Explore every episode of the podcast Grave Tone: Horror Podcast
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Woodstake Graphic Novel: Shawn Hainsworth on a Vampire Crashing Woodstock 1969
17 oct. 2026
00:42:27
Woodstake is the vampire graphic novel that sends a Dracula-style predator to Woodstock 1969, and we sat down with the man who made it. Shawn Hainsworth (who writes as Darin S. Cape) joins Meaghan and Arthur to talk about how rereading Bram Stoker's Dracula alongside Michael Lang's The Road to Woodstock turned into a pun, then a screenplay, then five years of work on the Woodstake graphic novel.
The elevator pitch is simple: hippies vs. vampires. What's underneath it is a lot more interesting. Shawn wanted to take one of the most cynical creatures in horror (a centuries-old predator who knows human failings better than anyone) and set it loose on a generation that honestly believed it could change the world.
Woodstake: Hippies vs. Vampires at Woodstock 1969
Shawn Hainsworth's elevator pitch for the Woodstake graphic novel: a vampire descends on Woodstock in 1969.
The idea hit while he was rereading Bram Stoker's Dracula and reading Michael Lang's The Road to Woodstock at the same time. The pun came first; the scenes followed.
He didn't want it to just be campy, so it took a while to find something bigger inside the concept.
A Dracula-Style Vampire vs. the Peace and Love Generation
A cynical, centuries-old vampire who knows human failings better than anybody, set against people who believed they could change the world.
Three kinds of hippie: Nina, the true believer; Artie, who might sell out and become a yuppie; and Jon, chasing his own career.
The Vietnam War divide runs through the villains, including a vampire who argues about the war while trying to kill Artie.
Recreating Woodstock 1969 in a Graphic Novel
Shawn and Felipe Kroll watched the Woodstock documentary on repeat to get the details right.
Every act appears when it actually played, and Creedence Clearwater Revival's Bad Moon Rising lands right as things come to a head.
Michael Lang makes a cameo, and the story ends with a conversation between the vampire and Jimi Hendrix.
Shawn's dream backstage passes: Richie Havens stretching his set into Freedom, Santana, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Arlo Guthrie, and Hendrix.
From Screenplay to Graphic Novel
Woodstake started as a screenplay; the whole prologue was added after the first two issues were written.
Felipe Kroll's painted art style looks nothing like a typical comic book, and he repainted pages to get them right.
Woodstake took about five years from idea to finished graphic novel.
Vampire Movies and Why Vampires Never Die
Shadow of the Vampire, Willem Dafoe and the Max Schreck legend from the making of Nosferatu.
Meaghan's festival pick Los Vampires, about the Spanish-language Dracula crew that shot at night.
Shawn calls vampires the Swiss Army knives of the horror world: What We Do in the Shadows, Interview with the Vampire, and even Star Trek's salt vampire.
Woodstake '99 and What's Next from SHP Comics
Woodstake '99 concludes the story at Woodstock 1999, with darker art and a vampire who is back for vengeance.
Issues are named after songs: Going Up the Country, My Generation, Freedom, Bad Moon Rising and Purple Haze. There's a companion Spotify playlist too.
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Other Mommy Review: Jessica Chastain Can't Save This Incidents Around the House Adaptation
10 oct. 2026
00:40:34
Our Other Mommy review, fresh from the theater: Jessica Chastain plays a mom and the thing wearing her face, and it should have wrecked us. It didn't.
Rob Savage (Host, The Boogeyman) directs this adaptation of Josh Malerman's 2024 novel Incidents Around the House, produced by James Wan through Blumhouse-Atomic Monster. The cast is stacked: Jessica Chastain, Arabella Olivia Clark, Jay Duplass, Arian Moayed, Dichen Lachman and Karen Allen (yes, Marion from Raiders of the Lost Ark).
Other Mommy Review: Our Verdict and Scare Factor
Other Mommy gets 4 digs out of 10 from both of us; a stacked cast and great visuals can't fix a story with no build.
Scare factor: Fun and Wild, with Light scares (and yes, we argued about it).
Meaghan's tagline for the movie: "Don't lie to your children."
Incidents Around the House: Josh Malerman's Novel vs the Movie
The novel is told entirely from eight-year-old Bela's perspective, which Meaghan compares to Emma Donoghue's Room.
In the book, the entity is tall, boxy, and wrong (eyes on its chin), and it stays in Bela's closet far longer.
The book's ending is much darker than the film's, which Meaghan refuses to spoil on mic.
Want the full book breakdown? Our friends at Drawn to Darkness are covering it.
Why the Dread Never Builds
The Other Mommy movie reveals its entity in the opening minutes, before we know anyone in the family.
One throwaway line explains why the entity can suddenly leave Bela's room.
There's almost no ambiguity between Ursula and Other Mommy; the novel's impersonation scenes are where the real fear lives.
What Works: Practical Effects, the Ball Pit and the Upside-Down Party
The melting face and the seven-foot entity land some genuinely creepy moments.
The ball pit to bedroom to ocean transitions look great (and feel very James Wan, very Insidious).
The upside-down party sequence with babysitter Kelvin is Meaghan's favorite scene in the film.
Jessica Chastain's Dual Role and the Motherhood Theme
Jessica Chastain is grounded as Ursula and deeply unsettling as Other Mommy; her glued-on smile made a kid on set scream.
Arabella Olivia Clark carries a hard role as Bela, and Jay Duplass makes Russ easy to root for.
The film keeps the book's honest take on parenthood: you can love your kid and still want your own identity.
Coming Up on Grave Tone
Next week: Whalefall, Brian Duffield's adaptation of the Daniel Kraus novel.
We're catching Fresh Meat, Dead Meat's horror shorts anthology.
Not sure what to watch? Try the Horror Movie Picker at gravetonepod.com.
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V/H/S/Mixtape Review: The Most Unhinged V/H/S Yet?
08 oct. 2026
00:35:24
V/H/S/Mixtape review time, and this one is cuckoo nuts bananas. The ninth V/H/S film turns sound, music and heavy metal into the horror, and we came out of it with our jaws on the floor.
Arthur and Meaghan break down Shudder's newest found footage horror anthology, starting with GWAR's deranged MTV-style wraparound and moving through all four main segments: Renee Zhan's Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance (killer puppets from Jim Henson's Creature Shop, plus Barbara Crampton), David Moreau's Heartbeat (two urban explorers, a soundproof chamber and the sound of your own body), Ernest Dickerson's The Music of Mr. Sze (a film student, a violin and something cosmic living in the attic) and RZA's Death Tone (Neela Jolene, a dead producer's tape and a very literal hunt for the perfect sound). We also get into the two music video interludes, Flying Lotus's stop-motion Another Cabin and Tobias Forge's Premature Burial.
The ninth V/H/S film, streaming on Shudder October 9, 2026, builds every segment around sound, music and heavy metal.
Spoiler-free verdict: gory, wild, and easily one of the most unhinged V/H/S movies yet. Arthur compares its sound-horror focus to Undertone.
How it stacks up against V/H/S/Beyond and V/H/S/Halloween, the two entries that got the franchise back on a roll.
GWAR's MTV-Style Wraparound and the Music Video Interludes
GWAR host a deranged, metal-only music video show that sets the tone in the first five minutes (don't eat dinner during this one).
Flying Lotus directs Another Cabin, a stop-motion nightmare about a boy, his awful grandmother, and a 30-foot monster in the woods.
Tobias Forge of Ghost directs Premature Burial, a metal music video about revenge and being buried alive.
Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance and Heartbeat
Renee Zhan's killer puppet segment: Jim Henson's Creature Shop builds Muppet-style monsters, Barbara Crampton plays the studio exec, and the song is a genuine earworm.
Watch for the V/H/S/Halloween Easter egg in the warehouse and the post-credit scene.
David Moreau's Heartbeat (from the director of MadS) traps two urban explorers in a soundproof chamber where their own bodies become the horror.
The Music of Mr. Sze and RZA's Death Tone
Ernest Dickerson's The Music of Mr. Sze: a film student, a forbidden violin piece, and a cosmic entity in the attic. Lovecraft fans, take note.
RZA's Death Tone: a dead producer's tape, a step-by-step recipe for the perfect sound, and a descent into madness carried by Neela Jolene.
V/H/S/Mixtape Segments Ranked and Ratings
Digs: Arthur 8/10, Meaghan 7/10 (huge highs, a little less cohesive overall).
Arthur's top two: Death Tone and Heartbeat. Meaghan's top two: Heartbeat and Death Tone.
Plus favorite segments from past entries, including Mike P. Nelson's V/H/S/85 work and Kate Siegel's V/H/S/Beyond segment.
Also on Our Horror Radar
Black Zombie, Maya Annik Bedward's documentary on the Haitian roots of the zombie.
Other Mommy hits theaters, Dead Meat's Fresh Meat anthology is coming, and Brooklyn Horror Film Festival coverage is on the way.
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Beware Boiúna Review: Mike P. Nelson's Giant Snake Movie Takes No Prisoners
02 oct. 2026
00:34:48
Our Beware Boiúna review is here, and this giant snake movie does not care who it eats. Spoiler-free first, full spoilers after Gary's warning.
Meaghan and Arthur review Beware Boiúna, the new creature feature from director Mike P. Nelson (Wrong Turn, Silent Night, Deadly Night), shot on location in the Amazon rainforest near Leticia, Colombia. A team of doctors on a medical mission heads upriver, an illegal gold mining operation is tearing up the jungle, and the Boiúna (the colossal river serpent of Amazonian folklore) wants every last one of them gone.
Beware Boiúna Review: Spoiler-Free First Impressions
Mike P. Nelson's Amazon creature feature was shot on location near Leticia, Colombia, and it shows: sweaty, gritty and fully immersive.
A stacked cast: Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day), Kiana Madeira (Fear Street trilogy), Logan Marshall-Green (Upgrade), plus Juan Pablo Shuk, Will Close and Jackson Bews.
Meaghan's tagline keeps it simple: stay out of the jungle.
The Boiúna: Amazonian Folklore Meets Giant Snake Horror
The Boiúna is the giant river serpent of Amazonian folklore, here roughly titanoboa-sized and grounded in that legend.
An illegal gold mining operation sets the stakes, and the snake plays more like nature restoring balance than a monster looking for lunch.
Real-world context: Indigenous communities are confronting illegal miners destroying the rainforest.
Practical Effects, Stunts and a Brutal Location Shoot
The snake is digital, but the explosions, the collapsing structures, and a character getting flung into the air were done for real.
From our interview: a flash flood wiped out a set and forced a reshoot that Mike P. Nelson now prefers.
Huge credit to the stunt team, and to Kiana Madeira for that mud pit.
Why This Giant Snake Movie Beats the Creature Feature Stigma
Not silly snake fodder in the Anaconda mold; we're measuring it against Jaws and Jurassic Park.
The snake hunts in the water, in the jungle, and in a machinery yard, by day and at night. No safe rock like in The Devil's Mouth.
A midway twist (spoiler section) flips the movie in a direction we did not expect.
Scare Factor and Final Scores
Scare factor: Fun and Wild. Scare level: Solid Scares.
Meaghan gives it 7.5 digs; Arthur gives it 8.
Best seen in a theater with friends on a weekend.
Mike P. Nelson's Next Move: Saw
Mike P. Nelson is directing the next Saw film after reviving Wrong Turn and Silent Night, Deadly Night.
Coming up on Grave Tone: Whalefall (October 16) and more Shudder drops.
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Beware Boiúna Interview: Mike P. Nelson on Making a Giant Snake Movie Actually Scary
26 sept. 2026
00:33:21
Beware Boiúna director Mike P. Nelson is back on Grave Tone, and this time he brought stories from the Amazon. Floods, a jungle blessing, a poison dart frog on set, and a giant snake that does not care who you are.
We sat down with Mike P. Nelson ahead of Beware Boiúna hitting theatres October 2 to talk about how this giant snake movie actually got made. He almost turned it down (giant snake movies come with baggage, and he knew it). What changed his mind was finding the link between Titanoboa, the real prehistoric snake discovered in Colombia, and the Boiúna of Amazonian folklore. Add a structure borrowed from William Friedkin's Sorcerer and a lot of respect for how Alien, Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Tremors hold back their monsters, and you get a creature feature built on dread instead of camp.
How Beware Boiúna Became a Giant Snake Movie Worth Making
Producers Robert Kulzer and Jeremy Bolt, with Tony Giglio, wanted a giant snake story. Mike P. Nelson almost passed because of the stigma the subgenre carries.
What won him over: tying Titanoboa, the real prehistoric snake found in Colombia, to the Boiúna of Amazonian folklore.
Why William Friedkin's Sorcerer was his main comp (one movie at the start, a different movie by the end).
Shooting a Horror Movie in the Colombian Amazon
Asking permission to film near Leticia, then a blessing ceremony (chicha included) where a healer told Mike to be "the father of your team."
Heavy rain floods the location of the opening gold mining siege, so the whole sequence gets shot from the other side.
Mike's favorite days: shooting aboard the Hermes, moving down the Amazon River with the cast.
A poison dart frog lands on a chair right across from Kiana Madeira. The snake wrangler handled it.
Practical Effects Behind the VFX Snake
A stunt performer was yanked 40 feet into the air with foliage blasting out, all in camera.
Real TNT brings down the lumber camp structure while the leads run down the ramp.
Mike's rule: if there is a VFX snake in the movie, something real has to go along with it.
The Cast of Beware Boiúna
Kiana Madeira as Lena: soft-spoken between takes, fully switched on in the mud and the viscera.
Logan Marshall-Green pushing buttons during the bar scene with Jessica Rothe, then checking in on her after the cut.
Why Mike lets his actors play: if a moment surprises him, it will surprise the audience too.
Protector or Predator: Boiúna, Folklore and Gold Mining
Is Boiúna the jungle's guardian or just a hungry snake? Mike wants you arguing about it after the credits.
The opening illegal gold mining siege reflects a real fight Indigenous communities in the Amazon are in right now.
The viral poster campaign that fed internet animals like Moo Deng and Jimothy to Boiúna.
Monster Matchups and Fill in the Blank
Boiúna vs. Shardik from Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a matchup Mike first chewed on with Eric Vespe on The Kingcast.
Boiúna vs. the original King Kong (1933), the movie Mike grew up on.
Mike's rule for the genre: every creature feature needs a character who doesn't deserve to die.
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The IT 1990 Miniseries Gave Her a Tim Curry Phobia: Childhood Trauma with Graeae Horror
23 sept. 2026
01:07:08
The IT 1990 miniseries is the reason Janine of Graeae Horror spent more than a decade unable to look at Tim Curry. She snuck downstairs at six, caught Pennywise taking Georgie through the banister, and the nightmares followed her home from school for years.
Childhood Trauma is back, and this might be the most traumatic entry in the series so far (that is saying something). Janine joins Arthur and Meaghan to revisit the 1990 ABC adaptation of Stephen King's IT, directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, and to explain how one TV movie turned into a real phobia, a mid-screening exit from Burke & Hare and, eventually, a Pennywise tattoo. We go through the Losers Club casting, from Jonathan Brandis and Emily Perkins to John Ritter, Seth Green, Annette O'Toole and Tim Reid, and we have strong feelings about Bill Denbrough's ponytail (it is not okay).
How the IT 1990 Miniseries Created a Real Tim Curry Phobia
Janine was six when she snuck downstairs during the miniseries premiere and caught Pennywise taking Georgie; recurring nightmares of Pennywise waiting outside the local sweet shop lasted for years.
The fear spread to everything Tim Curry touched: The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Legend, Muppet Treasure Island, and a mid-screening exit from Burke & Hare.
A forced VHS rewatch in her late teens, IT (2017) in a theatre with a dozen friends, and a Pennywise tattoo later, she is fine. Mostly.
Casting the Losers Club: IT 1990 Kids vs Adults
Jonathan Brandis carries young Bill Denbrough's grief; Richard Thomas's ponytail does not survive the rewatch.
Emily Perkins (Ginger Snaps) and Annette O'Toole (Smallville) give Beverly Marsh the most emotional weight, and the miniseries gives Bev's marriage far more time than IT Chapter Two does.
John Ritter is a better Ben Hanscom than we remembered, Seth Green has had the same face since 1990, and Adam Faraizl plays Eddie Kaspbrak as the kid everyone wants to protect.
Mike Hanlon (Tim Reid, Marlon Taylor) and Stan Uris (Richard Masur, Ben Heller) still get overlooked, in every version.
IT Miniseries vs IT 2017 and IT Chapter Two
The miniseries jumps between timelines like the book; Andy Muschietti's films split kids and adults, which made the story easier for a new generation to get into.
Kicking the spider to death vs. bullying Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise into nothing: two endings, both a little funny.
Mike Hanlon's lore is the backbone of IT: Welcome to Derry, and the Black Spot fire makes a lot more sense with that in mind.
What the Miniseries Cut from Stephen King's IT
No Ritual of Chüd, no turtle, and very little cosmic mythology (think Terry Pratchett's Discworld, but horror).
The spider loses its eggs, and graphic content gets trimmed for ABC network standards.
A 30-year time jump instead of the 27-year cycle, plus a ponytail moment that might be a quiet nod to the book scene nobody wants adapted.
Practical Effects and Tim Curry's Pennywise
The skeletal hand grabbing Ben in the Barrens, the I Was a Teenage Werewolf transformation, and the exploding library balloons still look great.
Tim Curry's accent slipping when the mask drops is one of the scariest choices in the whole adaptation.
Henry Bowers and the Cycle of Violence
Pennywise shows up every few decades; Henry Bowers is there every day after school.
An abusive father, zero outlets, and a monster happy to use him as its Renfield.
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Resident Evil 2026 Review: Zach Cregger Pulled It Off
19 sept. 2026
00:35:21
Our Resident Evil 2026 review, and the short version is that Zach Cregger cracked the video game movie. Arthur and Meaghan sat down right after seeing Resident Evil in theatres, and this is one of those episodes where the two of us do not land in the same place at all.
Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier taking a package up to Raccoon City General Hospital on a night that goes very wrong. That is basically the whole premise, and it works. No Leon, no Jill, no legacy characters, just an everyman with a handgun and a delivery to finish. We get into why going off-script inside the Resident Evil universe might be the smarter move after seven previous films, what the practical creature design actually accomplishes, and whether the humour helps or dilutes the horror.
Zach Cregger's Resident Evil Reboot and the Off-Script Gamble
Cregger wrote Resident Evil as an original story with Shay Hatten and dropped it inside the game universe instead of remaking a game. No Leon, no Jill, no legacy roster.
Eight films in, we argue a tangential character at the eve of the Raccoon City outbreak beats another straight reboot. That is the question of the episode.
Meaghan rewatched the 2002 original before this and still found it badly explained, which is a big part of why this one works for her at all.
Cregger's Barbarian and Weapons DNA is all over the tone, especially the way the jokes land in the middle of the gore.
Austin Abrams Carries the Whole Movie
Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier, and he is on screen for nearly every minute. Arthur's take: without him, there is nothing here.
Meaghan's point about the everyman quality is the best argument in the episode. No celebrity sheen, just a guy having the worst night of his life.
The wet socks moment. The grumbling to himself. A lot of the humour in this film is one actor alone in a room.
Sara Paxton, Cregger's wife, voices Michelle on the phone, continuing her cameo streak from Barbarian and Weapons.
Creature Design, Practical Gore and the Rooftop Drop
The infected are not tame Resident Evil zombies. They fuse, grow limbs, puke acid, and the final design is the best of the lot.
The rooftop drop sequence was done practically with weighted blood bags on cranes, and one of them landed inches from Austin Abrams.
The sewer creature is a Whopper-style bruiser, or as Meaghan put it, the fat vampire from Blade.
Meaghan's comparison point for the creature's movement: the alpaca creature in Color Out of Space.
Video Game DNA: Save Rooms, Padlocks and Weapon Upgrades
The typewriter room got an audible cheer in our theatre. If you have played the games, you know why. If you have not, we explain it.
Weapon progression from handgun to hunting rifle to Uzi is straight out of a game loop.
The padlock running gag is the tagline: don't lose your keys. Shooting the lock does not work because the game says find the key.
The settings work like levels. Hospital, road, farmhouse, Raccoon City, then the hospital building.
Scores, Scare Rating and What Is Next
Scare factor: Fun and Wild. Scare level: Solid Scares. Arthur: 8.5 Digs. Meaghan: 6.5 Digs.
Meaghan's criticism is fair and worth hearing: it is a great time with very little under the surface.
Coming soon: our Mike P. Nelson interview for Beware Boiuna, in theatres October 2.
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Hope Movie Review and Ending Explained: What Really Landed in Hope Harbor
13 sept. 2026
00:42:45
Hope (2026) movie review: Na Hong-jin spent ten years away and came back with a creature feature that is not a creature feature at all. Arthur and Meaghan review Hope, the Korean sci-fi horror epic that premiered at Cannes, opened in South Korea in July, and finally hit North American theatres on September 9 through Neon.
The setup is small. A remote fishing village called Hope Harbor, a police chief who is in way over his head, a dead cow that a bear did not kill. Then the thing in the mountains walks through a concrete wall in broad daylight, and the movie gets very, very big. This Hope movie review covers what works (creature design you can actually see, a setting that feels lived in, characters who make smart decisions and bring grenade launchers), and what does not (a middle section that lags, ten straight minutes of toilet humour, and a lore drop saved for the last twenty minutes).
Hope (2026) Movie Review: Na Hong-jin's Creature Feature Swing
Na Hong-jin's first film since The Wailing opens small and gets enormous, and the scale jump is the whole experience.
Both hosts land on a six out of ten. Good movie, real problems, no hedging about either.
The middle section lags and the toilet humour runs about ten minutes past funny.
Creature Design and Practical Effects in Hope
The creatures show up in broad daylight, in slow motion, in full view. No one-tenth-of-a-second monster nonsense here.
Each alien is designed differently, and the close-up work holds up even when the chase CG does not.
Arthur's number one pick of the episode, and the reason the first reveal lands so hard.
Hope Harbor: Setting, Scale, and the DMZ
A shabby little fishing village near the Korean Demilitarized Zone, full of elderly residents and no backup coming.
Meaghan's favourite element: storefronts that feel real, forests that feel enormous, overhead shots worth the ticket.
Communications are cut, and reinforcements are off fighting wildfires, which is how a small town becomes a sealed box.
The Alien Reveal and the Lore Drop
What looks like a Korean folklore sea monster turns out to be something else entirely.
Four aliens, four designs, a language built from a Mongolian dialect and actually spoken by the actors.
The lore arrives in the final stretch and answers maybe half of what you want answered.
Casting Fassbender, Vikander, Russell, and Britton
Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander perform through motion capture as Ma'veyyo and J'aur.
Taylor Russell plays Ai'dovor, and Cameron Britton plays Va'migere. Britton is the Mindhunter and Umbrella Academy guy.
Hwang Jung-min carries the human half as a police chief who is scared, hesitant, and completely out of his depth.
Hope Ending Explained and Sequel Talk
The ending opens more doors than it closes, and the hosts argue two different readings of why the aliens are here.
Na Hong-jin has a sequel script written. Nothing is greenlit.
Closing question of the episode: is Asian cinema the only place keeping action movies interesting?
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Return to Oz and The Peanut Butter Solution: 1985's Two Weirdest Kids Movies
07 sept. 2026
01:18:07
Return to Oz and The Peanut Butter Solution both came out in 1985; both were sold as children's movies, and both are genuinely upsetting. Meaghan and Arthur team up with Annie and Caroline from the Drawn to Darkness podcast for a Childhood Trauma double bill made entirely of films that were technically made for kids.
RETURN TO OZ: THE DISNEY SEQUEL THAT STARTS IN AN ASYLUM
The first thirty minutes are a straight horror film. Dorothy has insomnia, Aunt Em hands her to Dr. Worley, and we get a silent nurse, a dark corridor, restraints, and screaming from other rooms.
The electroshock therapy is a Disney invention. It appears nowhere in L. Frank Baum's Oz books.
Fairuza Balk was actually the right age for the character in her feature debut, which makes the stakes land harder than the 1939 version ever did.
The lightning cuts the power right before the machine fires. Everyone on this episode thinks it worked anyway.
THE OZ BOOKS, MGM'S COPYRIGHT, AND WHAT DISNEY COULD NOT USE
The film combines The Land of Oz (1904) and Ozma of Oz (1907). Baum wrote fourteen Oz novels before he died in 1919.
MGM owned the 1939 designs, so Disney paid for the ruby slippers (silver shoes in the book) and left the gingham dress alone.
Book two is a girls' revolt fought with knitting needles, and the messaging has not aged into anything coherent.
The Gump's reward for saving Ozma is asking to be taken apart. That is in the novel.
PRINCESS MOMBI, THE WHEELERS, AND THE NOME KING
Jean Marsh plays Nurse Wilson and Princess Mombi, the same doubling trick the 1939 film used. She also played Bavmorda in Willow.
Mombi's hall of heads is Elizabeth Bathory logic in a Disney film. Trophies, kept young, screaming.
The Wheelers sit between Freddy Krueger's stretched silhouette and Biff's gang in Back to the Future Part II. The book defuses them. The film does not.
Nicol Williamson plays Dr. Worley and the Nome King, so Dorothy's real trauma follows her into Oz wearing a different face.
THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION AND QUEBEC'S TALES FOR ALL SERIES
The second Tales for All entry, directed by Michael Rubbo and produced by Rock Demers. The series now runs to twenty-seven films and markets itself as family-friendly.
Michael gets a fright, loses his hair, ignores the ghosts' measurements, and everything after that is consequences.
The art teacher kidnaps a neighbourhood of kids for a paintbrush sweatshop and wears Michael's hair as a jacket. His dog gets a matching vest.
Celine Dion recorded her first English-language songs for this soundtrack at seventeen.
MONTREAL ON SCREEN AND TRAUMA THAT ACTUALLY STICKS
Three characters are brothers with three different accents, none French Canadian, which contradicts a claim made on the How Did This Get Made episode.
Return to Oz earns real credit for admitting the first film broke its protagonist, then tells her to keep quiet or go back to the asylum.
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Jonathan Janz on Marla, His TV Adaptation & Moonflowers
05 sept. 2026
01:10:08
Jonathan Janz on Marla, the horror novel that sold out before it went on sale and then spent four years being the book nobody could find. Now it is everywhere, and he came back to Grave Tone to explain how that actually happened.
Marla was published in 2022 by Earthling Publications as a 500-copy limited edition hardcover. That was the whole run. Paul Miller told Janz it was the most requested post-sellout book he has ever had. Four years, one agent change, one manager change, and a three-book deal later, Weird Tales and Blackstone Publishing gave Marla a wide release on August 18, 2026, and Janz walks us through every turn of that road (including the parts most authors would not say out loud).
Marla, From 500 Copies to Everywhere
Marla was a 2022 Earthling Publications limited edition, 500 copies, and that was the entire run. Paul Miller told Jonathan Janz it was the most requested post-sellout book he has ever had.
Weird Tales and Blackstone Publishing released it wide on August 18, 2026, with a foiled cover, sprayed edges, and interior art.
The text is about 98 percent identical to the 2022 edition after a full editorial pass. If you read it in 2022, you are not getting a different book.
Inside King's Branch: Marla, Carl, Annie and Dylan
A reclusive young woman lives with her mother Irene in a house on the edge of town. Some say witch, some say prisoner, and nobody actually knows.
Detective Carl Lancaster connects her to a string of murders. Social worker Annie Frost carries a vague memory of her. Twenty-one-year-old Dylan Ellison sees someone he wants to know.
Moonflowers and the Marla TV Series
Marla is in development for television through Weird Tales and Lit Entertainment. Janz is working with a showrunner he cannot name yet.
Moonflowers is an 11,000-word novelette prequel covering the Halloween night eleven years before the novel. It ships with the hardcover and the audiobook.
The prequel introduces a character intended to matter in a possible second season, and it came out of Janz and the showrunner building the lore together (there is a Pinterest board).
How Marla Got Here: Agents, Managers, Weird Tales
A former agent read Marla as a reprint that would not sell. Janz disagreed; they parted, and he is clear that nobody was a villain.
Ryan Lewis introduced him to Patrick White at Lit Entertainment; Adam Kolbrenner became his manager. Lane Heymont at The Tobias Literary Agency opened their first call with what the hell is going on with Marla.
John Harlacher at Weird Tales read it and offered a three-book deal. Next up: The Stars Have Left the Skies, then Panopticon.
Adapting Books to Screen Without Being Precious
Janz has taught film lit for twenty-five years. Asked how he handles adapters changing his work, his answer was let the ultraviolence begin.
Patrick White wrote a 35-page treatment of Marla and pitched it as The Outsider meets Mare of Easttown, which is why it went to series instead of feature.
Widow's Bay, Horror Towns and Staffing One
Janz, Meaghan, and Arthur all love Widow's Bay. Patricia, the painting scene, the taser episode. Derry and Castle Rock get their due as towns that feel lived in.
We played a game where we asked Jonathan to staff a fictional town with horror characters. These were his awesome choices that we totally agree with!
Sheriff: Stu Redman. Doctor: Beverly Marsh. Teacher: Patricia. Funeral director: Clancy Brown's mortician from The Mortuary Collection. Neighbor: Eddie Dean, with Oy included.
Patricia Santomasso and Sean Patrick Hopkins narrate the Marla audiobook. Janz cried at his own book during a lunch break.
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Daniel Barnett on Nightmareland: The Dark Tower Meets The Last of Us
01 sept. 2026
00:43:20
Daniel Barnett built a horror epic out of eternal night, and the Nightmareland omnibus is only the halfway point. Twelve volumes are planned.
We sit down with horror author Daniel Barnett to talk about the Nightmareland Chronicles, the horror fantasy series he pitches as The Dark Tower meets The Last of Us (the games, and he is a purist about that). John Hawthorne is crossing a darkened America to reach his daughter's blue house by the Atlantic Ocean, with Mariah Nowak and thirteen-year-old Marcos Walker beside him. Marcos is deaf, and in this world, that turns out to be a defense rather than a limitation.
Nightmareland Chronicles: Premise, Scope and the Omnibus
Daniel describes Nightmareland Chronicles as one man's journey to reach his estranged daughter in a world claimed by eternal night, then admits that the logline does not cover all of it.
The illustrated omnibus collects volumes one through six, a complete first season rather than an arbitrary halfway cut.
Twelve volumes are planned; he originally thought ten. Individual volumes stay available for serialized readers.
Dark Tower Meets The Last of Us: Influences and Genre
His pitch is The Dark Tower plus The Last of Us, the games specifically. John Hawthorne shares an archetype with Roland; his dark tower is a blue house by the Atlantic.
The revenge odyssey of The Last of Us Part II fed the dread of volume six. He also notes an accidental overlap: both stories put a brother in Wyoming.
Nightmareland has fantasy bones (a quest, a small party, a great evil) but the architecture is all horror.
Building the Book: Illustrations and Design
Leslé Kieu created six original black-and-white illustrations that run in both the hardcover and the ebook, so digital readers get the art too.
Daniele Serra's volume cover artwork runs as chapter title page backgrounds in the hardcover. Todd Keisling assembled the package.
Writing Process: Gardens, Lullabies and Unwritten Lines
He compares drafting to tending a garden; some things you plant will not bloom for years.
A key lullaby in the first six volumes originally belonged to someone else. Moving it years later made it much more significant.
The biggest lines at the end of volume six were never written down. He let them burn in him for years, so writing them became the reward. Lily is the book he always set out to write.
Found Family in the Dark: John, Mariah and Marcos
The trio is John Hawthorne, Mariah Nowak, and Marcos Walker, a deaf thirteen-year-old whose deafness is a real protective advantage here.
Asked how long he would survive in his own universe, his answer is short: grab the dog, run somewhere remote.
The defining survival trait is enduring and holding onto hope, the thematic spine of the whole series.
Horror Is a Big House: Stigma and Recommendations
His horror origin story is being shown Legend at two years old by a father who still claims he does not like horror. [LINK: Legend]
He argues horror is a foundational genre, and emotional resonance rings sharper against the darkest material.
Recommendations: the original version of The Stand, Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice, and Doctor Sleep, which he says almost makes up for what Kubrick did to The Shining.
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Buddy (2026) Review: Casper Kelly's Killer Unicorn Is a Perfect Midnight Movie
28 août 2026
00:30:10
Buddy (2026) review: Casper Kelly's killer unicorn horror comedy is the most unhinged thing in theaters this week, and we are fully on board.
Meaghan and Arthur caught Buddy at its international premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival, about a month before the wide theatrical release, and walked out of that screening loud about it. Casper Kelly (the Too Many Cooks guy, the Adult Swim Yule Log guy) built a pitch-perfect recreation of a 1990s children's television show called It's Buddy!, then let the giant orange unicorn at the center of it start turning on the kids. That is the setup. What the movie does after that is stranger, funnier, and a lot meaner.
Casper Kelly Goes Feature Length with Buddy
Casper Kelly made his name on Too Many Cooks, the 2014 Adult Swim short that ate the internet alive. Buddy is his feature directorial debut, co-written with Jamie King.
The same obsessions carry over: disposable 80s and 90s family media, hand-built sets, puppetry, and post-production elements treated as real things characters have to survive.
It premiered in the Midnight section at Sundance in January 2026, then took its international premiere at Fantasia on August 1 before Roadside Attractions and Saban Films opened it wide.
What If Barney Was a Horror Movie
The film builds a fake 1990s kids show called It's Buddy! and commits to it completely, down to the theme song, the credits, and the episode reset.
Barney & Friends ran fourteen seasons and 268 episodes between 1992 and 2010. That is the shape Kelly is working from, and the recreation is close enough to hurt.
Kelly's hook came from a real question: what if one of the kids refuses to follow the script? Five minutes in, we find out.
Buddy Cast and the Young Performers
Delaney Quinn plays Freddy, the first kid to clock that something is wrong. She is the reason the film works, and she told Kelly she wanted to play a final girl.
Cristin Milioti (Emmy winner for The Penguin) plays Grace, a suburban mother running a parallel modern-day storyline. Topher Grace plays her husband Ben.
Keegan-Michael Key voices Buddy, Patton Oswalt voices Strappy the sentient backpack, and Michael Shannon voices Charlie the Train and Willie.
Every kid in this thing is believable as a child trapped in an impossible situation, which is harder than it sounds.
Practical Effects, Puppets, and Production Design
The practical effects work is the headline. Buddy takes damage across the runtime, and the costume changes tracking that damage are excellent.
The set is period accurate in a way that feels almost aggressive: oversized cartoonish props, matte painted woods, a clubhouse, a treehouse, and the Worry Well.
Supporting characters include Mr. Mailbox, Betty Bunny, Charlie the Train, a bluebird, a junior puppeteer designed, and talking flowers. None of it feels out of place.
Every lesson arrives as a song, exactly like the shows it is riffing on.
Diamond City, Wizard of Oz, and the Lore
Buddy tells the kids their missing friend went to Diamond City. The kids come to believe it is a way out.
The Wizard of Oz influence is all over the escape, and Kelly has named The Shining as another touchstone.
There is a spin-off tease planted in the film, and Kelly talked about wanting to do more if this one connects.
Content Warnings and Where to Watch
Rated R. Children are in real danger throughout, and the violence is not implied, so know that going in.
Runtime is 95 minutes. It plays best loud, in a full room, with people who react.
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Colony Review: Train to Busan Director's Goopiest Outbreak Yet
24 août 2026
00:39:17
Colony (2026) review: Yeon Sang-ho went back to zombies and made them learn. Meaghan and Arthur break down the Train to Busan director's newest outbreak.
Colony traps biotechnology professor Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun, credited internationally as Gianna Jun) inside a mixed-use Seoul high-rise when disgraced scientist Seo Young-chul (Koo Kyo-hwan) releases an engineered virus at a biotech conference and announces that he is the only vaccine. The infected do not just bite. They share a hive mind, they trade information, and they get better at hunting you every hour.### Colony 2026 Review: Yeon Sang-ho Returns to the Zombie Movie
Colony is a standalone story with no ties to the Train to Busan timeline, and the outbreak starts in a completely different way.
World premiere at Cannes Midnight Screenings on May 15, 2026, South Korean release May 21, Canadian premiere at the 30th Fantasia International Film Festival, North American theatrical release August 28, 2026 through Well Go USA.
Scores: Meaghan 7.5, Arthur 8. [LINK: Colony]
Hive Mind Zombies and the Fungal Virus Explained
The infected share information across a hive mind, so a skill one of them picks up spreads to all of them within minutes.
They start on all fours like animals, then stand, then learn to use their senses, then start throwing each other at people.
The fungal and spore basis gives the film a real Last of Us flavour, and it is also why everything eventually turns sticky.
The Colony Cast and Who Survives the Lockdown
Jun Ji-hyun (Gianna Jun) plays Kwon Se-jeong, a blunt biotech professor attending the conference with her ex-husband Han Gyu-seong (Go Soo).
Koo Kyo-hwan plays Seo Young-chul, the ousted scientist who engineers the virus, keeps the only vaccine in his own body, and has a real reason for doing it.
Ji Chang-wook is security guard Choi Hyun-seok and Kim Shin-rok is his older sister Choi Hyun-hee, an IT employee and wheelchair user spending the day with him.
Shin Hyun-been plays scientist Gong Seol-hee, working the outbreak from outside the building.
A Sealed Seoul Tower: Mall Horror After Dawn of the Dead
Retail at the bottom, office tower above, and the whole thing locked down once the authorities clock the bioterror attack.
The film uses the full building (mall floors, offices, parking garage) with an actual reason to move each time, rather than clearing levels like a video game.
Very Romero, with a bit of [REC] in the quarantine.
Zombie Choreography and Practical Body Horror
Movement was designed by choreographer Jeon Young, who also shaped the zombies in Train to Busan, Peninsula and Hellbound, using breakdancers, contortionists and modern dance troupes.
The first person to turn gets an iconic contortion scene, the same way Train to Busan handled its first turn.
The set degrades across the runtime, going from clean and shiny to fully overtaken, and characters start getting stuck to walls.
The horde reminded us of the dancer sequence in Smile 2.
Is the Zombie Subgenre Oversaturated in 2026?
Measured against We Bury the Dead, This Is Not a Test and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, plus a decade-plus of The Walking Dead spinoffs.
The verdict: the standard zombie is exhausted, but the twists are not. Colony and The Bone Temple both prove there is room left.
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Insidious: Out of the Further Review + Post-Credits Explained
21 août 2026
00:40:29
Insidious: Out of the Further review, and we did the homework first. We rewatched all five previous Insidious films in one week, then walked into the sixth one with fresh eyes and a much better understanding of what this franchise is actually building.
Vote for us at the Sacred Crypt Awards for the Rising Star category! Vote here, thank you!
Insidious: Out of the Further Review and Our Rating
We rewatched all five previous Insidious films before seeing the sixth, and it changed how much of this one landed. You do not need to, but it helps.
Both of us landed on 5.5. It is a solid installment that does more with its lore than we expected going in.
Not scary so much as gross. Multiple "ew, yuck" moments and almost no gore, which is a strange trick to pull in a PG-13 supernatural horror movie.
The makeup and practical effects are the best they have looked in a few installments.
Cast: Amelia Eve, Lin Shaye and Sam Spruell
Amelia Eve plays Gemma Hall, a single mother raising her daughter Maya (Island Austin) in her childhood home.
Lin Shaye returns as Elise Rainier, the only person to appear in all six Insidious films.
Sam Spruell plays Cyrus Lam, a cult leader who kept the job after death. Tall, blindfolded, genuinely menacing.
Brandon Perea (Nope) plays Nick, Maisie Richardson-Sellers plays Clare, and Joseph Lopez turns up as Lester after starring in Passenger earlier this year.
Set Design, Lighting and the Pillow Fort Sequence
The pillow fort scene is the best set piece in the movie. It looks soft in the trailer; it is metal underneath, and she cannot get through it.
Rooms in the Further open outward as the camera moves, revealing four walls floating in nothing. Clever, cheap, effective.
Insidious has always loved a nice house, from the Lambert home to Elise's childhood place to Dalton's dorm in The Red Door. Take a safe space, make it unsafe.
Six movies in, someone finally bought a working flashlight. You can actually see things.
Further Lore, the Doors and the Post-Credits Scene
The entities in the Further have a hierarchy, and Cyrus brought his cult with him. Everyone over there wants out.
Gemma does not just astral project. She can pull things out and shove them back in, which is a genuinely new ability for this franchise.
Every film pushes harder toward our world. This one gets the furthest without fully succeeding, and we think that is deliberate.
The post-credits scene resolves Cyrus and leaves the door open (literally and otherwise) for whatever comes next.
Our Biggest Gripe: No Specs and No Tucker
Specs and Tucker have appeared in every other Insidious film. They are not in this one at all. Not even a cameo.
Clare fills their narrative slot as the in-between helper, except she has an ability and they never did.
Spectral Sightings, their in-universe company, used to have a real website. It is now a parked domain for sale. Huge missed marketing opportunity.
If we missed a second credits scene, tell us in the comments. We checked.
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Fantasia Film Festival 2026: The Best Horror Films We Saw Out of 20-Plus Screenings
12 août 2026
00:22:20
Fantasia Film Festival 2026 is over, and we saw more than 20 films between us. These are the six that stuck.
Meaghan and Arthur close out Grave Tone's Fantasia Film Festival 2026 coverage with a mini wrap-up of their best horror films of the fest. No ranking (Meaghan ranked hers anyway). Just the movies that are still living in our heads two weeks later, plus honorable mentions and the release dates you actually need.
Fantasia Film Festival 2026 wrapped, and we saw more than 20 films between us. No ranking, just the six that stuck, plus when you can watch them.
Fantasia 2026 Vampire Horror: No Rest for the Wicked
Junction Row review time, and this Fantasia 2026 world premiere is the one that split us right down the middle.
Meaghan and Arthur close out their Fantasia International Film Festival minisodes with Ashlea Wessel's feature debut, a Canadian sci-fi horror creature feature starring Katharine Isabelle as Juno, an army veteran in recovery who returns to the housing compound she walked away from. Her friend Ruby is missing. A new drug called The Link is tearing through the place. And something underneath Junction Row is a lot worse than the dealers running it.
Ashlea Wessel moves from festival shorts (Tick, Weirdo, and segments in the anthology Creepy Bits) to her first feature, and the ambition is all over the screen.
Katharine Isabelle plays Juno, an army veteran in recovery who returns to the Junction Row compound to find her missing friend Ruby.
Co-written by Wessel with Adam Cesare (the Clown in a Cornfield novels) and Matt Serafini.
Meaghan came out of it satisfied. Arthur wanted the film to reveal more instead of asking him to reverse-engineer it.
Katharine Isabelle as Juno and the Junction Row Cast
Making Juno an army vet is a real choice, not set dressing. She has the tactical knowledge, she can fight, and she can plan an infiltration.
Isabelle kicks a genuinely absurd amount of ass here (Ginger Snaps and American Mary fans, this is your action-star era).
Kyle Mac plays Miles, Juno's former dealer, and steals every scene he lands in. He is an asshole, and he is very funny about it.
A lot of familiar Canadian faces round out the compound, which Meaghan is never going to stop enjoying.
The film mixes 60s and 70s styling in its advertising and posters with technology that feels well ahead of ours. The phones and tablets look like sheets of paper.
A pharmaceutical company is weaponizing addiction inside the compound with a new drug, and what it does to people is where the horror lands.
Some of the visual effects get wonky, which is what a lower budget buys you. Meaghan is fine with that here and would not be fine with it from a studio sitting on all the money in the world.
Sci-Fi Horror That Withholds: Meander, Coherence, and Ambiguity
Arthur's whole issue is explanation. He wants a film to reveal more as it goes, even if the ending stays strange.
Coherence is his counter-example for slow, conversational sci-fi that still tells you what is happening.
Meaghan raised the same complaint about Home Bodies a few episodes back and it did not bother her at all here. Junction Row's open ending worked for her.
Bagman Short Film Review: Wildlife Cams and Recursive Dread
Bagman, from brothers Connor Gaston and Vaughn Gaston, screened with Junction Row and Arthur loved it. [LINK: Bagman]
Nat monitors a wildlife camera feed tracking deer and bears. One frame there is nothing, the next frame there is a black garbage bag in the brush.
Her supervisor goes to check it out while she watches through the live feed, and it gets very bad very fast.
The ending did not land for Meaghan. Arthur calls it a solid jump scare with recursive implications that get worse the longer you sit with them.
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The Glorious Dead Review: The Adams Family Go Full Apocalypse
06 août 2026
00:14:10
The Glorious Dead review: the Adams Family wake a small town to blood in the taps and dead that will not stay buried.
Meaghan and Arthur close out their Fantasia 2026 coverage with a mini review of The Glorious Dead, the sixth consecutive film from the Adams Family to world premiere at Fantasia. John Adams and Toby Poser wrote and directed it. Poser stars as Sheriff Deb McCloud, who wakes up on her day off to a total blackout, blood coming out of faucets, missing people, holes in the ground that should not be there, and creatures in the woods. Zelda Adams plays her deputy Mikey. The whole thing unfolds over roughly twenty four hours in the dead of an upstate New York winter, and it goes exactly where you do not expect.
The Adams Family and Their Sixth Fantasia World Premiere
John Adams and Toby Poser write and direct together, Poser stars, and daughters Zelda and Lulu Adams act in the films. They shoot, score, and edit as a unit out of upstate New York.
The Glorious Dead is the sixth consecutive film from the family to world premiere at Fantasia, following The Deeper You Dig, Hellbender, Where the Devil Roams, Hell Hole, and Mother of Flies.
John Adams told the room before the screening that Fantasia is where they find out what their movie is actually about. They screen it, they read the reaction, then they know what they made.
The Glorious Dead: Blood in the Taps and a Town Coming Apart
Toby Poser plays Sheriff Deb McCloud, woken on her day off by a full blackout in the dead of an upstate New York winter. No power, no wifi, no cell service. The cars still run (do not think about it).
Zelda Adams plays Deputy Mikey, bringing in reports of blood from faucets, missing people and holes in the ground that nobody can explain.
The story covers roughly twenty four hours. Calling it a zombie movie is technically true and completely misleading.
Adams Family Style: Quick Cuts and a Heavy Metal Score
Fast interspersed cuts, deadpan performances everyone fully commits to, and a metal score the edit syncs to. There is a shot of windshield wipers moving in time with the beat and it rules.
Every film in their catalogue is a different subgenre: supernatural thriller, folk horror, Great Depression period piece, creature feature body horror, dark fantasy.
Mother of Flies is streaming on Shudder now if you want an entry point
The Ratings and the Ending Nobody Called
Meaghan started around a six on the night and moved up to a seven after a few days. The first two thirds landed immediately, the ending took time.
Arthur went a hard seven, setting the film's closing message aside. The last ten minutes are wild enough that he wanted more of that energy earlier.
TERM: Dean Norris, Mark Hamill and a Hell of a Short
Written and directed by Chadrick Preuss, also a Fantasia 2026 world premiere, playing before The Glorious Dead
Dean Norris of Breaking Bad carries the whole thing basically alone as a state senator facing a miracle that turns into a nightmare across one night before a major vote on abortion.
Every other character speaks to him over the phone, and one of those voices is Mark Hamill.
The producing team reached out to Hamill on a maybe and got a yes. Ask for the thing.
Where Fantasia Shorts Go After the Festival
Shorts this good are almost impossible to watch again once the festival ends, and that is a real problem worth naming.
Fingers crossed for a Shudder pickup on The Glorious Dead, since most of the family's catalogue already lives there.
One more Fantasia 2026 minisode is coming for the closing film
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Home Bodies Review: Casey Walker's Fantasia 2026's Creepiest Smart Home
05 août 2026
00:12:30
Home Bodies review time. Casey Walker's Canadian sci-fi horror had its world premiere at Fantasia 2026, and it left us with a lot to chew on.
Two children, Red and Blue, have been raised in total isolation by an automated house. The fridge restocks itself the second you close it. The dishes vanish into the trash. A disembodied voice they call Papa runs the whole operation. Then a stranger arrives as a Christmas gift, the kids name it Pal, and twelve years of routine come apart.
The pitch is simple and nasty: two children raised in total isolation by an automated house start asking questions after an enigmatic stranger arrives from outside.
We call it dystopian science fiction more than straight horror, but the premise alone is horror enough if you sit with it for a second.
No wide release date yet. VVS Films is handling distribution, and the film also screens at Tubi FrightFest 2026 in London.
The Cast: Emma Ho, Ian Ho, and Ess Hödlmoser
Red and Blue are played by real-life twins Emma Ho and Ian Ho, and that is the single biggest reason the film works. The arguments land because the chemistry is real.
Ess Hödlmoser plays Pal, the silent gift who arrives at Christmas. Hödlmoser is a Toronto contortionist, aerial performer, and stunt artist.
Their credits are a genre deep cut list: Pennywise motion capture and contortion work on It, Cindy on The Boys, S on Station Eleven, M on Motherland: Fort Salem, plus The Expanse, Titans, Code 8, Star Wars Outlaws, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
Retro-Futuristic Production Design That Steals the Movie
The house is the best thing in Home Bodies. Seventies futurism, worn in and lived in, and every appliance is doing thematic work.
Close the fridge and it restocks. Throw dishes in the trash and they disappear. Arthur wants to live there. That is a problem the film is aware of.
Total automation is why the kids never learned to take care of themselves. The convenience is the cage.
Cain and Abel: The Sibling Dynamic
One sibling starts questioning everything. The other does not want to anger Papa. That split is the engine of the whole film.
Pal's arrival is what tips the balance. Two becomes three, and the routine that held their world together stops holding.
Screenwriters Adrian Murray and Marcus Sullivan build the rules carefully, which makes the breaks land hard.
Where Home Bodies Loses Us
Meaghan's issue is the final quarter. Too much gets revealed too quickly and there is not enough time to sit with any of it.
Arthur's counter is that we only ever see what the kids see, so the abruptness is the point. Take your pick.
Both of us want more. The door for a sequel or an expanded universe is wide open, and we would watch it.
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Los Vampires & The Leader Review | Fantasia 2026 Double Bill
01 août 2026
00:25:51
Los Vampires review, plus The Leader, both caught at Fantasia 2026 and both built on things that actually happened. Meaghan went to these two solo (Arthur could not get into either screening) so this one runs as a spoiler-free double feature.
Los Vampires is Craig Mitchell's fictionalized account of the 1931 Spanish Dracula, the version George Melford shot overnight on Tod Browning's sets while Bela Lugosi's crew slept. Henry Ian Cusick plays Luis de Ossario, the Spanish actor handed the Count and ordered to copy every mannerism off the dailies of Kürt Orlov (Thomas Kretschmann), his English-language counterpart. The rivalry turns ugly. Then people start dying on the soundstage. Meaghan calls it the more fun of the two and the period detail is why: 1930s costumes, one location worked every way it can be worked, English and Spanish trading off inside the same scene. It runs a little long and starts repeating its ideas, which is the only real knock. Rating: 8/1- digs.
The Leader is the harder watch. Michael Gallagher wrote and directed this one about Heaven's Gate, the UFO cult that ended in 39 deaths at Rancho Santa Fe in March 1997. Tim Blake Nelson plays Marshall Applewhite. Vera Farmiga plays Bonnie Lu Nettles, the nurse who went from dissatisfied wife and mother to co-running one of the most notorious cults in American history. Jim Parsons plays Warren, a follower, and it is one of the best things he has done. The tone swings between absurd and awful on purpose. Not horror by category. Real-life horror by every other measure. Rating: 9/10 digs.
The Spanish Dracula Night Shoot That Los Vampires Rebuilds
In 1930 Universal ran two Dracula productions on the same sets. Tod Browning had the day with Bela Lugosi. George Melford had the night with a Spanish-speaking cast, because dubbing technology did not exist yet.
The Spanish version starred Carlos Villarías as the Count and Lupita Tovar as Eva Seward. Tovar died in 2016 at 106. Plenty of critics now argue the Spanish cut is technically the better film.
Melford's crew watched the day's dailies before shooting, which is the exact detail Los Vampires builds its entire rivalry on.
Los Vampires Cast, Craig Mitchell, and What Actually Works
Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond Hume on Lost, Marcus Kane on The 100) plays Luis de Ossario, the Spanish actor handed the Count. Peruvian-Scottish, debonair, exactly right for the period.
Thomas Kretschmann plays Kürt Orlov, the Lugosi stand-in. Their scenes in the dailies room are where the tension actually lives.
Oscar Nuñez (The Office), Daniela Couso, Jefferson Mays and Jorge Diaz fill out the cast. The film switches between English and Spanish and it never feels forced.
The real complaint: it runs long enough to start repeating its own ideas, and the single-location staging starts to feel like a play. Meaghan's rating: 8/10 digs.
The Leader and the Heaven's Gate Story
Michael Gallagher wrote and directed. World premiere at Tribeca on June 5, 2026, Canadian premiere at Fantasia, with distribution reportedly in motion for the US, UK and Canada.
Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Minority Report, Syriana, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) plays Marshall Applewhite. Vera Farmiga plays Bonnie Lu Nettles, and she was at the Fantasia screening.
Jim Parsons plays Warren, one of the followers, and it is one of the best things he has done since The Big Bang Theory.
The film tracks Nettles from nurse and unhappy wife to cult co-leader, which is the 180 that makes the whole thing land.
Why a Cult Movie Belongs on a Horror Podcast
The tone swings between absurd and awful on purpose. You laugh at what these people believed, then the next scene is a humiliation ritual and it stops being funny.
Heaven's Gate taught that the body was a vehicle to be shed, and sexual desire was repressed hard. The film gets into what that did to people.
Bonnie Nettles died of cancer in 1985, twelve years before the 39 deaths at Rancho Santa Fe in March 1997 that were timed to Comet Hale-Bopp.
Meaghan's rating: 9/10 digs. Not horror by category. Real-life horror by every other measure.
What Is Coming Next From Fantasia 2026
Colony from Yeon Sang-ho, Buddy from Casper Kelly (the Too Many Cooks guy), and Freaks Part II from Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, which closes the festival.
Shorter episodes are coming while festival coverage runs, and most stay spoiler-free since wide release dates are not locked yet.
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No Rest for the Wicked Explained: Fantasia's Award-Winning Queer Vampire Film
30 juil. 2026
00:30:01
No Rest for the Wicked is a queer vampire love story from the 1862 Faroe Islands, and it wrecked us in the best way. This one had our attention before the festival schedule even dropped, and it earned every bit of that hype.
Kasper Kalle's world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival follows Baldur (Egor Venned), a young fisherman stuck caring for his widowed mother on a treeless island in the North Atlantic, and Helge (Pilou Asbaek), the drifting whaler who washes into his life and changes everything. What starts as a reluctant friendship turns passionate, then turns strange; there is a supernatural element folded into the story that gives us one of the most unusual takes on vampirism we have seen on film.
A Queer Vampire Love Story in the 1862 Faroe Islands
Kasper Kalle's world premiere follows Baldur (Egor Venned), a bored young fisherman caring for his widowed mother, and Helge (Pilou Asbaek), a drifting Danish whaler who washes into his life.
A reluctant friendship turns into a passionate, secret relationship on a tiny, deeply religious island where hiding is survival.
Set on a treeless island in the North Atlantic, with dialogue in both Faroese and Danish (yes, it is subtitled, and worth it).
The Cast: Egor Venned and Pilou Asbaek Carry It
Newcomer Egor Venned (himself from the Faroe Islands) plays Baldur, and we would have handed him a performance award too.
Pilou Asbaek (Euron Greyjoy in Game of Thrones, Overlord) plays Helge, a full swing away from the villains he usually gets, and it is a great look for him.
Sofia Nolsoe Mikkelsen plays the mother, and Johannes Haukur Johannesson (Succession, Captain America: Brave New World, Vikings: Valhalla) turns up as a villager.
Robert Eggers Vibes and Nordic Gothic Atmosphere
The natural light, the fog, the night shots with barely any lighting (because 1862): it all felt very Eggers-esque, just softer and more romantic.
The score is beautiful the whole way through, and there is a funeral song halfway in that nearly had Meaghan crying in the theater.
The film leans on the real landscape instead of manufactured spectacle, and it earns that authenticity.
A Vampire Movie Unlike Any We Had Seen
This is a vampire film at its core, but nobody is running around biting the village. The supernatural element is quieter, stranger, and much more beautiful.
No Dracula crossing from Transylvania, no jump-scare machine. The dread is woven in naturally, and the horror stays understated.
Underneath it all: religious oppression, repression, and a real theme of acceptance by the end that a lot of these stories skip.
Fantasia 2026 Awards and Where to Watch
No Rest for the Wicked won Best Director (Kasper Kalle) and an Outstanding Performance award (Pilou Asbaek) in Fantasia's Cheval Noir competition.
Screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival on August 9, with a Denmark release on September 3 through SF Studios.
No North American release confirmed yet. We are hoping for a VOD or limited theatrical run, so keep an eye on a cinema near you that plays foreign genre films.
Coming Up on Grave Tone: Fantasia Closing Week
The Glorious Dead, the new one from the Adams family (Hellbender, Mother of Flies, The Deeper You Dig).
Junction Row, the Katharine Isabelle creature feature, plus the Comic-Con darling Buddy and the festival closer Freaks Part II.
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Penny Lane Is Dead Review: The Ozploitation Slasher That Made Fantasia Faint & Someone's Daughter Review
27 juil. 2026
00:29:23
Penny Lane Is Dead review: the 1986 Ozploitation slasher that dropped a Fantasia audience member on the floor, plus the world premiere of Someone's Daughter.
PENNY LANE IS DEAD
The feature debut from Australian writer-director Mia'Kate Russell, and a straight throwback to 1980s Ozploitation. It is 1986, three friends are celebrating at an isolated beach house, and Penny's jealous cousin Kat turns up with a container of spiked cupcakes. What starts as a prank collapses into a home invasion and then into a revenge film. Meaghan covers the content warnings up front, the tonal wobble between dark comedy and genuine brutality, the practical effects (excellent), the final girl payoff, and the audience member who fainted during the Fantasia screening. Streaming on Shudder August 28. Meaghan gives it 7 digs.
Cast: Bailey Spalding, Tahlee Fereday, Alexandra Jensen, Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn, Ben O'Toole, Steve Le Marquand, Fletcher Humphrys.
SOMEONE'S DAUGHTER
The world premiere of Wiebke von Carolsfeld's survival thriller, shot in Quebec's Eastern Townships. A criminal defense lawyer and the client she once got acquitted of an assault charge wind up stranded together in the wilderness, and the longer they walk, the less certain she is that she was right. Pascale Bussieres and Francois Arnaud carry nearly the whole film. Slow burn, very quiet, gorgeous, and not as twisty as the thriller label suggests. Meaghan gives it 7.5 digs.
PENNY LANE IS DEAD: MIA'KATE RUSSELL'S OZPLOITATION SLASHER DEBUT
- Feature debut from Australian writer-director Mia'Kate Russell, who previously screened shorts at Fantasia. Premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2025.
- Set in 1986. Three friends celebrating at an isolated beach house, one jealous cousin, one container of spiked cupcakes, and a prank that turns into a body count.
- Prank-gone-wrong film, home invasion film and revenge film stacked on top of each other.
- North American premiere at Fantasia on July 20. Streaming on Shudder August 28.
CONTENT WARNINGS AND THE TONAL BALANCE PROBLEM
- Meaghan flags the assault sequence up front. It happens off-camera but is heard, and the film sits in rape-revenge territory. Go in knowing.
- The film plays as horror dark comedy, but the brutality keeps overriding the jokes. Some laughs did not land in the room.
- Reviews are split, and Meaghan gets why. Australian horror runs mean, and this one leans all the way into it.
- Comparison point on-mic: The Loved Ones.
THE CAST, THE GORE AND THE FANTASIA FAINTING
- Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn as Kat is the engine of the whole film. Ben O'Toole as Angus is genuinely unhinged.
- Bailey Spalding plays Penny, Tahlee Fereday plays Toni, Alexandra Jensen plays Amy. Jensen was also in Talk to Me from Danny and Michael Philippou.
- Practical gore and makeup effects are the highlight, and the final girl payoff earns its catharsis.
- Yes, someone fainted at the screening. Meaghan was there and is not convinced the film gets the credit.
SOMEONE'S DAUGHTER: A QUIET QUEBEC SURVIVAL THRILLER
- World premiere at Fantasia. Directed and co-written by Wiebke von Carolsfeld, whose Marion Bridge won Best First Canadian Feature at TIFF in 2002.
- Criminal defense lawyer Sam ends up stranded with Paul, the client she once got acquitted of an assault charge. The longer they walk, the less sure she is.
- Pascale Bussieres and Francois Arnaud carry nearly every frame. Peter Outerbridge turns up early.
- Shot in the Eastern Townships, and the landscape works as a third character. Meaghan gives it 7.5.
SHORT FILM SPOTLIGHT
- Best Friends with the Devil, from writer-director Hugo de Sousa, played before Penny Lane Is Dead. Nine minutes, a missing friend, a hiking trail, and a comedy of errors that keeps escalating.
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Nightborn Review: Rupert Grint's Monster Baby Folk Horror Nightmare
25 juil. 2026
00:32:46
Nightborn review time. Hanna Bergholm's Finnish folk horror lands on Shudder July 31, and we caught it at Fantasia first (the North American premiere, no less). This is her follow-up to Hatching, and it takes the motherhood horror thing somewhere darker and a lot more visceral.
The Setup: Hanna Bergholm's Folk Horror Follow-Up
- Nightborn is Hanna Bergholm's second feature after Hatching (2022), and it pushes deeper into body horror and Finnish folklore.
- Saga (Seidi Haarla) and her British husband Jon (Rupert Grint) move into her crumbling childhood house deep in the forest and start a family.
- World premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February; North American premiere at Fantasia Film Festival on July 22 as part of the festival's 30th anniversary.
Motherhood Horror as Allegory
- The whole film reads as an allegory for postpartum and first-time motherhood, the fear, the isolation, and nobody believing you.
- Saga names the baby Kuura (frost) and refuses to call him anything but 'it' while everyone insists she is the one who needs help.
- It lands somewhere between Rosemary's Baby and We Need to Talk About Kevin, run through Finnish folk horror.
Use of Space, Set Design, and the Score
- The house does storytelling work: the broken floor, the renos, the tree growing up through the middle as Saga's bond with the child shifts.
- The gothic-in-the-woods nursery is a standout, dark greens and muted grays with a cloud light and hot air balloon over the bassinet.
- The score is by Eicca Toppinen, Finnish cellist and founder of Apocalyptica, and it carries the tone scene to scene.
Body Horror, Gore, and the Growling Baby
- There is a real amount of gore here, plus visceral childbirth and body-transformation makeup that earns its warnings.
- The CG baby munching meat and growling tips into accidental comedy, which becomes part of the experience.
- Content note for parents especially: some of the motherhood and childbirth material hits hard.
The Verdict
- Seidi Haarla carries the whole film and makes the impossible stuff believable; her performance is the anchor.
- Arthur landed closer to a seven; Meaghan sat around a six, with the tonal 'too on-the-nose' quality as her main sticking point.
- If you like folk horror and films about the harder edges of motherhood, this one is worth your time. Nightborn streams on Shudder from July 31.
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Her Private Hell Explained (Kind Of): Nicolas Winding Refn at Fantasia
20 juil. 2026
00:33:07
Her Private Hell is the most beautiful movie we couldn't explain. Nicolas Winding Refn's first film in a decade opened the 30th Fantasia International Film Festival, and we sat on this one for days before we could even record (we needed to).
This is our Her Private Hell review, and honestly? We're still turning it over. Refn's neon fever dream drops Sophie Thatcher's Elle into a futuristic metropolis swallowed by fog, while Charles Melton's soldier hunts for his missing daughter and a masked killer called the Leather Man picks off young women. Two movies in one, a father-daughter subplot running through both, and a color palette so stunning it almost carries the whole thing (there is no green anywhere in the film, and there is a reason for that).
Nicolas Winding Refn's First Film in a Decade
The Neon Demon (2016) was his last feature; Her Private Hell is his first in roughly ten years, and you can feel him swinging for it.
Refn has said a near-death experience (25 minutes) reshaped the film's obsession with rebirth and reinvention.
Fantasia handed him the Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award as the 30th edition kicked off.
The Cast, and the One Who Steals It
Sophie Thatcher plays Elle, a model-actress worn down by an industry that chews women up.
Charles Melton plays a soldier searching for his missing daughter, fresh off Beef season 2 and still Reggie to the Riverdale crowd.
Kristine Froseth (Hunter) has the best comedic timing in the film; the ditzy-blonde bit is funnier and more honest than it has any right to be.
Dougray Scott and Havana Rose Liu round out a genuinely stacked cast.
Beautiful to Watch, Hard to Explain
The color palette is stunning, and there is no green anywhere in the film (the director is colorblind, and it shows on purpose).
Pino Donaggio's score, from Brian De Palma's longtime collaborator, was written first; Refn built the movie to fit the music instead of the other way around.
Surprisingly phenomenal action sequences, a Neo-Tokyo look somewhere between Blade Runner and a dark Jetsons.
The Spoiler Talk (Two Movies, One Fog)
Our read on the Leather Man: he stands in for the industry itself, swallowing women whole.
The sapphic storyline Refn added halfway through filming feels shoehorned in, and because he shot in sequence, you can see the seam.
The ambiguity is a lot; loving how a film looks doesn't cancel out leaving with zero real answers.
Fantasia 2026 and What's Next
Her Private Hell opened the 30th Fantasia International Film Festival; Freaks Part II closes it.
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga both hit the festival, so we're still holding out for a Conjuring reunion.
More Fantasia coverage is dropping almost every other day through early August.
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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma Review: Jane Schoenbrun's Meta Slasher Is Gory, Funny, and Queer
18 juil. 2026
00:36:54
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma review, spoilers included, straight off its Canadian premiere at Fantasia. Jane Schoenbrun made a queer slasher that loves slashers, and we did not see it coming. Hannah Einbinder plays Kris, a director handed a dead franchise (a "zombie IP," in her words) to reboot; Gillian Anderson plays Billy, the original final girl who vanished into a reclusive Hollywood mystery. The two of them meet at the abandoned camp where the first film was shot, and things get bloody, horny, and genuinely strange from there.
JANE SCHOENBRUN'S QUEER SLASHER LANDS AT FANTASIA
- Camp Miasma had its Canadian premiere at Fantasia Festival, with Jane Schoenbrun on hand for the post-screening Q&A.
- It's Schoenbrun's third feature after We're All Going to the World's Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, and easily their funniest and brightest.
- The film goes wide in theaters August 7 via Mubi; it opened Un Certain Regard at Cannes and won the Queer Palm.
THE CAST IS FANTASTIC
- Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) plays Kris, the director handed the reboot; Gillian Anderson plays Billy, the reclusive original final girl.
- Jack Haven plays the killer, Little Death, reuniting with Schoenbrun after playing Maddy in I Saw the TV Glow.
- Jasmin Savoy Brown (Yellowjackets, Scream) plays Mari, with Sarah Sherman, Patrick Fischler, and Montreal's own Kevin McDonald rounding it out.
A HOMAGE THAT LOVES THE SUBGENRE
- The opening credits sequence tears through the whole life cycle of a slasher franchise (sequels, space, arcade games, a reboot) and it's brilliant.
- There's a fully playable Camp Miasma board game the production team built, rulebook and all, that surprised even Schoenbrun.
- Little Death's design is the standout: a box-within-a-box head, a hazmat suit, and a spear that flings victims around like a flag.
SEX, DEATH, AND LITTLE DEATH
- The killer's name translates straight from la petite mort, the French phrase for an orgasm, and the film weaves sex and death together on purpose.
- It sits with the problematic history of older slashers (the transphobia of Sleepaway Camp, the homophobia stitched into the genre) without losing its love for them.
- We kept spoilers light since the film isn't out until August 7. Watch it, then come back and yell at us.
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Alex Grass on Infernal Tramps, Body Horror & Weird Terror
16 juil. 2026
00:47:14
Infernal Tramps: Tales of Weird Terror is out today, and Alex Grass sat down with us for a horror author interview that went everywhere we hoped it would. He traces his horror education back to a father who took him to see Terminator 2 when he was six, and a mother who kept buying him pulp paperbacks based on how cool the covers looked (she had no idea what was inside). The Fly is the one that did the real damage. The body horror hooked him, but it was the descent into the beast that stuck.
INFERNAL TRAMPS: WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS
- Seventeen stories, flash fiction up to novelettes, and they do not connect. Start in the middle, at the end, wherever.
- His standing pitch: if you want the experience of David Cronenberg and Clive Barker smoking bath salts together and then writing short stories, he has that for you.
WHERE TO START READING
- “A Woman of Distinction” for short, punchy and kind of funny. Dark, but one of the less weird ones.
- “A New World Basement” if you want to start dark.
- “The EP™ Implant” if you want to start weird. This is his pick for the weird entry point.
HOW ALEX GRASS GOT INTO HORROR
- A father who took him to Terminator 2 at six, and a mother who bought him pulp paperbacks because the covers looked cool (she had no idea what was inside).
- The Fly is his childhood trauma pick. Body horror hooked him, but the descent into the beast is what stuck.
THE GROTESQUE AND THE LINE OF WEIRD
- Horror done right holds a wistful beauty and a brutality at once. Alex points at real life: dying is not pretty, and you remember the good times anyway.
- The inversion is aspiring toward beauty and creating the grotesque instead. He calls it the silicone industrial complex. Arthur clocks it: sounds like he has seen The Substance. He has. He loves it.
- Defining weird takes a rollerblader in lingerie and a man walking an ocelot through Bushwick. The line is where benign deviancy starts causing somebody pain. The Elvis version is even better.
PROCESS, OR THE LACK OF ONE
- He planned two of the novels. Short stories have too much flex in the joints; his outline would read “one, eggs. Two, eggs with spider legs.”
- It is not that the settings are mundane; it is that terrible things wait inside mundanity, and power gets wielded dumbly and cruelly inside bureaucracies.
- The notebook he carried while drinking produced “what if cheese pocket” and “soda cans equals hypocrisy.” Usable ideas out of it: zero, not once.
- The routine is 300 words, day off, 3,000 words, day off, reset. He is not trying to fix it.
HORROR BOOKS ALEX GRASS RECOMMENDS
- Reggie Oliver, for M. R. James-style English academic occult stories. “The Mortlake Manuscript” runs a lineage from John Dee to Aleister Crowley.
- Clive Barker’s Rawhead Rex, closer to what Alex writes.
- Bentley Little, who made the bank, the store, and the town terrifying. People keep asking for a horror story about an HOA. He wrote it. It is appalling.
- Attila Veres out of Hungary via Valancourt Books, hallucinatory stuff about a vineyard serving something that is not quite wine.
- The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay, and not the anti-Christian book Alex expected.
Find Infernal Tramps on Amazon (search “Infernal Tramps by Alex Grass,” G-R-A-S-S, like the green grass) or at infernaltramps.com.
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Evil Dead Burn Review: The Most Brutal Deadite Movie Yet
10 juil. 2026
00:39:28
Evil Dead Burn review: Sébastien Vaniček made the nastiest movie in this franchise, and it starts fast and never lets up.
We came home from the theatre and recorded immediately. Evil Dead Burn drops French expat Alice (Souheila Yacoub) into a house full of in-laws who never wanted her there, and then turns them into Deadites one by one. The early hype said you are not ready. Usually, that hype is nothing. This time it is one of the exceptions.
Sébastien Vaniček Brings French Horror to the Evil Dead Franchise
Second feature after Infested (2023), the spider movie that got him hired. Sam Raimi saw it and handed him the keys.
Vaniček's stated goal was a visceral sensory experience that punches audiences in the gut and leaves them physically drained. It works.
The dry humour running through the crematorium scenes is unmistakably French, in the same family as Le Manoir.
Evil Dead Burn Cast and Performances
Souheila Yacoub (Climax, Dune: Part Two) plays Alice, the French expat widow, and she carries the whole film.
Hunter Doohan (Wednesday) as Joseph, Luciane Buchanan as Thya, Tandi Wright as Susan, Erroll Shand as Edgar, George Pullar as Will.
Maude Davey plays Polly, the grandmother, and she is the only real levity in the movie (she is also the funniest thing in it).
Mostly lesser-known actors, which is what this franchise keeps getting right.
Practical Effects, Gore, and the NC-17 Problem
The holes in Edgar's skull hold up in close-up for most of the runtime. Mostly practical with a VFX layer on top.
The original cut was rated NC-17. Vaniček trimmed one long, cold, raw scene to land the R.
There is one head sequence where you see everything. If you are squeamish, skip the popcorn.
Necronomicon Lore and the Evil Dead Timeline
The grandfather's link to Professor Raymond Knowby finally gives the modern films connective tissue back to 1981.
The Kandarian dagger returns as the only thing that kills a Deadite for good.
The Circle of Wise Men reaches back to the mage in Army of Darkness.
Burn's cold open brings back Jessica from Evil Dead Rise's lakeside prologue.
Evil Dead Wrath (Francis Galluppi, April 2028) is a prequel set in 1972.
Trigger Warnings and Scores
Animal death: the dog dies. Domestic violence is a heavy plot point, not a background detail.
Arthur: 8. Meaghan: 7.5 to 8.
Two credits scenes, one mid and one post. Stay for both. We are not telling you what they are.
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Best Canadian Horror Movies: Killer Picks for Canada Day
03 juil. 2026
00:44:33
The best Canadian horror movies don't get talked about enough, so for Canada Day we counted down ten we genuinely love (killer jeans included). This is Grave Tone doing what it does when there's no new release to chase: pulling from the deep, weird catalog of Canadian horror films and arguing about them.
Canadian Horror Comedy That Actually Lands
Slaxx (2020) is Elza Kephart's killer-jeans satire skewering fast fashion and sweatshop labor, and the kills are great.
Suck (2009), Rob Stefaniuk's vampire rock 'n' roll road movie, somehow got Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Moby, Alex Lifeson, and Malcolm McDowell into one cast.
Vicious Fun (2020) traps a horror-mag critic in a support group for serial killers; high energy, fun from start to finish.
Buffet Infinity (2025) tells a full cosmic-horror story entirely through fake TV commercials, SCTV style. Weird, and it works.
Werewolves, Zombies & Body Horror
Ginger Snaps (2000) is still the definitive werewolf-as-puberty coming-of-age film, carried by Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins.
Pontypool (2008), based on Tony Burgess's novel Pontypool Changes Everything, is a zombie movie where the virus lives in language. Stephen McHattie is perfect.
Possessor (2020), Brandon Cronenberg's body-swap assassin nightmare, sits at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes for a reason.
Les Affames (2017), Robin Aubert's French-Canadian zombie film, took Best Canadian Feature at TIFF.
Psychological Dread & Dark Web Terror
Red Rooms (2023), Pascal Plante's dark web true-crime thriller, barely shows violence and stays unbearably tense. Juliette Gariepy is the whole movie.
Come True (2020), Anthony Scott Burns's sleep-study descent, is nonlinear, strange, and impossible to shake.
Undertone (2025) is audio horror about a cursed podcast; turn the lights off and let it get to you.
Cult Classics & Deadly Labyrinths
Cube (1997), Vincenzo Natali's deadly-labyrinth cult classic, was made for roughly $350K and arguably paved the way for Saw. A 4K restoration hit Fantasia in 2024.
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Evil Dead Deep Dive: Deadites, Lore & The Franchise Future - Childhood Trauma With Nightmare Echoes
26 juin 2026
00:44:45
Meaghan and Arthur welcome Eleazar for a Childhood Trauma episode that doubles as one of the deepest Evil Dead franchise dives we've done. They cover the full arc — from Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell's proof-of-concept short film Within the Woods, through the legal chaos that forced Evil Dead II to basically remake the first twenty minutes of its own predecessor, through Army of Darkness and its cursed rights issues, through Ash vs Evil Dead and the weird, wonderful lore that keeps expanding with every entry.
🎙 About Our Guest: Eleazar of Nightmare Echoes
Eleazar is the host of Nightmare Echoes Podcast, a horror podcast exploring classic and modern genre films with a rotating roster of co-hosts.
The show has covered every film in the Evil Dead franchise — and has been running for 120+ episodes across multiple seasons.
Meaghan and Arthur appeared on Nightmare Echoes earlier this year to discuss The Substance.
Within the Woods (1978) — Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell's proof-of-concept short film, used to secure the $90,000 needed to make the original. The same bootstrapped-short-to-feature pipeline Curry Barker used decades later with YouTube.
The original Evil Dead (1981) was shot in extreme cold in a Tennessee cabin that was slowly falling apart — the fireplace was their only heat source, power tools were stolen off the set, and the crew's housing was converted into a brothel mid-production.
Evil Dead II (1987) couldn't use footage from the first film due to a multi-studio rights dispute — so it re-created the first twenty minutes, quietly altering character counts and relationships to sidestep the issue.
Linda is played by a different actress in every film in the series. Same with the character count: Evil Dead has five friends; Evil Dead II drops it to just Ash and Linda. Rights issues explain both.
Ted Raimi (Sam's younger brother) wore a full latex suit in Evil Dead II during the extreme Tennessee summer heat. Buckets of sweat were reportedly dumped out of the suit between takes — and the perspiration is visible in the film.
📖 The Necronomicon: Franchise Lore Explained
The Necronomicon (Book of the Dead) evolves in detail and design across every Evil Dead film — each entry adds new layers of mythology and expands what the book can do.
Evil Dead II introduces a crucial detail: pages from the Necronomicon can function independently of the book, which becomes a plot point involving Jake throwing them into the fireplace — a decision the hosts describe as one of the franchise's most frustrating character choices.
Army of Darkness introduces three Necronomicons on a pedestal — two fakes and one real — and Ash picks the wrong one (partly) because he can't say the words correctly either.
Evil Dead Rise confirms that all three books across the franchise's history are separate Necronomicons, placing every film in a shared universe. Evil Dead Burn appears to introduce a fourth.
🪓 Ash Williams: Character Arc Across the Franchise
In The Evil Dead (1981), Ash is almost passive — nearly self-effacing, not the commanding presence he becomes later. The hosts note how strikingly different he is between films one and two.
Bruce Campbell's physical comedy and willingness to be repeatedly destroyed is the engine of Evil Dead II. The hand-severing sequence remains one of the franchise's most iconic (and genuinely terrifying) moments.
Sam Raimi originally intended to go straight from Evil Dead into what became Army of Darkness (working title: Medieval Dead). Stephen King's rave review of the first film helped secure funding for a sequel — but the studio wanted more of the same, not a medieval adventure.
Evil Dead II was ultimately designed as setup for Army of Darkness — a bridge film Raimi made funnier because he knew where the story was going.
🔥 Evil Dead Burn & The Franchise Future
Evil Dead Burn hits theaters July 10, 2026. Directed by Sébastien Vaniček (Infested), produced by Sam Raimi and Robert G. Tapert, executive produced by Bruce Campbell and Lee Cronin.
The crew discuss the fan theory that a voice heard in Evil Dead Rise's vinyl record sequence is Bruce Campbell's — suggesting Ash is still time-traveling through the franchise timeline, trying (and failing) to prevent Deadite uprisings.
A Deadite glimpsed in the Evil Dead Burn trailer appears to match the lake woman from Evil Dead Rise — potentially linking the two films and suggesting the franchise's shared universe is tighter than any official confirmation has stated.
Evil Dead Wrath (directed by Francis Galluppi) is also in development, marking the first time two Evil Dead films have been in production simultaneously.
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Hold the Fort Is the Horror Comedy You Need This Summer (And It's Finally on VOD)
22 juin 2026
00:30:22
Arthur and Meaghan dig into William Bagley's Hold the Fort (2025), now available on VOD. They saw it first at its world premiere at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, loved it enough to re-watch it the second it hit digital, and they're still laughing. This is that kind of movie.
HOLD THE FORT — EPISODE SHOWNOTES
ABOUT THE FILM
▸ Hold the Fort (2025): written and directed by William Bagley, co-written by Scott Hawkins
▸ Distributed by Sunrise Films (North America); available on Digital HD via Apple TV, Prime Video, and Fandango at Home as of June 23, 2026
▸ Runtime: 74 minutes · Genre: Horror Comedy
▸ World premiere: Fantasia International Film Festival, Montreal, July 2025, also screened at FrightFest London, Sitges, Beyond Fest, and Toronto After Dark
THE CAST
▸ Chris Mayers (Ozark) as Lucas, the new homeowner who definitely did not read the HOA contract
▸ Haley Leary as Jenny, the more sensible half of the couple, and yes, also a nurse
▸ Julian Smith (social media comedian and producer) as Jerry, HOA president, keeper of the lore, cheese stick casualty
▸ Levi Burdick as Ted and Michelle Lamb as Annette, the neighborhood veterans who've been doing this for years
▸ Tordy Clark as Leslie, the neighborhood's better-living-through-chemistry advocate
▸ Hamid-Reza Benjamin Thompson as McScruffy, the hired weapons expert who gets taken out of commission early
▸ Luke Michael Williams as Marcus, the mechanic who changes everyone's oil for free (this is genuinely nice)
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Leviticus Review: Queer Horror Has Never Hit This Hard
19 juin 2026
00:37:22
Leviticus review: the queer Australian horror film Joe Bird stars in just opened, and we saw it opening night. Here's our raw reaction. Leviticus (2026) — written and directed by Adrian Chiarella — is one of the best horror films of this year so far. It's sitting at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and the praise is not overstated. This is a queer coming-of-age horror film that follows Naim (Joe Bird, Talk to Me) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen) — two teenage boys in a small, deeply religious town in rural Australia whose emerging feelings for each other trigger a supernatural entity that stalks anyone who's had a conversion ritual performed on them.
About the film
Leviticus (2026) — written and directed by Adrian Chiarella in his feature debut. Released June 18, 2026 in Australia; June 19, 2026 in the US via Neon. Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2026 (Midnight section).
Produced by Causeway Films (also behind Talk to Me, The Babadook, Bring Her Back). Distributed internationally by Neon, acquired in a reported seven-figure deal post-Sundance.
Running time: 88 minutes. Currently sitting at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and 84 on Metacritic. Nominated for an audience award at SXSW.
Cast and Crew
Joe Bird as Naim — best known as Riley in Talk to Me (2022). AACTA Young Stars Award 2025 winner. Leviticus is his first leading film role.
Stacy Clausen as Ryan — praised by critics for conveying warmth beneath Ryan's guarded exterior.
Mia Wasikowska as Arlene, Naim's mother — widely known for Crimson Peak, Alice in Wonderland. Plays the film's quiet, devastating antagonist.
Nicholas Hope as the deliverance healer. Jeremy Blewitt as Hunter. Ewen Leslie as Rod.
The Queer Horror Conversation
Leviticus sits within a larger queer horror tradition — the film draws deliberate comparisons to It Follows (2014) in its use of a supernatural entity as social metaphor.
The film's central metaphor: a post-exorcism entity that takes the form of whoever the victim desires most. It follows them. It adapts. It doesn't stop. The implication — that sexuality cannot be prayed away — is embedded in the film's rules.
Meaghan also draws a comparison to Grave Tone's coverage of At the Place of Ghosts, another recent queer horror film dealing with queerness and small community dynamics.
The book of Leviticus (specifically Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13) provides the film's title — and its central indictment of religious doctrine used to justify violence against queer people.
Australian Horror's Moment
Causeway Films has quietly built one of horror's most consistent track records: The Babadook (2014), Talk to Me (2022), The Moogai (2024), Bring Her Back (2025), Leviticus (2026).
Arthur and Meaghan discuss what makes Australian horror feel distinctively raw and stripped-back — less Hollywood gloss, more visceral grounding in real places and real dread.
Director Adrian Chiarella filmed across Victorian regional towns including Geelong and Bacchus Marsh — specific locations chosen to reinforce the film's claustrophobic, isolated atmosphere.
Production Details
Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen completed two weeks of pre-production bonding exercises — including a shopping complex improvisation (staying in character while buying each other gifts as their characters).
Director Chiarella drove both leads around the filming locations before production began to build atmosphere and connection. A significant portion of the film's dialogue and movement was improvised on set.
Production designer chosen specifically for her subdued, drab color palette — a deliberate visual choice to reinforce the emotional bleakness of the setting.
Score composed by Jed Kurzel. Cinematography by Tyson Perkins.
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Summerween 2026: Horror Movie, Book & TV Recommendations
12 juin 2026
00:45:54
Summerween is a real thing (Gravity Falls coined the term back in 2012, and it has only picked up steam since), and this episode is our full lineup of summer horror movie recommendations, vampire picks, slasher books, and the horror TV shows we cannot stop talking about.
On the movie side: The Final Girls, The Vast of Night, the new survival horror film Pitfall, The Lost Boys, Joyride, Sean Byrne's shark thriller Dangerous Animals, the live-action Scooby-Doo, the horror sequel Influencers, The Gift, and The Ruins. For summer horror books, we cover Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley, You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron, The Last Astronaut by David Wellington, I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones, Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan, and Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare. And for horror TV, we get into Widow's Bay (just renewed for season two), Midnight Mass, Eerie Indiana, and True Blood.
Use the chapter markers below to jump straight to whichever category you're after, movies, books, or TV, and check the full shownotes for links to everything we mention.
If even one of these sends you down a rabbit hole this summer, our job here is done. Stay scared, stay tuned.
Summerween comes from Gravity Falls (2012-2016), which had an actual episode by that name about a town that celebrates Halloween twice a year, and the term has stuck around as its own horror content category ever since.
New Horror Releases for Summerween 2026
Pitfall (2025): survival horror slasher from director James Kondelik, starring Richard Harmon, Randy Couture, and Alexandra Essoe, about a hike that turns into a hunt.
Dangerous Animals (2025): Sean Byrne's shark horror, starring Jai Courtney as a fisherman who feeds victims to sharks for no reason other than that he likes it.
Influencers (2025): the Fantasia Festival sequel starring Cassandra Naud as CW, now hiding out in the south of France until another influencer catches her eye.
Vampire and Slasher Throwbacks
The Lost Boys (1987): Joel Schumacher's California-pier vampire classic, queer-coded and iconic, perfect for Pride Month too.
Joyride (2001): Paul Walker, Steve Zahn, and Leelee Sobieski in a cross-country road trip gone very wrong.
The Final Girls (2015): a meta horror comedy where friends get sucked into the slasher Camp Bloodbath, starring Taissa Farmiga, Nina Dobrev, and Adam DeVine.
Scooby-Doo (2002): the definitive live-action take on these characters, with Matthew Lillard as Shaggy.
Sci-Fi and Southern Gothic Throwbacks
The Vast of Night (2019): 1950s New Mexico sci-fi horror loosely based on the Kecksburg UFO incident and the Foss Lake disappearances.
The Gift (2000): Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves, and Katie Holmes in a Southern psychic thriller.
The Ruins (2008): friends trapped on a Mexican pyramid by something far worse than they expected, based on the Scott Smith novel.
Summer Horror Books for Your TBR
Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley: a wellness retreat slasher whodunit set in Joshua Tree.
You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron: a full-contact summer camp terror experience, final girl included.
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones: small-town Texas, summer 1989, told from the killer's side.
Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan: Texas funeral-home women vs. rising vampires, with serious Southern charm.
Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare: Frendo the killer clown, now four books deep.
The Last Astronaut by David Wellington: space horror that'll give you chills no matter how hot it is outside.
TV to Binge This Summerween
Widow's Bay: just renewed for season two, with the season one finale dropping next week.
Midnight Mass shares Hamish Linklater with Widow's Bay, and is still one of the best vampire stories around.
Eerie, Indiana (1991-1993): Omri Katz (Hocus Pocus' Max) investigates the weird stuff in his new town, a great horror gateway show.
True Blood: Louisiana, heat, accents, vampires, and vibes that carry the whole series.
Housekeeping: Awards, Anniversary and Where to Find Us
We're up for Rising Star at the Sacred Crypt Awards, nominations open through July 12.
Our one-year anniversary as a podcast is right around the corner.
Ad-free listening is only on Spotify, that's the one platform where we run without ads.
Take our horror movie picker quiz at gravetonepod.com if you need help deciding what to watch tonight.
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In a Violent Nature 2: Ry Barrett on Johnny's Kills, Prep & the Sequel
04 juin 2026
00:41:41
In a Violent Nature 2 is coming, and we got to sit down with the man who makes Johnny tick.
Ry Barrett — actor, stuntman, and the face (well, mask) of one of the most talked-about slasher characters in recent horror memory — joins Arthur and Meaghan for a full conversation about what it takes to play a silent killer, how he prepared for the sequel, and what fans should expect when Johnny hits a summer camp.
We get into the physicality of playing Johnny: the shoulder-first movement system, the checklist Ry ran through before every take, and the work cinematographer Pierce Derks put in just to keep pace. The bear attack videos that shaped how Ry moved through the first film. The shark attack footage he watched for the sequel — and what that hints at for Johnny's energy in In a Violent Nature 2.
Ry talks about the moment of humanity he fought to keep in the original, the Steven Kostanski makeup that made it possible, and why he thinks Johnny works as a slasher villain in a way that stands alongside the classics. We compare notes on Canadian horror icons — Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine, Ginger Snaps — and what it means to have Johnny take his place in that lineage. There's a panel story involving Kane Hodder, Lee Waddell, and Tom Morga that you'll want to hear.
Plus: the plan for a third film, the possibility of a Fantasia premiere, and Ry's personal zombie apocalypse survival strategy (it involves duct tape).
The Physicality of Playing a Silent Slasher
Ry Barrett built Johnny's movement from a checklist — specific posture elements he ran through mentally before every single take to keep the character consistent across shooting days.
The shoulder-first movement was a collaborative system developed with cinematographer Pierce Derks, who hand-held and followed Barrett through every scene — a physical cue system so Derks could frame correctly without verbal communication on a live take.
Barrett studied bear attack footage to shape Johnny's baseline energy in the first film: smooth and territorial until the moment it becomes an attack, at which point the animal shifts completely. [LINK: In a Violent Nature (2024)]
For In a Violent Nature 2, he switched to shark attack footage — which he hints connects directly to the sequel's tone and pacing, though he's deliberately cagey about the specifics.
In a Violent Nature 2: What to Expect
The sequel picks up directly after the events of the first film — no time jump — and moves Johnny into a summer camp setting, leaning further into the Friday the 13th tradition while doing something genuinely different with it.
Barrett describes the sequel's Johnny as already operating at the heightened viciousness of the end of the first film, sustained throughout. He estimates there are at least three kills on the level of the yoga scene — and then more.
The script, written by Chris Nash and directed by Nathaniel Wilson, still preserves the mystery around Johnny — the unreliable narration of the mythology remains intact — while adding new angles on the character.
A tentative late summer/early fall 2026 window is discussed; Barrett also floated the possibility of a Fantasia Film Festival premiere without confirming anything. [CONFIRM: release window with IFC Films/Shudder before publishing]
Canadian Horror and the Slasher Icon Question
Arthur and Meaghan make the case for Barrett's Johnny as the Canadian answer to Kane Hodder's Jason — a comparison Barrett takes seriously given Hodder's status as the definitive physical performer behind a masked slasher.
Barrett has met Kane Hodder multiple times — including once at a Nashville convention where he found himself on a panel alongside Hodder, Lee Waddell (original Ghostface in Scream), and Tom Morga (the only actor to play Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, and Michael Myers on screen) and describes mostly just listening in awe the entire time.
The episode touches on the deep bench of Canadian horror films that tend to get absorbed into the general horror canon without their origins being noted: Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine, Ginger Snaps — and now In a Violent Nature. [LINK: Canadian Horror Film Recommendations]
The Horror Community and Making Indie Film
Barrett traces his career in indie horror back to a micro-budget film made with friends in 2002 — which ended up being distributed worldwide through Lions Gate/Alliance Atlantis and basically set the course for everything after.
He talks about the horror community as a self-sustaining ecosystem of fans, filmmakers, and convention culture — more accessible and more genuinely welcoming than most other genre communities he's encountered.
The practical demands of the role: months of physical preparation, the reality of working in the Ontario wilderness near Sault Ste. Marie, and — most memorable for Barrett — the black flies targeting his eyes through the mask.
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Backrooms (2026) Review: Kane Parsons Delivers One of the Year's Best Horror Films
29 mai 2026
00:46:36
Backrooms is here, and we went on opening night.
Kane Parsons, the 20-year-old who built the Backrooms universe on YouTube as Kane Pixels and became A24's youngest feature director in the process, delivers something that genuinely holds up. This is slow-burning psychological horror with real atmosphere, a committed lead performance from Chiwetel Ejiofor, and a level of visual dread that stays with you well after you leave the theater.
In this episode, Arthur and Meaghan break down the film in full, including the creepypasta and Kane Pixels YouTube lore that started it all, what it means for the story (and why catching up on the shorts adds a whole other layer), and why the 30,000-square-foot practical set makes such a difference.
We get into the cast — Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve carry this thing on their backs — plus some fun horror Easter eggs scattered through the supporting cast, including a Ginger Snaps scream queen sighting and a Tucker & Dale vs. Evil deep cut. We also talk about the "ghost directing" controversy, why Kane Parsons absolutely directed this film, and why the YouTube-to-Hollywood pipeline is producing some of the most interesting horror of the decade. Backrooms scored an 8.5 from both of us — and that number might go up on a rewatch.
The Origin: Creepypasta, 4chan, and Kane Pixels
The Backrooms began as a single liminal space image posted to 4chan, which spawned creepypasta lore and a wave of community-built content.
Kane Parsons — now known as Kane Pixels — launched his YouTube series The Backrooms (Found Footage) in January 2022 at age 16, built entirely in Blender and Adobe After Effects.
The YouTube series has amassed over 190 million views across roughly 15–20 episodes and developed a massive cult following, with dedicated lore breakdown videos clocking in at 90+ minutes.
The core lore: a company called Async accidentally created a pocket universe through particle acceleration experiments; that universe began collapsing into our own, trapping people inside — timeline distortions, entities, and all.
The Film: Psychological Horror & Liminal Dread
Directed by Kane Parsons (his feature directorial debut), written by Will Soodik, and produced by A24 with executive producers James Wan, Shawn Levy, and Osgood Perkins.
Set in 1990 California; Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture store owner and failed architect, discovers an entry point into the Backrooms in his store's basement through unexplained electrical failures.
The film leans into slow burn psychological horror over conventional scares — eerie atmosphere sustained throughout, with brief moments of levity that land because of how well they're placed.
A 30,000-square-foot practical set was built for production; crew members reportedly got lost in it during filming, which tells you everything about the level of commitment to the physical environment.
The period setting is fully realized — costume design, furniture, the aesthetic of late-eighties elements bleeding into 1990, Clark's pirate-themed furniture commercials — all of it feels deliberate.
The Cast: Who's in It and Why It Works
Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark delivers one of the year's best horror performances — a fully formed, deeply flawed human being whose descent across two very different timelines is completely believable.
Renate Reinsve as Dr. Mary Kline (fresh off her Oscar-nominated turn in The Worst Person in the World and her role in Sentimental Value) brings emotional grounding to the film's second half.
Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett (Targaryen fans will clock him immediately), Lukita Maxwell, and Avan Jogia round out the supporting cast. Duplass went on record defending Parsons' directing publicly when the ghost-directing rumors started.
Horror Easter eggs buried in the supporting cast: Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps, Freddy vs. Jason) appears briefly as a character named Robin; Philip Granger (the sheriff in Tucker & Dale vs. Evil) plays an electrician; Sawyer Fraser, recently seen as Jude in Netflix's Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, appears in a scene at Phil's house.
Originally, Cristin Milioti was in negotiations for the role of Mary before Renate Reinsve was cast.
What We Actually Thought (Mild Spoilers)
Both Arthur and Meaghan landed at 8.5/10 — with both acknowledging the score might move higher on a rewatch once you can catch the Easter eggs and lore callbacks you missed the first time.
The atmosphere is relentlessly maintained; the practical sets mean the actors are physically inside the space, and it shows. You can basically smell the carpet.
Kane Parsons co-scored the film alongside Edo van Breemen. The sound design does more heavy lifting than any traditional score, pulling from what Arthur mentions is a genre called "647" — liminal ambient music that already existed within the Backrooms community.
The scares are quiet and effective, particularly a bulldozer sequence in a childhood flashback and a moment when Mary first finds Clark inside the Backrooms.
Minor note: the music during Clark's very first exploration inside is a touch too forward — but it corrects itself quickly and the sound design takes over from there.
The Ghost-Directing Controversy & What It Means
Because Parsons is 20 and the executive producer list includes names like James Wan, Shawn Levy, and Osgood Perkins, a portion of the internet decided he must have been ghost-directed. He was not.
Cast members including Mark Duplass publicly confirmed Parsons directed the film — because they were there. Megan draws a parallel to similar discourse around Coralie Fargeat and other young directors.
The YouTube origin story is relevant here: Parsons had already built this universe, established its aesthetic, and demonstrated a real vision before any studio got involved. That's not a gap that required ghost direction to fill.
This is A24's biggest opening weekend ever in projection — up to $55–65 million domestically — on a $10 million budget. Whatever people assumed about a 20-year-old getting handed a feature, the results speak for themselves.
What Comes Next: The YouTuber-to-Horror Pipeline
Backrooms arrives at a remarkable moment: Curry Barker's Obsession (another YouTube-born horror director) is currently posting massive holds in its third weekend; Iron Lung from Markiplier crossed $50M on a $3M budget earlier this year.
Arthur and Megan speculate about a Backrooms sequel or expanded universe — there's enough lore to sustain multiple films — and whether Parsons might branch into entirely different projects now that the door is open.
Curry Barker has a Texas Chainsaw Massacre reimagining already in production. The class of 2026 horror is genuinely exciting.
Next week: the Ry Barrett interview, discussing In a Violent Nature 2 and the horror scene in and around Canada.
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Passenger (2026) Review: Is Øvredal's Road Trip Demon Worth Seeing?
22 mai 2026
00:45:06
Passenger (2026) review: André Øvredal returns to horror with a supernatural road trip that looks incredible and scares hard, but leaves questions unanswered. In this episode, we dig into the Autopsy of Jane Doe director's latest film, where a young couple's van life adventure turns into a demonic nightmare after they stop at a fatal highway crash.
Lou Llobell and Jacob Scipio play Maddie and Tyler, and we talk about what works (the cinematography by Federico Verardi is genuinely stunning), what surprised us (a few jump scares we did not see coming), and where the story falls apart. The religious mythology around the Passenger entity feels half-baked, the character lore is thin, and the whole thing could have come out a decade ago and felt the same.
We get into spoiler territory on the hobo code, the Saint Christopher symbology, and what the film does (and doesn't) answer about its own monster. Plus: where Passenger fits in an absolutely stacked May 2026 for original horror, how it compares to Hokum, Obsession, and At the Place of Ghosts, and why Backrooms is the one we cannot wait for next week.
Featuring: André Øvredal, Lou Llobell, Jacob Scipio, Melissa Leo, Joseph Lopez, Federico Verardi, T.W. Burgess, and Zachary Donohue.
André Øvredal's Road Horror Legacy
Passenger is Øvredal's follow-up to The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023), continuing his pattern of never repeating a sub-genre twice. Previous credits include Trollhunter (2010), The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016), and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019).
Written by T.W. Burgess and Zachary Donohue, produced by Walter Hamada (18Hz Productions) and Gary Dauberman (Coin Operated), distributed by Paramount Pictures.
Cast and Performances in Passenger (2026)
Lou Llobell stars as Maddie, bringing depth to a character wrestling with abandonment and stability. Llobell is known for her role in Foundation on Apple TV+. Jacob Scipio plays Tyler, the van life enthusiast with a complicated relationship to home and routine.
Academy Award winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter, 2010) plays Diana, the figure who introduces the couple to the road's mythology. Joseph Lopez plays the Passenger entity itself.
Cinematography and Visual Craft
Cinematographer Federico Verardi delivers standout sequences: the hazard light flat tire scene, the film projector in the forest (with Roman Holiday overlaying onto the trees), and the continuously rotating parking lot shot where the van drifts further away with each turn.
The visual work is the strongest element of the film; even mixed reviews acknowledge that Passenger is a gorgeous-looking movie.
Supernatural Rules and Road Mythology
The Passenger attaches itself to travelers who break the road rules: do not drive at night, and never stop for anything. The hosts dig into the hobo code symbols that appear throughout the film, Saint Christopher as the patron saint of travelers, and the religious symbology that doesn't fully connect to the entity's origins.
Both hosts agree the lore is undercooked; the exposition feels rushed or possibly edited down from a longer cut.
May 2026: An Insane Month for Original Horror
Passenger opens in a month stacked with Hokum (Damien McCarthy / NEON), At the Place of Ghosts, Obsession, and the highly anticipated Backrooms (A24, May 29). The hosts discuss how this scheduling may have hurt Passenger's reception.
Grave Tone: Horror Podcast crew previews Backrooms and flags Saccharin and Corporate Retreat as additional titles they're tracking for late May 2026.
Ratings and Final Verdict
Meaghan: 4.5/10 — effective scares and strong cinematography, but generic writing and unresolved mythology pull it down.
Arthur: 5/10 — solid jump scares and cool transitions, likable characters who make smart decisions, but ultimately middle of the road.
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Obsession Review: The Best Horror Movie of 2026 Just Arrived
14 mai 2026
00:43:53
Obsession (2026) review: Curry Barker's horror film is terrifying, hilarious, and emotionally devastating. We rate it 9.5/10.
Arthur and Meaghan review Obsession, the new supernatural horror from 26-year-old writer/director Curry Barker. We break down Inde Navarrette's award-worthy performance as Nikki, the be-careful-what-you-wish-for premise powered by the One Wish Willow, Barker's rise from YouTube comedy (That's a Bad Idea, Milk & Serial) to a Focus Features horror classic, and why this might be the best horror movie of 2026.
We cover the cast (Michael Johnston, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Andy Richter), the TIFF premiere and $15M bidding war, comparisons to Get Out and Talk to Me, the comedy-to-horror pipeline, toxic relationship horror, and every scene that had our hands sweating.
Discussed in this episode:
Obsession (2026): The Horror Event of the Year
Written, directed, and edited by Curry Barker; produced by Blumhouse, Tea Shop Productions, Capstone Studios; distributed by Focus Features
Premiered at TIFF 2025 (Midnight Madness); screened at SXSW 2026; theatrical release May 15, 2026
Currently holds 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 83 on Metacritic; sold to Focus Features for over $15 million after a 24-hour bidding war involving A24 and Neon
We rate Obsession 9.5 out of 10 digs; one of the highest scores we've ever given on the podcast
Curry Barker: The Comedy-to-Horror Pipeline
Co-creator of YouTube comedy channel That's a Bad Idea with Cooper Tomlinson; rose to viral fame with the $800-budget short film Milk & Serial (2024), which hit 2.3 million views on YouTube [LINK: Milk & Serial on YouTube]
Follows the comedy-to-horror trajectory of Jordan Peele (Get Out), Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons), and the Philippou brothers (Talk to Me)
Next project: Anything But Ghosts (Focus Features) starring Aaron Paul, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Violet McGraw; also attached to write and direct a new Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Cast: An Ensemble That Hits Every Note
Michael Johnston (Teen Wolf) as Bear (Baron); a performance that keeps you locked into his guilt and desperation the entire runtime
Inde Navarrette (Superman & Lois) as Nikki Freeman; a star-making, award-worthy turn that shifts from charming to demonic in a heartbeat; comparisons to Mia Goth in Pearl [LINK: Inde Navarrette Interview Magazine profile]
Cooper Tomlinson as Ian, Megan Lawless as Sarah, Andy Richter (Conan) as Carter; the friend group chemistry feels genuinely lived-in
Be Careful What You Wish For: The Horror of the One Wish Willow
Premise rooted in the monkey's paw trope; Barker cites The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror as direct inspiration
Bear's wish ("I wish for her to love me more than anyone in the world") triggers a supernatural curse that strips Nikki of her autonomy and replaces her with something terrifying
Comparisons to Get Out (the sunken place), Black Mirror, Bedazzled, and Fatal Attraction
Psychological Horror and Toxic Relationship Themes
Obsession explores infatuation versus love, codependence, unrequited feelings, and what it means to remove someone's agency for your own comfort
Bear's natural chemistry with Sarah's character highlights how forced and artificial his "relationship" with cursed Nikki really is
The customer support hotline scene condenses everything great about the movie into two minutes: comedy, horror, and devastating emotional stakes all at once
Standout Moments and Horror Craft
The corner scene: Nikki standing in the dark at 3 AM with a slow, jerky shuffle; the entire theater shifted in discomfort
The duct tape door and lingering Smile-like grin; the demon-eye lighting at the front door; practical effects and a head-smashing scene that was trimmed to avoid an NC-17 rating
Barker's editing instincts: knowing when to ramp intensity and when to pull back for quieter character moments is remarkable for a filmmaker this young
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At the Place of Ghosts Review: TIFF Standout Finally Hits Theatres
08 mai 2026
00:50:30
At the Place of Ghosts is the kind of film that stays with you long after the credits. Bretten Hannam's Mi'kmaq supernatural thriller follows two estranged brothers, Mise'l and Antle, who are forced back together when a malevolent spirit from their shared childhood begins poisoning them from the inside out.
Their only option: enter Sk+te'kmujue'katik, the Place of Ghosts, a forest where time folds on itself and the living walk alongside ancestors, future selves, and the traumas they tried to leave behind. Arthur and Meaghan break down everything that makes this Canadian indigenous horror film work so well; the nonlinear storytelling that never loses you, the stunning Nova Scotia cinematography by Guy Godfree, the powerhouse performances from Forrest Goodluck and Blake Alec Miranda, and the way the film explores generational trauma, queerness, two-spirit identity, and Mi'kmaq culture without ever shoving it in your face.
Premiering at TIFF 2025 and now hitting Canadian theatres on May 8, 2026 via VVS Films, this is a slow burn supernatural drama wrapped in a ghost story wrapped back into a drama again. Meaghan goes 9/10. Arthur's at a solid 8. Neither of them can find much to complain about, and honestly that almost never happens.
In this episode, we cover:
• Why the nonlinear storytelling actually works
• The film's exploration of generational trauma and two-spirit identity
• Stunning cinematography and the technical achievement of shooting in remote forests
• How this compares to the current wave of indigenous horror
• Red Dress Day, Moose Hide Campaign Day, and indigenous heritage resources
• Book recommendations: Highway of Tears, Five Little Indians, Bad Cree, Never Whistle at Night
At the Place of Ghosts releases in Canadian theatres May 8, 2026.
About the Film
At the Place of Ghosts (Sk+te'kmujue'katik) directed and written by Bretten Hannam; a Canada/Belgium co-production
Starring Forrest Goodluck as Antle, Blake Alec Miranda as Mise'l, and Glen Gould as their father
Cinematography by Guy Godfree; score by Jeremy Dutcher
World premiere at TIFF 2025 (Platform Prize program); Canadian theatrical release May 8, 2026 via VVS Films
Hannam's previous feature: Wildhood (2021), also exploring indigenous identity and brotherhood
Mi'kmaq Culture, Two-Spirit Identity, and Generational Trauma
The Mi'kmaq are indigenous peoples primarily residing in Atlantic Canada (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, Newfoundland and Labrador) and parts of Maine
The film features dialogue in both English and the Mi'kmaq language
Exploration of two-spirit identity and gender fluidity within indigenous communities
The impact of residential schools and colonialism on generational trauma, identity, and family dynamics
Indigenous Heritage Days and Resources
Red Dress Day (May 5): Commemorating missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people; originated from a 2010 art installation by Métis artist Jamie Black [LINK: Amnesty International MMIWG resources]
Moose Hide Campaign Day (May 14): Grassroots movement engaging men and boys to end violence against indigenous women and children [LINK: moosehidecampaign.ca]
National Day of Truth and Reconciliation (September 30): Also known as Orange Shirt Day
Indigenous Literature Recommendations
Highway of Tears by Jessica McDiarmid; nonfiction investigating missing and murdered indigenous women along Highway 16 in BC
Five Little Indians by Michelle Good; fiction based on real events about children escaping the residential school system
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns; supernatural indigenous horror novel
Never Whistle at Night edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.; bestselling indigenous dark fiction anthology. Sequel (Back for Blood) coming August 2026
What's Next
Next week: Obsession by Curry Barker (in theatres May 15). Barker recently tapped to direct A24's Texas Chainsaw Massacre reimagining
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Annie Neugebauer Talks The Extra, The Other, and Horror That Won't Let Go
05 mai 2026
00:51:16
Annie Neugebauer is a two-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated horror author, and her work gets under your skin the way only the best psychological horror can. In this interview, we sit down with Annie to talk about The Outsiders Sequence, her series of wilderness horror novellas published through Shortwave Publishing, including her debut novella The Extra and the upcoming follow-up The Other, dropping June 9, 2026.
We get into the big questions: what draws a writer to horror fiction in the first place, and why does the genre still carry a stigma when books like Interview with the Vampire and The Shining have been proving otherwise for decades? Annie talks about the power of mundane horror, how grounding a story in everyday life lets it slip past the reader's defenses, and why short fiction gives horror writers the freedom to take risks that longer formats don't always allow.
We also dig into the concept Annie calls the "force field" in horror storytelling: the mechanism every horror writer needs to keep characters trapped in the story. From Stephen King's The Tommyknockers to Cabin in the Woods, and the very real problem that cell phones created for the genre (R.L. Stine agrees, by the way), this conversation covers the craft of building dread in a modern world that makes isolation harder and harder to pull off.
Annie shares the books that stuck with her the most, from A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay to Broken Harbor by Tana French, and we play a round of horror survival scenarios that tells you everything you need to know about her relationship with the genre. She also teases two major unannounced projects that she describes as "dream come true level."
Whether you read literary horror for the slow-burn dread or just want a good popcorn scare, this one is for you.
Annie Neugebauer: Horror Author and The Outsiders Sequence
Annie Neugebauer is a two-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated short story author, nationally award-winning poet, and horror novelist
Her debut novella The Extra is the first book in The Outsiders Sequence, published by Shortwave Publishing; her short story collection You Have to Let Them Bleed is from Bad Hand Books
The Other (Outsiders Sequence #2) drops June 9, 2026; a couple meets their doppelgangers on a hiking trail; The Spare follows in spring 2027
Annie teases two major unannounced projects described as "dream come true level" — follow her at [LINK: annieneugebauer.com] and @AnnieNeugebauer on Instagram
Literary Horror vs. Popcorn Horror: The Case for Both
Annie makes the case that literary horror and commercial horror both have value; sometimes you need popcorn, sometimes you need to be challenged
The conversation covers how Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire was proof that horror can do "important things and deep things and powerful things"
Discussion of Ari Aster films (Midsommar, Hereditary) vs. franchise horror like The Conjuring and what each gives the audience
Mundane Horror and the Art of Slow-Burn Dread
Annie's approach to mundane horror: grounding stories in real life to get under the reader's defenses before the horror fully lands
The horror that stays with you; Annie's "stuck in me" criterion for what separates good horror from unforgettable horror
Books that achieved this: A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay, Broken Harbor by Tana French, The Shining, Salem's Lot, Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman
The Force Field Problem and Cell Phones in Modern Horror
Annie's concept of the "force field" in horror: every story needs a mechanism to trap characters in the situation
From Stephen King's The Tommyknockers to Cabin in the Woods: literal and metaphorical containment strategies
R.L. Stine recently called cell phones the worst thing to happen for horror, and Annie agrees; wilderness settings provide a natural force field for modern horror
Short Fiction vs. Novels: Different Beasts, Same Genre
Annie writes everything from poems to epic novels, but short fiction lets her take risks with faster reader buy-in
The practical side: publishers can gamble on an unknown short story author in an anthology more easily than on a 120,000-word debut novel
How The Outsiders Sequence evolved: each novella can stand alone but connects through a shared world; editor Alan Lastufka accidentally planted the seed for the series
Horror Survival Scenarios and Childhood Scares
Annie plays a round of horror survival scenarios: would survive the Overlook Hotel, would lose her psyche at Hill House, would make it decently far in Cabin in the Woods, and accepts her fate in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
Childhood horror confessions: Annie was deeply traumatized by both Anaconda and E.T. as a kid (the stuffed animal scene especially)
Discussion of horror in the school curriculum: Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from seventh grade through high school
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Hokum Review: Damian McCarthy's Best Horror Movie Yet?
01 mai 2026
00:46:53
Hokum review: Damian McCarthy's new horror movie is a near-perfect Irish folk horror film starring Adam Scott. We break down everything.
Hokum just dropped, and we had to talk about it immediately. Damian McCarthy, the director behind Oddity and Caveat, delivered something special here. Adam Scott plays Ohm Bauman, a horror writer who checks into a remote Irish hotel to scatter his parents' ashes and ends up locked in a haunted honeymoon suite with a witch, a missing woman, and a conspiracy that's entirely human.
This is a full spoiler review (with a warning before we get into it). We cover Adam Scott's performance, McCarthy's visual style, the incredible use of lighting and sound design, comparisons to Stephen King's 1408 and The Shining, and why this might be one of the best horror movies of 2026.
DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Hokum (2026) — Dir. Damian McCarthy — Neon
Cast: Adam Scott, David Wilmot, Peter Coonan, Florence Ordesh, Michael Patric, Will O'Connell
Also referenced: Oddity, Caveat, Severance, 1408, Secret Window, The Shining, Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Hokum: The Movie and Why It Works
Damian McCarthy's third feature after Caveat (2020) and Oddity (2024); currently sitting at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes
Adam Scott stars as Ohm Bauman, a reclusive horror novelist who checks into a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents' ashes
Folk horror meets haunted hotel; supernatural elements wrap a deeply human story about grief, guilt, and who the real villains are
Distributed by Neon; premiered at SXSW in March 2026; theatrical release May 1, 2026
The Cast of Hokum: Who's Who at the Bilberry Woods Hotel
Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman; David Wilmot as Jerry (you'll love him); Peter Coonan as Mal
Florence Ordesh as Fiona the bartender; Michael Patric as Fergal the groundskeeper; Will O'Connell as Alby the bellhop
Adam Scott watched Oddity, got obsessed, and essentially cast himself by cold-contacting McCarthy directly
Damian McCarthy: From Electrician to Horror Auteur
McCarthy was a working electrician in West Cork while making micro-budget shorts on weekends
After festival rejections, he uploaded "He Dies at the End" to YouTube; it went viral and launched his career
The character name "Ohm" is a nod to the electrical unit of resistance (and to McCarthy's own resistance to returning to that career)
McCarthy edited Oddity himself on weekends over eighteen months; had an early draft of Hokum in the drawer the whole time
Atmosphere and Visual Style: Horror in the Dark
Cinematographer Colm Hogan returns from Oddity; heavy use of natural light, oil lanterns, and oppressive shadow
The lighting doubles as character work: Ohm's darkness is literal and metaphorical from the opening scene
Comparisons to Amnesia: The Dark Descent for the lantern-only exploration sequences
Stephen King Vibes and Genre Comparisons
Strong parallels to 1408 (grumpy writer, haunted hotel room), Secret Window (writer psychology), and The Shining (isolated hotel)
McCarthy's recurring device: objects from previous films appear (Caveat's bunny in Oddity; Oddity's bell in Hokum)
The film's title itself means "nonsense" — reflecting how the characters (and maybe the audience) first treat the witch folklore
Coming Up on Grave Tone
Interview with horror author Annie Nugabauer on her upcoming projects
Interview with Rye Barrett (Johnny in In a Violent Nature) on the sequel and the Canadian horror scene
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I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) Traumatized Us, Here's Why
24 avr. 2026
00:56:30
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) revisited — the post-Scream slasher that traumatized a generation. Full review and breakdown.
The Childhood Trauma series is back on Grave Tone Podcast. Megan was nine years old when this movie shut her down, and we're going back to figure out exactly why. Wild production history, the convoluted plot decoded, and an honest look at whether this Kevin Williamson slasher holds up against Scream almost 30 years later.
We cover the cast that was almost completely different (Reese Witherspoon, Jeremy Sisto), the reshoot that accidentally created the best jump scare in the movie, Sarah Michelle Gellar's hundred-splinter nightmare, and the original ending that was so bad Jim Gillespie sabotaged it on purpose. Plus Megan's full story of being terrified in a creaky basement at age nine.
Featuring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze Jr., Kevin Williamson, Lois Duncan, the 2025 requel, and the state of the slasher revival in 2026.
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Lee Cronin's The Mummy Review: Is Blumhouse's R-Rated Reboot Actually An Evil Dead Movie?
17 avr. 2026
00:43:33
Lee Cronin's The Mummy review, Blumhouse's R-rated possession horror reviewed, with full spoilers, ending explained, and a spoiler breakdown of what actually happens to Katie Cannon.
Arthur and Meaghan sit down to review Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026), the Blumhouse and Atomic Monster reimagining from the director of Evil Dead Rise. Starring Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, Shylo Molina, Billie Roy and Verónica Falcón, this is not a Brendan Fraser sequel; it's something much gnarlier.
We cover first impressions, where the tone breaks down, the wheelchair scene everyone's talking about, the viral May Calamawy wound-prosthetic premiere moment, Natalie Grace's incredible physical performance, and a full spoiler breakdown of the demon, the Magician, the possession, and the ending. Plus Meaghan's Frédéric Bourdin impostor-case spiral, why this feels more like Evil Dead with a mummy filter, and a look ahead at Evil Dead Burn (July 2026), Brendan Fraser's Mummy 4, and Mārama.
⚠ Full spoilers begin around the 22:00 mark.
What we're reviewing
Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026) — directed and written by Lee Cronin, released April 17 by Warner Bros. Pictures
Produced by Jason Blum (Blumhouse) and James Wan (Atomic Monster) with Cronin's Wicked/Good (formerly Doppelgängers)
Rated R, a standalone reimagining (explicitly not connected to the Brendan Fraser films or Universal's 2017 Dark Universe attempt)
What worked
The mummy design itself — wrappings as skin, a containment spell written on the underside, genuinely unsettling every time she's on camera
Natalie Grace's physical performance (a 22-year-old actress playing a mummified, demon-possessed child)
Practical effects across the board — prosthetics designed by Arjen Tuiten, gore work that went viral when May Calamawy wore a wound prosthetic to the April 9 LA premiere and the clip pulled 20 million views
Sound design — teeth-tapping, shifts in chairs, small details that amplify every serious moment
The house itself — secluded, colonial, almost a character in its own right
The kid actors, consistently (Cronin proved this in Evil Dead Rise too)
What didn't
The wheelchair-up-the-stairs scene (goes on for almost two minutes, never explains why no one just carries the chair)
Unwanted camp — the little girl pulling out her teeth and inserting Abuela's dentures is supposed to be unsettling, lands as funny
Silly musical cues dropped on top of brutal deaths
The split-diopter shot is used so often it stops being an effect and starts being a distraction
The Egypt setting feels shoehorned in once the film relocates to New Mexico — the mummy stuff never fully integrates with the possession story
40 minutes of denial from the parents that Katie is obviously not okay
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Exit 8 Review: Japan's Liminal Horror Loop Is Better Than the Game
13 avr. 2026
00:39:45
Exit 8 is a 2025 Japanese psychological horror film directed by Genki Kawamura — the producer behind Your Name and A Silent Voice — and it's based on the 2023 indie video game The Exit 8 by Kotake Create. After earning an eight-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and grossing over ¥5.2 billion in Japan, it's finally arrived in North American theatres via NEON, and Arthur and Megan are here for it.
This is Part 2 of Grave Tone's Double Feature Weekend, and they come prepared. Unable to get the game running on Arthur's Xbox (a whole saga), they did the next best thing: watched Markiplier's full playthrough, catalogued the anomalies, and then headed to the theatre. The result is one of the most informed discussions you'll hear about this one — game vs. film, anomaly mechanics, what the adaptation does differently, and whether the emotional depth they've layered onto a basically plotless video game actually works.
Spoiler-free section covers the game's premise, the film's setup in a looping Tokyo subway tunnel, the rules the lost man must follow to reach Exit 8, and first impressions from both hosts. Then it's full spoilers: the multiple POV structure (including the Walking Man's storyline), the themes of societal passivity and fatherhood anxiety, the sound design that makes silence terrifying, the tsunami siren sequence, the ambiguous ending, and what they think it all means.
Arthur lands at a 7/10, Meaghan at an 8/10 — and both agree it's a film that earns its Cannes reception. Liminal horror is having a real cultural moment right now, with A24's Backrooms arriving in May 2026, and Exit 8 is exactly the kind of film that shows you why the genre works when it's done right.
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Faces of Death (2026) Review: The Cult Classic Gets a TikTok-Era Upgrade
11 avr. 2026
00:44:29
Faces of Death (2026) review: Arthur and Meaghan break down Daniel Goldhaber's TikTok-era cult horror reimagining, starring Barbie Ferreira and Dacre Montgomery. In theatres April 10 via IFC Films / Shudder.
Is the 2026 Faces of Death worth seeing? We went opening night and came back with some thoughts. Here's the honest take, no nostalgia for the original, no safety net, just the movie on its own terms.
⬇️ WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE
→ The 1978 original: John Alan Schwartz's mondo horror cult film, its fake-and-real deaths, PSA Flight 182 footage, $450K budget / $35M box office, and why it lives exclusively on old VHS
→ The 2026 reimagining: content moderator Margot (Barbie Ferreira) at short-clip app Kino flags videos appearing to recreate murders from the original film, and the killer, Arthur Spivak (Dacre Montgomery), is filming them for viral fame
→ Dacre Montgomery's performance: Dexter-level methodical, physically built for the role, genuinely disgusted by blood, completely unhinged in the best way
→ Barbie Ferreira's arc: a woman trying to disappear from the internet after her sister's death went viral, slowly forced back into the spotlight
→ The social commentary: content moderation, the algorithm, and the very human fascination with violent video online
→ The kills: more restrained than the marketing implies, visceral because they're realistic, not because they're gratuitous
→ What doesn't work: a third act that over-explains its thesis when the quieter moments were landing just fine
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10+ Horror Films You Can Only Watch Once (Hereditary, Hounds of Love, The Mist…)
03 avr. 2026
00:42:33
Unrewatchable horror movies, we all have a list. This week Arthur and Meaghan dig into the horror films they love but will never, ever put on again: Hereditary, Hounds of Love, The Mist, Gerald's Game, Hostel, Annihilation, Mandy, The Ring, Silent Hill, and more.
And the thing is, being unrewatchable isn't always a knock. Some of these are genuinely excellent films. The reasons vary: some are too dark, some hit physically wrong, some only work when you don't know the ending, and some are just so stylistically unhinged you need a very specific headspace to return to them. They go through all of it.
ALSO IN THIS EPISODE:
— The Mortuary Assistant movie vs. the game: why it doesn't translate
— Eli Roth's Ice Cream Man remake, Horror Sector (his new production company), and how Snoop Dogg ended up attached
— Mike Flanagan's mirror Easter egg (it's on our TikTok, go look)
— The case for Australian horror cinema beyond Wolf Creek
— Why Japanese horror originals almost always beat their American remakes
— Nicolas Cage in Mandy and why "cage rage headspace" is a real thing
— Carla Gugino appreciation that is long overdue
— Ari Aster's next A24 project: what we know
Films discussed: Hereditary, Gerald's Game, Hostel, Hounds of Love, The Mist, Mandy, Annihilation, Cabin Fever, The Mortuary Assistant, Silent Hill, The Ring, Terrifier, Martyrs, A Serbian Film, Wolf Creek...
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Mike P. Nelson Interview: A Deep-Dive With The Horror Director Of Wrong Turn, VHS 85, Silent Night Deadly Night, and the Amazon Creature Feature
30 mars 2026
01:05:01
Mike P. Nelson has made a habit of walking into beloved horror franchises and doing something completely unexpected with them. He did it with Wrong Turn in 2021, he did it twice in VHS 85, and now he's done it again with his reboot of Silent Night Deadly Night, a film that somehow turned Pixar, the Bill Paxton thriller Frailty, and an Indiana Jones homage into a killer Santa movie that went genuinely viral before it even hit theaters.
In this special bonus interview episode, Arthur and Meaghan sit down with Nelson for a wide-ranging horror nerd conversation covering the full arc of his career. They get into how Universal Monsters, Monster Squad, and his dad's shoulder-rig camera sent him down the filmmaking path. They talk about Wrong Turn's tri-fecta of politics and its unexpected resonance. They dig into the two connected segments Nelson contributed to VHS 85, including the one that turns a sniper-based horror premise into something genuinely devastating, and how he convinced the producers to let him link them across the film.
From Universal Monsters and Monster Squad to a killer Santa who takes his orders from a Pixar-meets-Frailty dark passenger, Mike P. Nelson's path through horror is exactly as weird and specific as his movies.
In this interview, Arthur and Meaghan talk with Nelson about:
→ Growing up on recorded-off-TV VHS tapes and making backyard movies with his dad's shoulder-rig camera
→ How The Domestics led to Wrong Turn, and why the franchise's political subtext made it worth taking on
→ His two connected segments in VHS 85, including the active-shooter-as-horror-film concept behind "No Wake", and how he convinced producers to let him link them
→ The creative process behind Silent Night Deadly Night (2025): the Dexter-coded dark passenger, the Rohan Campbell and Ruby Modine casting, and why Mark Acheson was the only choice for the voice of Charlie
→ The now-viral Nazi massacre sequence, how it was inspired by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, shot in a day and a half with real squibs, and what got cut for time
→ A genuinely pitched sequel: both leads are in, the producers are in, it's just waiting on a distribution green light
→ Boiúna: Legend of the Amazon: shot on the actual Amazon River in Colombia, produced by the Event Horizon and Resident Evil producer, distributed by Lionsgate, described as "a little bit more grim" than Anaconda
→ Horror bracket: Midsommar, Cabin in the Woods, The Shining, Wrong Turn, one winner
→ Childhood trauma pick: Toy Soldiers, and why it still makes him uncomfortable in ways pure horror films don't
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Grave Tone: Horror Podcast Trailer
29 mars 2026
00:01:36
Horror doesn't wait around, and neither do we.
Grave Tone is a horror podcast covering the genre across film, TV, books, and games, with new release reviews on the day they drop, deep dives into the movies that traumatized us as kids, and interviews with the directors and actors actually making the horror.
We go in with opinions. We come out with takes. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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They Will Kill You Review: Satanic Cults, Zazie Beetz, & Kill Bill Vibes
27 mars 2026
00:35:03
THEY WILL KILL YOU (2026) Review | Satanic Cult Horror, Zazie Beetz, Kill Bill Vibes & Full Spoilers — Grave Tone Podcast
Arthur and Megan just got back from the theater and they're reviewing They Will Kill You — the new horror-action-comedy from director Kirill Sokolov, starring Zazie Beetz, Patricia Arquette, Myha'la, Heather Graham, and Tom Felton.
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Ready or Not 2: Here I Come Review: Bigger, Better & Bloodier
20 mars 2026
00:35:01
Grace is back, her sister's in danger, and the whole world is apparently run by satanic billionaires. Arthur and Meaghan review Ready or Not 2: Here I Come and break down whether this blood-soaked sequel actually earns its place next to the original.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is directed by Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett) and picks up exactly where the first film left off — Samara Weaving covered in blood, the mansion in ashes, and everything you thought you knew about that first movie suddenly feels like just the opening act. This time, the game is global.
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The Man Behind Ice Spiders & a Bram Stoker Nomination | Eric Miller on Horror Writing, Hollywood & Whatever Happened to Uncle Ed?
19 mars 2026
00:49:38
In this special midweek bonus, Arthur and Megan sit down with Eric Miller, a horror writer who's navigated pretty much every corner of the genre across multiple decades and formats. He's written and produced screenplays, including the SyFy Channel's cult creature feature Ice Spiders (yes, the one with the ski resort and the giant spiders), along with Night Skies, Swamp Shark, and Mask Maker.
He's an editor whose anthology Hell Comes to Hollywood earned a Bram Stoker Award nomination. And in January 2025, he released his debut novel, Whatever Happened to Uncle Ed?, a darkly funny, action-packed horror story where a former high school basketball star inherits a mansion, a fortune, and a generational curse that comes with shapeshifting demons and underground battle arenas. Kirkus Reviews called it "simultaneously horrifying and hilarious."
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Undertone: We're A Horror Podcast. They Made a Movie About One. Let's Talk
13 mars 2026
00:36:58
Arthur and Meaghan review A24's Undertone (2025) — Ian Tuason's directorial debut and one of the most talked-about horror films of early 2026. A paranormal podcast host receives ten mysterious audio recordings at her dying mother's bedside, and what starts as content slowly becomes a waking nightmare.
They break down the film's extraordinary sound design, its slow-burn atmosphere, the meta joy of two horror podcasters reviewing a horror podcast movie, and where it lands on their rating scale (Arthur: 7/10 — Meaghan: 6.5/10). Plus: the Fantasia connection, the A24 deal, and why you really should see this one in Dolby if you can.