CategoryIndie
Independent horror: micro-budget features, short films and first-time filmmakers doing more with less — and often doing it better.
2,258 stories
IndieMovies
Man-o-man did I ever love me some Trancers flicks back in my misspent youth…but I haven’t laid eyes on any of these scintillatin’ sci-fi thrillers in many a year. To that end, I was pleased as poison punch when the first three films in the Trancers series arrived on my demonic doorstep courtesy of those sexy lil’ devils at Full Moon Entertainment! So, let’s kick back, pop open a brew or twenty and dive into the first feature… Trancers (1984): In a Blade Runner style future (replete with voice over narration), Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) is a bounty hunter hot on the trail of master criminal Whistler (Michael Stefani); a bad motherfucker who can hypnotize folks turning them into zombie like creatures called Trancers (‘natch). Said trail leads our hard boiled hero back in time to 1985 where Whistler has traveled “down the line” (a process by which an individual can possess the body of their ancestor) to kill the
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
In the near future, Herbert West surrogate Dr. Wojick Borge (Cooper Hoag) perfects the resurrection of the dead (green fluid and all); first by bringing back a cat, then a T-Rex (as one does)…yeah; this movie features zombie dinosaur…a zombie dinosaur that can turn humans into zombies as well…this may be the best fucking premise I’ve ever heard in my life! Opposing his machinations are a group of hard ass mercenaries and a gaggle of tech nerds…the most unlikely of combinations thrown together after an EMP asteroid attack (this just gets better and better fiends…). Can our heroes defeat the evil Borge and his putrid pet, or will they become the living dead after they find themselves deep within the mad Doctor’s fortified bunker?!! Armed with an incredibly fun comic book aesthetic featuring mad scientists, tough as nails soldiers, action, and monsters; The Jurassic Dead is one hell of an entertaining ride on the horror biz express and plays out
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesNewsTrailers
Portola Pictures has announced the Digital HD release of Tyler Savage‘s Inheritance, following the world premiere at Dances with Films, Inheritance has received high marks at festivals around the country. Savage directed from his own script, putting a chilling twist on the universal feeling of being trapped by your family history, for better or worse. Dread Central raved, “Savage uses the dark essences of an even more gloomy past to highlight this modern-day ghost story.” Tyler Savage makes his feature film debut alongside executive producer Nicholas Gonda (Tree of Life), cinematographer Drew Daniels (Krisha, It Comes At Night) and producers J.P. Castel (Krisha), Dash Hawkins (Party Crashers), and Chase Joliet (It Comes at Night), who also leads the cast. Sara Montez (“Pitch”), Tim Abell (Sniper: Special Ops), Kate Norby (The Devil’s Rejects), Dale Dickey (Hell or High Water, “True Blood”), Krisha Fairchild (Krisha), and Drew Powell (“Gotham”) co-star. The film was shot on location along the California coast and LA-based
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Mason Wells (Chris Mason) gets a wild hair up his ass about “fixing” society’s ills by hacking the human mind in order to save mankind from themselves. This seems reasonable (in a totally batshit, definitely going to go wrong sort of way). Standing in Mason’s way is the fact that he doesn’t have the resources to pull this off on the scale necessary in any way, shape, or form…and he has multiple personalities rattlin’ around in his head (thanks to the fact he’s done the initial testing of his new technology on himself) making him do whatever it take to see his crazy scheme come to fruition. To make matters worse, he spends his time hanging out with some sort of tech obsessed drug cult that hangs out in a warehouse having raves and attempting to expand their consciousness via new hardware (oh, and drugs as previously established). Before our story is through, what will be left of Mason’s morality
Continue reading →
ForeignIndieMoviesReviews
Pity poor Vidar…be-sodden with an eternally “ill” Mother and at the mercy of a Draconian Christian community, our hero has led an overbearingly monotonous existence keeping up the family farm while trying to conform to societal norms. Seeking escape, Vidar begs Jesus for salvation, looks at a Playboy, dreams of a naked demoness (a dream in which he sees himself as a vampire…that’s foreshadowing for ya), wakes up and smokes a cig, and heads to his barn where a vampire Jesus appears and forces our hero to give him a beej…which turns him into a creature of the night…a bloodsucker who also regularly attends therapy to figure out what condition his condition is in. Dammit Vidar, you are one mother fucker of a film!! Moving on, Vidar begins a debauched journey into all of life’s (and afterlife’s) pleasures with that demon Jesus (there’s the ultimate dichotomy for you) egging him on all the way! Can our hero find his humanity
Continue reading →
ForeignIndieMoviesReviews
In a post apocalyptic landscape a lone black clad lawman (Rafael Tombini) wanders in search of vengeance against an outre adversary; a demonically possessed serial killer (inspired in no small way by Stephen King’s great creation Randall Flagg). Along his journey our hero takes up with two teenage castaways who tag along on his dark mission, fights monsters and magic, and attempts to retain some semblance of his humanity as he stares further into the abyss of both his quest and the world he inhabits. Highly reminiscent of the D.Y.I., punk rock aesthetic of early ’90’s genre film trailblazers such as Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, Beyond the Grave presents a story that takes well established tropes and puts a slight spin on them, along with a kinetic energy that ends up being a bit like Mad Max meets Phantasm…a world of grim policemen in muscle cars fighting zombies and magic in dilapidated industrial districts and sprawling bucolic landscapes. Speaking
Continue reading →
GamingIndieNewsProductTrailers
Mark your calendars and put on your happy face, because “We Happy Few” will be coming August 10th to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC! Gearbox Software and Compulsion Games will be taking players on a trip to alternate 1960’s England that has become a dystopian world where people’s perception of their surroundings is altered by a drug that literally makes them happy. Players take on the role of three characters each with interesting back stories as they try to escape the crumbling dystopia around them while trying to navigate through the manic inhabitants who don’t like it when someone is a “downer”. The game is a mix of stealth and action set to a first-person style.
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
I’m gonna come right out and lay some truth on you cats; The Last House on the Left was never one of my favorite Wes Craven fright flicks…but it has been well over a decade and a half since I last laid my eerie eyeballs upon it, so now that Arrow Video is unleashing a feature packed Blu-ray of ol’ Last House, let’s see if the ever shifting sands of time have mellowed my attitude towards this (admittedly classic) film… The Last House on the Left concerns the misadventures of young Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassell) who heads out (after a bizarre conversation with her parents about her tits) to a concert by the wholesome sounding Bloodlust with her friend Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham)…a concert taking place in New York City…far away from her bucolic home. Meanwhile, the ultra villainous Krug (David Hess) and his kill krew have recently escaped from prison, and soon our comely protagonists find themselves in the
Continue reading →
IndieMovies
Darkness Reigns begins at with the world Premier of Darkness Reigns (meta as fuck, yo!), at which the film’s sad sack Director seems incredibly reticent to talk about it. We then switch to some found footage style behind-the-scenes of the film within the film’s creation which eventually leads to cast and crew taking up residence in a haunted hotel (different from a horror hotel…much less necking with ghouls), and folks become used and abused by a demonic force that goes apeshit on ’em six ways to Sunday…and may have ties to someone on the crew! Also Casper Van Dien shows up and plays himself…also meta A.F (and seriously, this dude doesn’t age, which may be a paranormal event in and of itself). I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Darkness Reigns. The found footage aspect was handled incredibly well, the characters were actually fun to watch (including a game performance from the aforementioned Van Dien) with a very noticeable
Continue reading →
IndieMovies
Thomas Griffith (Mark Lewis Jones) and Thomas Howell (Michael Jibson) are two men, one a former brawler and one a religious man with a dark past respectively, charged with keeping a Welsh lighthouse up and running on a small isolated rock of an island in 1801. Neither man likes the other too much so that makes things a bit rough, but nothing compared to what happens when a big ass storm (official meteorological term if ever there was one) leaves them stranded on the island for weeks longer than their provisions could provide for. What do they do to compensate, why drink their asses off and begin to slide down the slippery slope of complete batshit lunacy…then an event occurs that makes things get impossibly more out of control. Just to get it out of the way; if you are expecting over-the-top thrills and chills with The Lighthouse, you definitely are going to come away disappointed. This is basically two
Continue reading →
More from Indie
IndieMovies
Man-o-man did I ever love me some Trancers flicks back in my misspent youth…but I haven’t laid eyes on any of these scintillatin’ sci-fi thrillers in many a year. To that end, I was pleased as poison punch when the first three films in the Trancers series arrived on my demonic doorstep courtesy of those sexy lil’ devils at Full Moon Entertainment! So, let’s kick back, pop open a brew or twenty and dive into the first feature… Trancers (1984): In a Blade Runner style future (replete with voice over narration), Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) is a bounty hunter hot on the trail of master criminal Whistler (Michael Stefani); a bad motherfucker who can hypnotize folks turning them into zombie like creatures called Trancers (‘natch). Said trail leads our hard boiled hero back in time to 1985 where Whistler has traveled “down the line” (a process by which an individual can possess the body of their ancestor) to kill the
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
In the near future, Herbert West surrogate Dr. Wojick Borge (Cooper Hoag) perfects the resurrection of the dead (green fluid and all); first by bringing back a cat, then a T-Rex (as one does)…yeah; this movie features zombie dinosaur…a zombie dinosaur that can turn humans into zombies as well…this may be the best fucking premise I’ve ever heard in my life! Opposing his machinations are a group of hard ass mercenaries and a gaggle of tech nerds…the most unlikely of combinations thrown together after an EMP asteroid attack (this just gets better and better fiends…). Can our heroes defeat the evil Borge and his putrid pet, or will they become the living dead after they find themselves deep within the mad Doctor’s fortified bunker?!! Armed with an incredibly fun comic book aesthetic featuring mad scientists, tough as nails soldiers, action, and monsters; The Jurassic Dead is one hell of an entertaining ride on the horror biz express and plays out
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesNewsTrailers
Portola Pictures has announced the Digital HD release of Tyler Savage‘s Inheritance, following the world premiere at Dances with Films, Inheritance has received high marks at festivals around the country. Savage directed from his own script, putting a chilling twist on the universal feeling of being trapped by your family history, for better or worse. Dread Central raved, “Savage uses the dark essences of an even more gloomy past to highlight this modern-day ghost story.” Tyler Savage makes his feature film debut alongside executive producer Nicholas Gonda (Tree of Life), cinematographer Drew Daniels (Krisha, It Comes At Night) and producers J.P. Castel (Krisha), Dash Hawkins (Party Crashers), and Chase Joliet (It Comes at Night), who also leads the cast. Sara Montez (“Pitch”), Tim Abell (Sniper: Special Ops), Kate Norby (The Devil’s Rejects), Dale Dickey (Hell or High Water, “True Blood”), Krisha Fairchild (Krisha), and Drew Powell (“Gotham”) co-star. The film was shot on location along the California coast and LA-based
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Mason Wells (Chris Mason) gets a wild hair up his ass about “fixing” society’s ills by hacking the human mind in order to save mankind from themselves. This seems reasonable (in a totally batshit, definitely going to go wrong sort of way). Standing in Mason’s way is the fact that he doesn’t have the resources to pull this off on the scale necessary in any way, shape, or form…and he has multiple personalities rattlin’ around in his head (thanks to the fact he’s done the initial testing of his new technology on himself) making him do whatever it take to see his crazy scheme come to fruition. To make matters worse, he spends his time hanging out with some sort of tech obsessed drug cult that hangs out in a warehouse having raves and attempting to expand their consciousness via new hardware (oh, and drugs as previously established). Before our story is through, what will be left of Mason’s morality
Continue reading →
ForeignIndieMoviesReviews
Pity poor Vidar…be-sodden with an eternally “ill” Mother and at the mercy of a Draconian Christian community, our hero has led an overbearingly monotonous existence keeping up the family farm while trying to conform to societal norms. Seeking escape, Vidar begs Jesus for salvation, looks at a Playboy, dreams of a naked demoness (a dream in which he sees himself as a vampire…that’s foreshadowing for ya), wakes up and smokes a cig, and heads to his barn where a vampire Jesus appears and forces our hero to give him a beej…which turns him into a creature of the night…a bloodsucker who also regularly attends therapy to figure out what condition his condition is in. Dammit Vidar, you are one mother fucker of a film!! Moving on, Vidar begins a debauched journey into all of life’s (and afterlife’s) pleasures with that demon Jesus (there’s the ultimate dichotomy for you) egging him on all the way! Can our hero find his humanity
Continue reading →
ForeignIndieMoviesReviews
In a post apocalyptic landscape a lone black clad lawman (Rafael Tombini) wanders in search of vengeance against an outre adversary; a demonically possessed serial killer (inspired in no small way by Stephen King’s great creation Randall Flagg). Along his journey our hero takes up with two teenage castaways who tag along on his dark mission, fights monsters and magic, and attempts to retain some semblance of his humanity as he stares further into the abyss of both his quest and the world he inhabits. Highly reminiscent of the D.Y.I., punk rock aesthetic of early ’90’s genre film trailblazers such as Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, Beyond the Grave presents a story that takes well established tropes and puts a slight spin on them, along with a kinetic energy that ends up being a bit like Mad Max meets Phantasm…a world of grim policemen in muscle cars fighting zombies and magic in dilapidated industrial districts and sprawling bucolic landscapes. Speaking
Continue reading →
GamingIndieNewsProductTrailers
Mark your calendars and put on your happy face, because “We Happy Few” will be coming August 10th to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC! Gearbox Software and Compulsion Games will be taking players on a trip to alternate 1960’s England that has become a dystopian world where people’s perception of their surroundings is altered by a drug that literally makes them happy. Players take on the role of three characters each with interesting back stories as they try to escape the crumbling dystopia around them while trying to navigate through the manic inhabitants who don’t like it when someone is a “downer”. The game is a mix of stealth and action set to a first-person style.
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
I’m gonna come right out and lay some truth on you cats; The Last House on the Left was never one of my favorite Wes Craven fright flicks…but it has been well over a decade and a half since I last laid my eerie eyeballs upon it, so now that Arrow Video is unleashing a feature packed Blu-ray of ol’ Last House, let’s see if the ever shifting sands of time have mellowed my attitude towards this (admittedly classic) film… The Last House on the Left concerns the misadventures of young Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassell) who heads out (after a bizarre conversation with her parents about her tits) to a concert by the wholesome sounding Bloodlust with her friend Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham)…a concert taking place in New York City…far away from her bucolic home. Meanwhile, the ultra villainous Krug (David Hess) and his kill krew have recently escaped from prison, and soon our comely protagonists find themselves in the
Continue reading →
IndieMovies
Darkness Reigns begins at with the world Premier of Darkness Reigns (meta as fuck, yo!), at which the film’s sad sack Director seems incredibly reticent to talk about it. We then switch to some found footage style behind-the-scenes of the film within the film’s creation which eventually leads to cast and crew taking up residence in a haunted hotel (different from a horror hotel…much less necking with ghouls), and folks become used and abused by a demonic force that goes apeshit on ’em six ways to Sunday…and may have ties to someone on the crew! Also Casper Van Dien shows up and plays himself…also meta A.F (and seriously, this dude doesn’t age, which may be a paranormal event in and of itself). I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Darkness Reigns. The found footage aspect was handled incredibly well, the characters were actually fun to watch (including a game performance from the aforementioned Van Dien) with a very noticeable
Continue reading →
IndieMovies
Thomas Griffith (Mark Lewis Jones) and Thomas Howell (Michael Jibson) are two men, one a former brawler and one a religious man with a dark past respectively, charged with keeping a Welsh lighthouse up and running on a small isolated rock of an island in 1801. Neither man likes the other too much so that makes things a bit rough, but nothing compared to what happens when a big ass storm (official meteorological term if ever there was one) leaves them stranded on the island for weeks longer than their provisions could provide for. What do they do to compensate, why drink their asses off and begin to slide down the slippery slope of complete batshit lunacy…then an event occurs that makes things get impossibly more out of control. Just to get it out of the way; if you are expecting over-the-top thrills and chills with The Lighthouse, you definitely are going to come away disappointed. This is basically two
Continue reading →
