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
AdaptationBooksMoviesNewsPeacockReviewsStreaming TVTrailers
Okay, let’s start at the begging. Firestarter (2022) is based on Stephen King’s 1980 classic novel. In the film, for more than a decade, parents Andy (Zac Efron; Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile; The Greatest Showman) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon; Fear the Walking Dead, Succession) have been on the run, desperate to hide their daughter Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong; American Horror Story: Double Feature, The Tomorrow War) from a shadowy federal agency that wants to harness her unprecedented gift for creating fire into a weapon of mass destruction. To be blunt, when the news first arrived that a new reboot/new adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter was headed our way, I was skeptical. Let’s be honest remakes/reboots/reimagining usually suck. So I didn’t expect much. But I am here to tell you that I actually enjoyed it. I know, I’m shocked too. The casting is great and Zac Efron actually pulls off playing a dad, which is a role I would
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Fresh off her role in the series “Yellowjackets”, Christina Ricci stars as Laura, a mother fleeing her husband. After relocating to a new beautiful home complete with cheery wallpaper and a picturesque lake, things soon take a dark turn when an entity sets its sights on the family. From All Cheerleaders Must Die director Chris Siverston, comes this dark tale about desperation, pain, and coming to terms with the past. In a way, the entity, a black entity that emerges from black goo to harass the family serves as a representation of Laura’s pain and guilt. Christina Ricci, where to start? I’ve long been a fan. She’s given so many amazing performances, but in the case of Monstrous, her performance is over the top, almost coming across as silly. While Ricci’s character is out to protect both herself and her son, she also seems a bit neglectful, never taking what her son is saying seriously. The story has issues. It
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Do your best not to learn much at all about writer/director Eskil Vogt’s Norwegian film The Innocents (De uskyldige; 2021) — my review will be free of spoilers — and you will be rewarded with one of the most gripping slices of fear-fare involving children in recent memory. This eerie feature has solidified one of the top spots on my list of favorite horror films of this year. Nine-year-old Ida (Rakel Lenora Flottum) is fed up with the extra attention that her parents (Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Flottum’s real-life mother, and Morten Svartveit) bestow on her older autistic sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad), signaled at the beginning of the film with Ida hurting her sister, who doesn’t outwardly express pain. The family moves into an apartment in a tower block at the edge of a wooded area, where Ida meets loners Ben (Sam Ashraf) and Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim). Ida is fascinated with what seem to be supernatural powers displayed
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsMoviesReviews
Dashcam Director Rob Savage follows up his highly acclaimed 2020 feature Host with Dashcam. It’s a freaky effort that uses an intriguing style that falls somewhere between direct cinema and found footage. There’s much to recommend about the film, though the lead character is so grating — no matter which way your politics lie — that it cancels out some of Dashcam’s goodwill. Musician and anti-vaxxer Annie Hardy plays a revved-up version of herself, hosting a livestreaming show in which she raps in an improv style while driving around in her car. In an effort to escape what she feels is the overbearing strictness toward COVID-19 in the United States to visit an old bandmate Stretch (Amar Chadha-Patel) in the U.K. — obviously, she didn’t do much homework before purchasing her ticket. She wreaks havoc in Stretch’s life before stealing his car and winds up picking up a sick elderly woman (Angela Enahoro), but the woman isn’t merely sick, and
Continue reading →
GamingIndieNewsProductReviews
Narcotics Anonymous said in 1981 “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.” before it was famously misquoted saying that it’s “doing the same thing over and over”, either way, the point is repeating things with the hope of a different outcome is insane. The subject of this review is a perfect example of that thanks to Thunderful & Carry Castle’s Lovecraftian game Source of Madness. Source of Madness is a side-scrolling action RPG that takes players into a world being twisted by cosmic horrors from beyond the stars. Players take on the role(s) of an acolyte of a cult venturing into the twisted landscapes of different biomes to find the source of the growing madness taking over your world. Now onto the game itself! the controls for Source of Madness are straightforward and thankfully limited allowing you to master it quickly and respond very well. The game’s sound design is amazing with the roars of the monsters,
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Dark Glasses Italian/French coproduction Dark Glasses (AKA Black Glasses; Occhiali Neri, 2022) is the latest from Dario Argento, and while it isn’t quite a return to form for the legendary director, it is arguably one of his better later-career offerings. High-end call girl Diana (Ilenia Pastorelli) loses her sight when she is pursued in a car chase by a serial killer who targets sex workers, and her vehicle crashes into another, blidning her and killing the parents of young boy Chin (Andrea Zhang). She visits him at the nunnery for orphans where he stays until placed with a foster family, and he escapes to live with her illegally. Naturally, the murderer is still pursuing Diana, which puts both her and the boy in peril. There are no surprises in Dark Glasses other than an eerie opening sequence involving a solar eclipse. After that, it’s pretty standard giallo/slasher fare, and not as stylish as viewers might hope for Argento’s first film
Continue reading →
BooksComic Books/Graphic NovelsReviews
Mad Shelley Comics has just released Halloween Girl, Vol. 2, the second chapter in its supernatural graphic novel series Halloween Girl. This latest installment in a planned 7-issue series based on creator Richard T. Wilson’s The Halloween Girl film and its sister web series, Under the Flowers. Halloween Girl, Vol. 2 continues this young-adult–oriented series in an intriguing manner, widening the world presented in the debut issue while dropping breadcrumbs of mystery for future story progression. Titular character Charlotte William is an 18-year-old ghost who can take on human form. Halloween Girl, Vol. 2 begins as she is trapped in a large house and about to be devoured by huge, spider-like creatures — and it doesn’t help that she suffers from arachnophobia and is stuck in her form that is least helpful for the precarious situation. Wilson’s writing is sharp and engaging, and he unfolds the story at a pace that is neither rushed nor too slow-moving. It might be
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
After surviving a freak plane crash as a child, Katerina (Svetlana Ivanova) has conquered her fears and is set to once again take flight with her young daughter in tow. Sometimes fear can be a life saver… Before the plane even leaves the tarmac, things start getting tense as shit as the weird/stressed passengers (what there are of them) and strange noises begin to take a hold on our heroine, bringing back the trauma… but, she refuses to give in and ditches her meds. I’m sure that’ll only help. Once in the air, a storm starts brewing, and our heroine begins reliving her past as things turn decidedly more nightmarish, not that the unblinking, unmoving flight attendants notice… but an in-flight heart attack seems to snap everybody to, and then all hell breaks loose… but is what is happening merely coincidence and a mental health speed bump, or is something more preternatural afoot? Director Alexander Babaev’s Row 19 is a
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Cannibal Holocaust’s maestro of mayhem Ruggero Deodato is back baby! Well, he was in 2016, and after a decades long hiatus from fright flicks and sleaze he just went right the fuck ahead and dove into the deep end of the putrid pool… and let me assure you, the old chap hasn’t lost a single beastly beat! Based (loosely) on the true life 2007 murder case of Amanda Knox/Meredith Kercher, Ballad in Blood begins with a sex fueled Halloween night party/drug-fueled orgy with bonus naked crucifixion hybrid (ain’t they always cats n’ creeps) and slips greasily into the aftermath of said event, where pals Duke (Edward Williams), a drug dealer by trade, and Jacopo (Gabriele Rossi) wake up in the apartment of Jacopo’s girlfriend Lenka (Carlotta Morelli) to find their friend Elizabeth (Noemi Smorra) decidedly not full of life… probably due to the rather large wound on her neck. Anyway, ol’ Elizabeth was recording a whole light of the previous
Continue reading →
ReviewsStreaming TV
An accident at a military base unleashes the greatest plague mankind has ever known (nicknamed Captain Trips), and the resulting contamination begins decimating Earth’s population faster than shit through a goose. Adding to the apocalyptic calamity on hand is the fact that the hand-full of survivors that are seemingly immune to the disease begin having visions of either the kindly Mother Abigail (Ruby Dee) or the devilish Randall Flagg (Jamey Sheridan), and they are being called towards a rural cornfield in Colorado. Soon sides will be chosen, good and evil will have a final conflict, and the fate of the world will be decided! Comprised of one hell of a stellar cast, some impressive visuals, and gnarly effects and make-up, this adaptation of Stephen King’s epic The Stand is a fantastic fright flick that manages the Herculean task of boiling down the maestro’s dense work into something that both wouldn’t run 18,645 minutes in length and could actually be played
Continue reading →
More from Reviews
AdaptationBooksMoviesNewsPeacockReviewsStreaming TVTrailers
Okay, let’s start at the begging. Firestarter (2022) is based on Stephen King’s 1980 classic novel. In the film, for more than a decade, parents Andy (Zac Efron; Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile; The Greatest Showman) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon; Fear the Walking Dead, Succession) have been on the run, desperate to hide their daughter Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong; American Horror Story: Double Feature, The Tomorrow War) from a shadowy federal agency that wants to harness her unprecedented gift for creating fire into a weapon of mass destruction. To be blunt, when the news first arrived that a new reboot/new adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter was headed our way, I was skeptical. Let’s be honest remakes/reboots/reimagining usually suck. So I didn’t expect much. But I am here to tell you that I actually enjoyed it. I know, I’m shocked too. The casting is great and Zac Efron actually pulls off playing a dad, which is a role I would
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Fresh off her role in the series “Yellowjackets”, Christina Ricci stars as Laura, a mother fleeing her husband. After relocating to a new beautiful home complete with cheery wallpaper and a picturesque lake, things soon take a dark turn when an entity sets its sights on the family. From All Cheerleaders Must Die director Chris Siverston, comes this dark tale about desperation, pain, and coming to terms with the past. In a way, the entity, a black entity that emerges from black goo to harass the family serves as a representation of Laura’s pain and guilt. Christina Ricci, where to start? I’ve long been a fan. She’s given so many amazing performances, but in the case of Monstrous, her performance is over the top, almost coming across as silly. While Ricci’s character is out to protect both herself and her son, she also seems a bit neglectful, never taking what her son is saying seriously. The story has issues. It
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Do your best not to learn much at all about writer/director Eskil Vogt’s Norwegian film The Innocents (De uskyldige; 2021) — my review will be free of spoilers — and you will be rewarded with one of the most gripping slices of fear-fare involving children in recent memory. This eerie feature has solidified one of the top spots on my list of favorite horror films of this year. Nine-year-old Ida (Rakel Lenora Flottum) is fed up with the extra attention that her parents (Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Flottum’s real-life mother, and Morten Svartveit) bestow on her older autistic sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad), signaled at the beginning of the film with Ida hurting her sister, who doesn’t outwardly express pain. The family moves into an apartment in a tower block at the edge of a wooded area, where Ida meets loners Ben (Sam Ashraf) and Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim). Ida is fascinated with what seem to be supernatural powers displayed
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsMoviesReviews
Dashcam Director Rob Savage follows up his highly acclaimed 2020 feature Host with Dashcam. It’s a freaky effort that uses an intriguing style that falls somewhere between direct cinema and found footage. There’s much to recommend about the film, though the lead character is so grating — no matter which way your politics lie — that it cancels out some of Dashcam’s goodwill. Musician and anti-vaxxer Annie Hardy plays a revved-up version of herself, hosting a livestreaming show in which she raps in an improv style while driving around in her car. In an effort to escape what she feels is the overbearing strictness toward COVID-19 in the United States to visit an old bandmate Stretch (Amar Chadha-Patel) in the U.K. — obviously, she didn’t do much homework before purchasing her ticket. She wreaks havoc in Stretch’s life before stealing his car and winds up picking up a sick elderly woman (Angela Enahoro), but the woman isn’t merely sick, and
Continue reading →
GamingIndieNewsProductReviews
Narcotics Anonymous said in 1981 “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.” before it was famously misquoted saying that it’s “doing the same thing over and over”, either way, the point is repeating things with the hope of a different outcome is insane. The subject of this review is a perfect example of that thanks to Thunderful & Carry Castle’s Lovecraftian game Source of Madness. Source of Madness is a side-scrolling action RPG that takes players into a world being twisted by cosmic horrors from beyond the stars. Players take on the role(s) of an acolyte of a cult venturing into the twisted landscapes of different biomes to find the source of the growing madness taking over your world. Now onto the game itself! the controls for Source of Madness are straightforward and thankfully limited allowing you to master it quickly and respond very well. The game’s sound design is amazing with the roars of the monsters,
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Dark Glasses Italian/French coproduction Dark Glasses (AKA Black Glasses; Occhiali Neri, 2022) is the latest from Dario Argento, and while it isn’t quite a return to form for the legendary director, it is arguably one of his better later-career offerings. High-end call girl Diana (Ilenia Pastorelli) loses her sight when she is pursued in a car chase by a serial killer who targets sex workers, and her vehicle crashes into another, blidning her and killing the parents of young boy Chin (Andrea Zhang). She visits him at the nunnery for orphans where he stays until placed with a foster family, and he escapes to live with her illegally. Naturally, the murderer is still pursuing Diana, which puts both her and the boy in peril. There are no surprises in Dark Glasses other than an eerie opening sequence involving a solar eclipse. After that, it’s pretty standard giallo/slasher fare, and not as stylish as viewers might hope for Argento’s first film
Continue reading →
BooksComic Books/Graphic NovelsReviews
Mad Shelley Comics has just released Halloween Girl, Vol. 2, the second chapter in its supernatural graphic novel series Halloween Girl. This latest installment in a planned 7-issue series based on creator Richard T. Wilson’s The Halloween Girl film and its sister web series, Under the Flowers. Halloween Girl, Vol. 2 continues this young-adult–oriented series in an intriguing manner, widening the world presented in the debut issue while dropping breadcrumbs of mystery for future story progression. Titular character Charlotte William is an 18-year-old ghost who can take on human form. Halloween Girl, Vol. 2 begins as she is trapped in a large house and about to be devoured by huge, spider-like creatures — and it doesn’t help that she suffers from arachnophobia and is stuck in her form that is least helpful for the precarious situation. Wilson’s writing is sharp and engaging, and he unfolds the story at a pace that is neither rushed nor too slow-moving. It might be
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
After surviving a freak plane crash as a child, Katerina (Svetlana Ivanova) has conquered her fears and is set to once again take flight with her young daughter in tow. Sometimes fear can be a life saver… Before the plane even leaves the tarmac, things start getting tense as shit as the weird/stressed passengers (what there are of them) and strange noises begin to take a hold on our heroine, bringing back the trauma… but, she refuses to give in and ditches her meds. I’m sure that’ll only help. Once in the air, a storm starts brewing, and our heroine begins reliving her past as things turn decidedly more nightmarish, not that the unblinking, unmoving flight attendants notice… but an in-flight heart attack seems to snap everybody to, and then all hell breaks loose… but is what is happening merely coincidence and a mental health speed bump, or is something more preternatural afoot? Director Alexander Babaev’s Row 19 is a
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Cannibal Holocaust’s maestro of mayhem Ruggero Deodato is back baby! Well, he was in 2016, and after a decades long hiatus from fright flicks and sleaze he just went right the fuck ahead and dove into the deep end of the putrid pool… and let me assure you, the old chap hasn’t lost a single beastly beat! Based (loosely) on the true life 2007 murder case of Amanda Knox/Meredith Kercher, Ballad in Blood begins with a sex fueled Halloween night party/drug-fueled orgy with bonus naked crucifixion hybrid (ain’t they always cats n’ creeps) and slips greasily into the aftermath of said event, where pals Duke (Edward Williams), a drug dealer by trade, and Jacopo (Gabriele Rossi) wake up in the apartment of Jacopo’s girlfriend Lenka (Carlotta Morelli) to find their friend Elizabeth (Noemi Smorra) decidedly not full of life… probably due to the rather large wound on her neck. Anyway, ol’ Elizabeth was recording a whole light of the previous
Continue reading →
ReviewsStreaming TV
An accident at a military base unleashes the greatest plague mankind has ever known (nicknamed Captain Trips), and the resulting contamination begins decimating Earth’s population faster than shit through a goose. Adding to the apocalyptic calamity on hand is the fact that the hand-full of survivors that are seemingly immune to the disease begin having visions of either the kindly Mother Abigail (Ruby Dee) or the devilish Randall Flagg (Jamey Sheridan), and they are being called towards a rural cornfield in Colorado. Soon sides will be chosen, good and evil will have a final conflict, and the fate of the world will be decided! Comprised of one hell of a stellar cast, some impressive visuals, and gnarly effects and make-up, this adaptation of Stephen King’s epic The Stand is a fantastic fright flick that manages the Herculean task of boiling down the maestro’s dense work into something that both wouldn’t run 18,645 minutes in length and could actually be played
Continue reading →
