When I was a kid, I used to have horrific night terrors. They were reoccurring – at their worst, happening nearly weekly – and they terrified me beyond anything I have since experienced in life. They would leave me trapped in an almost fugue state, eyes open and seemingly conscious but screaming bloody murder and completely incapable of being awoken by my concerned parents. This … Continue reading Tormenting My Inner Child With ‘Skinamarink’
James Wan, the undisputed champion of modern franchise horror, has blessed the world with some of the biggest names in pop-culture terror. From Saw to Insidious and The Conjuring, Wan is a virtual King Midas within the genre, cranking out hit after hit for nearly two decades now. Also, he made Aquaman. So win some, lose some, I guess. But the writer/director superstar didn’t achieve … Continue reading Chucky Finally Has Some Competition in the Slick, Sinister, and Sincere ‘M3GAN’
John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher Halloween was a smash hit (and one of the most financially successful independent films ever made), and for good reason: It was a tense, atmospheric thriller that relied on its mastery of suspense to scrounge up scares, rather than over-the-top blood and gore. It had a stellar lead in final girl Laurie Strode, launching Jaime Lee Curtis to well-earned stardom overnight. … Continue reading Why the Underrated ‘Season of the Witch’ is the Most Halloween-y ‘Halloween’ Sequel
Is there any movie more synonymous with Halloween than The Nightmare Before Christmas? It’s pretty much the ultimate holiday movie, pulling double-duty as both the perfect film for the spooky season as well as its holly-jolly counterpart in December. Plus, I’m pretty sure that it single-handedly keeps Hot Topic alive as a business model. The tragic thing about it though is that people continuously lump … Continue reading ‘Wendell & Wild’ Is Middling Stop-Motion Madness
You know what’s really creepy? Ventriloquist dummies. Seriously, look at this little bastard: There’s no way that thing hasn’t killed a child. I hate those things with a fiery passion. As a child, I was shown Bride of Chucky at a waaaay too early age by a nefarious cousin, and it messed me up pretty bad, sparking a decade-long fear of anything remotely in the … Continue reading ‘Dead Silence’ is Horror For Dummies, And I Kind of Love It
I consider myself to be a fanatic for the works of Wes Craven, who gave us such iconic horror films as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and The Last House on the Left, among many, many others. As such, I was arrogant enough to assume that I had seen everything that he had either written and directed (well, mostly everything; You couldn’t pay me … Continue reading Mile-High Danger in Wes Craven’s ‘Red Eye’
I’ve talked a lot on this site about found-footage horror films. It’s probably my favorite subgenre of horror. I’ve also been equally vocal about my love of anthology horror films, serving up bite-sized, easily digestible chunks of spooky goodness without running the risk of boring the audience with unnecessary narrative beats. And luckily, these two flavors of horror mix together wonderfully, working in tandem to … Continue reading ‘V/H/S 99’ is Flashback, Millennial Horror Fun
At the turn of the millennium, Robert Zemeckis (along with producers Joel Silver and Gilbert Adler) formed a new production label called Dark Castle entertainment. This new enterprise, a division of Warner Bros’ Silver Pictures, was created with one singular goal: To remake the classic horror films of legendary filmmaker William Castle. The results were… well, let’s say ‘mixed.’ For those of you who don’t … Continue reading ‘House of Wax’ and the Wonderful Mediocrity of Dark Castle Entertainment
Some films have reputations built on infamy. These notorious pieces of forbidden art, which may be banned in certain countries and shunned by polite society, are spoken of in hushed whispers, and subject to endless debate. They’re often urban legends, full of rumors and hearsay, their legends bolstered by decades of myth-making by third-person accounts shared by those too scared to see it for themselves. … Continue reading ‘Cannibal Holocaust’: A Legacy of Depravity
The Halloween franchise has certainly had its share of highs and lows over the years, but it’s recently been on a relative upswing. Director David Gordan Green and writer Danny McBride (yes, that Danny McBride) successfully revived the floundering series in 2018 with their reboot/sequel/rebootquel of the original John Carpenter classic in 2018 with the confusingly-titled Halloween. This installment, which was met with both critical … Continue reading ‘Halloween Ends’ Is A Mercy Killing
The Blogger Under the Stairs 