CategoryReviews
Honest horror reviews of films, series, games and books — no hype, no spoilers, just whether it is worth your time and your nerves.
3,463 stories
AdaptationGamingParanormalProductReviews
H.P. Lovecraft’s works are hard to put into film or games properly. Attempts have been made over the years with some decent attempts, and some flat-out missing the point. Bit Golem and Feardemic have done something I have not seen done before, making a 100% faithful adaptation of not one but three of Lovecraft’s short stories! This is Dagon: Complete Edition. Dagon: Complete Edition puts players into one of Lovecraft’s most iconic short stories, Dagon where they can experience the story firsthand as it’s narrated to them by the tale’s protagonist. Now, onto the game itself! Dagon: Complete Edition‘s controls are impossible to not master as the game mainly involves the player observing their surroundings, zooming in on objects, and clicking on prompts. This is the main part of the gameplay, the player just controls the camera and when the narration stops and it’s allowed, you can look around to see if you can find any hidden elder signs that
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
1978 Codirectors Luciano and Nicolás Onetti craft a marvelously macabre fright-fare outing with 1978 (Argentina, 2024). Set in Argentina in the titular year, and specifically during both a military dictatorship and the World Cup match between that country — which hosted the event in Buenos Aires — and The Netherlands, the film uses the dark history of torture, brutality, and murder by the regime of that time as its setting. Government representatives torture political dissidents for information regarding other members of their groups, but when they accidentally kidnap the wrong group, the hell that they have brought to so many is about to be visited back on them in gruesome, blood-soaked ways. Unflinching in its depictions of political horror and unrelenting in its presentations of supernatural terror and violence, 1978 delivers visceral shocks and grisly set pieces galore. The Onetti brothers deliver a feature that combines strong political and philosophical themes along with hard-hitting horror. Solvent Johannes Grenzfurthner’s Solvent (Austria,
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Touched by Eternity Writer/director Mārcis Lācis serves up an intriguing, amusing feature with his Latvian philosophical horror dramedy Touched by Eternity. Fatso (Andris Keišs) longs for immortality, though why he desires that isn’t clearly evident, as he pretty much keeps to himself in his trailer, listening to broadcasts about seeking eternal life. When vampires Egons (Ivars Krasts) and Carlos (Edgars Samītis) come calling, seemingly offering him what he pursues, his simple lifestyle is upended and he is suddenly faced with existential questions about mortality. Lācis blends the thoughtful, the horrific, and the humorous quite nicely, and Keišs leads a solid cast as a simple everyman who dreams of the unattainable until his dream is offered to him as a reality — though quite a different, blood-spattered one than he had originally imagined. Thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining, Touched by Eternity is a unique slice of genre cinema well worth seeking out. Heavier Trip Finnish/German/Norwegian/Lithuanian coproduction Heavier Trip — the sequel to
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HalloweenProductReviews
Halloween is coming, but why wait till then to enjoy some candy? There’s candy all over the place in stores at the moment and we can argue till the cows come home which candy is the best and assign them to tier lists, but unfortunately, there’s a lack of variety. If you want a variety and unique twists on some of your Halloween favorites, you’ll have to look online, and luckily for you, I discovered Dylan’s Candy Bar! I would like to give a big Thank You to Dylan’s Candy Bar for sending over some of their Halloween candies to try! First up is the Haunted House Sweets Bulk Bag! This bag contains a combination of milk chocolate spiced gummy candies and grape-flavored haunted houses. The bag was supposed to contain licorice black cats but mine didn’t have any, which was OK because I tend to avoid licorice candy anyway. Next up is the Fruity Gummy Skulls & Bones Bulk
Continue reading →
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Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Writer/director Dean Puckett’s The Severed Sun (U.K., 2024) is an engrossing work that takes folk horror elements and sets them in an ambiguous time period — the story could be taking place in the past but a couple of items suggest that it could also be set in an isolated rural area in the present day. The Pastor (Toby Stephens) leads a village of followers who must adhere to his religious moral code. The upstanding reputations of the men of the village must be upheld, even if it means covering up or ignoring their physical and mental abuse toward family members. When the pastor’s daughter Magpie (Emma Appleton) decides to no longer take such abuse from her husband toward his sons and her, she kills him, and some of the other flock members are suspicious of her claims of the death being an accident. Magpie grows further away from the strict religious regiment demanded of the Pastor’s followers to the
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Christina (Ana Belén) has it all, she lives a comfortable life with her husband Marcos (Juan Diego), the host of a truly ridiculous variety show, and she is expecting the couples first child, but… A brief “attack” from a black German Shepard causes Christina to miscarry, so Marcos whisks Christina off for a romp on the beach where they spent their honeymoon, but in a shocking twist of fate (though definitely nothing compared to what’s to come), Christina befriends a stray dog of the same breed as the one who hassled her earlier. Now there’s no way to say this gently… Christina has an affair with the dog (sex implied, so there’s that), and soon a choice has to be made between Marcos or the dog. It isn’t much of a Sophie’s Choice level decision, as Marcos is a pretty terrible human being… I can’t believe I’m typing this… wait, yes I can… Anyway, what could have been a mega-sleazy
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesParanormalReviews
In the 1970’s Jack Delroy (the amazing David Dastmalchian, 2021’s Dune and The Suicide Squad) makes a bid to dethrone Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show which doesn’t quite succeed. Following the death of his wife, Jack takes a sabbatical before returning with a tweak to his format where controversy and shock value is introduced among the schtick and corniness. Flash forward to Halloween night, 1977 and Jack has a pretty stellar line-up sure to appeal big-fucking-time to the Occult obsessed ’70s including celebrity clairvoyant/fraud Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) and paranormal debunker Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), but the real showstopper is parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and her young charge Lilly (Ingrid Torelli… more on her in a bit), a girl rescued from the fiery stand-off between law enforcement and a Satanic cult. About Lilly, she’s two things; incredibly strange and purported to be demonically possessed… and Jack is all about proving that particular topic to be a fact to improve
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Lee Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and Yoon Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun) are a shaman duo that offers their services to those that are plagued by the vengeful spirits of deceased family members… like the one plaguing the wealthy Park family, and let me tell ya, this one’s a fuckin’ doozy of a creepy case. So complex is the job, that our heroes call in the help of geomancer Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) and his coroner partner Go Yeong-geun (Yoo Hae-jin) to assist in the exhumation of the relative’s coffin via a traditional ceremony after which the coffin and remains will be cremated. No matter how seasoned our shamans are, things go tits up with the quickness once a rain delay keeps that corpse from getting crispy (can’t burn ’em on a soggy day… bad luck) and of course some ass just has to go and open the coffin setting the evill spirit free to go on a supernatural bender that spells bad
Continue reading →
GamingProductReviewsSci-Fi
Sometimes a good Noir film is what the doctor orders, a classic “Who Done it” story, a detective or private eye working on a blade’s edge between law and crime, a city full of danger and suspects, they don’t make good noir films anymore, but a game like Shadows of Doubt from ColePowerd Games and Fireshine Games will put you in the rain-drenched trench coat of a former cop turned Private Investigator. Shadows of Doubt is a first-person procedurally generated stealth game where players explore the open world of a city and help solve crimes to earn both money and Social Credits to earn the right to go to the retirement sector outside this sci-fi dystopian city. Now, onto the game itself! Controls for Shadows of Doubt are a bit tricky to master at first, even during the tutorial level, but not really anything bad. It’s just a bit annoying if you want to get right to playing. I like
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsSci-Fi
Sumuru (Goldfinger‘s Shirley Eaton) is one deadly woman, she’s also a near-comic book styled super-villain hell bent on replacing the powerful male leaders of the world of the Swinging Sixties with her cadre of her murderous all-girl army, members of whom kill men with their thighs for kicks! One such attempt of Sumuru’s evil plan leads to a threat being made on the life of the leader of Sinonesia, President Boong (played by noted lunatic Klaus Fuckin’ Kinski) which results in horny C.I.A. operatives Nick West (George Nader) and Tommy Carter (Frankie Avalon sans beach, blanket, and bingo) being called in to investigate by by the head of British Intelligence, Sir Anthony Baisbrook (Wilfrid Hyde-White, whom you may remember from the original Battlestar Galactica, or that Star Trek-ass second season of Buck Rogers). Our (occasionally) hammered heroes are hot on the case and travel from Europe to Hong Kong where they are soon up to their asses in the machinations
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More from Reviews
AdaptationGamingParanormalProductReviews
H.P. Lovecraft’s works are hard to put into film or games properly. Attempts have been made over the years with some decent attempts, and some flat-out missing the point. Bit Golem and Feardemic have done something I have not seen done before, making a 100% faithful adaptation of not one but three of Lovecraft’s short stories! This is Dagon: Complete Edition. Dagon: Complete Edition puts players into one of Lovecraft’s most iconic short stories, Dagon where they can experience the story firsthand as it’s narrated to them by the tale’s protagonist. Now, onto the game itself! Dagon: Complete Edition‘s controls are impossible to not master as the game mainly involves the player observing their surroundings, zooming in on objects, and clicking on prompts. This is the main part of the gameplay, the player just controls the camera and when the narration stops and it’s allowed, you can look around to see if you can find any hidden elder signs that
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
1978 Codirectors Luciano and Nicolás Onetti craft a marvelously macabre fright-fare outing with 1978 (Argentina, 2024). Set in Argentina in the titular year, and specifically during both a military dictatorship and the World Cup match between that country — which hosted the event in Buenos Aires — and The Netherlands, the film uses the dark history of torture, brutality, and murder by the regime of that time as its setting. Government representatives torture political dissidents for information regarding other members of their groups, but when they accidentally kidnap the wrong group, the hell that they have brought to so many is about to be visited back on them in gruesome, blood-soaked ways. Unflinching in its depictions of political horror and unrelenting in its presentations of supernatural terror and violence, 1978 delivers visceral shocks and grisly set pieces galore. The Onetti brothers deliver a feature that combines strong political and philosophical themes along with hard-hitting horror. Solvent Johannes Grenzfurthner’s Solvent (Austria,
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Touched by Eternity Writer/director Mārcis Lācis serves up an intriguing, amusing feature with his Latvian philosophical horror dramedy Touched by Eternity. Fatso (Andris Keišs) longs for immortality, though why he desires that isn’t clearly evident, as he pretty much keeps to himself in his trailer, listening to broadcasts about seeking eternal life. When vampires Egons (Ivars Krasts) and Carlos (Edgars Samītis) come calling, seemingly offering him what he pursues, his simple lifestyle is upended and he is suddenly faced with existential questions about mortality. Lācis blends the thoughtful, the horrific, and the humorous quite nicely, and Keišs leads a solid cast as a simple everyman who dreams of the unattainable until his dream is offered to him as a reality — though quite a different, blood-spattered one than he had originally imagined. Thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining, Touched by Eternity is a unique slice of genre cinema well worth seeking out. Heavier Trip Finnish/German/Norwegian/Lithuanian coproduction Heavier Trip — the sequel to
Continue reading →
HalloweenProductReviews
Halloween is coming, but why wait till then to enjoy some candy? There’s candy all over the place in stores at the moment and we can argue till the cows come home which candy is the best and assign them to tier lists, but unfortunately, there’s a lack of variety. If you want a variety and unique twists on some of your Halloween favorites, you’ll have to look online, and luckily for you, I discovered Dylan’s Candy Bar! I would like to give a big Thank You to Dylan’s Candy Bar for sending over some of their Halloween candies to try! First up is the Haunted House Sweets Bulk Bag! This bag contains a combination of milk chocolate spiced gummy candies and grape-flavored haunted houses. The bag was supposed to contain licorice black cats but mine didn’t have any, which was OK because I tend to avoid licorice candy anyway. Next up is the Fruity Gummy Skulls & Bones Bulk
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Writer/director Dean Puckett’s The Severed Sun (U.K., 2024) is an engrossing work that takes folk horror elements and sets them in an ambiguous time period — the story could be taking place in the past but a couple of items suggest that it could also be set in an isolated rural area in the present day. The Pastor (Toby Stephens) leads a village of followers who must adhere to his religious moral code. The upstanding reputations of the men of the village must be upheld, even if it means covering up or ignoring their physical and mental abuse toward family members. When the pastor’s daughter Magpie (Emma Appleton) decides to no longer take such abuse from her husband toward his sons and her, she kills him, and some of the other flock members are suspicious of her claims of the death being an accident. Magpie grows further away from the strict religious regiment demanded of the Pastor’s followers to the
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Christina (Ana Belén) has it all, she lives a comfortable life with her husband Marcos (Juan Diego), the host of a truly ridiculous variety show, and she is expecting the couples first child, but… A brief “attack” from a black German Shepard causes Christina to miscarry, so Marcos whisks Christina off for a romp on the beach where they spent their honeymoon, but in a shocking twist of fate (though definitely nothing compared to what’s to come), Christina befriends a stray dog of the same breed as the one who hassled her earlier. Now there’s no way to say this gently… Christina has an affair with the dog (sex implied, so there’s that), and soon a choice has to be made between Marcos or the dog. It isn’t much of a Sophie’s Choice level decision, as Marcos is a pretty terrible human being… I can’t believe I’m typing this… wait, yes I can… Anyway, what could have been a mega-sleazy
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesParanormalReviews
In the 1970’s Jack Delroy (the amazing David Dastmalchian, 2021’s Dune and The Suicide Squad) makes a bid to dethrone Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show which doesn’t quite succeed. Following the death of his wife, Jack takes a sabbatical before returning with a tweak to his format where controversy and shock value is introduced among the schtick and corniness. Flash forward to Halloween night, 1977 and Jack has a pretty stellar line-up sure to appeal big-fucking-time to the Occult obsessed ’70s including celebrity clairvoyant/fraud Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) and paranormal debunker Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), but the real showstopper is parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and her young charge Lilly (Ingrid Torelli… more on her in a bit), a girl rescued from the fiery stand-off between law enforcement and a Satanic cult. About Lilly, she’s two things; incredibly strange and purported to be demonically possessed… and Jack is all about proving that particular topic to be a fact to improve
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Lee Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and Yoon Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun) are a shaman duo that offers their services to those that are plagued by the vengeful spirits of deceased family members… like the one plaguing the wealthy Park family, and let me tell ya, this one’s a fuckin’ doozy of a creepy case. So complex is the job, that our heroes call in the help of geomancer Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) and his coroner partner Go Yeong-geun (Yoo Hae-jin) to assist in the exhumation of the relative’s coffin via a traditional ceremony after which the coffin and remains will be cremated. No matter how seasoned our shamans are, things go tits up with the quickness once a rain delay keeps that corpse from getting crispy (can’t burn ’em on a soggy day… bad luck) and of course some ass just has to go and open the coffin setting the evill spirit free to go on a supernatural bender that spells bad
Continue reading →
GamingProductReviewsSci-Fi
Sometimes a good Noir film is what the doctor orders, a classic “Who Done it” story, a detective or private eye working on a blade’s edge between law and crime, a city full of danger and suspects, they don’t make good noir films anymore, but a game like Shadows of Doubt from ColePowerd Games and Fireshine Games will put you in the rain-drenched trench coat of a former cop turned Private Investigator. Shadows of Doubt is a first-person procedurally generated stealth game where players explore the open world of a city and help solve crimes to earn both money and Social Credits to earn the right to go to the retirement sector outside this sci-fi dystopian city. Now, onto the game itself! Controls for Shadows of Doubt are a bit tricky to master at first, even during the tutorial level, but not really anything bad. It’s just a bit annoying if you want to get right to playing. I like
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsSci-Fi
Sumuru (Goldfinger‘s Shirley Eaton) is one deadly woman, she’s also a near-comic book styled super-villain hell bent on replacing the powerful male leaders of the world of the Swinging Sixties with her cadre of her murderous all-girl army, members of whom kill men with their thighs for kicks! One such attempt of Sumuru’s evil plan leads to a threat being made on the life of the leader of Sinonesia, President Boong (played by noted lunatic Klaus Fuckin’ Kinski) which results in horny C.I.A. operatives Nick West (George Nader) and Tommy Carter (Frankie Avalon sans beach, blanket, and bingo) being called in to investigate by by the head of British Intelligence, Sir Anthony Baisbrook (Wilfrid Hyde-White, whom you may remember from the original Battlestar Galactica, or that Star Trek-ass second season of Buck Rogers). Our (occasionally) hammered heroes are hot on the case and travel from Europe to Hong Kong where they are soon up to their asses in the machinations
Continue reading →
