Category: Film


  • Exhuma Shows Why Some Secrets Should Stay Buried

    If youโ€™re not familiar with Well Go USA, you need to remedy that. Theyโ€™re one of the best genre distributors out there, and they especially excel at bringing Korean films to the States. For example, theyโ€™ve introduced American audiences to modern classics like Train to Busan and The Wailing, and just last month, they gave…

  • Finding Human Dignity in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

    Youโ€™d be hard-pressed to find a more dementedly sadistic horror movie than The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Sure, the film isnโ€™t particularly gory, but despite that lack of on-screen blood and guts, the insanity of the Sawyer family still hits you like a ton of bricks. Itโ€™s a visual and psychological assault on our sense…

  • Sheeps Clothing Is a Scathing Indictment of Religious Hypocrisy

    To riff on the opening line of another recent review of mine, horror and religion go together like peanut butter and jelly. Itโ€™s a classic combination thatโ€™s given us some of the greatest horror films of all time, like The Exorcist, The Wicker Man, and The Witch, so when I first heard about Sheeps Clothing,…

  • Izzard’s Performance Elevates an Otherwise Tame Doctor Jekyll

    The return of the legendary Hammer studio brought an ear-to-ear grin to my face with the announcement of Doctor Jekyll in 2020. Hammer is responsible for a plethora of monster films, including some based on the Universal creations, usually with an unequivocal look of Technicolor and a propensity for a deeper macabre than the monster…

  • Imaginary Turns a Childhood Staple into a Soul-Sucking Demon

    Iโ€™m always up for a new Blumhouse film. Sure, Blumhouse has their fair share of stinkers just like any other studio, but theyโ€™ve also put out some of the best horror movies of the past decade and a half, like Paranormal Activity, Get Out, and The Black Phone. Theyโ€™ve more than earned the benefit of…

  • Renfield: Making Monsters Relatable

    As a horror fan, whenever I mention enjoying any specific monster movie, Iโ€™ve grown used to having another horror fan pop out jump scare-style to say, โ€œI like slasher movies because theyโ€™re realistic. Itโ€™s something that could really happen!โ€ If you โ€œjust donโ€™t relateโ€ to people facing monsters, films like Renfield (2023) (screenplay by Ryan…

  • H. P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones Pays Tribute to the Master of Cosmic Horror

    Iโ€™m a big fan of H. P. Lovecraft. His proclivity for esoteric cults, horrors beyond human description, and ancient creatures far older than mankind resonates with me on a deep level, so Iโ€™ll watch just about anything adapted from his works. In fact, Iโ€™m always on the lookout for great new Lovecraftian horror, so when…

  • The Sympathetic Yet Uncompromising Morality of birth/rebirth

    2023 was a great year for modern takes on classic monsters. For example, Renfield, and The Last Voyage of the Demeter put fun new spins on the classic Dracula story, and The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster was a touching remix of Frankenstein. But in my opinion, one 2023 reimagining stands head and shoulders…

  • Frogman Has the Makings of a New Cult Classic

    I love cryptids. When I was a kid, I read books about things like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster all the time, and even now, Iโ€™m still a big fan of TV shows like Monsterquest and Destination Truth. So naturally, when I first got wind of Frogman, I was instantly intrigued. Not only did…

  • The Ghost Writer Dredges up Angry Demons From the Past

    Horror and the arts go together like bananas and peanut butter. Those may not sound like good combinations at first, but if you give them a shot, youโ€™ll be pleasantly surprised (and yes, Iโ€™m serious about bananas and peanut butter). The art/horror pairing goes at least as far back as The Phantom of the Opera,…