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
Film FestivalsReviews
Horror movie lovers seeking something truly unique, as well as puppet fans with an edgy side, will find plenty to enjoy in the all-puppet terror tale Frank & Zed. Lovingly brought to cinematic life by writer/director Jesse Blanchard — the film took six years to make — Frank & Zed serves up gore galore, dark humor, and a feast for the eyes. Frank — who, you might guess, resembles Frankenstein’s monster — and zombie-like Zed are the former servants of an evil entity that once brought fear and destruction to the land in which the film is set. A king made a pact with that god of death to spare his kingdom and subjects, with the catch being that once the royal lineage dies out, the kingdom’s subject will be massacred in “an orgy of blood.” For countless years, Frank and Zed existed peacefully, with daily routines of battery charging using lightning and plenty of brain munching. Once some conspirators
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsReviews
Phone app horror and the newer trend of Zoom-based fear fare meet in The Cloud, an anthology film from San Francisco’s Awesome Theatre group. Created and curated by Awesome Theatre’s Artistic Director Colin Johnson, the film features a good deal of tension and some solid performances. A new, invitation-only app called ReKomoZe is not only addictive in the usual sense — it also won’t let users quit without dire consequences. It’s also more intrusive than its downloaders could ever imagine. In The Cloud’s main thread, Eric (Marc Abrigo) and Lacey (Sonia Sawkar) become concerned about their friend Jules (Puja Tolton), who has been using ReKomoZe and is now withdrawn. As Eric begins some online sleuthing, the app creeps into his life as well as Lacey’s. All three actors turn in nifty work, and the mystery build pays off handsomely. In the first installment, “Dolores,” — written by Alexandria Love and directed by Nikki Meñez — celebrity vlogger Kennedi (Sharon Shao)
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsReviews
The latest entry into the ride-share subgenre of thriller and horror movies is Night Drive, one of the best offerings in the subgenre so far. Funny, smart, and with a truly surprising element, the first co-directing feature film team up from Brad Baruh and Meghan Leon is a blast. AJ Bowen (Dead Night; Satanic Panic; I Trapped the Devil) portrays Russell, a ride-share driver with a fancy car who has gone through a series of personal and professional hardships. He and his freewheeling fare Charlotte (Sophie Dalah of Dead Night and Satanic) share some laughs and drinks, and then Russell accidentally hits a pedestrian. It turns out that Charlotte happens to be quite knowledgeable in the area of body disposal, and the night is only going to get weirder and more dangerous for Russell. Bowen and Dalah have superb chemistry together, with both getting in their share of sarcastic barbs and witty asides. Leon’s crackerjack screenplay gives the duo plenty
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviews
Director TJ Marine’s At Night Comes Wolves is headed towards its release. Here are my thoughts on the movie about a cult. Right off to bat we meet a couple, Leah and her husband Daniel. We are given reason after reason to dislike Daniel whose dutiful wife will do anything to please him. She gets to her breaking point and just walks away from her life and her asshole of a husband. She meets a young woman who leads her to her Guru/cult leader, and things quickly unravel as secrets are revealed. The lead character played by Gabi Alves is left lacking. She has very few lines and mostly just mopes around the entire movie, which is not the fault of the actress. There’s also very little character development for her, which is a shame. I think the film was meant to speak out against misogyny and mistreatment, yet when the main character gets out of an abusive relationship she
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
This film begins with a man dressed as a cartoon Granny gingerly sexually assaulting a woman while an absolute cum load of porn guitar issues forth from the soundtrack with wild abandon. Granny laughs long and hard… Hard cut to a Michael Stivic-lookin’ mother fucker of a man exiting a barge-sized sedan in suburbia. Two minutes in and A Scream in the Streets has already given my brain a lil’ love-tap directly to the sack. The assault continues for ninety minutes of bumbling policemen, on-screen erections, wacky music stings to underscore “jokes”, shitty pseudo-Greensleeves utilized to underscore more nipple and vajay licking than it should, small-talk seemingly written by an alien computer doing the best it’s cute lil’ transistors can… and failing in breathtaking fashion, a David Cassidy lookin’ dude smokin’ grass and gettin’ ass, phone calls to the police given mid-lesbian cunnilingus (and under a not-at-all distracting asshole and vagina that fills a solid 50% of the frame), and
Continue reading →
ForeignIndieMoviesReviews
In a plague-ravaged future a nomadic couple, Helmut (Lorenzo Lepori, who also co-wrote, co-produced, and directed the film) and Ornella (Shiri Binder), traverse a rural landscape trying like hell to avoid the murder-happy, haz-mat suited, gasmask sportin’ mother fuckers that eliminate the remaining populace with wild abandon. Long story short, Helmut buys the farm, and Ornella is taken in by Udolfo (Pio Bisanti in a Dafoe-level performance); a highly troubled individual who rapes her repeatedly while using her in his experiments involving nightmarish mutants and his disease-ridden wife that take place within the stone walls of the dilapidated fortress Udolfo calls home. What follows is a wicked whirlwind of brutal survival in a new world ruled by monsters and madmen! What begins with a set-up you may expect from a Bruno Mattei post-apocalyptic flick from down Italy way, soon transforms into something a bit deeper as Flesh Contagium unfolds. Sure we get mutants, naked flesh, and oh-s0-much bloodshed (more on
Continue reading →
Amazon Prime VideoMoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
“Them,” set in the 1950s, centers on a black family who moves from their home in North Carolina to an all-white Los Angeles neighborhood during a period known as “The Great Migration.” The family’s new idyllic home soon becomes ground zero for racial prejudice, malevolent otherworldly forces, and other evils that threaten to ravage and destroy them. Honestly, I didn’t make it through the premiere episode on my first try. I couldn’t finish it. I was left emotional and heartbroken. It took me several days to try again, this time I lasted through the end of the premiere and two more episodes before I folded and gave up again. My heart couldn’t take it. A day or two later, I was determined to see it through. I was left angry and depressed, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Billed as a horror series, the show is more about the horrors African Americans have faced than about scares
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
New (as of 1949) from Daiei; the studio that made YOU believe a turtle can fly comes: The Invisible Man Appears, one of the earliest tokusatsu efforts that would go on to be a huge cornerstone of Japanese cinema and TV! Ol’ Doc Nakazato has invented himself a way to make living things invisible down Japan way. Well wouldn’t ya just know that a gaggle of no-good jewel thieves get wind of the discovery and put a kidnap on Nakazato lickety-split so they can use his science to make their pockets fatter with zero the risk normally associated with such deviltry. Soon a real Claude Rains 1933 type (read bandages and sunglasses) shows up in Kobe and goes on a crime spree, but of course once those bandages are off there’s no trace of the criminal responsible for the dirty deeds! The real question is, will John Q. Law (aided by Ryûko Mizuki; a stylish, highly androgynous nightclub performer played
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsReviews
Carlson Young makes a flashy-looking splash with her debut feature film The Blazing World, which she directs, cowrites (with Pierce Brown), and stars in. The film is rich in gorgeous imagery and dreamlike set pieces, but could use a bit more in characterization and story. Young twin sisters Margaret (Josie Fink) and Elizabeth (Lillie Fink) are playing in a field with fireflies around them. Inside their stately home, their parents — Tom (Dermot Mulroney) and Alice (Vinessa Shaw) Winter — are fighting, verbally and physically. Elizabeth falls into the family’s pool and drowns, with the parents running outside when they hear Margaret’s screams. As the parents pull Elizabeth out of the pool, Margaret turns to look away from the horror and notices an odd man — Udo Kier as Lained — beckoning her to join him as he stands near a wormhole-like portal. Flash forward about 20 years to Margaret (Carlson Young of Scream: The TV Series), who is now
Continue reading →
Amazon Prime VideoBooksReviews
Plot Austrian Spencer attacks his plot head on and it is powerful. This book really is unlike any other book I have read, it is strange, unique, gritty, difficult, beautiful, and phenomenal. Obviously a book about death is not a new concept, but the way that Spencer builds his story around this topic is where the uniqueness sits. I have often found (and enjoyed) authors using common horror tropes and putting their own spins on accepted mythologies, but this novel does so much more. It made me think not only about death, but about the inevitability, pain, variety, and reality of HOW death happens…and what comes next. This book digs deep into what death is and what happens surrounding this universally shared experience. Characters Much like with his plot, Spencer avoids using stock or stereotypical characters. Each character is strong and realistic. There are no filler characters. It must have been absolutely painstaking to fully flush out each character’s story,
Continue reading →
More from Reviews
Film FestivalsReviews
Horror movie lovers seeking something truly unique, as well as puppet fans with an edgy side, will find plenty to enjoy in the all-puppet terror tale Frank & Zed. Lovingly brought to cinematic life by writer/director Jesse Blanchard — the film took six years to make — Frank & Zed serves up gore galore, dark humor, and a feast for the eyes. Frank — who, you might guess, resembles Frankenstein’s monster — and zombie-like Zed are the former servants of an evil entity that once brought fear and destruction to the land in which the film is set. A king made a pact with that god of death to spare his kingdom and subjects, with the catch being that once the royal lineage dies out, the kingdom’s subject will be massacred in “an orgy of blood.” For countless years, Frank and Zed existed peacefully, with daily routines of battery charging using lightning and plenty of brain munching. Once some conspirators
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsReviews
Phone app horror and the newer trend of Zoom-based fear fare meet in The Cloud, an anthology film from San Francisco’s Awesome Theatre group. Created and curated by Awesome Theatre’s Artistic Director Colin Johnson, the film features a good deal of tension and some solid performances. A new, invitation-only app called ReKomoZe is not only addictive in the usual sense — it also won’t let users quit without dire consequences. It’s also more intrusive than its downloaders could ever imagine. In The Cloud’s main thread, Eric (Marc Abrigo) and Lacey (Sonia Sawkar) become concerned about their friend Jules (Puja Tolton), who has been using ReKomoZe and is now withdrawn. As Eric begins some online sleuthing, the app creeps into his life as well as Lacey’s. All three actors turn in nifty work, and the mystery build pays off handsomely. In the first installment, “Dolores,” — written by Alexandria Love and directed by Nikki Meñez — celebrity vlogger Kennedi (Sharon Shao)
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsReviews
The latest entry into the ride-share subgenre of thriller and horror movies is Night Drive, one of the best offerings in the subgenre so far. Funny, smart, and with a truly surprising element, the first co-directing feature film team up from Brad Baruh and Meghan Leon is a blast. AJ Bowen (Dead Night; Satanic Panic; I Trapped the Devil) portrays Russell, a ride-share driver with a fancy car who has gone through a series of personal and professional hardships. He and his freewheeling fare Charlotte (Sophie Dalah of Dead Night and Satanic) share some laughs and drinks, and then Russell accidentally hits a pedestrian. It turns out that Charlotte happens to be quite knowledgeable in the area of body disposal, and the night is only going to get weirder and more dangerous for Russell. Bowen and Dalah have superb chemistry together, with both getting in their share of sarcastic barbs and witty asides. Leon’s crackerjack screenplay gives the duo plenty
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviews
Director TJ Marine’s At Night Comes Wolves is headed towards its release. Here are my thoughts on the movie about a cult. Right off to bat we meet a couple, Leah and her husband Daniel. We are given reason after reason to dislike Daniel whose dutiful wife will do anything to please him. She gets to her breaking point and just walks away from her life and her asshole of a husband. She meets a young woman who leads her to her Guru/cult leader, and things quickly unravel as secrets are revealed. The lead character played by Gabi Alves is left lacking. She has very few lines and mostly just mopes around the entire movie, which is not the fault of the actress. There’s also very little character development for her, which is a shame. I think the film was meant to speak out against misogyny and mistreatment, yet when the main character gets out of an abusive relationship she
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
This film begins with a man dressed as a cartoon Granny gingerly sexually assaulting a woman while an absolute cum load of porn guitar issues forth from the soundtrack with wild abandon. Granny laughs long and hard… Hard cut to a Michael Stivic-lookin’ mother fucker of a man exiting a barge-sized sedan in suburbia. Two minutes in and A Scream in the Streets has already given my brain a lil’ love-tap directly to the sack. The assault continues for ninety minutes of bumbling policemen, on-screen erections, wacky music stings to underscore “jokes”, shitty pseudo-Greensleeves utilized to underscore more nipple and vajay licking than it should, small-talk seemingly written by an alien computer doing the best it’s cute lil’ transistors can… and failing in breathtaking fashion, a David Cassidy lookin’ dude smokin’ grass and gettin’ ass, phone calls to the police given mid-lesbian cunnilingus (and under a not-at-all distracting asshole and vagina that fills a solid 50% of the frame), and
Continue reading →
ForeignIndieMoviesReviews
In a plague-ravaged future a nomadic couple, Helmut (Lorenzo Lepori, who also co-wrote, co-produced, and directed the film) and Ornella (Shiri Binder), traverse a rural landscape trying like hell to avoid the murder-happy, haz-mat suited, gasmask sportin’ mother fuckers that eliminate the remaining populace with wild abandon. Long story short, Helmut buys the farm, and Ornella is taken in by Udolfo (Pio Bisanti in a Dafoe-level performance); a highly troubled individual who rapes her repeatedly while using her in his experiments involving nightmarish mutants and his disease-ridden wife that take place within the stone walls of the dilapidated fortress Udolfo calls home. What follows is a wicked whirlwind of brutal survival in a new world ruled by monsters and madmen! What begins with a set-up you may expect from a Bruno Mattei post-apocalyptic flick from down Italy way, soon transforms into something a bit deeper as Flesh Contagium unfolds. Sure we get mutants, naked flesh, and oh-s0-much bloodshed (more on
Continue reading →
Amazon Prime VideoMoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
“Them,” set in the 1950s, centers on a black family who moves from their home in North Carolina to an all-white Los Angeles neighborhood during a period known as “The Great Migration.” The family’s new idyllic home soon becomes ground zero for racial prejudice, malevolent otherworldly forces, and other evils that threaten to ravage and destroy them. Honestly, I didn’t make it through the premiere episode on my first try. I couldn’t finish it. I was left emotional and heartbroken. It took me several days to try again, this time I lasted through the end of the premiere and two more episodes before I folded and gave up again. My heart couldn’t take it. A day or two later, I was determined to see it through. I was left angry and depressed, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Billed as a horror series, the show is more about the horrors African Americans have faced than about scares
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
New (as of 1949) from Daiei; the studio that made YOU believe a turtle can fly comes: The Invisible Man Appears, one of the earliest tokusatsu efforts that would go on to be a huge cornerstone of Japanese cinema and TV! Ol’ Doc Nakazato has invented himself a way to make living things invisible down Japan way. Well wouldn’t ya just know that a gaggle of no-good jewel thieves get wind of the discovery and put a kidnap on Nakazato lickety-split so they can use his science to make their pockets fatter with zero the risk normally associated with such deviltry. Soon a real Claude Rains 1933 type (read bandages and sunglasses) shows up in Kobe and goes on a crime spree, but of course once those bandages are off there’s no trace of the criminal responsible for the dirty deeds! The real question is, will John Q. Law (aided by Ryûko Mizuki; a stylish, highly androgynous nightclub performer played
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsReviews
Carlson Young makes a flashy-looking splash with her debut feature film The Blazing World, which she directs, cowrites (with Pierce Brown), and stars in. The film is rich in gorgeous imagery and dreamlike set pieces, but could use a bit more in characterization and story. Young twin sisters Margaret (Josie Fink) and Elizabeth (Lillie Fink) are playing in a field with fireflies around them. Inside their stately home, their parents — Tom (Dermot Mulroney) and Alice (Vinessa Shaw) Winter — are fighting, verbally and physically. Elizabeth falls into the family’s pool and drowns, with the parents running outside when they hear Margaret’s screams. As the parents pull Elizabeth out of the pool, Margaret turns to look away from the horror and notices an odd man — Udo Kier as Lained — beckoning her to join him as he stands near a wormhole-like portal. Flash forward about 20 years to Margaret (Carlson Young of Scream: The TV Series), who is now
Continue reading →
Amazon Prime VideoBooksReviews
Plot Austrian Spencer attacks his plot head on and it is powerful. This book really is unlike any other book I have read, it is strange, unique, gritty, difficult, beautiful, and phenomenal. Obviously a book about death is not a new concept, but the way that Spencer builds his story around this topic is where the uniqueness sits. I have often found (and enjoyed) authors using common horror tropes and putting their own spins on accepted mythologies, but this novel does so much more. It made me think not only about death, but about the inevitability, pain, variety, and reality of HOW death happens…and what comes next. This book digs deep into what death is and what happens surrounding this universally shared experience. Characters Much like with his plot, Spencer avoids using stock or stereotypical characters. Each character is strong and realistic. There are no filler characters. It must have been absolutely painstaking to fully flush out each character’s story,
Continue reading →
