CategoryReviews
Honest horror reviews of films, series, games and books — no hype, no spoilers, just whether it is worth your time and your nerves.
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Film FestivalsMoviesReviews
Sylvan shockers are in no shortage at Screamfest this year. Here’s a look at two of those woods-set features. Deer Camp ‘86 Combining supernatural cabin-in-the-woods elements with slasher fare, first-time director L. Van Dyke Siboutszen’s Deer Camp ‘86 (2022) goes for the jugular, along with several other body parts, in its tale of a group of Detroit friends who head out to the forest to open up the 1986 deer hunting season. They make an ill-fated stop at the bar, where nice guy of the group Wes (Noah LaLonde) falls hard for Native American bartender Star (Tina Manera) while the group is confronted by local racists. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Wes, Star is assaulted and murdered behind the bar before the group leaves. That’s doubly unfortunate, as every time a Native American woman in the area is killed, something attacks any hunters in the area, which Sheriff Paulson (Paul Wilson) puts down to bear attacks — though he knows better. Most
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Prolific fear-fare director Charlie Steeds’ latest effort Freeze (U.K., 2022) is a Lovecraftian creature feature that punches above the weight of its budgetary limitations, resulting in a solid-looking, highly entertaining period piece. The crew of the HMS Innsmouth is on a mission to rescue the HMS Eibon, which was lost during its expedition to the North Pole. HMS Innsmouth’s Captain Mortimer’s (Rory Wilson) good friend Captain Streiner (Tim Cartwright) commanded the lost ship, so he is determined to learn the fate of his friend. Meanwhile, Crewman Redgrave (Jake Watkins) helps hide a woman stowaway named Carmen (Beatrice Barillá), whose brother was an officer on the Eibon. Tension heightens when crewman Spriggs (Ricardo Freitas) (who you just can’t wait to see get his) learns of this. Mortimer’s first mate McCullough (Johnny Vivash) warns the captain that sailing any further ahead in the ice will result in disaster, but Lieutenant Roth (David Lenik), whose father owns HMS Innsmouth, persuades Streiner to forge
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsSci-FiThriller
The following three shorts were part of SLASH Film Festival’s Fantastic Futures competition, which consisted of nine shorts from student filmmakers or first-time filmmakers. Starfuckers Writer/director/star Antonio Marziale delivers a gripping revenge thriller of a decidedly different kind with his short film Starfuckers (2022). The short begins with genre elements such as plastic sheets covering a floor and an atmosphere thick with tension as a young man (Cole Doman) meets a middle-aged man (Jonathan Slavin) with power dynamics obviously skewed toward the older man, who happens to be a film director. The director seems to make a habit of promising male escorts roles in his films that never come about, and a second young man (Marziale) shows up unexpectedly to make his feelings known in an unforgettable way. Marziale gives a jaw-dropping, star-making drag performance that lingers long after the short ends, and is reason enough to seek out this powerful take on Hollywood corruption, though there are plenty of
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
U.K. mystery thriller Zebra Girl (2021) is rich with slowly unfolding shocks and surprises, and is the kind of film that is difficult to discuss much in a review for concern of giving too much away for future viewers. Director Stephanie Zari’s chilling film is ultimately a character study of a highly troubled woman dealing with the emotional and psychological aftermath of having gone through horrifying events when she was younger, and how it affects her as an adult. Catherine (Sarah Roy) and English professor Dan (Tom Cullen) meet online and then in-person for a first date, during which she makes a startling confession and then asks Dan to do the same. Hers is far darker than his, but she later finds out that he was hiding a secret from her worse than the one he had originally told her. After they marry and she becomes pregnant, Dan’s secret threatens to drive Catherine to drastic measures. She calls her estranged
Continue reading →
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HalloweenProductReviews
Halloween is right around the corner! You see it everywhere, people setting up their displays outside, turning their living rooms into crypts, getting their costumes, stockpiling candy… that’s fine, but what else can you add to your arsenal of all hallows cheer that you already don’t have? I say neon signs! Lucky for you, Sketch & Etch has you covered with their line of Halloween-themed neon lights! I would like to give a big shout-out to the awesome folks at S&E for helping make this review possible! The neon sign that I got is the try-and-true Jack-o-lantern. With a clear acrylic back and LED Neon tubing, this 15×15 pumpkin puts out a lot of light but with the free dimmer remote that came with it, I can make it as bright as I want, even in daylight the sign glows brightly on its highest setting, still able to draw attention during daylight hours! The sign also came with mounting hardware
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsMoviesReviews
Boasting, as the film’s poster says, “5 stories from 5 Latino AF directors,” Satanic Hispanics is a fine entry in the horror anthologies subgenre. The film balances the spooky and the humorous quite well, resulting in a highly satisfying effort. The wraparound story, directed by Mike Mendez, concerns the questioning of a man who calls himself The Traveler (Efren Ramirez) — the sole survivor of a massacre that saw the lives of 27 other people taken — by Detectives Gibbons (Sonya Eddy) and Arden (Greg Grunberg). In the vein of classic Amicus and Hammer horror anthologies, he regales the detectives, sometimes to their dismay and often to their shock, with a series of tales. First up is “Tambien Lo Vi,” written and directed by Demian Rugna, which concerns Rubik’s Cube tournament competitor Gustavo (Demián Salomón), who believes he has discovered a method to reveal the afterlife. He talks a podcaster into checking out his technique, which leads to grim consequences
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
About as cautionary a fable as you can have for both meeting strangers through online dating apps and not following first impressions, writer/director Viljar Bøe’s Norwegian chiller Good Boy (2022) is a dark journey, indeed. Part-time university student Sigrid (Katrine Lovise Øpstad Fredriksen) and non-working millionaire Christian (Gard Løkke) meet on tinder, and their first date goes well enough that they wind up in bed at his house. Things take a turn for the unexpected when Frank’s dog walks into the bedroom. Frank, as viewers see in the opening minutes of the film, is actually a man (Nicolai Narvesen Lied) in a canine costume participating in “puppy play” role playing. Naturally, this freaks Sigrid out, but once her roommate tips her off about who Christian is and about his wealth, Sigrid begins to second-guess the red flags she originally felt about the situation. She meets Christian at his home again and sparks fly even as she questions the relationship between
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Two pals buy a lunch and bitch bout booze money as they head out for a hard day working construction at a remote cabin in Hawaii (didn’t see that one coming did ya?). Once on-site they witness one of their peers blasting geysers of blood from a wound inflicted from machete wielding psycho/amateur occultist John Jones (Sam Bluestone). Our heroes don’t stand for this kind of maiming and proceed to beat Jones’ ass before escorting him by truck where the battle continues in the bed of a moving truck… and let me just stop this sinister synopsis to commend the absolutely absurd danger of filming this, and the result is at times nail-biting indeed! Anyway, the chase continues until Jones huffs some sort of gas from a respirator mask and disappears into thin air which slightly rattles our heroes, but not as much as it would say, any normal-ass mother fucker that would bear witness to that David Copperfield shit.
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Severin has recently unleashed a new box set titled The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler, and that is my personal choice for understatement of the century! Let’s just dive-in to the first feature in the set, 1962’s Wild Guitar: The incredible legend (well at least his Dad wanted that to be a thing) Arch Hall Jr. (who also appeared in the caveman shocker Eegah! the same year) stars as Bud Eagle, a dude that’s a lil’ bit Elvis but is more a clumsy doofus with a massive Johnny Bravo-style blonde pompadour. Anyway Bud blows in to Hollywood one fateful day, down to his last fifteen cents, and happens into a diner (populated by cartoon hooligans and an inexplicable kid dressed as a cowboy) where he meets the bubbly, Joker-grin having Vickie (Nancy Czar), a hopeful dancer that let’s Bud tag along with her to a variety show taping where she struts her stuff; a shimmy-packed, facial tick-laced dynamite
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Lionsgate will soon release Fall, from director Scott Mann. I got a chance to check it out early and of course, I have some thoughts. The movie centers on Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner), best friends whose lives are all about conquering fears and pushing limits. Their next conquest is a radio tower, that reaches a height of 2,000 feet. What could go wrong? The majority of the movie takes place at the top of the tower where the two women find themselves stuck with no way down and time running short. You would think that a movie set in one spot would be boring, but with tons of drama, twists, and action, Fall manages to stay engaging from beginning to end. Both stars, Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner played their roles well and were easy to empathize with. I can’t help but wonder how much of the stunts they did themselves. They were rather impressive.
Continue reading →
More from Reviews
Film FestivalsMoviesReviews
Sylvan shockers are in no shortage at Screamfest this year. Here’s a look at two of those woods-set features. Deer Camp ‘86 Combining supernatural cabin-in-the-woods elements with slasher fare, first-time director L. Van Dyke Siboutszen’s Deer Camp ‘86 (2022) goes for the jugular, along with several other body parts, in its tale of a group of Detroit friends who head out to the forest to open up the 1986 deer hunting season. They make an ill-fated stop at the bar, where nice guy of the group Wes (Noah LaLonde) falls hard for Native American bartender Star (Tina Manera) while the group is confronted by local racists. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Wes, Star is assaulted and murdered behind the bar before the group leaves. That’s doubly unfortunate, as every time a Native American woman in the area is killed, something attacks any hunters in the area, which Sheriff Paulson (Paul Wilson) puts down to bear attacks — though he knows better. Most
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Prolific fear-fare director Charlie Steeds’ latest effort Freeze (U.K., 2022) is a Lovecraftian creature feature that punches above the weight of its budgetary limitations, resulting in a solid-looking, highly entertaining period piece. The crew of the HMS Innsmouth is on a mission to rescue the HMS Eibon, which was lost during its expedition to the North Pole. HMS Innsmouth’s Captain Mortimer’s (Rory Wilson) good friend Captain Streiner (Tim Cartwright) commanded the lost ship, so he is determined to learn the fate of his friend. Meanwhile, Crewman Redgrave (Jake Watkins) helps hide a woman stowaway named Carmen (Beatrice Barillá), whose brother was an officer on the Eibon. Tension heightens when crewman Spriggs (Ricardo Freitas) (who you just can’t wait to see get his) learns of this. Mortimer’s first mate McCullough (Johnny Vivash) warns the captain that sailing any further ahead in the ice will result in disaster, but Lieutenant Roth (David Lenik), whose father owns HMS Innsmouth, persuades Streiner to forge
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsSci-FiThriller
The following three shorts were part of SLASH Film Festival’s Fantastic Futures competition, which consisted of nine shorts from student filmmakers or first-time filmmakers. Starfuckers Writer/director/star Antonio Marziale delivers a gripping revenge thriller of a decidedly different kind with his short film Starfuckers (2022). The short begins with genre elements such as plastic sheets covering a floor and an atmosphere thick with tension as a young man (Cole Doman) meets a middle-aged man (Jonathan Slavin) with power dynamics obviously skewed toward the older man, who happens to be a film director. The director seems to make a habit of promising male escorts roles in his films that never come about, and a second young man (Marziale) shows up unexpectedly to make his feelings known in an unforgettable way. Marziale gives a jaw-dropping, star-making drag performance that lingers long after the short ends, and is reason enough to seek out this powerful take on Hollywood corruption, though there are plenty of
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
U.K. mystery thriller Zebra Girl (2021) is rich with slowly unfolding shocks and surprises, and is the kind of film that is difficult to discuss much in a review for concern of giving too much away for future viewers. Director Stephanie Zari’s chilling film is ultimately a character study of a highly troubled woman dealing with the emotional and psychological aftermath of having gone through horrifying events when she was younger, and how it affects her as an adult. Catherine (Sarah Roy) and English professor Dan (Tom Cullen) meet online and then in-person for a first date, during which she makes a startling confession and then asks Dan to do the same. Hers is far darker than his, but she later finds out that he was hiding a secret from her worse than the one he had originally told her. After they marry and she becomes pregnant, Dan’s secret threatens to drive Catherine to drastic measures. She calls her estranged
Continue reading →
HalloweenProductReviews
Halloween is right around the corner! You see it everywhere, people setting up their displays outside, turning their living rooms into crypts, getting their costumes, stockpiling candy… that’s fine, but what else can you add to your arsenal of all hallows cheer that you already don’t have? I say neon signs! Lucky for you, Sketch & Etch has you covered with their line of Halloween-themed neon lights! I would like to give a big shout-out to the awesome folks at S&E for helping make this review possible! The neon sign that I got is the try-and-true Jack-o-lantern. With a clear acrylic back and LED Neon tubing, this 15×15 pumpkin puts out a lot of light but with the free dimmer remote that came with it, I can make it as bright as I want, even in daylight the sign glows brightly on its highest setting, still able to draw attention during daylight hours! The sign also came with mounting hardware
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsMoviesReviews
Boasting, as the film’s poster says, “5 stories from 5 Latino AF directors,” Satanic Hispanics is a fine entry in the horror anthologies subgenre. The film balances the spooky and the humorous quite well, resulting in a highly satisfying effort. The wraparound story, directed by Mike Mendez, concerns the questioning of a man who calls himself The Traveler (Efren Ramirez) — the sole survivor of a massacre that saw the lives of 27 other people taken — by Detectives Gibbons (Sonya Eddy) and Arden (Greg Grunberg). In the vein of classic Amicus and Hammer horror anthologies, he regales the detectives, sometimes to their dismay and often to their shock, with a series of tales. First up is “Tambien Lo Vi,” written and directed by Demian Rugna, which concerns Rubik’s Cube tournament competitor Gustavo (Demián Salomón), who believes he has discovered a method to reveal the afterlife. He talks a podcaster into checking out his technique, which leads to grim consequences
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
About as cautionary a fable as you can have for both meeting strangers through online dating apps and not following first impressions, writer/director Viljar Bøe’s Norwegian chiller Good Boy (2022) is a dark journey, indeed. Part-time university student Sigrid (Katrine Lovise Øpstad Fredriksen) and non-working millionaire Christian (Gard Løkke) meet on tinder, and their first date goes well enough that they wind up in bed at his house. Things take a turn for the unexpected when Frank’s dog walks into the bedroom. Frank, as viewers see in the opening minutes of the film, is actually a man (Nicolai Narvesen Lied) in a canine costume participating in “puppy play” role playing. Naturally, this freaks Sigrid out, but once her roommate tips her off about who Christian is and about his wealth, Sigrid begins to second-guess the red flags she originally felt about the situation. She meets Christian at his home again and sparks fly even as she questions the relationship between
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Two pals buy a lunch and bitch bout booze money as they head out for a hard day working construction at a remote cabin in Hawaii (didn’t see that one coming did ya?). Once on-site they witness one of their peers blasting geysers of blood from a wound inflicted from machete wielding psycho/amateur occultist John Jones (Sam Bluestone). Our heroes don’t stand for this kind of maiming and proceed to beat Jones’ ass before escorting him by truck where the battle continues in the bed of a moving truck… and let me just stop this sinister synopsis to commend the absolutely absurd danger of filming this, and the result is at times nail-biting indeed! Anyway, the chase continues until Jones huffs some sort of gas from a respirator mask and disappears into thin air which slightly rattles our heroes, but not as much as it would say, any normal-ass mother fucker that would bear witness to that David Copperfield shit.
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Severin has recently unleashed a new box set titled The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler, and that is my personal choice for understatement of the century! Let’s just dive-in to the first feature in the set, 1962’s Wild Guitar: The incredible legend (well at least his Dad wanted that to be a thing) Arch Hall Jr. (who also appeared in the caveman shocker Eegah! the same year) stars as Bud Eagle, a dude that’s a lil’ bit Elvis but is more a clumsy doofus with a massive Johnny Bravo-style blonde pompadour. Anyway Bud blows in to Hollywood one fateful day, down to his last fifteen cents, and happens into a diner (populated by cartoon hooligans and an inexplicable kid dressed as a cowboy) where he meets the bubbly, Joker-grin having Vickie (Nancy Czar), a hopeful dancer that let’s Bud tag along with her to a variety show taping where she struts her stuff; a shimmy-packed, facial tick-laced dynamite
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Lionsgate will soon release Fall, from director Scott Mann. I got a chance to check it out early and of course, I have some thoughts. The movie centers on Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner), best friends whose lives are all about conquering fears and pushing limits. Their next conquest is a radio tower, that reaches a height of 2,000 feet. What could go wrong? The majority of the movie takes place at the top of the tower where the two women find themselves stuck with no way down and time running short. You would think that a movie set in one spot would be boring, but with tons of drama, twists, and action, Fall manages to stay engaging from beginning to end. Both stars, Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner played their roles well and were easy to empathize with. I can’t help but wonder how much of the stunts they did themselves. They were rather impressive.
Continue reading →
