For most people, simply being in the water near sharks is enough of a nightmare. Being forty-seven meters (154.2 feet for my fellow Americans) under the surface, bleeding, and with sharks circling is whole different beast. In 47 Meters Down, writer/director Johannes Roberts takes this seemingly simple narrative setup and… Continue reading
Travis’s grandfather is not well. As It Comes at Night opens, he has been infected with an unknown disease. His body is covered in open sores, his eyes black, and occasionally he contorts and vomits blood. He mercifully passes on, much to the family’s sadness but ultimate relief. The next… Continue reading
Seventeen years ago the face of horror changed forever when The Blair Witch Project, filmed for a minuscule $60,000, took the August box office by storm and raked in an incredible $140 million by Halloween. It’s not like it was a fluke; all-around well-received, it was something never seen before… Continue reading
As universal fears go, public humiliation is near the top of the list. In the quaint old days, when something embarrassing happened to you, it was usually only witnessed by a few people and forgotten relatively quickly. Not anymore in our age of social media, instant camera access, and countless outlets… Continue reading
The Babadook is a relentless psychological horror film. Made for a modest $2.5 million, this Australian export is about five times as scary and disturbing as its big-budget Hollywood counterparts. With most of the film taking place in the dark corners of a house, writer/director Jennifer Kent, in her feature film debut,… Continue reading
The allure of the prequel, from the studio’s standpoint, makes a whole lot of sense. After all, something can always occur before something else and you can pretty much make up your own rules. Dracula Untold, the latest in the Dracula saga that has served Universal well for decades, is a… Continue reading
Writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait has become quite the daring and provocative filmmaker in his post-acting years. His God Bless America and World’s Greatest Dad are both biting satires and pitch black social commentaries on contemporary America. With Willow Creek, Goldthwait switches gears completely and explores the found footage horror sub-genre. It’s one… Continue reading
Frankenweenie sure feels like a deeply personal film for Tim Burton, the world’s favorite outsider director. It is, after all, a touch-up of his 1984 short film of the same name. This one comes up with the full Disney works: 3D, stop-motion, and daring black-and-white (I can only imagine the… Continue reading
The Woman in Black should satiate those looking to see Daniel Radcliffe wandering down dark hallways for an hour and a half, but that’s about it. This is one unimaginative, largely scare-free experience that exploits every haunted house cliché known to man, down to boo scares with random animals and… Continue reading
“I hate human beings.” – Dr. Heiter Every once in a while an idea for a film comes along that is so repulsive that morbid curiosity takes over. Tom Six’s The Human Centipede is a perfect example. The film has made waves in the horror circuit, if only for its… Continue reading