CategoryReviews
Honest horror reviews of films, series, games and books — no hype, no spoilers, just whether it is worth your time and your nerves.
3,465 stories
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Gambir (Fachry Albar) is a fashionable mother fucker, all art galleries and high times… but all isn’t as it seems with our hero. See, awhile back, he and his girlfriend (later wife) Talyda (Marsha Timothy) went and made a baby out of wedlock, and since her parents would never approve, it’s soon abortion o’ clock, and the resulting fallout from that leaves Gambir weak in the crotch… permanently. None of this puts a damper on his art career however, and soon Gambir’s life casts of pregnant women contain extra baggage, namely aborted fetuses… for fuck’s sake dude… Anyway, the meteoric rise in Gambir’s career is matched only by his descent into rather poor mental health, and with the looming threat of his dark secret being revealed, he becomes caught up in the sick goings-on centered around the Herosase building… a structure who’s walls hide the viewing displeasure of multiple television screens that “treat” the viewers to scenes of extreme violence
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Writer-director Russell Owen’s chilling new horror Shepherd, set to be released this May, centers on a man mourning the death of his wife. To get a change of scenery he takes a job as a shepherd on a remote Scottish island. Haunted by visions of a figure in a black robe, and nightmares of the accident that killed his wife, Eric (Tom Hughes) struggles to keep his sanity. Just moments after arriving on the island Eric’s dog, Baxter, begins to signal that something is very wrong, constantly growling and whining at unseen things. Strange and terrifying noises echo through the dilapidated cottage and land. And every time Eric closes his eyes night terrors plague him. When his only connection to the world, a boat captain, begins to tease that he must face the darkness of his past things go off the rails. The fog and mist-filled island and ramshackle home add to the feeling of isolation and tension. The cinematography
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
I’ve seen at least a hundred exorcism movies, and they were all pretty much the same, and the majority were just plain terrible, always featuring the same recycled ideas shuffled around to try and make a plot look new. When I sat down to watch The exorcism of God I just assumed it would be another low-budget trash version of The Exorcist (no offense). What I got, was shock, it was a new twist on the supernatural that left me impressed. I should probably tell you a little about it before we go any further. In the film, from director Alejandro Hidalgo, who co-wrote The Exorcism of God along with Santiago Fernández Calvete, comes the story of a priest, Father Williams, who while conducting his first exorcism briefly became possessed and did something terrible. He has spent his life trying to find forgiveness within himself while striving to be the best priest he can be. His life seems ideal until
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Talisman One person’s belief system is another person’s superstition, and director Reangsei Phos’ Talisman (Canada) finds school-age Yi (Sean Lu) torn between those two schools of thought. His family has just moved into a new house, and as his mother (Qingqing Yang) tries to protect the home against ghosts, his father (Danny Liang) admonishes her not to fill the young boy’s head full of nonsense. Strange things are indeed happening inside the house, which leads to shocking acts of violence. Phos balances solid family drama with well-paced suspense, including some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it occurrences which should keep viewers’ eyes glued to the proceedings. The cast members, including Pascale Behrman, all turn in solid performances. Wendigo The animated short Wendigo (Ireland, 2021) is an intriguing take on the North American First Nations mythological creature combined with other eldritch occurrences. Charlie (voiced by Marc-Ivan O’Gorman) is an inquisitive young man who wants to investigate first-hand what remains of the Olsen manor, site of some
Continue reading →
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Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Upurga Director Ulges Ote blends blends folk horror, eco horror, surrealism, and absurdism to mystifying, eerie effect in his Latvian narrative feature debut Upurga. Andrejs (Igors Selegovskis) is a river rafting guide haunted by his inability to save a young woman from drowning. When his sister Mara (Elvita Ragovska) and her boyfriend Matiaas (Rihaard Sniegs) plan a trip to the wilds to shoot a vegan sausage commercial — along with videographer Oskars (Reinis Boters) and director/project manager Eva (Inga Tropa) — Andrejs insists on coming along to ensure everyone’s safety, though the others are far less concerned about that and more intent on having a good time and creating a worthy advertisement. Inspector Salins (Morten Traavik), the local park ranger, warns the group to respect nature and leave his jurisdiction within 30 minutes, but naturally the group members ignore his warnings. That turns out to be a poor decision, as exposure to the local flora makes them act in aggressive
Continue reading →
MoviesReviewsShudder
For those unfamiliar with the V/H/S series , here’s the eerie elevator pitch: an anthology of period terror tales is presented in the found footage format, more specifically via VHS tapes. I can safely say that V/H/S 94 sticks to that formula (which doubtless comes a shock to some of you lascivious lot). Moving on, V/H/S 94 begins with a woman in a strange compound huffing fumes from some sort of demonic jizz or another, before she begins a countdown with her eyes gouged out. Meanwhile, a SWAT team raids said compound finding all manner of ghoulish goings-on before a news broadcast begins… Written and directed by Jennifer Reeder, this is a nice, tension filled way to kick out the jams and get this fright flick rocking n’ rolling (as are the segments of the tale that appear between each story proper)! The above leads into Chloe Okuno’s Storm Drain, which tales the tale of Channel 6 news reporter Holly
Continue reading →
GamingIndieProductReviews
I’m nearing a major milestone of reviewing over 100 games for you the Horror Fuel reader but this review, in my opinion, is more important as it’s been both humbling and surreal. The game reviewed today comes to us from Sengi Games a Ukrainian-based indie game developer, even though their home country is in the middle of a war in which many of their countrymen have been murdered for simply being Ukrainian, they still worked on the game so it will be ready in time for its release date, the game: The Serpent Rogue. I want to thank Team 17 and Sengi Games (I hope you guys see this!) for the reviewing opportunity! The Serpent Rogue is a third-person adventure where players are in a dark world and play as The Warden, a plague doctor-looking alchemist tasked with saving the world from a corrupting dark force that reawakened and is taking over the lands. Now onto the game itself. The
Continue reading →
From the CryptMoviesNewsReviewsSci-FiTrailers
Ten years ago Patrick Wilson‘s (The Conjuring franchise) Brian Harper, an astronaut, was disgraced after claiming to see something strange in space. Now, Brian, along with Halle Berry’s Jocinda Fowler, and John Bradley’s JC. is the world’s only hope after the moon leaves its orbit, threatening the complete destruction of the earth in Moonfall. Directed by Roland Emmerich, who penned the script along with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen, Moonfall is a part disaster movie and part sci-fi flick and features out-of-this-world special effects including everything from giant waves taking out cities, pieces of the moon pelting the world, and amazing outerspace structures. Here’s where the spoilers start. The reason the moon is out of orbit is that it isn’t made of rock as we believe. Instead, it is a superstructure built by the ancestors of man to find planets where they could resettle after a war with AI gone bad. Now, one of the giant, biomechanical creatures has found
Continue reading →
GamingIndieProductReviews
It might be spring but the chill of winter can still be felt in the air for most people, but for the topic of this review, winter has just begun in Winter Ember, an isometric stealth sandbox action game taking players to the city of Anargal where they can lurk in the shadows as a former Nobel turned vigilante. A big thank you to Blowfish and Skymachine Studios for making this review possible! In Winter Ember you play Arthur, a Nobel playboy turned hooded vigilante after going into hiding leaving others to assume you met the same fate as your family after your mansion was destroyed. Arthur returns to the city he once called home to exact revenge and uncover a growing conspiracy involving cults, street gangs, and other wicked foes. Now onto the game itself. There are only a couple of issues with the game I’ll address first before getting into what I like about the game. There seem
Continue reading →
Reviews
Writer/director Brendan Muldowney expands his 2004 short film The Ten Steps into a feature length treatment with The Cellar (Ireland; 2022). The result is an interesting watch that doesn’t offer a lot in the way of originality, but is bolstered by a solid performance from Elisha Cuthbert (House of Wax; Captivity). Cuthbert plays Keira Woods, who is moving into a house with her family — husband Brian (Eoin Macken of The Forest), teen daughter Ellie (Abby Fitz), and preteen son Steven (Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady) — that just happens to be riddled with strange symbols and, of course, a creepy cellar. When Keira and Brian are at a late work meeting one night and the power goes out at home, Keira talks a petrified Ellie down the darkened stairs by candlelight over the phone, only for the girl to disappear. Though some write off Ellie as a runaway, Keira believes she is alive and that her disappearance has something to do
Continue reading →
More from Reviews
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Gambir (Fachry Albar) is a fashionable mother fucker, all art galleries and high times… but all isn’t as it seems with our hero. See, awhile back, he and his girlfriend (later wife) Talyda (Marsha Timothy) went and made a baby out of wedlock, and since her parents would never approve, it’s soon abortion o’ clock, and the resulting fallout from that leaves Gambir weak in the crotch… permanently. None of this puts a damper on his art career however, and soon Gambir’s life casts of pregnant women contain extra baggage, namely aborted fetuses… for fuck’s sake dude… Anyway, the meteoric rise in Gambir’s career is matched only by his descent into rather poor mental health, and with the looming threat of his dark secret being revealed, he becomes caught up in the sick goings-on centered around the Herosase building… a structure who’s walls hide the viewing displeasure of multiple television screens that “treat” the viewers to scenes of extreme violence
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Writer-director Russell Owen’s chilling new horror Shepherd, set to be released this May, centers on a man mourning the death of his wife. To get a change of scenery he takes a job as a shepherd on a remote Scottish island. Haunted by visions of a figure in a black robe, and nightmares of the accident that killed his wife, Eric (Tom Hughes) struggles to keep his sanity. Just moments after arriving on the island Eric’s dog, Baxter, begins to signal that something is very wrong, constantly growling and whining at unseen things. Strange and terrifying noises echo through the dilapidated cottage and land. And every time Eric closes his eyes night terrors plague him. When his only connection to the world, a boat captain, begins to tease that he must face the darkness of his past things go off the rails. The fog and mist-filled island and ramshackle home add to the feeling of isolation and tension. The cinematography
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
I’ve seen at least a hundred exorcism movies, and they were all pretty much the same, and the majority were just plain terrible, always featuring the same recycled ideas shuffled around to try and make a plot look new. When I sat down to watch The exorcism of God I just assumed it would be another low-budget trash version of The Exorcist (no offense). What I got, was shock, it was a new twist on the supernatural that left me impressed. I should probably tell you a little about it before we go any further. In the film, from director Alejandro Hidalgo, who co-wrote The Exorcism of God along with Santiago Fernández Calvete, comes the story of a priest, Father Williams, who while conducting his first exorcism briefly became possessed and did something terrible. He has spent his life trying to find forgiveness within himself while striving to be the best priest he can be. His life seems ideal until
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Talisman One person’s belief system is another person’s superstition, and director Reangsei Phos’ Talisman (Canada) finds school-age Yi (Sean Lu) torn between those two schools of thought. His family has just moved into a new house, and as his mother (Qingqing Yang) tries to protect the home against ghosts, his father (Danny Liang) admonishes her not to fill the young boy’s head full of nonsense. Strange things are indeed happening inside the house, which leads to shocking acts of violence. Phos balances solid family drama with well-paced suspense, including some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it occurrences which should keep viewers’ eyes glued to the proceedings. The cast members, including Pascale Behrman, all turn in solid performances. Wendigo The animated short Wendigo (Ireland, 2021) is an intriguing take on the North American First Nations mythological creature combined with other eldritch occurrences. Charlie (voiced by Marc-Ivan O’Gorman) is an inquisitive young man who wants to investigate first-hand what remains of the Olsen manor, site of some
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Upurga Director Ulges Ote blends blends folk horror, eco horror, surrealism, and absurdism to mystifying, eerie effect in his Latvian narrative feature debut Upurga. Andrejs (Igors Selegovskis) is a river rafting guide haunted by his inability to save a young woman from drowning. When his sister Mara (Elvita Ragovska) and her boyfriend Matiaas (Rihaard Sniegs) plan a trip to the wilds to shoot a vegan sausage commercial — along with videographer Oskars (Reinis Boters) and director/project manager Eva (Inga Tropa) — Andrejs insists on coming along to ensure everyone’s safety, though the others are far less concerned about that and more intent on having a good time and creating a worthy advertisement. Inspector Salins (Morten Traavik), the local park ranger, warns the group to respect nature and leave his jurisdiction within 30 minutes, but naturally the group members ignore his warnings. That turns out to be a poor decision, as exposure to the local flora makes them act in aggressive
Continue reading →
MoviesReviewsShudder
For those unfamiliar with the V/H/S series , here’s the eerie elevator pitch: an anthology of period terror tales is presented in the found footage format, more specifically via VHS tapes. I can safely say that V/H/S 94 sticks to that formula (which doubtless comes a shock to some of you lascivious lot). Moving on, V/H/S 94 begins with a woman in a strange compound huffing fumes from some sort of demonic jizz or another, before she begins a countdown with her eyes gouged out. Meanwhile, a SWAT team raids said compound finding all manner of ghoulish goings-on before a news broadcast begins… Written and directed by Jennifer Reeder, this is a nice, tension filled way to kick out the jams and get this fright flick rocking n’ rolling (as are the segments of the tale that appear between each story proper)! The above leads into Chloe Okuno’s Storm Drain, which tales the tale of Channel 6 news reporter Holly
Continue reading →
GamingIndieProductReviews
I’m nearing a major milestone of reviewing over 100 games for you the Horror Fuel reader but this review, in my opinion, is more important as it’s been both humbling and surreal. The game reviewed today comes to us from Sengi Games a Ukrainian-based indie game developer, even though their home country is in the middle of a war in which many of their countrymen have been murdered for simply being Ukrainian, they still worked on the game so it will be ready in time for its release date, the game: The Serpent Rogue. I want to thank Team 17 and Sengi Games (I hope you guys see this!) for the reviewing opportunity! The Serpent Rogue is a third-person adventure where players are in a dark world and play as The Warden, a plague doctor-looking alchemist tasked with saving the world from a corrupting dark force that reawakened and is taking over the lands. Now onto the game itself. The
Continue reading →
From the CryptMoviesNewsReviewsSci-FiTrailers
Ten years ago Patrick Wilson‘s (The Conjuring franchise) Brian Harper, an astronaut, was disgraced after claiming to see something strange in space. Now, Brian, along with Halle Berry’s Jocinda Fowler, and John Bradley’s JC. is the world’s only hope after the moon leaves its orbit, threatening the complete destruction of the earth in Moonfall. Directed by Roland Emmerich, who penned the script along with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen, Moonfall is a part disaster movie and part sci-fi flick and features out-of-this-world special effects including everything from giant waves taking out cities, pieces of the moon pelting the world, and amazing outerspace structures. Here’s where the spoilers start. The reason the moon is out of orbit is that it isn’t made of rock as we believe. Instead, it is a superstructure built by the ancestors of man to find planets where they could resettle after a war with AI gone bad. Now, one of the giant, biomechanical creatures has found
Continue reading →
GamingIndieProductReviews
It might be spring but the chill of winter can still be felt in the air for most people, but for the topic of this review, winter has just begun in Winter Ember, an isometric stealth sandbox action game taking players to the city of Anargal where they can lurk in the shadows as a former Nobel turned vigilante. A big thank you to Blowfish and Skymachine Studios for making this review possible! In Winter Ember you play Arthur, a Nobel playboy turned hooded vigilante after going into hiding leaving others to assume you met the same fate as your family after your mansion was destroyed. Arthur returns to the city he once called home to exact revenge and uncover a growing conspiracy involving cults, street gangs, and other wicked foes. Now onto the game itself. There are only a couple of issues with the game I’ll address first before getting into what I like about the game. There seem
Continue reading →
Reviews
Writer/director Brendan Muldowney expands his 2004 short film The Ten Steps into a feature length treatment with The Cellar (Ireland; 2022). The result is an interesting watch that doesn’t offer a lot in the way of originality, but is bolstered by a solid performance from Elisha Cuthbert (House of Wax; Captivity). Cuthbert plays Keira Woods, who is moving into a house with her family — husband Brian (Eoin Macken of The Forest), teen daughter Ellie (Abby Fitz), and preteen son Steven (Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady) — that just happens to be riddled with strange symbols and, of course, a creepy cellar. When Keira and Brian are at a late work meeting one night and the power goes out at home, Keira talks a petrified Ellie down the darkened stairs by candlelight over the phone, only for the girl to disappear. Though some write off Ellie as a runaway, Keira believes she is alive and that her disappearance has something to do
Continue reading →
