Every horror fan should know the story of the MGM studio fire. Sixty years ago, an electrical short caused a fire in Vault 7 of the MGM backlot just before ten o’clock at night on August 10, 1965. The nitrate film quickly burned, and the pressure building within the vault would eventually cause it to…
One of the films I most anticipated at this year’s FrightFest was undoubtedly Seth Daly’s The Rows. A film about a kid in a cornfield avoiding a group of murderers was like drawing a moth to a flame. Sure, the cornfield is getting a little overcrowded these days with a lackluster reboot of Children of…
Horror gameshow films have been around for a while now. My first introduction to the subgenre was likely through a segment of the John Ritter comedy Stay Tuned as a kid, a gateway horror title toward films like The Running Man, Deathrow Gameshow, $la$hers, and The Uh-Oh Show, which have all enhanced the depths of…
Haunt movies have become a bigger part of the horror landscape over the last few years. Films like Haunt, Hurt, and Hellfest have all been relatively successful in providing scares that make us question the sadism of the people providing our fear, especially when we clamor for more, holding the belief that everything we’re witnessing…
Imagine having nowhere to run to and nowhere to go that’s safe, not even being able to sleep without your nightmares reminding you that the color of your skin defines someone’s hatred for you. That’s the fresh idea behind Raven Deshay Carter’s debut film Noseeums. When social injustice and horror collide, the viewer often wins,…
At a time when businesses seem to have more rights than the people who work at them, a film like Night of Violence arrives to eviscerate your moral sensibilities. Illya Konstantin’s film plays with your sense of what’s right, actively has you siding with its supposed villains, but produces POV characters you also want to…
Olivia Taylor Dudley’s 2025 is going very well. The actress was last seen during the Chattanooga Film Festival’s virtual showcase, giving a dramatically engrossing performance in the cult-aftermath movie Abigail Before Beatrice, and now in Fantasia’s Canadian Premiere of Addison Heimann’s Touch Me. Dudley is becoming a staple of indie cinema, undertaking memorable parts in Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman…
Earlier this year, while writing reviews for Boston Underground Film Festival, the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) had a fascinating title that featured a collection of movie theater pre-movie and intermission programs, as well as some commercials. The film, Hey Folks! It’s the Intermission Time Mixtape, is a non-narrative film, meaning its presentation has no…
There are few films brazen enough to go where Todd Wiseman Jr’s future-dystopia Florida-set film The School Duel goes. When it comes to the next generation, there’s plenty to discuss, but consistent gun violence against the most vulnerable in the nation never seems to amount to direct change. In the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy…