• Resident Evil: Where Horror Begins

    Resident Evil is a series that needs little introduction. For nearly 30 years the Resident Evil franchise has been setting the standard for horror in gaming. With viral zombies, sentient mold, and head exploding parasites, the series has continued to give players excitement, terror, and spectacles untold. Nine games make up the main series with…

  • Mary Shelley: The Mother of Horror III

    The Last Man (1826) – The Invention of Post-Apocalyptic Horror and the Terminal Annihilation of Hope The two preceding novels established Mary Shelley’s core thesis: the great horrors of humanity are self-inflicted, stemming from unchecked ambition and the ultimate failure to prioritize compassion and responsibility. With The Last Man, published in 1826, Shelley takes this…

  • “She’s my family now”: Black Christmas and Perceptions of Feminine Power, 1974-2019

    Released into the crowded horror landscape of the early 1970s, the original Black Christmas was a signal of what was to come, the subgenre that would dominate the next two decades: the slasher. Black Christmas helped codify many familiar tropes that would be used for years (and are still used today), but its treatment of…

  • Game: An Interview with Director John Minton

    What happens when a BAFTA-winning editor swaps shorts for a no-distributor rave nightmare? I saw the answer when watching Game at Mayhem Film Festival a few weeks ago, and now I had the chance to find out from the director himself, John Minton. My teenager, Fern, had loved the film too, and couldn’t help gatecrashing right at…

  • The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964): The Dust of Empire and the Death of Wonder

    By 1964, Hammer’s Gothic machinery was running on instinct, guided less by inspired vision and more by the relentless momentum of commercial demand. The studio had resurrected monsters, seduced the dead, and given Technicolor blood a moral weight it hadn’t known before. Yet as The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb emerged from the venerable, dust-shrouded…

  • Revisiting Friday the 13th Part III (1982)

    The move into the third dimension had been experimented with in cinemas long before Jason picked up that hockey mask. The 1950’s was the golden age of this technology with Andre de Toth’s House of Wax (1953) heralding a wave of, mostly, horror films to the 3D screen. William Castle, long an exponent of the…

  • Scooby-Doo: Neil Fanning on Door-Opening Moments, How to “Scoobify” Words, and Stunts!

    As a fan of horror, comedy, musicals, and any combination thereof…is it any surprise to anyone that I love Scooby-Doo? The answer should be as obvious as my orange shirt as I interview Neil Fanning: the actor, writer, producer, stunt performer, stunt safety supervisor, voice actor, and more who starred in Scooby-Doo (2002) and Scooby-Doo…

  • My First Time Watching SCREAM: An Iconic Film That Deserves Its Praise

    “What’s your favorite scary movie?” It’s maybe the most famous opening line in horror history, and I’d somehow never actually watched the movie it came from. I know, I know, how does someone who loves movies avoid SCREAM for this long? The Ghostface mask is everywhere, from Spirit Halloween stores to Reddit memes, and I’ve…

  • The Evil of Frankenstein (1964): Resurrection and Regression

    By 1964, Hammer Films stood at a crossroads. The great Gothic cathedral they had built—of blood, faith, and moral dread—was showing its cracks. Dracula and Frankenstein had already carved their myths deep into British cinematic history, terrifying and scandalizing audiences across the globe. Yet the hunger for more persisted. The world demanded another resurrection, another…

  • Mary Shelley: The Mother of Horror II

    Mathilda (1820) – The Abyss of Guilt and the Horror of the Self If Frankenstein was Mary Shelley’s grand, thunderous statement on the dangers of scientific ambition, then Mathilda is her whispered, devastating confession about the failures of the human heart. Written just two years after the publication of her magnum opus, this 1820 novella…