Reviews

Honest horror reviews of films, series, games and books — no hype, no spoilers, just whether it is worth your time and your nerves.

3,462 stories

MoviesReviews

Fear Crypt Unleash Two New Short Films!

Those delightfully devious devils over at the Fear Crypt Youtube channel have sent a deadly dup of sinister short films my way, and as such yours cruelly is going to give them the ol’ revoltin review treatment! First up we have Fused: Sarah (Sarah McGuire) has one hell of a nasty-ass skin condition, and that shit is spreadin’ faster than the town whore. Needless to say, her doctor (Jennifer Femiano) is baffled, and her paramour Cassie (Katie Rohlfing) is none to pleased by the disappearing act our heroine has pulled since this eerie epidermal nightmare has begun. Speaking of ol’ Cass; Sarah finally lets her in on the fact that she has been havin’ more blackouts than the town drunk (just what kind of town do I live in anyway?!!)… something she’s failed to inform her doc, and when Cassie offers to watch over her during one such unconscious episode she gets an eyeful of more than she bargained for!

Continue reading →

DanXIII

Dec 9, 2020

ForeignMoviesReviews

Movie Review (Another Hole in the Head Film Festival): The Turn of the Screw

Writer/director Alex Galvin takes a novel approach to his feature The Turn of the Screw, his adaptation of the classic Henry James novella. Setting the New Zealand-made film at a play rehearsal for The Turn of the Screw one night before the play opens at a Wellington theater, the approach puts the last-minute replacement actress Julia (Greer Phillips) in an unfamiliar environment. As she goes through what the director Richard (Ralph Johnson) calls an unofficial dress rehearsal, Julia finds herself becoming increasingly distressed and fearful as the play proceeds. Whereas the governess in the source novella slowly begins to believe that the house in which she is put in charge is haunted, Julia starts to see strange sights and hear odd noises. The theater is empty other than the cast, director, and sound and lights crew members — or is it? Phillips is marvelous as the understudy given a frantically rushed chance to take a lead role in a production

Continue reading →

Joseph Perry

Dec 7, 2020

MoviesNewsReviewsThrillerTrailers

Hulu Review: ‘Run’ Starring Sarah Paulson

Hulu’s original thriller Run is breaking records on the streaming service. So, I wanted to see what all the fuss is about. And I really enjoyed it. Sarah Paulson (“AHS”) stars as Diane Sherman, a mother consumed with her desire to protect her teenage daughter Chloe (Kiera Allen) who is bound to a wheelchair and suffers from a host of other medical problems. But everything is not as it seems and Diane is hiding a dark secret. When her daughter begins to uncover the truth and tries to escape Diane’s world is thrown into chaos. The first thing I noticed right off to bat is that it appears the story took a lot of inspiration from the true story of Gyspy Rose Blanchard, the young woman whose mother kept her sick for her entire life. But have no fear, Run‘s events differ a lot from Gypsy’s life story. First off, this movie is intense and features a lot of tension

Continue reading →

Kelli Marchman McNeely

Dec 6, 2020

MoviesReviews

Short Film Review: Nova (2020)

Dr. Nova Thorpe (Kelly Kula) is racing against the clock to get a warning out about impending doom related to a top secret experiment she’s involved in… but is said threat already in the room with her? Running a scant eight minutes, Nova, the latest short film from writer/director David McAbee makes a lot of very little; to wit: we have one actress (the aforementioned Kula who does a fantastic job of selling the dire straits she has been tossed into), one room, and some rock solid cinematography (courtesy of David C. Smith). Adding to the overall top-shelf quality of this short is the fact our heroine’s degeneration is captured in nearly one continuous shot (which rumor has it was achieved with the help of a remotely operated robotic arm) and features some great make-up effects created by Chanel Panagiotopoulos. There’s not much more to say really; if you love a tense sci-fi tale told right (and right quick) then

Continue reading →

DanXIII

Dec 6, 2020

IndieMoviesReviews

Movie Review: Paintball Massacre (2020)

A gaggle of ol’ school chums get together for a bit of the reunion n’ paintball combo that sits so well with telephone operators from Biloxi between the ages of 22 and 22. Long story short, these folks get balls deep into feudin’ and fussin’, but that shit is small potatoes compared to the fact that a masked maniac has joined the (soon to be) ghoulish game, and he’s brought the tools to guarantee that there will be a higher than normal body count (which for paintball usually hovers somewhere between zero and zip) in this contest of champions! If Paintball Massacre is anything, it’s a damn good joltin’ jaunt into our beloved stalk n’ slay genre! What makes this one such a great time you may (or admittedly may not) ask? For starters, it has a great cast that manage to convey both horror at the murder biz befalling them, and a solid sense of comedic timing (yup, this

Continue reading →

DanXIII

Dec 5, 2020

MoviesReviews

Movie Review: What Lies Below

For the first several scenes in What Lies Below, I was wondering what I had gotten myself into: Mena Suvari hamming it up, Trey Tucker emerging out of a lake in a swimsuit like something out of a romance novel, and so on. Once the film kicked in and things got bonkers, though, I was all in on Braden R. Duemmler’s mashup of horror, science fiction, thriller, and family drama elements. Suvari — who does a fine job here, and it soon becomes obvious why her character acts the corny way she does in the opening scenes — plays Michelle Wells, a writer whose teenage daughter Liberty (Ema Horvath of The Mortuary Collection) has just finished her annual summer camp session. Liberty, viewers are told, is somewhat socially awkward and coming into her own about liking boys — which Michelle presses her on — and when she sees mom’s new boyfriend John Smith (Tucker of The Outpost) emerge from the

Continue reading →

Joseph Perry

Dec 4, 2020

IndieMoviesReviewsThriller

Movie Review: Backwoods (2020)

Molly (Isabella Alberti) wakes up in a trunk, with no memory of how her ass got in there, and wanders into a trap laden cemetery. Sounds like a typical Tuesday to me boils n’ ghouls… So how in the hell did Molly end up in the sinister soup anyway? Could it be because of the large debt her cheap skate boyfriend Hunter (Matthew McCoy) owes ye olde local drug dealer (Jeremy Sande)… or maybe it was jealous AF Hunter himself… he did quite peeved she was jawin’ with ol’ Noah (Michael Anthony Bagozzi). Regardless of how she got to the charmingly named Hangman’s Hollow, Molly is drfinitely going to have to keep her shit together to avoid the local slasher; namely the Hangman (Scott Alan Warner) his own damn self… a deformed sick-ticket religious nut, who hangs his male victims and keeps the ladies as his brides! Told in part via flashbacks, Backwoods manages to throw some fun twists and

Continue reading →

DanXIII

Dec 2, 2020

MoviesReviews

Blu-ray Review: Silent Running (1972)

Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) spends most of his time aboard the spacecraft Valley Forge caring for the ship’s verdant greenhouses while the rest of the skeleton crew tears ass through the corridors of the vessel on dune buggies… when they aren’t shooting pool, playing poker, or generally acting like complete assholes. Speaking of the Forge; the ship is part of a space fleet that contains all of the Earth’s remaining flora after the planet has succumbed to a catastrophic environmental event, and they’ve been cultivating those plants for eight long years, and to say Lowell is attached to his job is an understatement. Imagine his outrage then when the orders come down from above to jettison the greenhouse pods from the fleet and nuke them… and imagine how he’s not going to sit still and let that happen… at least not to his greenhouse. After eliminating the crew, Lowell makes a desperate gambit to pilot the ship through Saturn’s rings

Continue reading →

DanXIII

Dec 1, 2020

ForeignIndieMoviesReviews

Blu-ray Review: Burst City (1982)

The plot, as very, very loose as it is to Gakuryû Ishii’s (aka Sogo Ishii) Burst City goes kinda/sorta as follows: In a dystopian Japan, gangs of punk rockers put on large concerts (conveyed via music video style vignettes), fight each other for stage time, and form their own dominant, completely out-of-control culture. This of course goes over like a fart in church to the local gangsters who plan on making the city, or more properly the land it sits on, their own. Rioting, rock, racing, and hard fucking (it’s not an “R” word, but it’s in there) ensue! Oh, and before I forget there are also a draconian police force (the Battle Police), a work force comprised of violent heavily armored Road Warrior-style bastards (some mutated, all insane), and plenty of piss n’ puke! Unconcerned with traditional narrative structure, Ishii throws as much light, sound, movement and pure adrenaline on screen as humanly possible… and when the film does

Continue reading →

DanXIII

Dec 1, 2020

ForeignMoviesReviews

Blu-ray Review: The Black Cat (1989)

Being an adaptation of horror maestro Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 short story The Black Cat, this film begins the only way it could; with a baby in the womb super-imposed with images of the cosmos. A visit to a movie set, some hair metal, and a baby having apocalyptic dreams later, and we know well and truly that Luigi Cozzi (Starcrash, Contamination) is following the original story to the absolute letter in such a slavish fashion that would make literary scholars the world over to rise up and shout “Skeet, skeet skeet!” Anyway, there’s also a freaky ass witch, and Caroline Munro involved in these goings-on as well. Not a lot of cats here so far, but I’m sure they’ll chuck one in at some point. (Edit: they do) So what exactly is going on in this picture? The long and the short of it all is; some folks want to make a horror movie about the aforementioned legendary evil

Continue reading →

DanXIII

Nov 30, 2020

Reviews

More from Reviews