorman (2012) - Limited Edition Steelbook 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray [4K UHD]](https://horrorfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/co.avif)
MoviesReviews
Our dear fiends over at Shout! Factory have unleashed a demonic duo of frightful family features, and I’m about to lay my eerie eyeballs on both monstrous movies! First up comes Coraline, an impressive stop-motion adaptation from Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) based on the yarn from Sandman’s Neil Gaiman! Coraline Jones has it rough; she’s the new kid in town, and her parents do nothing but work their asses off ‘round the clock. While existing in her solitude, our heroine makes the acquaintance of her parent’s landlady’s grandson; one, Wyborne “Wybie” Lovat (not to mention a black cat that always makes the scene), and before long her new pal hands Coraline a ragdoll his grandmother owns… and that thing looks just like our protagonist! Now get this, that doll is soon up and about, and leads Caroline to a secret door in the apartment that opens upon a parallel nightmare universe populated by button-eyed, saccharine doppelgangers of her
Continue reading →
GamingParanormalReviews
When the sun sets in the west, you would think the day’s done right? Nope, that’s when the work picks up in Flying Wild Hog’s game, Evil West. A big thank you to Focus Home and Flying Wild Hog for the reviewing opportunity! Evil West takes place in an alternative 19th-century timeline where players take on the role of Jesse Rentier, a vampire hunter with the secretive Rentier Institute that hunts down the vampire threat in the US. Someone behind the scene among the vampires wants to rage all-out war against humans and attacked the Rentier Institute head-on, forcing Jesse to take on the role of the organization’s leader and rebuild the institute. Now onto the game itself! The controls are easy to learn and adapt to. When it comes to sound, the voice acting, ambient sounds, and music are all good but the mixing should be tweaked as even though I lowered the volume on everything else and raised
Continue reading →
AdaptationNetflixNewsReviewsStreaming TVTrailers
Like many Addams Family fans, I was thrilled to hear that Tim Burton and Netflix were teaming up for the series “Wednesday,” which premiered earlier this month on the streaming giant. I binged the series, and I have some thoughts. In the series, we see Wednesday shipped off to a school for outcasts and monsters, Nevermore Academy. While she hates it at first, she is soon swept up in a mystery surrounding killed students and townspeople after she begins to have visions. Along the way, she makes friends and enemies. First off, let me say that Jenna Ortega was a brilliant casting decision. She makes a fantastic Wednesday and captures the character’s darkness perfectly. However, the rest of the Addams family wasn’t quite so lucky. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays the role of Morticia but lacks the iconic sexiness and elegance of the character. When it comes to Gomez, played by Luis Guzmán, the character is missing the suaveness we’ve come to
Continue reading →
More from Reviews
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Special Delivery A fun horror comedy that could also serve as a tongue-in-cheek educational birth control film, director Andrew Melzer’s short Special Delivery (2022) finds a couple having their lives as they know them threatened by the news of a certain bundle of joy on the way. As they fight through their emotions, a stork intent on delivering its traditional package looms eerily nearby. The laughs come hard and fast here, with a subject highly relatable to parents and anyone who ever considered — or freaked out about — becoming one. Stuck Sophia (Ianua Coeli Linhart) is having second thoughts about moving into a new home with her significant other, and the demonic discovery she makes in the attic isn’t going to help matters any. With Stuck (Italy, 2022), writer/director David A. Roncone has crafted an eerie supernatural short that wrings a good deal of suspense from its classic set-up of a person alone in a new house who finds
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
Writer/director Zac Locke’s #FLOAT (2022) combines survival horror and the supernatural for a river trek involving a group of young people who plan to scatter the ashes of a friend who died in the same body of water. Though an interesting exercise, #FLOAT ultimately leaves viewers adrift regarding story details after spending time with characters to whom it isn’t easy to warm up. Aspiring but struggling vlogger Kali Fyre (Kate Mayhew) and her boyfriend Jackson (Miguel Muñoz) go on the river trip with friends Madison (Scarlett Sperduto), Dee (Kaya Coleman), Blake (Grant Morningstar), and Zola (Christina Nguyen), along with Blake and Zola’s young daughter Thea (Ophelia Lichtenstein). The group plans to pay respect to their deceased friend Chuy (Cristobal Reyes), but first comes heavy drinking and plenty of bickering amongst members who are nonsupportive of each other, harbor sexual crushes, and the like. Once the river float starts, Thea suddenly disappears underwater and her panic-stricken parents spy her on shore
Continue reading →
HalloweenHoliday HorrorProductReviews
It’s that time of year again when ugly Christmas sweaters are back in style for a few weeks, and with that is the want and need to find a sweater that’s not just right for the season, but shows off your fandom. This is where the awesome folks over at Merchoid come to the rescue! A big thank you to Merchoid for making this review possible! Merchoid was awesome enough to send me a The Nightmare Before Christmas ugly Christmas sweater, and it’s anything but ugly! First off, this is an actual sweater, while most sites right now sell ugly Christmas “sweaters” that are just designs printed on polyester and spandex material and then have the gull to charge you a lot for it, Merchoid gives you an actual woven sweater! If you’re wondering if it keeps you warm, YES it does. How do I know? Remember that snowstorm that hit Buffalo back in November? Guess who was wearing an
Continue reading →
GamingProductReviewsSci-Fi
From the first moment I got a cryptic email telling me about a new game coming from Glen Schofield (creator of Dead Space) called The Callisto Protocol, I was in from the word go! After the first trailer, I was very interested and I brought you guys along for the ride. I’m pleased to say that the awesome folks at Krafton and Striking Distance were awesome and allowed me to take a trip to Black Iron Prison and for this, I thank them for the early Christmas gift! The Callisto Protocol follows a freight transporter named Jacob Lee who while transporting cargo to the moon of Callisto, has his ship pirated by a terrorist organization and causing him to crash onto the planet that is also a maximum security prison, and in a Kafka twist, he’s arrested and made into the prisoner of the planet for no reason. Shortly after becoming a prisoner, Jacob awakes to find the prison falling
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Ringworms Director Will Lee’s Ringworms (2022) is a blast — an insane, splatterific, mind-boggling trip that finds a young woman named Abbie (Faye Nightingale) on what was supposed to be a romantic weekend trip to a cabin with her boyfriend Jacob (Skylar Okerstrom-Lang). When she discovers that he plans to propose, she goes through doubts about whether she wants such a commitment with him. Meanwhile, something’s going on in the cabin basement that will make her worries about marriage seem miniscule in comparison to what goes down. Lee, who cowrote the screenplay with Ian Hedman, packs plenty of thrills, grue, and even some laughs into this high-energy affair that boasts solid direction and acting, along with some fantastic practical effects. Shadowban The modern phenomenon of social influencing crashes headlong into folk horror traditions in writer/director Shane W. Brennan’s solid Irish horror short Shadowban (2022). Fiona (Fiona Bergin) is livestreaming her side hustle deliveries on a lonely country road on Halloween
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsMoviesReviews
You would think that a film giving away its body count in its title and told by way of nonlinear fashion in which the fate of its characters are shown early on would be lacking in suspense, but 8 Found Dead defies the odds. Director Travis Greene, working from a screenplay by Jonathan Buchanan, wrings tension from an initially awkward situation that escalates to chilling, thanks in large part to characters that create highly uncomfortable edginess throughout. Four twenty-something friends with uncomfortable ties in both the present and the past plan a weekend retreat so that social influencer Sam (Alisha Soper) can make a big announcement to her boyfriend Dwayne (William Gabriel Grier) and couple Carrie (Aly Trasher) and Ricky (Eddy Acosta). The group books a short-term rental house only to find, as they arrive in separate pairs, that older couple Richard (Tim Simek) and Liz (Roseanna Limeres) are already ensconced and have no plans to leave. As the younger
Continue reading →
GamingIndieParanormalProductReviewsSci-Fi
During the pandemic, there were a lot of changes going on that some people adjusted well to while others had no coping skills and made simple solutions painfully difficult to enforce. Game developers were also affected by the pandemic and like the aforementioned groups of people, felt fear, isolation, and uncertainty about the future. Indie game publisher and developer HOOK was inspired by this and made Edengate: The Edge of Life. I want to give thanks to HOOK for the reviewing opportunity! In Edengate: The Edge of Life players take on the role of Mia, a biologist, who has awakened in the hospital with little to no memory of what or how she got there, even more, she’s all alone, and not just in the hospital but in the entire city of Edengate. Now onto the game itself. When it comes to Edengate: The Edge of Life‘s controls, they’re literally just movement, zoom, and interaction, that’s it, pretty much impossible
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
Our dear fiends over at Shout! Factory have unleashed a demonic duo of frightful family features, and I’m about to lay my eerie eyeballs on both monstrous movies! First up comes Coraline, an impressive stop-motion adaptation from Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) based on the yarn from Sandman’s Neil Gaiman! Coraline Jones has it rough; she’s the new kid in town, and her parents do nothing but work their asses off ‘round the clock. While existing in her solitude, our heroine makes the acquaintance of her parent’s landlady’s grandson; one, Wyborne “Wybie” Lovat (not to mention a black cat that always makes the scene), and before long her new pal hands Coraline a ragdoll his grandmother owns… and that thing looks just like our protagonist! Now get this, that doll is soon up and about, and leads Caroline to a secret door in the apartment that opens upon a parallel nightmare universe populated by button-eyed, saccharine doppelgangers of her
Continue reading →
GamingParanormalReviews
When the sun sets in the west, you would think the day’s done right? Nope, that’s when the work picks up in Flying Wild Hog’s game, Evil West. A big thank you to Focus Home and Flying Wild Hog for the reviewing opportunity! Evil West takes place in an alternative 19th-century timeline where players take on the role of Jesse Rentier, a vampire hunter with the secretive Rentier Institute that hunts down the vampire threat in the US. Someone behind the scene among the vampires wants to rage all-out war against humans and attacked the Rentier Institute head-on, forcing Jesse to take on the role of the organization’s leader and rebuild the institute. Now onto the game itself! The controls are easy to learn and adapt to. When it comes to sound, the voice acting, ambient sounds, and music are all good but the mixing should be tweaked as even though I lowered the volume on everything else and raised
Continue reading →
AdaptationNetflixNewsReviewsStreaming TVTrailers
Like many Addams Family fans, I was thrilled to hear that Tim Burton and Netflix were teaming up for the series “Wednesday,” which premiered earlier this month on the streaming giant. I binged the series, and I have some thoughts. In the series, we see Wednesday shipped off to a school for outcasts and monsters, Nevermore Academy. While she hates it at first, she is soon swept up in a mystery surrounding killed students and townspeople after she begins to have visions. Along the way, she makes friends and enemies. First off, let me say that Jenna Ortega was a brilliant casting decision. She makes a fantastic Wednesday and captures the character’s darkness perfectly. However, the rest of the Addams family wasn’t quite so lucky. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays the role of Morticia but lacks the iconic sexiness and elegance of the character. When it comes to Gomez, played by Luis Guzmán, the character is missing the suaveness we’ve come to
Continue reading →
