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
GamingIndieParanormalProductReviews
It’s a fact that Asian horror is top tier with its perfect mixture of old folk tales and ghost stories and bringing them into the modern world. The same can be said with horror games that take these characteristics and put you in the driver’s seat! This brings us to today’s main focus, White Day: A Labyrinth Named School, a South Korean first-person horror game remade for modern gamers as the original game came out in 2001 for mobile. I want to give SONNORI Corp and PQubed a big thank you for the reviewing opportunity. White Day: A Labyrinth Named School is about a high school boy named Hee-Min Lee who snuck into the Yeondu High School to leave a White Day gift for his crush. Things quickly go wrong as Hee-Min finds himself stuck inside the school along with his crush and two other schoolmates along with murderous janitors and ghosts from the school’s dark past. Now onto the
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
After some truly creepy shit with a young kid waltzing right into the middle of his naked sisters shower… you know the kind in these flicks, where our heroine absently soaps up her breasts more than anyone in the history of ever has done… and pretends to kill her, slasher style along with stern warning from her father (not shower based) to stay away from the local carnival/recent murder site (I bet those words have been strung together more times than we can imagine), Amy Harper (Elizabeth Berridge) and her friends head directly to the local carnival/recent murder site. After much fairground fuckery, including a sideshow featuring deformed animals and fetuses (fun for the whole family!), a magic show featuring Marco the Magnificent (the Phantom of the Paradise himself, William Finley), and a disastrous visit to the resident mystic, Madame Zena (Sylvia Miles), Amy and the gang decide to stick around after hours and spend the night in the eponymous
Continue reading →
DocumentariesFilm FestivalsMoviesParanormalReviews
Take the elements of a found-footage horror movie and add in the fact that the film is a documentary, and you have the intriguing feature Wedding 93. In fine Fortean style, director Paul Zagaris’ documentary leaves the interpretation of the proceedings up to individual viewers. Using film footage recently obtained by Zagaris from sources who wish to remain anonymous, Wedding 93 shows how a traditional rural wedding in 1993 Cambodia takes a disastrous turn. Bol, a well-off farmer, is set for an arranged marriage with Rah, who felt forced into the arrangement by her mother. As the festivities begin, a happy Bol sits next to a stone-faced Rah. The bride-to-be begins crying, and then displays chilling behavior that leads some wedding guests to believe she is possessed by an occult entity. The proceedings were captured on two different cameras by members of the wedding party. With jump-scare shots that could have come from a narrative found footage film, the footage
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
A Gravediggin’ man (Paul Homza) has a bit of surprise at work when he sees an actual living being in his cemetery instead of the usual stiffs he associates with. Fear not for our hero though, as the “living” being he has found is stitched together from pieces of more corpses than currently reside in the boneyard he tends… that’s right boils n’ ghouls, he has run across none other than Frankenstein’s monster (Gisbert Heuer)! Soon our protagonist is helping that misunderstood monster try to find any scrap of humanity left in that shamblin’ shell of patchwork flesh, but all isn’t well for long as the monsters creator, Victor (Tyler Charles Kane), is hot on his trail, and he’s eager to make that poor bastard double-dead for what he did to the “good” doctor’s family! Directed by Erynn Dalton and written by Joseph Zettelmaier, The Gravedigger is a study in minimalism that manages to be engaging while offering a refreshingly
Continue reading →
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IndieMoviesReviewsThriller
After learning the film was distributed by someone named “Brian”… and only “Brian”… and his distribution company, we get down to brass tacks with Massacre at Central High… Mark (Andrew Stevens), along with his bully buddies Bruce (Ray Underwood), Craig (Steve Bond), and Paul (Damon Douglas) rule Central High through a reign of douche-baggery seldom seen on the silver screen! Take for instance their harassment of nerdy Spoony (Robert Carradine, Revenge of the Nerds coincidentally… ) who is busy painting swastikas on school lockers which they force him to clean off… okay, that one is a bit dodgy… would it help if I told you he was painting them in protest of their raucous regime? Enter: David (Derrel Maury), a new man on campus who just so happens to be an old buddy of Mark’s… an old buddy that helped him out of a “jam” at their old alma mater. Now David is one aloof mother fucker, so when he’s
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviewsShudderStreaming TVThrillerTrailers
Shudder’s horror-thriller Speak No Evil is set to premiere this September. But is it worth watching? Let’s talk about it. From director Christian Tafdrup comes the film about two families who become friends during an Italian getaway. When Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) and Karin (Karina Smulders) invite Bjorn (Morten Burian) and Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch) to their remote home for a few days, they quickly say yes. Bjorn, Louise, and their young daughter are greeted with joy upon arriving, but that wouldn’t last long. After a few days, Bjorn and Louise begin to notice that something is off with the other family, soon they will learn just how off the family is when their true selves begin to shine through and the reality of Patrick and his wife’s nefarious motives are revealed. The film is good at building tension, but be prepared for a slow burn. And while the film features psychological horror, you won’t find any scares. The main
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Hounded (U.K., 2022) is a stylish, highly entertaining blend of Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” and the recent horror/thriller trend of young thieves being placed into potentially fatal situations by the homeowners they planned to rob, such as Don’t Breathe. Director Tommy Boulding tackles class war, working from a razor sharp screenplay by Ray Bogdonavich and Dean Lines. Brothers Leon (Nobuse Jr) and Chaz (Malachi Pullar-Latchman), together with partners Vix (Hannah Traylen) and Bod (Ross Coles), have been robbing valuable pieces of art from homes of the rich, sticking to a code amongst themselves and taking only what an art dealer (Larry Lamb) hires them to steal. Leon wants to stop because he has amassed enough money to put Chaz through university, but the other three teammates insist they go on to help them escape their current life situations. Leon reluctantly agrees, and on their next home invasion, they are tasered and when they wake up, find themselves bound
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesParanormalReviews
Izzy (Zelda Adams) lives a reclusive life deep within the woods in a mountain top house she shares with her mother (played by her real life mother Toby Poser… but more on all that in a bit my fiends) where the two of them get up to all manner of mother/daughter biz primarily consisting of creating some sweet-ass tunes with their two woman band, Hellbender, while glammed up in their home rehearsal space and eating pinecones, roots, and other assorted plant-based crunchy bits. Things are all art and river swimmin’ for Izzy, so life is pretty damn good except for one thing… she’s sick and cannot leave her property or interact with others. That of course goes to hell in a handbasket when Izzy learns that a girl her age lives just opposite her and it isn’t long before Izzy befriends said girl, Amber (LuLu Adams) by name, and soon that ol’ hoary chestnut “teen drinking” eventually leads our heroine
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Wild Bones Dripping with dread and rich in unsettling atmosphere, writer/director Jack James’ Wild Bones (U.K. 2022) is a chilling look at a fracturing mind. Fay (Roxy Bugler) and her stepsister Alice (Mary Roubos) reconnect after their father mysteriously disappears and they inherit his house. Fay’s grasp on reality is slipping, along with her memory. Complicating matters, Fay becomes involved with the man with whom Alice arrived at their father’s home with, Gary (Tom Cray), despite Alice’s warnings about him. James’ film serves up several mysteries; because of Fay’s unreliable psychological state, viewers shouldn’t expect tidy answers. Bugler is superb as the disturbed Fay, and she and Roubos have marvelously realistic sibling chemistry together. James invests Wild Bones with haunting visuals and a tone that travels between deadly serious drama and eerie surreal sequences. The film has a decidedly gothic flavor, and the sound design greatly adds to the film’s mystique. Viewers who appreciate slow-burn and ambiguous fear fare should
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsMoviesReviewsThriller
Wolves Haunting Canadian mystery thriller Wolves is a character study of a lonely man (Mark Nocent), unnamed throughout the film, who becomes obsessed with a series of animal mutilations in his wintry city. Fired from his moving job for stealing, and living alone with his pet turtle, the man researches and digs, ceaselessly pushing himself toward dangerous places psychologically and physically. Nocent gives a mesmerizing performance as someone living on edges and driven by dark places inside his mind. Writer/director Danny Dunlop invests his grim, slow-burn chiller with a constant feeling of unease. The sense of isolation is almost unrelenting, from the snow-covered streets to the man’s bare apartment to his almost hermit-like existence. Beautifully shot and masterfully edited by Dunlop, who also provided a fitting score with the help of Rachel Johnstone and Janice Kwan, Wolves is a discomfiting, highly recommended slice of genre cinema. Dash Writer/director Sean Perry’s Dash is a frenetic one-take thriller that goes from dark
Continue reading →
More from Reviews
GamingIndieParanormalProductReviews
It’s a fact that Asian horror is top tier with its perfect mixture of old folk tales and ghost stories and bringing them into the modern world. The same can be said with horror games that take these characteristics and put you in the driver’s seat! This brings us to today’s main focus, White Day: A Labyrinth Named School, a South Korean first-person horror game remade for modern gamers as the original game came out in 2001 for mobile. I want to give SONNORI Corp and PQubed a big thank you for the reviewing opportunity. White Day: A Labyrinth Named School is about a high school boy named Hee-Min Lee who snuck into the Yeondu High School to leave a White Day gift for his crush. Things quickly go wrong as Hee-Min finds himself stuck inside the school along with his crush and two other schoolmates along with murderous janitors and ghosts from the school’s dark past. Now onto the
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
After some truly creepy shit with a young kid waltzing right into the middle of his naked sisters shower… you know the kind in these flicks, where our heroine absently soaps up her breasts more than anyone in the history of ever has done… and pretends to kill her, slasher style along with stern warning from her father (not shower based) to stay away from the local carnival/recent murder site (I bet those words have been strung together more times than we can imagine), Amy Harper (Elizabeth Berridge) and her friends head directly to the local carnival/recent murder site. After much fairground fuckery, including a sideshow featuring deformed animals and fetuses (fun for the whole family!), a magic show featuring Marco the Magnificent (the Phantom of the Paradise himself, William Finley), and a disastrous visit to the resident mystic, Madame Zena (Sylvia Miles), Amy and the gang decide to stick around after hours and spend the night in the eponymous
Continue reading →
DocumentariesFilm FestivalsMoviesParanormalReviews
Take the elements of a found-footage horror movie and add in the fact that the film is a documentary, and you have the intriguing feature Wedding 93. In fine Fortean style, director Paul Zagaris’ documentary leaves the interpretation of the proceedings up to individual viewers. Using film footage recently obtained by Zagaris from sources who wish to remain anonymous, Wedding 93 shows how a traditional rural wedding in 1993 Cambodia takes a disastrous turn. Bol, a well-off farmer, is set for an arranged marriage with Rah, who felt forced into the arrangement by her mother. As the festivities begin, a happy Bol sits next to a stone-faced Rah. The bride-to-be begins crying, and then displays chilling behavior that leads some wedding guests to believe she is possessed by an occult entity. The proceedings were captured on two different cameras by members of the wedding party. With jump-scare shots that could have come from a narrative found footage film, the footage
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
A Gravediggin’ man (Paul Homza) has a bit of surprise at work when he sees an actual living being in his cemetery instead of the usual stiffs he associates with. Fear not for our hero though, as the “living” being he has found is stitched together from pieces of more corpses than currently reside in the boneyard he tends… that’s right boils n’ ghouls, he has run across none other than Frankenstein’s monster (Gisbert Heuer)! Soon our protagonist is helping that misunderstood monster try to find any scrap of humanity left in that shamblin’ shell of patchwork flesh, but all isn’t well for long as the monsters creator, Victor (Tyler Charles Kane), is hot on his trail, and he’s eager to make that poor bastard double-dead for what he did to the “good” doctor’s family! Directed by Erynn Dalton and written by Joseph Zettelmaier, The Gravedigger is a study in minimalism that manages to be engaging while offering a refreshingly
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviewsThriller
After learning the film was distributed by someone named “Brian”… and only “Brian”… and his distribution company, we get down to brass tacks with Massacre at Central High… Mark (Andrew Stevens), along with his bully buddies Bruce (Ray Underwood), Craig (Steve Bond), and Paul (Damon Douglas) rule Central High through a reign of douche-baggery seldom seen on the silver screen! Take for instance their harassment of nerdy Spoony (Robert Carradine, Revenge of the Nerds coincidentally… ) who is busy painting swastikas on school lockers which they force him to clean off… okay, that one is a bit dodgy… would it help if I told you he was painting them in protest of their raucous regime? Enter: David (Derrel Maury), a new man on campus who just so happens to be an old buddy of Mark’s… an old buddy that helped him out of a “jam” at their old alma mater. Now David is one aloof mother fucker, so when he’s
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviewsShudderStreaming TVThrillerTrailers
Shudder’s horror-thriller Speak No Evil is set to premiere this September. But is it worth watching? Let’s talk about it. From director Christian Tafdrup comes the film about two families who become friends during an Italian getaway. When Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) and Karin (Karina Smulders) invite Bjorn (Morten Burian) and Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch) to their remote home for a few days, they quickly say yes. Bjorn, Louise, and their young daughter are greeted with joy upon arriving, but that wouldn’t last long. After a few days, Bjorn and Louise begin to notice that something is off with the other family, soon they will learn just how off the family is when their true selves begin to shine through and the reality of Patrick and his wife’s nefarious motives are revealed. The film is good at building tension, but be prepared for a slow burn. And while the film features psychological horror, you won’t find any scares. The main
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Hounded (U.K., 2022) is a stylish, highly entertaining blend of Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” and the recent horror/thriller trend of young thieves being placed into potentially fatal situations by the homeowners they planned to rob, such as Don’t Breathe. Director Tommy Boulding tackles class war, working from a razor sharp screenplay by Ray Bogdonavich and Dean Lines. Brothers Leon (Nobuse Jr) and Chaz (Malachi Pullar-Latchman), together with partners Vix (Hannah Traylen) and Bod (Ross Coles), have been robbing valuable pieces of art from homes of the rich, sticking to a code amongst themselves and taking only what an art dealer (Larry Lamb) hires them to steal. Leon wants to stop because he has amassed enough money to put Chaz through university, but the other three teammates insist they go on to help them escape their current life situations. Leon reluctantly agrees, and on their next home invasion, they are tasered and when they wake up, find themselves bound
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesParanormalReviews
Izzy (Zelda Adams) lives a reclusive life deep within the woods in a mountain top house she shares with her mother (played by her real life mother Toby Poser… but more on all that in a bit my fiends) where the two of them get up to all manner of mother/daughter biz primarily consisting of creating some sweet-ass tunes with their two woman band, Hellbender, while glammed up in their home rehearsal space and eating pinecones, roots, and other assorted plant-based crunchy bits. Things are all art and river swimmin’ for Izzy, so life is pretty damn good except for one thing… she’s sick and cannot leave her property or interact with others. That of course goes to hell in a handbasket when Izzy learns that a girl her age lives just opposite her and it isn’t long before Izzy befriends said girl, Amber (LuLu Adams) by name, and soon that ol’ hoary chestnut “teen drinking” eventually leads our heroine
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Wild Bones Dripping with dread and rich in unsettling atmosphere, writer/director Jack James’ Wild Bones (U.K. 2022) is a chilling look at a fracturing mind. Fay (Roxy Bugler) and her stepsister Alice (Mary Roubos) reconnect after their father mysteriously disappears and they inherit his house. Fay’s grasp on reality is slipping, along with her memory. Complicating matters, Fay becomes involved with the man with whom Alice arrived at their father’s home with, Gary (Tom Cray), despite Alice’s warnings about him. James’ film serves up several mysteries; because of Fay’s unreliable psychological state, viewers shouldn’t expect tidy answers. Bugler is superb as the disturbed Fay, and she and Roubos have marvelously realistic sibling chemistry together. James invests Wild Bones with haunting visuals and a tone that travels between deadly serious drama and eerie surreal sequences. The film has a decidedly gothic flavor, and the sound design greatly adds to the film’s mystique. Viewers who appreciate slow-burn and ambiguous fear fare should
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsMoviesReviewsThriller
Wolves Haunting Canadian mystery thriller Wolves is a character study of a lonely man (Mark Nocent), unnamed throughout the film, who becomes obsessed with a series of animal mutilations in his wintry city. Fired from his moving job for stealing, and living alone with his pet turtle, the man researches and digs, ceaselessly pushing himself toward dangerous places psychologically and physically. Nocent gives a mesmerizing performance as someone living on edges and driven by dark places inside his mind. Writer/director Danny Dunlop invests his grim, slow-burn chiller with a constant feeling of unease. The sense of isolation is almost unrelenting, from the snow-covered streets to the man’s bare apartment to his almost hermit-like existence. Beautifully shot and masterfully edited by Dunlop, who also provided a fitting score with the help of Rachel Johnstone and Janice Kwan, Wolves is a discomfiting, highly recommended slice of genre cinema. Dash Writer/director Sean Perry’s Dash is a frenetic one-take thriller that goes from dark
Continue reading →
