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 FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Dawning Young Min Kim makes his feature film directorial debut — he also wrote the screenplay — with Dawning, a psychological horror outing heavy on family drama. Haejin Park (Kim Ellis) may have physically left her home after her father’s suicide (shown in the film’s opening scenes) for a new life in New York, but the trauma of that memory still weighs heavily on her. She goes back to the California farm where she grew up to console her younger sister Soojin (Veronica Kim), who has just split up with her abusive boyfriend. There, dark secrets are uncovered and supernatural overtones are introduced. Writer/director Kim shows a deft hand at the helm, serving up some twists and turns that raise the suspense while addressing the scars that PTSD and trauma can cause. Although the dialogue is a bit stiff at times, Dawning looks great, boasts fine performances from its two leads, and leaves viewers with much to think about. Kageboshi
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MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Sex and horror films have always walked hand in hand, but writer-director Ti West takes that to a whole new level with his horror film, about a porn movie shoot gone wrong, simply titled X. On a remote farm, a group of x-rated filmmakers rents a carriage house on a farm to make their porn flick, not knowing that when night falls they will face horror and death. Let me get this out of the way, this movie is only for the grown folks, so make sure your kids aren’t home when you watch it. X, set in 1979, really captures the time with its dialogue, wardrobe, props, and soundtrack (which you can own now) of the time that is recognized for its progressive attitude towards doing the nasty. X is labeled a horror film, and while there are a few scares, a ton of gore, and some tension, the sex overshadows the horror that the film aimed to deliver,
Continue reading →
GamingProductReviews
If you take Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, The Lost Boys, and Dungeons and Dragons and put them in a blender with a couple of drops of hot sauce, you will get the tabletop/pen and paper RPG Vampire: The Masquerade. The game and its story take place in a “Goth-Punk” world and was released in 1991 and became the best-selling tabletop RPG second to D&D. Over time the game has spawned multiple sequels over the years before becoming a video game. The focus today is the latest in the series of games, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong. A big thank you to Big Bad Wolf and Nacon for the reviewing opportunity. Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong takes place in Boston where all the vampires living in the city receive a “Code Red” alert, meaning that their existence was discovered and they’re under attack. While the city’s vampires are taking shelter, three vampires, Galeb Bazory, one of the oldest vampires in Boston,
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Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
One and Four Chinese feature One and Four (2021) is a nailbiter about Sanggye (Jinpa), a ranger who works alone at an isolated post in the Tibetan forest, whose solitude is interrupted when he finds a crashed car with a dead policeman on board. Returning to his cabin, he finds a wounded cop (Wang Zheng), but Sanggye suspects he might actually be a poacher. Kunbo (Kunde), a village acquaintance of Sanggye’s, returns to the cabin after a visit the night before, and eventually another wounded cop (Darggye Tenzin) stumbles onto the scene. As Sanggye becomes increasingly suspicious about each of the men, they do their part in creating further confusion and uncertainties. Naturally, weapons come into play, and as anger and confusion mount, danger threatens with every passing second. Writer/director Jigme Trinley’s debut feature looks terrific, with the snow-covered setting serving both a beautiful and bleak backdrop. He ratchets up the suspense masterfully, even if there’s not a whole lot
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Horror fans are always begging for something new, something we haven’t seen before, and that is exactly what you get with director Hanna Bergholm’s gruesome film Hatching. The film opens with scenes of a happy and loving family, of course, it doesn’t take long to discover that not all as is it seems. When a bird crashes through the window the mother snaps its neck, but later that night Tinja (Siiri Solalinna hears it crying and discovers its egg, but this is not a normal egg. It grows to a huge size then a creature hatches out, viewing the girl as its mother. With every day that goes by it kills and begins to look more human. Siiri Solalinna does a fantastic job in her role as a young girl struggling with pleasing her overbearing mother and playing a mother herself to the blood-thirsty creature. Her character has so many intense moments and for a young girl to nail every
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Subject Subject, cowinner of this year’s Fantaspoa Best Film in the Brazilian Feature Film Competition category, tackles a familiar set-up: writer Max (Gustavo Falcão) has moved into a house in a rural area to work on his next book, but odd things occur inside the house. What director Leo Falcão does with this set-up is quite unlike what viewers might expect, though, as he takes a rather light-hearted, magical realism approach and sends Max on a weird journey involving suddenly-appearing texts, oddball locals, and the mystery of what happened to the writer who lived in the house before him. From characters who say strangely out-of-place words and instantly correct themselves to daily fistfights among friends, these locals are an enigmatic lot, and the actors who portray them do a marvelous job. Max finds himself grappling with existential puzzles, and Gustavo Falcão inhabits the character with a bemused, fish-out-of-water verve. Though not strictly a horror film, Subject definitely has scare-fare elements
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Reviews
The Aviary from cowriters/codirectors Chris Cullari and Jennifer Raite combines survival suspense with a psychological thriller, with a fair dash of mystery on tap, as well. The performances from its two lead actors is the driving force behind the film. Jillian (Malin Akerman) was a highly placed member of the Skylight cult when she recruited Blair (Lorenzo Izzo), but after hearing about cult leader Seth’s (Chris Messina) latest treatment, she plans to break free with Blair. To escape the titular compound, the women must traverse the New Mexico desert for a few days before reaching civilization. Brainwashing and newfound paranoia brought on by post-traumatic stress disorder aren’t easily shaken, though, and each woman deals with her share of it, complicated by the dangers of the desert. The Aviary plays mind games with its viewers, as Seth does so with Jillian and Blair — is he in their heads as a result of their cult indoctrination, or in some more mysterious
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Things start off with that hot n’ heavy jogging action so popular with the youth of today before dovetailing into a naked sacrifice to a monster… so begins Kenneth J. Hall’s horror-comedy/creature-feature/softcore sex flick, The Halfway House! So about that jogger… well, she’s the sister of one Larissa Morgan (Janet Tracy Keijser) and she isn’t the type to take a missing sister lying down… unless she’s busy fucking a detective, one Dick Sheen (Shawn Savage) by name, to convince her to help her find her missing sib. Said investigation leads to our heroine going undercover at the local church-run halfway house for wayward “girls” lorded over by the stern Sister Cecilia (genre legend Mary Woronov of Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 fame… and about a billion others), who by day keeps the ladies in line through a healthy dose of fear, and by night sacrifices anyone that tries to escape the house’s wicked walls to the tooth and tentacle heavy
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Alex (David Hess, who coincidentally also starred in Wes Craven’s 1972 masterpiece The Last House on the Left… a title I’m sure I won’t be mentioning again in this review) is a true renaissance man with many passions; disco dancing, acting smarmy, and being a sexually violent serial killer. One night, Alex and his pal Ricky (Italian horror regular Giovanni Lombardo Radice in an amazing t-shirt) are invited to a swank house in New Jersey for a disco party full of discoing. Once there, the rich pricks that are throwing the shindig immediately begin taking advantage of the rather dim Ricky, and our “hero” turns on the apish charm, only to get blue balled. These things goes over like a fart in a submarine for Alex and before long he’s pulled out his straight razor and the night immediately devolves into card-playing, swimming, face slashing (there it is), sexual assault (and again… ), and of course, tchotchke smashing (“Oh, the
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Remember the 1981 TV movie Dark Night of the Scarecrow? Even if you answer “no” it won’t matter a bit when you sit down to view Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2 (or maybe it’s Straw Eyes if the extra title card is to be believed), because other than a few passing references to the first film this is a stand alone flick through and through, but more on that in a bit… Single mom Chris Rhymer (Amber Wedding) and her son Jeremy (Aiden Shurr) arrive smack-dab in the middle of cornfield country to begin life anew. Speaking of life, someone or something is wandering about these rural environs killing folks willy-nilly. Therein lies the crux of this fright film. Who is committing these murders, and why? Well, in case you are a really shit-lousy guesser, it seems a scarecrow is doing the deed, but why and how? That is where the movie gets a bit over-complicated for it’s own
Continue reading →
More from Reviews
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Dawning Young Min Kim makes his feature film directorial debut — he also wrote the screenplay — with Dawning, a psychological horror outing heavy on family drama. Haejin Park (Kim Ellis) may have physically left her home after her father’s suicide (shown in the film’s opening scenes) for a new life in New York, but the trauma of that memory still weighs heavily on her. She goes back to the California farm where she grew up to console her younger sister Soojin (Veronica Kim), who has just split up with her abusive boyfriend. There, dark secrets are uncovered and supernatural overtones are introduced. Writer/director Kim shows a deft hand at the helm, serving up some twists and turns that raise the suspense while addressing the scars that PTSD and trauma can cause. Although the dialogue is a bit stiff at times, Dawning looks great, boasts fine performances from its two leads, and leaves viewers with much to think about. Kageboshi
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Sex and horror films have always walked hand in hand, but writer-director Ti West takes that to a whole new level with his horror film, about a porn movie shoot gone wrong, simply titled X. On a remote farm, a group of x-rated filmmakers rents a carriage house on a farm to make their porn flick, not knowing that when night falls they will face horror and death. Let me get this out of the way, this movie is only for the grown folks, so make sure your kids aren’t home when you watch it. X, set in 1979, really captures the time with its dialogue, wardrobe, props, and soundtrack (which you can own now) of the time that is recognized for its progressive attitude towards doing the nasty. X is labeled a horror film, and while there are a few scares, a ton of gore, and some tension, the sex overshadows the horror that the film aimed to deliver,
Continue reading →
GamingProductReviews
If you take Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, The Lost Boys, and Dungeons and Dragons and put them in a blender with a couple of drops of hot sauce, you will get the tabletop/pen and paper RPG Vampire: The Masquerade. The game and its story take place in a “Goth-Punk” world and was released in 1991 and became the best-selling tabletop RPG second to D&D. Over time the game has spawned multiple sequels over the years before becoming a video game. The focus today is the latest in the series of games, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong. A big thank you to Big Bad Wolf and Nacon for the reviewing opportunity. Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong takes place in Boston where all the vampires living in the city receive a “Code Red” alert, meaning that their existence was discovered and they’re under attack. While the city’s vampires are taking shelter, three vampires, Galeb Bazory, one of the oldest vampires in Boston,
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
One and Four Chinese feature One and Four (2021) is a nailbiter about Sanggye (Jinpa), a ranger who works alone at an isolated post in the Tibetan forest, whose solitude is interrupted when he finds a crashed car with a dead policeman on board. Returning to his cabin, he finds a wounded cop (Wang Zheng), but Sanggye suspects he might actually be a poacher. Kunbo (Kunde), a village acquaintance of Sanggye’s, returns to the cabin after a visit the night before, and eventually another wounded cop (Darggye Tenzin) stumbles onto the scene. As Sanggye becomes increasingly suspicious about each of the men, they do their part in creating further confusion and uncertainties. Naturally, weapons come into play, and as anger and confusion mount, danger threatens with every passing second. Writer/director Jigme Trinley’s debut feature looks terrific, with the snow-covered setting serving both a beautiful and bleak backdrop. He ratchets up the suspense masterfully, even if there’s not a whole lot
Continue reading →
MoviesNewsReviewsTrailers
Horror fans are always begging for something new, something we haven’t seen before, and that is exactly what you get with director Hanna Bergholm’s gruesome film Hatching. The film opens with scenes of a happy and loving family, of course, it doesn’t take long to discover that not all as is it seems. When a bird crashes through the window the mother snaps its neck, but later that night Tinja (Siiri Solalinna hears it crying and discovers its egg, but this is not a normal egg. It grows to a huge size then a creature hatches out, viewing the girl as its mother. With every day that goes by it kills and begins to look more human. Siiri Solalinna does a fantastic job in her role as a young girl struggling with pleasing her overbearing mother and playing a mother herself to the blood-thirsty creature. Her character has so many intense moments and for a young girl to nail every
Continue reading →
Film FestivalsForeignMoviesReviews
Subject Subject, cowinner of this year’s Fantaspoa Best Film in the Brazilian Feature Film Competition category, tackles a familiar set-up: writer Max (Gustavo Falcão) has moved into a house in a rural area to work on his next book, but odd things occur inside the house. What director Leo Falcão does with this set-up is quite unlike what viewers might expect, though, as he takes a rather light-hearted, magical realism approach and sends Max on a weird journey involving suddenly-appearing texts, oddball locals, and the mystery of what happened to the writer who lived in the house before him. From characters who say strangely out-of-place words and instantly correct themselves to daily fistfights among friends, these locals are an enigmatic lot, and the actors who portray them do a marvelous job. Max finds himself grappling with existential puzzles, and Gustavo Falcão inhabits the character with a bemused, fish-out-of-water verve. Though not strictly a horror film, Subject definitely has scare-fare elements
Continue reading →
Reviews
The Aviary from cowriters/codirectors Chris Cullari and Jennifer Raite combines survival suspense with a psychological thriller, with a fair dash of mystery on tap, as well. The performances from its two lead actors is the driving force behind the film. Jillian (Malin Akerman) was a highly placed member of the Skylight cult when she recruited Blair (Lorenzo Izzo), but after hearing about cult leader Seth’s (Chris Messina) latest treatment, she plans to break free with Blair. To escape the titular compound, the women must traverse the New Mexico desert for a few days before reaching civilization. Brainwashing and newfound paranoia brought on by post-traumatic stress disorder aren’t easily shaken, though, and each woman deals with her share of it, complicated by the dangers of the desert. The Aviary plays mind games with its viewers, as Seth does so with Jillian and Blair — is he in their heads as a result of their cult indoctrination, or in some more mysterious
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Things start off with that hot n’ heavy jogging action so popular with the youth of today before dovetailing into a naked sacrifice to a monster… so begins Kenneth J. Hall’s horror-comedy/creature-feature/softcore sex flick, The Halfway House! So about that jogger… well, she’s the sister of one Larissa Morgan (Janet Tracy Keijser) and she isn’t the type to take a missing sister lying down… unless she’s busy fucking a detective, one Dick Sheen (Shawn Savage) by name, to convince her to help her find her missing sib. Said investigation leads to our heroine going undercover at the local church-run halfway house for wayward “girls” lorded over by the stern Sister Cecilia (genre legend Mary Woronov of Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 fame… and about a billion others), who by day keeps the ladies in line through a healthy dose of fear, and by night sacrifices anyone that tries to escape the house’s wicked walls to the tooth and tentacle heavy
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Alex (David Hess, who coincidentally also starred in Wes Craven’s 1972 masterpiece The Last House on the Left… a title I’m sure I won’t be mentioning again in this review) is a true renaissance man with many passions; disco dancing, acting smarmy, and being a sexually violent serial killer. One night, Alex and his pal Ricky (Italian horror regular Giovanni Lombardo Radice in an amazing t-shirt) are invited to a swank house in New Jersey for a disco party full of discoing. Once there, the rich pricks that are throwing the shindig immediately begin taking advantage of the rather dim Ricky, and our “hero” turns on the apish charm, only to get blue balled. These things goes over like a fart in a submarine for Alex and before long he’s pulled out his straight razor and the night immediately devolves into card-playing, swimming, face slashing (there it is), sexual assault (and again… ), and of course, tchotchke smashing (“Oh, the
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Remember the 1981 TV movie Dark Night of the Scarecrow? Even if you answer “no” it won’t matter a bit when you sit down to view Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2 (or maybe it’s Straw Eyes if the extra title card is to be believed), because other than a few passing references to the first film this is a stand alone flick through and through, but more on that in a bit… Single mom Chris Rhymer (Amber Wedding) and her son Jeremy (Aiden Shurr) arrive smack-dab in the middle of cornfield country to begin life anew. Speaking of life, someone or something is wandering about these rural environs killing folks willy-nilly. Therein lies the crux of this fright film. Who is committing these murders, and why? Well, in case you are a really shit-lousy guesser, it seems a scarecrow is doing the deed, but why and how? That is where the movie gets a bit over-complicated for it’s own
Continue reading →
