Incantation is a classic tale of three ghost hunters who travel to a secluded village in order to learn more about their spooky traditions and gather footage for their Youtube channel. However their journey quickly goes from silly to incredibly horrifying. Years later, the curse of the mother Buddha deity still remains.

Incantation is one of my favorite horror movies in recent years. Its kind of a hidden gem with no theatrical release. A lot of people in the horror community talk about wanting to find a movie that is actually scary and I really do think that this is it. I don’t want to hype it up too much for those of you who haven’t seen it because I don’t want you to have unrealistic expectations, but when I watched this movie for the first time I had to pause it and turn on the lights because I got too scared. It pulls the viewer into the story making you apart of the nightmare and for that this feels more like an experience than a movie. It wastes no time and gets scary within 5 minutes. If you haven’t checked it out please do yourself a favor and watch Incantation.

Score: 10/10

On a live broadcast during Halloween on sweeps week in 1977, a failing late night talk show starring Jack Delroy (played by David Dastmalchian) interviews a cult survivor supposedly possessed by a demon. The audience is amazed and horrified by the demonstration and Delroy soon finds himself out of his depth. But instead of heeding caution, he doubles down on the bit to save his show from cancellation to disastrous consequence.

This movie has a great premise. What if you showed Regan from The Exorcist on a talkshow next to obvious fake psychics and debunkers that often appeared on late night. The talk show is a format that everyone is familiar with, and even the guests previous to the possessed little girl should all be recognizable stand ins for real life talk show guests such as Uri Gellar and James Randi.

The biggest setback is that the writing and acting a little too on-the-nose, and it ends up feeling a little cringe. In what could be a super compelling and real-feeling found footage film, the artificiality really pulls you out of the moment and you definitely feel like you are watching a movie. It’s like when you see a movie or show about a stand up comedian, and the actor isn’t able to be convincingly funny but is met with uproarious laughter from the fake audience. It’s a type of uncanny valley that is created when actors aren’t able to match the charisma and timing of a seasoned professional, in this case, talk show host. 

They made the genius move to explain that this is a failing talk show, so Jack Delroy’s wooden presence and indiscernible personality actually sells the “why”.

That being said, this movie does have some good bones. The plot structure and utilization of the talk show format is great. It lends a new backdrop to the horror cliche of demonic possession.

The tension ramps up convincingly, and the inevitable trainwreck that is foreshadowed is satisfying.

I just wish they would have aimed for more realism in the writing and acting.

6/10

The Exorcism is about Farther Gabriel Amorth played by Russel Crowe, who…wait no sorry that’s the popes exorcist I keep getting confused. The exorcism is really about Anthony or Tony played by Russel Crowe who is a washed up actor who tries out for a leading role in an upcoming exorcism movie while attempting to overcome his serious drinking problem. With the loss of his wife, Tony sends his teenage daughter Lee to a catholic boarding school, but when she is kicked out for in her words “protesting” but in the words of the law “vandalism”, she returns home and the reunion is tense. When Tony lands the role as the exorcist in this new emotional drama in the format of a horror movie weird things start happening on and off set. Will Tony survive the making of this movie? Will his family survive his alcoholism? Will Russel Crowe be in another exorcism movie next year? Whose to say.

My review for the exorcism is that it is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. Its a catholic horror movie about a demon who needs to be exorcised. The scares aren’t that interesting, and some of the jump scares are so loud and quickly cut that I literally didn’t even know what happening. It was just startling and gave me zero information about what was actually going on in the film. Russel Crowes acting was actually pretty good in my opinion, but I think his voice is so deep and gravelly that it could be that I just enjoyed listening to him talk. The other star of the movie for me was the director played by Adam Goldberg who delivers both the funniest lines in the movie and the most emotionally brutal lines. The rest of the cast is kind of whatever to me. My favorite part of the movie was how it demonstrated the exploitation of trauma in the film industry which was pretty sad to watch. My least favorite parts were anything dealing with the demon cause I didn’t even really get what was happening or why. Maybe this really was a drama cloaked as a horror movie after all.

Score 4/10

You called. We answered again.

When you’re smiling the whole world smiles at you. Maybe not in this case, but most of the resto of the time.

Dr. Rose Cotter, a workaholic psychiatrist at a busy hospital, sees a troubled patient that complains of hallucinations of people with creepy smiles terrifying her every waking moment. Initially Dr. Cotter doesn’t believe the young woman, but when the same phenomenon begins happening to her, she must investigate the origins of the mysterious curse before it is too late.

Smile is the first feature length film from writer/director Parker Finn and is a retelling and expansion of his short Laura hasn’t slept. I haven’t been this excited about a new director since Ari Aster.

I loved this movie.

It has depth, it’s well crafted, and it features excellent performances from its cast.

Lets start with the tone and theme of the movie. It’s an on the nose allegory for the long lasting emotional effects of trauma, which specifically uses trauma as a device in the plot. The fact that it is so on the nose and that I didn’t feel like it was ever ham handed in it’s delivery, makes it all the more impressive to me. The tone is dark and helpless, and only sinks deeper throughout.

The direction and editing was fantastic. It has some of the best jumpscares I have ever witnessed, and somehow they seemed innovative instead of hacky. I jumped and yelled out several times in the theater. In so doing, it reaches the elusive praise of being “scary” by which some viewers judge horror movies. 

The sound design and music should almost get top billing on the poster. I’ve never been so disorientated and terrorized by ringing phones. The music is deeply unsettling and is composed by Cristobal Tapia de Veer, who did the music for White Lotus on HBOMax

Sosie Bacon, relative of the famous Travis Bacon, plays Rose, and her devolution into madness was convincing and heart wrenching.

The characters felt fleshed out, and the relationships felt real. There was one scene between Rose and her fiance played by The Boys’ Jessie T. Usher, that felt false to me, but eventually his character and that relationship was framed in a way that even made that one moment make sense.

It’s a movie that can be easily compared to It Follows and Th e Babadook, but it doesn’t ever feel derivative.

I didn’t think I’d find another horror movie this year that I’d love as much as Barbarian, but here we are, just weeks later.

I can’t stress this enough. I am a jaded, pretentious movie reviewer (see my comments on Terrifier 2’s review for proof). I no longer watch horror movies out of love or desire. I watch them out of obligation. This movie and Barbarian opened my cold heart and gave me childlike joy and terror, much like the critic at the end of Ratatouie. My faith in filmmaking is restored when I see new creative writer/directors that can still shock and delight me in the movie theater.

Thank you Parker Finn

10/10

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We watched Terrifier 2 and were treated to a homage to 80’s slashers with a runtime of a Lord of the Rings movie.

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A year after his original massacre, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) returns to terrify Miles County. This time instead of killing random people, he seems to have an agenda and a renewed sense of humor.

Art targets the friends and family of Sienna (Lauren LaVera). He is twisted, hateful, and worst of all – inappropriately humorous.

As he mutilates kids and adults alike, he kind of helps to bring Sienna’s family together, which is as weird as it sounds. 

This is the third Art the Clown effort by writer/director Damien Leone, who was obviously beaten by his father as a child.

I think that it’s fair to say that Art the Clown has earned a place among the likes of Michael Myers, Jason, and Freddy, although his brand of slasher is a much more horrifically violent one, with a kind of through the looking glass feel to the whole thing. 

Terrifier 2 is the longest slasher I’ve ever seen. It’s fucking long. It’s longer than The Return of the Jedi by 20 minutes!!

Lots could have been left on the editing room floor. This movie has so much extra dialog and mood scenes that I question whether or not they were just going for some kind of record.

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Does the runtime make it bad? No, it just makes it less good.

Terrifier’s brand seems to be astonishingly fucked up gore set to slapstick and deadpan comedy. Some of the kill concepts in this are truly gruesome and will never leave your mind. 

Is this movie good? I don’t know, it’s not my favorite thing to see horrendous gore, but I have to say, if I am going to see horrendous gore, I would choose to see it with Art the Clown. He a pretty funny guy.

This is not a real movie to me, this is some sort of attempt at a world record. It’s a pretty interesting thing to see. It pays homage to slashers of olde while cramming sex and blood down your gullet in a way that truly sickens me and makes me want to ask, “what is wrong with kids these days?” But that’s the whole point.

If that sounds like a good time to you, you probably didn’t need to listen to my review.

6/10

You called. We came twice.

If you’re ready for a howlin’ good time, look no further than Dog Soldiers. The setup of a group of soldiers provides an ideal level of character development and werewolf fodder in this 2002 monster movie.

In the highlands of Scotland, a group of soldiers are deployed in a training mission. Before long they stumble across the scene of another squad that has been ripped apart by an unseen monster. The lone survivor, Davos Seaworth, is close lipped about what they were attacked by and why they were there, since they were using live rounds and not a part of the training mission. Soon howling and fast moving creatures start picking them off until they run into a zoologist named Megan, who knows exactly what is hunting them, werewolves.

This is honestly the first time I’ve even heard of Dog Soldiers. And it doesn’t seem surprising given that it never had a wide release outside of the Sci Fi channel.

This is a very simple movie with a relatively low budget. However, it squeezes every cent out of the budget and delivers a fun and entertaining monster movie.

They opted to go completely practical with the effects, which limits a lot of what they can do with the werewolves, but it was the right choice given where CG was at the time. 

There are some shots early on of the werewolves that are pretty laughable, in that they look like peachfuzz from Creep, but for the most part they limit the appearance of the werewolves in ways that hide how goofy they look full on.

Regardless of the special effects, the plot, characters, and dialogue in the movie are what make it worth watching in my opinion. The relationships seem real, the dialogue is fun, and the actors really pull off great performances.

This is a passion project of writer/director Neil Marshall, who is obviously having fun, and puts in a lot of references and call backs to his favorite movies throughout.

While it might not be a “great” movie, the fun is infectious and its a compelling setup with some satisfying twists at the end.

7/10 

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We watched Critters (1986) and were taken on a nostalgia trip the likes of which only an  80’s horror movie can deliver.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

Critters is a fun and simple story about a slew of terrifying little Krites and their escape from prison asteroid sector 17, the bounty hunters hired to track them down, and a small town in Kansas who has to endure their reign of terror. After summarizing it, it seems a little less simple, but somehow it works.

As the Krites crash-land on earth, the town comes under attack. As the bounty hunters arrive, things are thrown into an even more impressive disarray by the single minded and determined bounty hunter crew.

Will the critters take over earth, or will the bounty hunters and earthlings learn how to team up to defeat these tiny terrors?

Critters is a super-fun and easy-going 80’s creature feature with a ton going for it. It knows exactly what it is, which is a Star Wars, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, Gremlins, Ghoulies, homage slash tribute slash ripoff.

Watching Critters now, I feel like I can hear the producers saying, “People want new stuff that references old stuff in a way that makes them remember the old stuff, but this new stuff has to be it’s own fun thing.” That’s exactly what Critters is, and without shame or even too much in the way of fourth-wall-breaking winks.

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It’s not going to blow you away or even make you feel scared. But it’s not really supposed to make you scared. It’s supposed to be a somewhat risque and fun film for you to sit down with your youngsters on a Friday night and munch on some popcorn over.

This is a PG-13 film and in the eyes of a 10 year old, it earns it. It’s got some decent violence and lots of frightening explosions. 

The Critters themselves are some of the most unique and well-thought-out horror movie monsters that I can think of. Here is a list of some of the more notable traits among Krites:

• Highly mobile when rolling in a ball
• Built in long-range with poison Krite quills
• Always hungry and can eat anything
• Can grow to massive proportions
• Can reproduce limitlessly

It’s hard to hate this movie because it has so much going for it in the way of nostalgia. It uses tons of practical effects and puppetry and has a tangent storyline involving bounty hunters that is fun in a way that I can’t quite describe.

7/10

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The long reign of terror is over. Or is it…? It is. Hopes were high after Halloween 2018, but each installment got progressively worse, until finally, Halloween Ends.

The town of Haddonfield, IL is on edge from the previous Halloween’s rampage from Michael Myers. Not in a way that gets them to be safer or demand justice, but mostly in a way that makes them irrationally blame Laurie Strode for all their problems.

Corey, a good kid, ends up accidentally killing a little prick of a kid, and gets labeled as psycho by the town. He gets pushed around until he finally reaches a breaking point and starts to style himself after Michael Myers.

Laurie Strode herself, after living a life based on fear and vengeance, training herself to be the ultimate mercenary, in this movie says, meh, I’ll just live like a normal grandma now.

And Michael Myers shows up at the end.

After Halloween Kills, my expectations were not high for this film, but nonetheless, it didn’t meet them. I imagine for fans of the Halloween franchise, this entry will be as befuddling to them as it is to me.

You would think that this being the final entry in the franchise, it would focus on what makes it work. Mainly, the unstoppable Michael Myers.

Nope, they play a switcheroo, and focus on attempting to create a Michael Myers stand in protege. 

It’s a bold move, and could be interesting, if they didn’t completely fuck up everything to do with character development and motivation. 

Every character in this movie acts completely irrationally. Your brain will feel whiplash as characters completely change motivations instantly. This serves to make the plot seem completely arbitrary and nonsensical. 

The film attempts to analyze the nature of evil via nature vs nurture, but it falls completely flat, since they don’t present a compelling or cogent argument for either.

I will say that the ending is satisfying. Laurie and Michael do get their final standoff, and it does put a period on the franchise.

After watching this movie, I do hope it is the last.

3/10 

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Wanna watch the grossest movie out there but don’t wanna do it alone? Allow our quips to keep you company in this Human Centipede 2 commentary track! Happy Halloween!

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We watched Hellraiser (2022) and were reminded of a series which has virtually infinite potential and has fallen from grace, and risen like Lazarus to raise heck again.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

Hellraiser can be found on Hulu in their formidable Huluween selection

Riley (Odessa A’zion) is a young woman struggling with addiction and staying sober. Her boyfriend, Trevor (Drew Starkey) is also a recovering addict who seems to be a little less concerned about sobriety and walking the straight and narrow. 

Riley’s brother, Colin (Adam Faison) and his gay boyfriend, Matt (Brandon Flynn) are worried about Riley.

When Riley and her straight boyfriend, Trevor break into a storage locker and steal the puzzle box – wacky hijinks ensue and everyone gets more heck than they bargained for.

Hellraiser (2022) is a promising new movie based in the Hellraiser universe. It’s 54% reboot, 27% homage, 33% slow and boring, with a nice 12% helping of gloop.

Probably the biggest thing that Hellraiser has going for it is David Bruckner is at the helm, fresh off one of our favorite movies of 2020 – The Night House and The Ritual from 2017.

Hellraiser does a lot of things right. It keeps the plot pretty easy to follow, and stays true to a lot of the lore of the series. It also has a lot of nods to sequels in the long line of Hellraiser movies.

The re-imagined Cenobites are off putting and sometimes horrifying, which is fabulous. Jamie Clayton as The Priest aka lady pinhead is something to behold, and strangely sexless as a character.

Lots of this movie was upsetting and hard to watch, but there was some stuff that didn’t work too well for me. I’m a bit tired of the same story playing out over and over again. 

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With this intellectual property, you could go to actual hell, and have any number of incredible and weird stories play out. Just take Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 as an example.

Instead, we have to see a bunch of new people going through a lot of similar actions that we’ve seen before. 

The pacing on this Hellraiser is also incredibly slow. It’s clear that a slow burn was their intent, but sometimes it drags a little too much.

Overall, this is a breath of fresh air to an otherwise dead series, and I’m glad to see it. I’ve always thought that Hellraiser had a ton of potential, and this is a pretty high-quality example of where it can go.

7/10

You called. We came.

The film follows the lives of two women as they navigate an uncharted territory of human experience, exploring themes of desire, taboo, and the limits of societal norms. The narrative delves into the depths of physical and emotional extremes.

It starts out in medias res with a young couple engaging in a love making session, after which, they enjoy a home cooked meal. However, the film quickly turns dark as they both develop food poisoning. Their bond remains strong and they struggle through sickness together powered by their love.

Not since Skinamarink have I seen such a daring and controversial film push the boundaries of conventional filmmaking and audience tolerance. 

Unlike Skinamarink, 2 Girls 1 Cup lives up to the hype, andI felt engaged throughout the duration of the film.

It’s not without it’s faults. I would have preferred more character development and I felt the pacing was too fast to digest on first viewing. The soundtrack at times felt like it was disconnected from the action on screen. I know a lot of films score against the tone of the film to great effect, such as in Tarantino films, but this one just felt out of place and overly maudlin. 

What I liked about the film was it’s unflinching portrayal of two lovers struggling through hardship together. It’s a film that will stay with me for some time, and I imagine I’ll revisit again in the future.

10/10 

A tight premise excellently executed by one of the Whitest Kids You Know. This taut thriller ramps up to a wacky exploitational movie in such a unique way, it left me grinning from ear to ear.

Tess, played by Georgina Campbell, travels to Detroit to interview for a job. When she arrives in the middle of the night at her Airbnb rental, she discovers that it is already inhabited by a man that supposedly rented the house from another site. Despite being leery of the man , played by Bill Skarsgard, she comes inside to figure out what went wrong with the rental companies. The man , named Keith, is friendly, but perhaps overly friendly in addition to several other red flags. The longer Tess stays in the house, the more she discovers about Keith and the history of the house, to her detriment.

Also, the Mac guy shows up.

This movie is a wild ride, and honestly a contender for my favorite of the year. It is really a movie divided by two halves. One very grounded in reality with a slow burn building of suspense relating to interactions with strangers. The other, while still not paranormal, enters a heightened bizarro underground realm of debauchery and brutality.

This film reminded me of Malignant in that it pulled off the tone that Malignant utterly failed to deliver on. That being a taut mystery thriller evolving into an exploitational fun fest.

The writer/director, Zach Cregger is mostly known from being a straight-man cast member in WKYK. He joins Jordan Peele as Sketch comedy graduate transformed into a horror prodigy

When I say that I enjoyed this movie, I mean that I had many times where I laughed in delight about the writing, acting, and direction. I was smiling ear to ear at the end of the film.

10/10

We watched The Mummy from 1999 with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz and were reminded of a simpler time, when unlimited double handguns were the solution to all of life’s little problems.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

In a story as old as time, grave robbing, gold digging, westerners invade the ancient city of Hamunaptra and steal the life and death savings of a napping Egyptian Pharaoh. 

The Pharaoh, played by a man who should be named Billy Zane, but who is actually named Arnold Vosloo gets re-animated and seeks to re-animate his girlfriend so they can fuck from beyond the grave.

Brendan Fraser has guns, a dashing smile, and a seething hatred of unspent shells. Rachel Weisz is a bookish librarian who is swept up in this action romp and soon gets more mummy than she bargained for.

You’ve probably heard of Indiana Jones and Die Hard – well what if I was to tell you those movies birthed a third, superior movie starring Brendan Fraser? 

You would say, “Fill me up, daddy!” 

Then I would slam The Mummy into your VHS player and smack your mother in the face before I sent you to the underworld of ecstasy by hitting the “Play” button.

The Mummy doesn’t give a shit what you think about reality. It sends an army of the undead and a swarm of Egyptian beetles called scarabs to eat you. Scarabs don’t eat you alive by burrowing under your skin, but The Mummy doesn’t give a shit.

It wants you to sit down, shut up, and have a blast – and by god you will.

It’s a movie that keeps it simple in the most impressive way possible. Any braindead dumb dumb can follow this plot, and that’s not a bad thing. 

Fraser makes funny faces, and is so handsome that I am unsure of my sexuality.

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Weisz reaffirms my sexuality by speaking Hebrew while showing bountiful cleavage.

Beni makes for an appropriate slime ball helper to evil incarnate.

There’s blazing guns, exploding mummies, sexy mommies, bugs that eat you from the inside out, angry Americans, ugly Americans, and CGI from 1999. 

What kind of red blooded white female would I be if I scored this any lower than a 10/10?

10/10

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Howdy pardners and pardnettes, it’s time to join the rodeo and review Bone Tomahawk. It’s going to be a rootin tootin good time.

In the sleepy old west town of Bright Hope, it is anything but, as the town doctor is kidnapped by a band of indigenous cave dwellers that even the (other?) Native Americans think are savages. Kurt Russel’s Sherriff Hunt leads a band of men on a rescue mission made up of his elderly assistant deputy played by Richard Jenkins, the arrogant Gunslinger Brooder played by Mathew Fox, and The doctor’s lame husband played by Patrick Wilson. Actually lame, his leg is broke. He’s actually a pretty cool dude.

They make their way through the frontier to find the territory of the Troglodytes, and find out that the stories of their savagery are if anything underselling it. 

This film is one of a few in the genre of Western Horror, and few if any reach the quality of this film. 

The film is effective in it’s simplicity. It’s a rescue mission ala The Searchers. You have the set of archetypal characters that are thrown together by situation and duty, and several dilemmas and power struggles along the journey to find the location of the savages.

When they get to the Troglodyte Territory, the tone takes a sharp turn into straight up torture porn horror. 

The mission goes from the guys in white hats will surely win, to oh no… oh nonono. 

While the first half of the movie drags a little, I think it’s necessary to set up the characters and give contrast to the horror at the end of the film.

One scene in particular stands out so much that it’s basically become a meme as “that scene” in Bone Tomahawk. For good reason. It will stick with you, and if you are a man, you will especially feel something.

8/10

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We watched Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 on Prime and found a not often talked about sequel that pis the epitome of everything 80’s horror.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

Doctor Channard is the lead doctor in charge of an insane asylum. 

Kirsty, the protagonist from the original Hellraiser is fresh out of her experience in the first movie and is sent to Doctor Channard’s asylum. 

She warns of terrible creatures that killed her family, known as the Cenobites. 

Coincidentally, Doctor Channard has been searching for the Cenobites and a doorway to hell for quite a while. As Doc Channard heads to hell Kirsty follows him to try to … save? … her family?

Everyone gets more hell than they bargained for.

Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 is one of the craziest horror movies I have ever seen, and that’s saying something. Hellbound came out a mere year after the original, in 1988, and managed to be a pretty coherent and disturbing ride. 

While some of the plot is a little obtuse and hard to follow, it’s made up for with some of the gnarliest gore, and craziest worldbuilding I’ve seen in a long time. 

Remember when movies would come out of real left field places and smack you in the face with stuff you’ve never thought of before? Well, Hellbound is determined to pummel you with that kind of thing until you relent.

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This sequel leans heavily on the original, including a lot of the most effective special effects and scenes from the first Hellraiser, which ends up being amazing because that first movie is great!

Hellbound goes even further than the original in some of the more disturbing imagery and suggestive scenes. I found myself closing my eyes during one scene where I just didn’t want to have to see what was happening anymore.

I wasn’t checking my watch throughout my viewing of Hellbound, and i had such a blast with all the crazy concepts that this has catapulted itself into one of my very favorite 80’s horror movies.

A tremendous amount of this film relies on the concept of medical malpractice and a shrugging of ethics being scary, which finds a new foothold today.

While the plot is a little strained, this is the stuff that a true 80’s horror fan will cream their pants over.

9/10

Much like disposable tupperware, Orphan: First Kill rebels against the idea of a one-use premise. It ends up being the latest entry in the “meh” cinematic universe (MCU).

Orphan First Kill is a prequel to 2009’s Orphan, that starred, then 10 year old Isabelle Fuhrman. Now a fully grown adult woman, she is reprising her role as Esther, a thirty something year old psychopathic proportional dwarf posing as an 8-9 year old girl. In this film, we are shown how Esther escapes an Estonian mental facility and poses as an American family’s lost daughter. As time goes on, the family has more questions about Esther, and Esther has more questions about the family. Hjinks ensue.

This is not a good movie, it’s not a bad movie, it’s meh. The film is directed by William Brent Bell, who directed The Boy and The Boy 2, which should set your expectations squarely in the Meh cinematic universe.

I do applaud the plotting of the film, it unlocks the puzzle of how to reuse a one use premise. 

Here’s the elephant in the room. Isabelle Fuhrman is not 10 years old any more. No matter the amount of camera angles and the de-aging they use, she still looks like a full grown woman. It doesn’t detract from the film nearly as much as you would expect, but it is a bizarre choice nonetheless. Would you film a Home Alone Prequel with a fully grown Macaulay Culkin?

The saving grace of the film is the twist around the middle of the film. It does add an interesting dynamic, and saves it from being a true rehash.

Overall, you get what you expect. A little psychopath that kills a lot of people.

5/10

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We watched The Ring and were treated to one of the most impressive and scary PG-13 movies ever made.

The Ring can be streamed with a Paramount + subscription, or for a nominal rental fee wherever movies are found.

A videotape that has the power to kill those who view it seems to be at the center of a string of four teenage deaths. 

Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) is a newspaper reporter who becomes interested in these deaths and takes it on herself to follow up. 

After she views the tape, Rachel begins to find herself being pulled deeper and deeper down the proverbial rabbit hole that seems to look a lot like a dark and ominous well.

Will Rachel be able to crack the story of how this video tape works or will she get more dead little girls than she bargained for?

Directed by Gore Verbinski, The Ring is the American Remake of the Japanese 1998 film, Ringu. Gore went on to direct all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, along with a few more big Disney projects.

The Ring was a tentpole classic horror movie almost as soon as it was released in 2002. 

The creepy concept of a video tape that kills was too much for anyone to resist, and the fact that the tape itself is viewed by the audience makes it so much more titillating.

The tone of The Ring is deadly serious, and it lands just right in the quiet of your darkened home on a Friday night. It feels morose and hopeless and creepy beyond compare. 

The tape is so dark and disturbing, but so vague that it taps into some gross center of things that people fear. 

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The heavy lifting in The Ring is left up to the sound design, which is absolutely perfect. So much of this movie is quiet and muted in terms of the ambiance, and the jump scares are so pronounced and shrill that it places you squarely on the edge of your seat and keeps you there. The iconic sound of the video is so unique and terrifying that I can hear it echoing in my nightmares to this day. 

Naomi Watts and Martin Henderson are so beautiful to look at that it’s hard not to worry that they might die at any moment, but somehow it makes sense that the thing to kill them would be a videotape.

There are few movies that are held in such high regard as The Ring, which has everything to do with it’s ability to resonate eerie terror to all those who watch it.

That said, I have always thought, even on my first viewing that at a 1:55:00 runtime it’s a little long-winded. The movie certainly takes it’s time to slowly unwind the mystery or what happened to Samara. Much of the Samara storyline seems extraneous in an otherwise nearly perfect movie.

9/10

Remember that hilarious Jordan Peele from sketch comedy shows like Mad TV and Key & Peele? Well he decided to make a movie, and I’m sure it’s going to be… hilarious.

Chris Washington, played by Daniel Kaluuya, is taking a vacation with his girlfriend to meet her family. Played by Allison Williams, his girlfriend Rose convinces Chris that her family will be perfectly fine with her dating a black man despite the fact that she never told them about his race.

The weekend begins pleasant, albeit slightly awkward. However as time goes on, Chris notices weird behavior from the black employees of the family. Chris becomes suspicious that something is wrong, but before he can GET OUT, he’s caught in the family’s trap and has to escape a fate worse than death.

Get Out is Jordan Peele’s first film as a writer/director and he delivered way beyond expectations given his sketch comedy background. Peele turns out to be an expert at building tension while utilizing, and commenting on latent racial tension in the US. 

I distinctly remember seeing the trailer in the movie theater and was immediately delighted by the implied premise of the film, that the scariest thing to a young black man, is…white people.

It really is impressive how this film gives a really nuanced social commentary on what it is like to experience racism. Peele didn’t choose the easy target of right wing southern whites as the danger to Chris, he specifically used an affluent “New York liberal type” family. It expresses the false sense of security of a masked racism right below the surface that others and marginalizes black people.

The quality of this commentary is really magnified by all of the racial allegory horror movies that have come out since. Just watch Antebellum or the Candyman remake to see how blunt these allegories can be.

10/10

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We watched Cabin Fever on Hulu and were reminded of a simpler time when Eli Roth was allowed to make movies.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

Karen (Jordan Ladd), Paul (Rider Strong), Bert (James DeBello), Marcy (Cerina Vincent), and Jeff (Joey Kern) are college students heading out into the – you guessed it – woods. 

They are heading to the woods to – you guessed it – party. They are partying at a – you guessed it – cabin. 

They get sick with a – you guessed it – fever.

Everyone gets more Cabin Fever than they bargained for.

With that extremely simple synopsis you would think that Cabin Fever wouldn’t be anything special, but you’d be wrong. Simple is often exactly what is called for, and this is no exception.

Cabin Fever is Writer/Director Eli Roth’s first full feature length directorial effort and is probably the reason he has become known as one of the modern horror greats of today.

It’s a movie so full of horror tropes and homages that on paper it seems like it should fade into the background with every other generic horror effort. But Cabin Fever stands out.

Cabin Fever stands out because it knows what’s funny, it knows what’s campy, and it knows what scares you. 

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We get to see Roth’s early takes on edgy dialog and non-politically correct character, which seems to draw inspiration from Tarantino’s work.

What Cabin Fever does really well is tap into people’s innate fear of infection and sickness. The concepts behind this fast moving disease are alarming and are something we are now all intimately familiar with following the pandemic.

Being helpless in the face of the suffering and death of your friends is a truly heinous concept, and Roth is able to balance this serious terror with lightness and humor in all the right ways.

As a result, Cabin Fever works it’s way into a fond place in any horror fan’s memories in much the same way Hostel (Roth’s second directorial effort) does. 

8/10

Prey takes the Predator franchise back to it’s roots by focusing on a mano a mano fight to the death. However, what this film does even better than the original is create a compelling protagonist with a clear character arc.

Prey is set in 1719 in the Comanche nation. Our protagonist, Naru is a young woman that wants to prove herself as a capable hunter by going through kühtaamia, a coming of age hunt between a Comanche and an animal Predator. As she struggles to prove herself, she discovers through her tracking skills that mountain lions and bears (oh my) aren’t the only big game in the land.

An alien Predator has been dropped off to complete a similar hunt and inevitably clashes with Naru (and her little dog too).

Prey is the fifth in the franchise of standalone Predator movies. 7th if you include the AVP movies, but let’s not talk about those.

So it’s taken 3 movies and 35 years to get back to the basic premise of a primarily  mano a mano fight between an outmatched human protagonist and the Predator in the wilderness. It’s almost like someone identified what worked in the original movie, and… used that information to make a good movie.

Although very similar in plot, this isn’t a direct remake. Writers Patrick Aison and Dan Trachtenberg made some very interesting changes in the setup that further accentuate what works in the original. Instead of a roided up Arnold, we get a diminutive, yet ferocious Naru. Instead of a modern setting with giant guns and explosives, Naru only has use of primitive weapons.

Everything works with this film. Mostly it comes down to the writers and director keeping it simple. They use the tried and true hero’s journey template and add enough set piece action sequences at the right times in the story to maintain interest. The story never strays far from the perspective of the protagonist, so it feels intimate and gives the audience one person to really root for.

The writing, directing, and acting is all great. There is very little to distract from the enjoying the film. If you are a fan of the original Predator, you will really enjoy this film, but not feel pandered to.

10/10

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We watched The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence and were treated to one of the most lauded gross-out flicks in recent memory.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

This is the unfortunate story of Martin, a diminutive, quiet, and overweight lad who doesn’t fancy senseless chit-chat. Martin is a nightshift parking lot attendant who has an obsession with the movie, The Human Centipede: First Sequence. 

He fantasizes about someday creating his own human centipede, larger and more fleshed out than the one depicted in the movie. 

Martin’s life is depraved in every way that you can imagine. His mother hates him for having his father put away for sexually molesting him. His therapist wants to molest him. His neighbor wants to kill him.

One day Martin snaps. Everyone gets more poop mouth than they bargained for.

The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence is a meta sequel to, you guessed it, The Human Centipede. Martin obsesses over the first movie, and for that, I kind of love this sequel.

It’s not just the meta take that’s fun, it’s the insanity of the whole thing done with a smile and a wink. It’s absolutely depraved because it feels like a place and a person and a life that could exist. 

With this sequel director Tom Six set out to give “true horror fans” a movie worthy of total disgust. In this he delivers, I would definitely place this among the grossest movies I’ve ever watched right along side, Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood, and The Sadness. 

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The enjoyment of The Human Centipede 2 lies in the shock value and the commitment to depravity. The version we watched was in black and white, which added a whole other level of gritty grossness to the already disgusting experience. 

There were more than a few moments where the comedy in this shown through the waves of nausea and I laughed out loud with shocked disgust. 

I admire this movie for what it is, an attempt to make you watch it through your fingers.

Most people will find this movie to be absolutely uncalled for and totally devoid of entertainment value – it’s not for those people. The genius part about The Human Centipede 2 is that it uses those people who shouldn’t be watching it as a siren song to get to those who should be watching it. 

The Human Centipede 2 exists, and that’s enough for me. For the seasoned horror fan, this isn’t a scary movie in terms of being thrilled or startled, it’s scary because of what it puts in your soul.

6/10

Who watches the watchers? We do! In this episode of Horror Movie Talk, we review the nepo baby Ishana Night Shyamalan’s new horror movie The Watchers. Should you watch it? Watch to find out.

The watchers is the first feature length film by writer/director Ishana Night Shyamalan, the daughter of M Night Shyamalan. Her previous work includes being a writer/director on her father’s Servant series on Apple TV+.

In this film, Dakota Fanning plays Mina, an American expat in Ireland who is tasked with delivering a parrot. Along the way she gets lost in some weird woods from which there is no escape. There she finds a group of people that have also been stranded in the woods. They lead her into a solitary shelter in the middle of the forest and explain that they are to stand as display in a two way mirror for mysterious killer creatures that come out at night.

As the days pass, Mina attempts to learn more about the woods to find an escape.

The film sits currently at 32% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I can say that that seems pretty harsh. It’s not a terrible movie, but it’s not great either. As they say in the old country, The Shyamalan doesn’t fall far from the tree. This film suffers from some of the same on-the nose dialogue and an overreliance on exposition to tell the story.

The set up is ripe for possibilities. Could it be a human zoo run by aliens or interdimensional travelers? Could it be an elaborate hallucination? Could it be a time loop? In the end, the explanation is a little more close to home and fantastical that science fiction, which was actually a welcome surprise. However, I still feel there was a lot of lost opportunity around hallucination, and shape shifting, which are both present in the story.

The film was bought purportedly for 30 million, and hasn’t yet made back half of that in the box office. If you are wondering if it is worth it to see in the theaters, I think the litmus test is whether you thought it was worth it to see Old in the theaters.

5/10

Jordan Peele’s third outing as a horror film writer/director, Nope, continues his trajectory as one of the best horror filmmakers of a generation. In Nope, he turns the trope of a UFO on it’s head and makes it a truly terrifying presence.

After a freak accident involving falling objects from the sky kills their father, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Heywood (Keke Palmer) are left to manage the struggling family ranch of trained horses. As horses start disappearing, a strange object in the sky seems to be the culprit. OJ and Emerald decide to capitalize on the opportunity by filming the UFO. 

This is Jordan Peele’s third horror movie that he’s written and directed, and he’s already established himself as one of the most interesting voices in the genre. I know that I was looking forward to seeing this one ever since I saw the trailer.

What’s most interesting about this film is that it takes the popular concept of a UFO as mysterious and clinically detached, and makes it personal and menacing.

It’s a very eclectic movie with a lot of seemingly disparate storylines and characters, and in the end ties them together nicely. It’s got killer chimps, the Hollywood film industry, family tragedy, sibling relationships, and more all contributing to the story of what this UFO is and why it is there.

At the center of the film is the relationship between OJ and Emerald. It’s a mix of button pushing, comfort, frustration, and love that comes from being siblings. OJ is a stoic introvert driven by duty, and Emerald is an ambitious extrovert, looking to make a mark in the world. Their contrast and the resulting relationship really grounds the film by giving it heart.

This film melds Peele’s weird and unique sensibilities from US with Spielbergian spectacle. There is genuine off-putting menace throughout, but especially in the third act, there are some undeniably fun and exciting sequences. My only gripe is that the runtime is a little long and seems to meander a bit in the middle. 

Some of the story elements like Stephen Yuen’s character and the monkey attack are nice for color, but don’t have a very satisfying payoff.

Overall this movie is a genuinely good time, and well worth the trip to the theater

9/10

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We watched Vampire’s Kiss on Vudu and it was a delightful window into the soul of one of the most impressive, interesting, and entertaining actors of our age, Nic Cage.

Publishing executive Peter Loew (Nicolas Cage) is bitten by a woman and starts acting erratically. Believing that he is being controlled by his vampire mistress puts a great deal of stress and pressure on Peter.

As he deals with the stress of this new vampire relationship, Peter leans more and more heavily on his poor secretary, Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso). 

As Peter’s madness evolves, it becomes questionable to the audience exactly what is real and what is Peter’s rapidly devolving mental state.

Everyone gets more Nicolas Cage than they bargained for.

Vampire’s Kiss is an anomaly of a movie. It’s not exactly a terrifying horror movie due to the strong overtones of comedy within Cage’s performance. On the other hand it’s not exactly a feel good romp due to the very serious mental decline of Peter, our protagonist turned antagonist and extremely unreliable narrator.

It’s a dark comedy that will delight those who want to be taken on a crazy ride. 

Vampire’s Kiss strongest feature is the insane performance given by Nic Cage. He creates such a believably crazy character that you can’t help but remember bumping into people just like him on public transportation and wondering, what is their life like.

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The best part is, you get to see what his life is like. It’s touched, tragic, and totally bonkers.

I can’t help but feel like writer Joseph Minion spent some time on the New York subway watching mentally disturbed people and began posing the question to himself, “what brought that person to this unfortunate place? What was their life like before and during their transition into madness?”

This is pretty much the only notable directing credit that director Robert Bierman has, and that astonishes me. It’s such a weirdly enjoyable movie and shares so much in common with one of my favorite movies of all time, American Psycho that I can’t help but see all the inspiration that Vampire’s Kiss has given to more recent dark comedy movies.

8/10

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Before Sarah Michele Gellar, Kristy Swanson brought Joss Whedon’s iconic vampire slaying heroine to the silver screen. Does this 90s relic hold up to scrutiny sans nostalgia? listen to our latest episode to find out.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, before she was an iconic television heroine was first found on the silver screen starring Kristy Swanson. Considering this movie is 30 years old, I’m not sure many people remember it, let alone the WB television show. However, Joss Whedon, it’s writer is well known, having written and directed some of the highest grossing films of all time in the last decade.

Buffy in this film is the stereotypical Valley Girl of the 90s. The type that opened Sir Mix a Lot’s hit single of the same year “I Like Big Butts”. She is vapid, dumb, and flaky. When an infestation of vampires begin to invade LA and her high schools Hawthorne High, a mysterious man in a trench coat named Merrick shows up. Merrick informs Buffy that she has been chosen to be the latest in a long line of vampire hunters throughout history. Buffy has no interest, but she finds she has a natural knack for Slaying. She decides to team up with Merrick and train so that she can defeat Lothos, the ancient vampire that is the leader of the cause of the recent uptick in vampire activity.

I have a lot of nostalgia for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I watched it several times in the 90s as a prepubescent little fat kid. I remember it having some iconic performances and moments, but upon checking the Rotten Tomatoes critics score, it sits at 36%. Was I so out of touch? No, it’s the critics who are wrong.

Watching it yesterday, I tried to put off nostalgia and be unbiased. It has some good bones. There are some great performances and Joss Whedon’s writing does shine through, but it is bogged down by poor direction.

Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Paul Rubens, Rutger Hauer, and Luke Perry all bring the appropriate amount of gravitas and goofiness that the high concept screenplay demands.

The dialogue is top notch, creating compelling characters while placing it squarely in 90s LA. Where it has problems is when it comes to establishing stakes (no pun intended) and establishing the lore in a compelling way. This is often blamed on changes made to Joss Whedon’s original script, which resulted in him walking away from the set halfway through production. In a comic book series called Buffy the Vampire Slayer The Origin, you can read the original vision Joss Whedon had for the film. It really is nearly identical except for a few key scenes.

Where the film starts to fall apart is the choppy and sometimes confusing editing and direction. It’s clear that the studio and/or director wanted to de-emphasize the darker elements of the story and focus more on the light hearted comedic aspects. What they didn’t understand is that those dark moments help to sell the comedy and make it a much more compelling film if executed right.

The stakes are never truly established, because we’re never shown that Buffy particularly cares about her school or any of her other similarly vapid friends. We are given scant details of the main villain, and when the main confrontations occur, they seem arbitrary and rushed.

In the end, while it still holds a special place in my heart, I can see the flaws in the movie, and it’s just aight.

4/10

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We watched Resolution on Tubi and were treated to something so meta that Facebook might have a case against them.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

Mike (Peter Cilella) heads out into the country to force his friend Chris (Vinny Curran) to quit his stimulant abuse after receiving a video of him deep in the depths of psychosis.

Upon arriving at Chris’ domicile, Mike starts noticing lots of weird doings transpiring. 

After chaining Chris to the wall, the two close friends hunker down and start reliving their relationship to everyone’s chagrin.

As Mike begins to delve deeper into Chris’ world and the rural area around the house, he keeps noticing strange occurrences that indicate they are being watched.

What is watching Mike and Chris, and how will this movie end?

A couple months ago I watched The Endless – another movie that was written and directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. It blew me away. I heard that Resolution was the first movie that they made, and it tied in to The Endless. Having watched The Endless before Resolution made the experience a lot more enjoyable and interesting. 

As a stand alone film, Resolution is fairly interesting and compelling. It’s essentially a drama with a lot of sinister mystery thrown in for good measure. 

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Being a fairly paranoid person, a lot of the feelings conveyed in this movie are familiar to me. 

Most of what Resolution explores is the complexities of addiction, and what it means to find meaning in life. Sometimes meaning is what we make of it, and sometimes the world provides us with the bump we needed to wish we had done more with what we had.

Alone, it’s not a groundbreaking movie, but it does do a lot in terms of meta winking and suggestions. While not as in-your-face with the meta as Scream, the narrative in this is so meta that it’s a little daunting to fully appreciate. It’s a perfect movie to follow up The Endless which is one of my favorite horror movies in years.

7/10

If you want to feel stranger danger, look no further than Scott Derrickson’s new film The Black Phone in theaters now. This well constructed and acted supernatural thriller is well worth your time.

Pretty much all you need to know is in the trailer. In the late 70s in North Denver, there is a spate of missing children. Rumors abound of a predator named “the Grabber”.

Finney, the protagonist, is either a popular baseball pitcher, or a shy weakling who is picked on by bullies. He is soon grabbed by the grabber, played by Ethan Hawk in a mask channeling Pennywise the clown. His sister Gwen has a touch of the shinning, and has dreams about where the Grabber takes his victims.

While Finney is locked in the Grabbers basement, the disconnected BLACK PHONE in the room receives calls from the previous victims of the grabber from beyond the grave.

Finney must work to free himself using the knowledge given to him from the phone and using his own wits.

This is a very capable film. It feels very much like a Stephen King story, which makes sense, since the original story was written by his son Joe Hill. It is directed by Scott Derrickson, who previously directed Sinister and the Exorcism of Emily Rose. This is to say that The Black Phone is in capable hands.

A lot is given away in the trailer, which is unfortunate, but the film has some good twists and turns and ends up being compelling and engaging throughout.

The biggest pleasant surprise is the quality of the acting from the young cast. Especially Mason Thames who plays Finney, and Madeleine McGraw who plays Gwen, and has some of the best lines in the film.

The first act does a very good job of creating a compelling three dimensional character in Finney. His life isn’t all roses, having to deal with an alcoholic abusive father along with school yard bullies. We are shown that Finney is empathetic, strong, and capable, but doesn’t fight for himself. He seems to survive day to day depending on friendships and his relationship with his little sister. This sets up a compelling character arc that seems natural and satisfying in the end.

There isn’t a lot of time spent on the Grabber. He is more of a presence and more of a looming threat than an active participant for most of the film. I would have liked to see them do more with him. There was ample opportunity to go very dark, and I was a little surprised given Derricksons previous films that there wasn’t more done to show what The Grabber did with his previous victims. This might have upped the stakes a little and made The Grabber a more indelible villain.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable movie, and exceeded my expectations.

8/10

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We watched Constantine on HBO Max and I realized that I had a bunch of unfounded ill-will toward this movie, which is pretty good.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

Constantine is about John Constantine (Keanu Reeves), a DC character whose job is essentially to send demons back to hell. Or at least he made it his job when he realized that he was heading there.

He is approached by Angela (Rachel Weisz) and asked to help her prove that her twin sister didn’t commit suicide. As a devout Catholic, Angela realizes that if her sister did actually commit suicide she damned herself to hell.

With the help of his plucky sidekick, Chas (Shia LaBeouf) and some of his friends, John is on the case. 

He finds himself in the middle of a war where the Devil’s son, Mammon, is trying to unleash himself into the world of the living. 

Everyone gets more holy hand grenades than they bargained for.

Constantine is a pretty impressive movie in a couple different ways.

Firstly, it had a large budget and was able to spend a lot of it on CGI monsters and backdrops, which wouldn’t normally be a plus. But this CGI from 2005 actually holds up quite well. 

It also has enough action and interesting characters to keep you involved in the movie from beginning to end. In fact, the Angel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) and Satan (Peter Stormare) are some of the best depictions of well-known Bible characters that I’ve ever seen on screen.

Constantine doesn’t dwell on the origin story, while still acknowledging it, which is a breath of fresh air in today’s hyper-cookie-cutter style comic book movie world.

By the end of Constantine, if you are bought in on the story the payoff will be pretty impressive.
It’s not without fault, however. This movie came out two years after The Matrix trilogy concluded, and it feels like a direct port of that series in a lot of ways. From the stylized world to the monotone color pallet to starring Keanu as the savior of mankind – it’s uh, kind of obvious. 

Also, it was originally touted as a horror movie and I can see where it threw in scary imagery and concepts to try and please the horror crowd. Make no mistake, this is not what I would call a “hard-horror movie”. This is an action-thriller that dealt with some of the scarier elements of religion, and the studio figured they could get a bigger audience if they could draw the horror crowd. This was my issue with the movie when I originally watched it on the bigscreen.

Overall, it’s a pretty fun movie that I would watch again after a few years. It was a much better Catholic horror movie than The Nun, so there’s that.

7/10

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Mad God is the new Phil Tippett stop motion animation movie available exclusively on Shudder. In this Patreon only review, we talk a lot about this movie and what we loved and hated about it.

To support our show and gain access to the following Patreon only Pretentious reviews, support us on Patreon!

Movies you can only hear us review on Patreon:

• Mad God (2022)
• The Vanishing
• Cat People (1942)
• Zombie (1979)
• Cemetery Man (1994)
• Psycho
• The Last House on the Left (1972)
• Don’t Look Now
• The Void
• Hausu (House)
• Ghoulies
• Greenland
• Army of the Dead
• Cabin in the Woods
• Dead Alive / Braindead
• Basket Case

For Pride month this year, we decided to review a great LGBTQ+ horror movie. Saying Stranger By The Lake is a horror movie, is pretty generous, since it is more on the light end of thriller. But what it lacks in horror, it makes up in homoeroticism.

At a French lake, Franke spends his summer days cruising for gay sex. Along the way he befriends the pudgy middle-aged depressive Henri who is ostensibly bisexual, but has no interest in sex, but provides good conversation. Franke sees a gay French Tom Selleck-type at the lake named Michel and is instantly attracted to him. Michel seems to be involved with someone else, but when Franke spies Michel drowning his presumed boyfriend, Franke decides to shoot his shot. 

This is an understated erotic thriller that could also be considered a black comedy. It explores themes of lust, relationships, commitment, loyalty, hot hot steamy cock.

This was on a list of “gay horror films” that I came across, and I hadn’t heard it, but the set up seemed intriguing. A man witnesses a murder, but decides “doesn’t matter, still got laid”.

It is an engaging thriller, but calling it a horror movie is being pretty generous with the genre. The last 10 mins or so could be considered horror, but the bulk of the film is mostly drama. By drama, I mean explicit, unsimulated gay sex.

To say that there is gay sex in this movie is an understatement. It is basically soft core gay porn for a good 60% of the film. In past episodes, we have advocated for more full frontal male nudity, and more sex in films. Well, be careful what you wish for.

I’ll admit that most of my enjoyment came from knowing that I was forcing David to watch this, because if I had known how hard it would go, I probably wouldn’t have suggested it.

However, I actually really liked this film. Like I said it is understated in that it says a lot with a few words. The script is very tight, and the characters intriguing. The acting is great, and a lot is communicated through glances and silences.

7/10

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We went and saw Crimes of the Future and witnessed David Cronenberg‘s return to body horror in one of the most upsetting films of the year.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website

Crimes of the Future is a story about the far flung future, where the earth has succumb to environmental havoc wreaked on it by the human race. Humanity has been treated with pain-killers for so long that the concept of physical pain is novel. 

Our protagonists are Saul Tensor (Viggo Mortensen) and Caprice (Léa Seydoux), who’s art is performative surgery that seems to be extremely sexual in nature. 

Saul Tensor is like a portion of humanity who finds himself growing auxiliary organs that make his life extremely uncomfortable. From eating to sleeping, Saul never finds himself far from discomfort, which is strange, given how much of humanity seems to experience so little in terms of feeling that they intentionally mutilate themselves to feel anything at all.

A young child named Brecken is murdered by his mother for eating a plastic trash can in the opening scene of this movie. A complicated game of cat and mouse between a shady government agency and a splinter cell of candybar aficionados takes place surrounding Brecken’s death.

Does art imitate life? Will humanity embrace their inevitable evolution? 

Crimes of the Future is the result of 50 years of doom and gloom reporting on humanities shaping of our environment. This future is one that you’ve had visions of every time you hear a news report of the trash island in the Pacific. A humanity made perverse by its own inability to react to itself.

More than that, this is a return to intense body horror for renowned writer, director David Cronenburg. 

I have to admit, Crimes of the Future hones in on my most intense personal terror – surgical imagery. I first found this personal weakness in the fourth grade when my teacher went into vivid detail in describing how doctors removed her brain tumor. I felt sweaty and weak, and soon passed out on my desk.

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Since then, I’ve come a long way in my ability to deal with thoughts and descriptions of surgery. Crimes of the Future cracked me by fusing surgery with sexuality and kink. There is something so perverse in the concept of sexualizing voluntary surgery that i found myself sweating and my vision blurring like I was back in the fourth grade.

The world that Crimes of the Future takes place in is so bleak and sad, I found myself wishing that the movie would end.

The concepts within are terribly interesting and well-presented. Questions like, “What is natural?” and “How do you deal with admiration if the thing that people admire about you is what you most hate about yourself?” crop up all over this masterpiece. There is no shortage of thought-provoking concepts and questions to keep your head busy for ages.

I can honestly say that I’ve never felt this uncomfortable watching a movie that Horror Movie Talk has reviewed. I can say that the most uncomfortable parts for me were within the first and second act. I contemplated leaving the theater after a particular scene, but I’m glad I didn’t because the end had less revolting content and more interesting questions.

A worthwhile movie that is sure to make you feel uncomfortable on a variety of levels. While it’s not as universally relatable as the performance given by Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, it’s very close to it.

9/10

The Grudge 2004 is an Americanized version of the movie Ju-on, a Japanese franchise about a curse of resentment and anger. Both Ju-on and The Grudge are directed by Takashi Shimizu, and the Grudge is produced by (among others) Sam Raimi. The movie stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as Karen, an American who moved to Japan with her boyfriend to study nursing. While attending to her first in-home patient, Emma, who is an elderly woman with dementia, she realizes that there might be something dark lurking in the home. After some creepy occurrences, Karen has no choice but to dig deeper into the house’s history and the legends surrounding it. 

The Grudge has interesting ghost lore, which isn’t too different from the way we view ghosts in America, but adds emphasis on reliving the violent past, which I think is fun and gives the viewer a bit more to latch onto as far as why the ghost exists. The ghost looks extremely creepy in most scenes, with a face that genuinely terrified me as a kid, even before I had seen the movie. Its mark on pop culture is undeniable. However, a part of me likes my memory of this movie more than the movie itself. Some of the scenes feel pretty copy and paste, especially the scenes about Karen trying to research the house and learn clues. Some of the scares came off as a bit goofy, which is fine, except that the tone of the movie is very heavy, so these silly-looking scares can feel a little out of place and unintentional. Still, the movie is good, in my opinion, and has a place within my mind that will never go away. 

Score: 8/10

This film is the epitome of body horror, done by the master of body horror: David Cronenberg. If you have never seen The Fly, you’ll definitely be saying to yourself “Ew, David”.

Jeff Goldblum plays Seth Brundle, a brilliant scientist that has successfully developed a working transporter. When he shows it to Geena Davis’ Veronica Quaife there are still a few kinks to work out with transporting living tissue. Vis-à-vis keeping the insides in. In an impulsive moment, after he corrects the issue, he decided to transport himself as the first human subject. However, he was so preoccupied with whether he could, and didn’t stop to think if he should. As time goes on, he slowly realizes that something went wrong and his body experiences a terrifying metamorphosis. 

The Fly still works. David Cronenberg, the director, has made his career off of pushing the limits, and in this movie, by doing so, he creates one of the best body horror movies ever filmed.

This film won an Oscar for best makeup for good reason. Seth Brundle’s slow transformation moves from the superficial to the grotesque so gradually, that you still think of him as a man even when he becomes a straight up monster. That is actually a big benefit to the film, because you maintain empathy for an utterly disgusting creature up to the final shot of the film.

Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum work really well together, and have excellent chemistry on screen, which makes sense because they eventually married for several years. Davis’ performance really grounds the film for the audience, because we are really watching all of the events of the film from the perspective of Veronica Quaife. Her reactions of wonder and horror really sells the special effects that we witness.

Jeff Goldblum is the perfect casting for a mad scientist, as the character’s eccentricities are utterly believable coming from him. Although, I have to say, this is only about 50% Goldbluhm compared to how eccentric he is today.

Overall, the story, characters and special effects are all masterful and don’t age a bit in the 36 years since its release.

10/10

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We went and saw Men and, for most men it will be a similar viewing experience to staring into a mirror for an hour and a half.

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Men is a movie about a woman named Harper (Jessie Buckley), because of course you can’t have men without women – or can you?

Harper has recently lost her husband to a fit of passion that looks an awful lot like a spiteful suicide on his part. She has decided to take a vacation in the countryside to get her wits about herself and is met by a bunch of MEN.

These MEN range from pleasantly goofy to downright terrifying. One through line with all the MEN she encounters is that they are all somewhat simple, aloof, or pleasantly dimwitted. There is one exception to that rule in the priest.

As her stay in the countryside progresses she is visited by a spectre of manhood, and her experiences become increasingly more surreal and alarming. She calls the police to help her, but the police department is full of MEN.

As things spiral out of control, the audience is given a barrage of horrendous body horror that is clearly meant to depict the female/male dichotomy in the most unpleasant ways imaginable.

Harper definitely gets more MEN than she bargained for.

Men is an interesting movie and the third full length feature film that writer, director Alex Garland has made. Because it was made by a man, I feel comfortable saying that its pretty accurate. Although, it’s somewhat problematic that Garland assumes to know what the female perspective is, which could be said to be his inherent male privilege shining through.

Men is an attempt to satirize males and give the audience a reference point for what it might be like living as a woman. It takes symbolism to the next level by starting as a straight ahead narrative story that slowly morphs into a nightmare of dreamlike sequences that can’t possibly be real.

It shares a lot in common with the recent Finish movie Hatching (Pahanhautoja) in that it is an allegory that will probably be the hardest to watch for those who would most benefit from it. There are undeniable truths within the subtle feelings provided by Men that are so on-the-nose that they can’t be summed up in words.

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Many will take issue with this movie for a variety of reasons, but the only issue I have with it is the title. By titling this movie “Men” it betrays a bias, and others those who would benefit the most from watching it. “Toxic masculinity” as a label would probably be a much more effective term that everyone was able to agree on if it weren’t othering males and was instead just referred to as “Toxicity”.

Perhaps the best way to heal divisions and painful histories is to work together to end the trend of “othering” those who have wronged us, and try our best to forgive, while acknowledging our differences.

This movie does that – it acknowledges the differences between men and women while pointing out the issues that  many men have.

The title was chosen to be divisive, and take advantage of the angst present between men and women, which is ironic because the content of the movie does a decent job of being fair to men and women alike.

It’s a well-done movie, if very slow in some parts. 

People who will enjoy Men might include:

• Women
• Open-minded men
• Body horror fans
• Psychological horror fans
• Thriller fans

People who probably won’t enjoy Men might include:

• Toxic people
• Many men
• Those who don’t do well with gore and body horror

8/10

An American man marries a Serbian immigrant who fears that she will turn into the cat person of her homeland’s fables if they are intimate together.

Like most movies from the 40s, there is a lot of things you have to get used to stylistically before you can see through the time period and production quality to get to the value of the film. A few films stand out as familiar because they figured out a lot of movie making tricks that survive till today. Cat People is one of them, especially for the horror genre. Cat people is notable because it is the first to use the jump scare. It was created at a time when RKO was struggling financially, and was looking to make a quick buck off of the Universal horror recipe. Low budget monster movies with high returns.

Cat People was made from a shoestring budget of $134,000 which would be about 2.5 million today. It made back (by some estimates) 30x.

It’s vague in all the right places and has a very spare and lightning fast script. Again, if you can look past the time period, or at least appreciate it in context, this is a really good and thought provoking movie.

Just like prodigy sang: I’m a firestarter, twisted firestarter; You’re a firestarter, twisted firestarter. This Blumhouse remake of the 80s classic is more twisted, but is it worth a watch? Listen to our review to find out.

Firestarter is the second adaptation to Stephen King’s 8th novel. It tells the story of a young girl Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) trying to control her supernatural power to set things on fire with her mind. After an accident in school, she finds herself on the run from the law and a mysterious government agency with her psychic father (Zac Efron). The government agency sends a telepathic native american assassin named Rainbird to track down Charlie and return her for testing.

In the end, everyone gets more fire than they bargained for.

This was an ok movie. I don’t know if anyone was clamoring for a remake of the 1984 Drew Barrymore film, but here it is. It is very quickly paced, and it gets off to a quick start, but it suffers from a lack of character development early on. The supernatural elements are handled very matter of factly and almost seems too common in the world for it to be surprising to anyone.

Where the film really shines (no pun intended) is when things get set on fire by Charlie. It’s unavoidable that you are going to have a good time watching her on a rampage at the end of the film.

I wasn’t blown away by it (no pun intended), and it does seem like an unnecessary remake/adaptation, but Blumhouse has found a market for remakes that no one is asking for, and it’s going to serve it god damn it. I was pretty bored with the first two acts. The problem with presenting the problem and immediately starting the action in the beginning is that the film ends up basically being the same thing for most of the movie. Some more character development around Charlie, her father, Rainbird, and even the government agency would have made it more engaging and established better stakes. 

It has some fun moments and is worth a watch with friends, but I wouldn’t rush to the theater for it.

5/10

We watched The Sadness before it was available for streaming in the US because we are a big time movie review podcast. I can easily say that this is one of the craziest movies I’ve ever seen, and will stick with me for a long time.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website

The Sadness follows boyfriend Jim (Berant Zhu) and girlfriend Kat (Regina Lei) on their normal day in Taiwan. Unfortunately for our couple, this normal day is the day that the Alvin virus hits their city.

The Alvin virus is a pandemic that they’ve been hearing about for a while but no one seems to be taking seriously.

As the virus hits their hometown, people start to die, and worse, rape each other in the streets.

The virus causes people to cry as they assault each other while simultaneously exhibiting total ecstasy in causing pain and torture.

It seems to unlock the most reprehensible parts of people and make them capable of depravity you’ve never even seen in horror movies.

Will Jim and Kat make it through, or will the sadness take them? 

Canadian writer, director Rob Jabbaz brought this manga adaptation of Crossed (Garth Ennis and Alan Moore)to Taiwan to film. This is his first full-length feature film.

Without question, this is one of the most depraved movies I’ve ever seen in terms of dialog. The violence is absolutely absurd and over-the-top. The themes are disgusting, and are meant to cast a light on the absurdities of politicizing a major health concern such as a pandemic. 

I heard a little bit about The Sadness before I watched it, enough to brace myself, which was good because I don’t think I would have enjoyed it otherwise.

The makeup, effects, and execution is unbelievable, rivaling that of similar splatter movies like Braindead / Dead Alive.

This is a slick movie that is well made, and outpaces most action movies handily. It’s also so absurdly disgusting that I imagine many won’t be able to finish it.

Watch on Shudder

It takes the old premise of zombies and the morality tales that they brought to the silver screen and pops a monster truck engine under the hood before sending you to hell with tears streaming from your eyes.

The Sadness is super gross, but it does have something of a point, which seems to make it easier to take in. 

The non-stop themes of rape, murder, and stupendously disgusting dialog where characters describe in vivid detail the acts of violent sodomy they wish to perform made me so happy that this wasn’t in English. Had I heard those words spoken in a language that I understood, I would have been sickened to my core.

The only movie that I’ve reviewed that left me feeling almost as gross as this was The House that Jack Built.

Not many will be able to get through this one and those who do will have to live with all those nasty thoughts in their head.

8/10

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Don’t let the subtitles turn you off. This is one of the best theatrical horror movie releases of the year. The Hatching will stay with you, especially if you were raised by a narcissist.

Finnish freshman director Hanna Bergholm heads this chilling talk of Tinja, a 12 year old gymnast and her toxic relationship with a giant bird person and  her mother. What begins as a simple tale of hatching a mystical growing forest egg, twists into a disturbing metaphor for the traumatic metamorphosis caused by being raised by a Finnish Laura Dern. 

I really liked this film. I went in with low expectations. The trailer featured some really corny acting, and set it up as a pretty arbitrary story of raising a monster. But it really delivers on an emotional and visceral level.

You really have sympathy and pity on little Tinja as she desperately tries to makes sense of and manage forces way beyond her control. 

The themes throughout are vague enough to be interesting, but explicit enough to draw some connections. Toxic relationships, narcissism, puberty, eating disorders, and hidden lives are all themes that are explored pretty adeptly in a tight 1:27 runtime.

The writing is really good, and develops the characters very well. Some of the lines are a little on the nose, but they are still believable in the context of a family that desperately is putting up the perfect façade under the command of a raging narcissist mother.

9/10

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We watched The Wailing on Shudder.com and found out just how badly a well meaning dad can fuck up his entire family. A lesson I learned long ago.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won) is a local policeman and caring father to Hyo-jin (Hwan-hee Kim), the precocious young daughter. A stranger enters their village and immediately things start to go awry.

Families are found horrifically murdered, and people in the village seem to be changing.

A Japanese man who lives in the forest is fingered as the culprit, but what is really going on?

As Hyo-jin gets sick, father Jong-goo takes it on himself to solve the mystery surrounding what exactly is happening to their village. 

The Wailing was directed and written by Na Hong-jin and many have called it one of the most impressive horror movies of the last 20 years.

I would call The Wailing the Indiana Jones of horror movies. It’s constantly throwing new stuff your way. It’s hard to know what’s around the next bend, but you can bet that it will be exciting, terrifying, or totally shocking.

More than that, it’s an engaging labyrinth of a story that answers questions only to reveal more questions.

Rent or Buy on Amazon

Those who want an ending that’s easy to understand may want to steer clear of The Wailing, but to be honest it’s pretty fun to guess at what it all means.

Personally, this movie has been hyped for so long by so many that I came away a bit underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine movie that’s pretty interesting and it definitely kept me on the edge of my seat.

I just expected something so much more scary than this due to everyone’s reaction to it and there’s just no way it could deliver.

There’s also something of a cultural rift that I feel in The Wailing more so than in other foreign films. I felt like there was tons of subtext and meaning that I was missing due to my inherent Western upbringings.

8/10

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The movie that launched a thousand stationary camcorders. Paranormal Activity cracked the code of found footage to make one of the most successful horror movies of all time. Listen to our review and see if it still holds up.

Paranormal Activity follows Katie and Micah, young twenty-somethings that are steady dating and living with each other. Told through the lens of Micah’s new camera equipment, we learn that he is attempting to document PARANORMAL ACTIVITY that Katie purports to be happening in their suburban house.

We learn that this is not the first time Katie has been haunted, and we watch as Micah attempts to use his powers of toxic masculinity to solve the problem.

Paranormal Activity was not the first found footage movie, but it was the first one to really crack the code for what makes that gimmick work. It remains the most profitable horror movie based on return on investment. With a budget of 450,000, it raked in nearly 90 million. Not that that speaks to the film itself, but it definitely speaks to popularity and marketability.

It’s interesting to come back to the original since the series has expanded in scope and lore. This is a simple movie, that mostly documents the happenings in a single bedroom.

It strikes a chord, because katie and micah’s relationship feels real enough to engage with the story. The viewer is drawn in to try and catch the signs of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY through the nightly static camera shots of a doorway. Sound boring? Well did I tell you it had (LOW RUMBLE)?

For what it is, and me growing up with sightings, before every douchebag had a ghost hunting tv show, this tapped into the suspension of disbelief around “real hauntings”. There aren’t really ghosts reaching through tvs stealing children, but do you know what there is? Ghosts knocking things off of shelves like housecats.

I love this film and several of its sequels before it totally got fucked out. I think it still works, although it’s not one you can revisit often, or see in a marathon.

10/10

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We saw Willow Creek on Vudu and it was everything that I remember about talking to Bigfoot believers.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

Willow Creek is a found footage film focused on bigfoot enthusiast and documentarian Jim (Bryce Johnson) and his girlfriend Kelly (Alexie Gilmore). 

Jim and Kelly are visiting Willow Creek, and the site of the original bigfoot footage shoot, the Patterson-Gimlin film shoot. 

Jim has been a passionate Bigfoot believer his whole life and is super-excited to make this documentary that allows him to pay homage to the epicenter of his obsession.

Kelly is not as crazy about the idea, but she is very supportive of his effort and holds the camera a lot of the time.

While Jim interviews locals about the legend, we learn a few things about the mystery of bigfoot before the couple take the plunge into the forest primeval and get more bigfeet than they bargained for.

Willow Creek is a remarkably simple film that capitalizes on everyone’s fear of the woods at night.

It’s not the best found footage camping film (Blair Witch), but it’s so sparse and short that I really can’t hate it.

The direction by Bobcat Goldthwait is simple and unobtrusive, but it makes sure to pay homage to all the tropes that you might expect it to. 

Willow Creek knows it’s lane, which is cheap, barebones, short, and mostly improvised. As long as you go into it with that in mind, it probably won’t offend your sensibilities.

If you are a person who is terrified of the woods at night, this is a fabulous way to scare yourself silly, or you could also try the slightly better version of this, Backcountry. 

One of the most questionable choices in Willow Creek is the decision to make the whole movie rest on a 25 minute long single shot toward the end of the movie. Your enjoyment of the entire movie will hinge on how this shot strikes you, and strangely it worked better on me on my second viewing. 

Overall Willow Creek is a fun found footage movie with a nice mix of subtle comedy and spooky moments.

Watch on Amazon

6/10

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The Possession of Hannah Grace does the smart move and doesn’t make itself a carbon copy of all The Exorcist copycats. This is an interesting twist on the demon possession sub genre and is well crafted enough to overcome its repetitiveness.

The possession of Hannah Grace is not like other possession movies. If you are expecting an exorcism in the denouement, you will be surprised that it’s the opening scene, and it results in the death of the titular character. The best way to describe this movie is that it’s like the demon version of Weekend at Bernie’s.

The protagonist of the film, Megan Reed (played by Shay Mitchell) is a recovering alcoholic and pill popper that takes a new job as the intake assistant at a hospital morgue during the GRAVEYARD shift. Hannah Grace’s body is delivered to the morgue on her first night on the job and as the night progresses, stranger and stranger things start happening. By the time that Megan realizes there is something fishy about Hannah, the demon has gained enough power to start killing a lot of people.

There are a lot of things that are good about The Possession of Hannah Grace. First of all, it completely subverts the expectations of a possession film, by not focusing on the lead up to an exorcism. 

The writing is surprisingly competent given that it was written by a writer from Teen Wolf. I really liked how they handled exposition in the beginning and set up all the rules for a normal night at the morgue.

There were some really effective jump scares especially from the ginger night security guard.

Kirby Johnson who plays Hannah gives a great performance as a contortionist.

 The the biggest downfall of the film is that it gets really repetitive at the end. All the deaths are essentially the same, so I wish they had some more creativity around that, but they were effective in showing the hopelessness of the situation.

Megan’s character has an arc, but it seems a little paint by numbers and doesn’t establish very strong stakes for the story. I guess we are worried that she’ll die? Do we care if she relapses? She’s more there to be a witness than anything.

Overall it was a pretty good film. I feel a little bad that we let it slip by when it was a new release

6/10

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Perfect Blue follows the story of Mima, a pop star who turns her life around to become an aspiring actress. As she goes deeper into her role on a crime thriller tv show, she realizes that someone might be stalking her. The line between reality and acting becomes thinner and thinner as the anxiety of fame and her potential stalker rise.

This movie is impeccable. Director Satoshi Kon forces the viewer to descend into Mima’s madness by blurring the line between real and fantasy throughout the course of the film with quick cuts, disorienting scenes, and an overall sense of unknowingness. Making an anime horror film be this good, this widely received and revered is no easy feat, but Kon makes it look like a cake walk. This is one of my favorite movies of all time, and one of my favorite directors of all time. The sense of dread, doom, and anxiety get bigger and bigger until it all comes to a head at the end of the movie. It is emotional, thrilling, scary, and hard to follow, but that is what makes it perfect. Perfect blue. Get it. Haha

10/10

We watched Puppet Master on Tubi and were reminded of a simpler time, a time when puppets rules the earth and we were helpless to prevent their tyrannical rule.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

Puppet Master is the “story” of Andre Toulon, a master of puppets who has found an ancient egyptian method of imbuing puppets with life. 

He killed himself long ago and now he’s back?

But he’s a different guy now, and his psychic friends must suffer because they are psychic.

Everyone gets more Full Moon Features than they bargained for.

Puppet Master (1989) spawned a massive, 14 movie series of sequels and spinoffs. It was written by Charles Band who we interviewed a few months ago in our Gingerdead Man Review.

It’s a typical exploitation movie by Full Moon Productions, cashing in on the recent success of creepy little things movies like Gremlins, Child’s Play, and Dolls. For some reason that I can’t quite work out, Puppet Master struck a cord with general audiences and became a straight to video hit. 

With a budget of $400,000 it went on to make many millions, and surpassed many theatrical releases of the time in terms of profitability by a wide margin.

Watch on Amazon

The movie itself is profoundly flawed. I found it extremely boring and confusing. There is not a lot here in terms of redeeming value, other than the circus of zany sequels that it spawned. 

Most of my criticisms can be boiled down to the phrase, “it’s the best that Full Moon has to offer.” which is the truth. It’s wacky, stupid, and has a mildly interesting baddie.

I think the principle sin that Puppet Master commits is that it takes itself too seriously. The dialog and story make very little sense, but they keep at it. When the script falters and becomes boring, they keep shoving it down your throat. But really, it’s your fault for expecting anything from a straight to video movie called Puppet Master.

Although I’ve only seen one other Puppet Master movie, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, I would recommend it much more enthusiastically than I would the original. The Littlest Reich understands what it is and embraces it while the original gropes around aimlessly to try and find something entertaining to show you.

2/10

Is X going to give it to you? Yes, indubitably, X is going to give it to you.

In the Halcyon days of mid-coke, pre-aids 1979, a fledgling porn production crew sets off to Rural Texas to try and film the next mainstream breakout porno, ala Debbie Does Dallas. They find an old farm house to rent from an elderly couple and try to hide the production from the conservative and suspicious owners. They are eventually discovered by Pearl, the elderly farmer’s wife, and she takes a cotton to Mia Goth’s Maxine. Soon, the porno people find themselves in danger and fight for their lives to escape a possible Texas pitchfork massacre. 

If you are wondering what a straight ahead A24 slasher looks like, here it is. It has the gore and body count of  a slasher, and the artsy fartsy shot composition and character focus of an A24 film. Is this an “elevated slasher”? Not quite, but it does put in more effort towards character development and theme exploration than any Friday the 13th film. 

The film explores the themes of youth and ambition as well as the inverse of old age and lost opportunities. A touch of religious judgment is sprinkled in there in the form of a TV preacher, but that is really to flavor the setting, and not integral to the story.

I really liked this film, and was fully engaged throughout. It doesn’t go too far into A24 avant garde territory, but references it in an almost tongue in cheek way that is entertaining. To say that this is “more than a slasher” is probably giving it more credit than it deserves, but there are some great scenes that build tension and dread that don’t necessarily fit in the regular slasher cliches. 

If you are wondering if there is nudity, X gon’ give it to ya. Tits, side boob, and dick silhouette galore in this film. Putting X up against recent slashers such as Scream 2022, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 and Studio 666, it makes them look like prudes. 

I highly recommend this film.

9/10

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We went and saw Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil and it reminded me how stupid college kids are.

@dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website.

Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are headed into the woods to fix up Tucker’s new vacation cabin. It’s going to be a weekend of fishing, fixing, and getting fucked up. A couple of guys, alone in the woods.

Nearby this cabin, a plethora of college kids are camping and partying it up. They meet the silly duo of Tucker and Dale and immediately are spooked by their hillbillyishness. 

Things come to a head one night when the college kids decide to go skinnydipping in the same lake that Tucker and Dale are night fishing. 

An angelic girl named Allison (Katrina Bowden) falls off a rock and hits her head, and our goofy duo go to save her. As they do, they shout to the other college kids that “We’ve got your friend!” and that sets in motion the zaniest misunderstanding you’ve seen all summer long!

Everyone gets more don’t judge a book by it’s cover than they bargained for.

Directed by Eli Craig, Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil was released in 2010 to only 33 theaters and eventually was shown in 44 theaters. Despite this limited theatrical release, when it was released on Netflix, it was met with universal enjoyment. 

Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil is a movie that takes the common horror movie structure of partying kids in the woods and inverts the classic protagonist/antagonist relationship. This inversion was a pretty unique thing even in the somewhat oversaturated world of meta-horror. It was a new brand of winking at the audience, one where the audience feels empathy for both the good guy and the bad guy. 

Horrible things happen in this movie, but the only thing to blame is a breakdown in communication between the two groups, or an othering of the hillbillies by the college kids

The dry wit and laugh out loud moments in this movie are a ton of fun and often the result of totally shocking and unexpected misunderstandings or accidents. The characters are completely wonderful and easy to fall in love with.

Watch on Amazon

The problem with Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil is because the whole premise is based on a misunderstanding, they had to manufacture an antagonist and that feels a little goofy. Chad (Jesse Moss) is as one dimensional a character as they come, and his motives aren’t interesting or fun. To me, this leaves the movie feeling a bit hollow in the third act. It meanders around a bad guy fight that we don’t care about and leaves me wishing we had just ended with a nice therapy session in act two.

The ending leaves a lot to be desired, but the impact that this movie has had on general audiences can’t be overstated. It’s enjoyed by horror fans for it’s interesting take on an old premise, and it seems to be the logical predecessor to the more impressive movie that does the same thing but with less comedy and more scares, The Cabin in the Woods, which came out the following year, 2011.

This is a different and more sophisticated kind of fun than Gremlins 2 is but the result is the same 

7/10