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’
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
For our final Sunday of the month, I thought I’d show you guys just exactly why these internet short films are so cool. Sure, they’re great bits of horror content in their own right, provided quick little jolts of spooky atmosphere to your system like a 5 Hour Energy shot. But the really exciting thing is how they’ve leveled the playing field for filmmakers. Long … Continue reading Short Film Showcase Sunday: Short Films as a Springboard for Mainstream Success
Horror isn’t exactly known for being a genre full of sunshine and rainbows. It can be depressing. Grimy. Morbid. And sure, a lot of horror films have (reasonably) happy endings. Our heroes may lose friends or loved ones, and even lose a limb or two themselves along the way, but in the end, they usually manage to beat whatever’s chasing them and live to see … Continue reading Fatal Finales: The Bleakest Endings in Horror
Werewolves are one of the most enduring pieces of horror pop culture iconography. And although they’re considered to be one of the quintessential mascots for the genre, and for the Halloween season, I would wager that the vast majority of people have never actually seen a werewolf movie. Well, a good one, anyhow. Twilight, Underworld, and Van Helsing all feature the beasts in some capacity, … Continue reading Bad Moon Rising: Horror’s Most Fantastically Ferocious Werewolf Flicks
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
The internet, to the absolute surprise of no one in the Fake News era, is a fertile breeding ground for mythology and lore. The urban legends and campfire stories of days past have since given way to stories told in obscure chat rooms and anonymous forums, built up over time before eventually breaching the mainstream and ingraining themselves into popular culture. From the earliest days … Continue reading Short Film Showcase Sundays: The Backrooms
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
Would you like to play a game? One of the most popular subgenres of horror in recent years, if it can really be called one, is the game movie. Popularized mostly by films like Saw, these are films in which our unlucky heroes and victims find themselves trapped in the midst of some clever psychopath’s demented puzzle room or game parlor, having to solve some … Continue reading High-Stakes Horror: The Genre’s Best Game Movies
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
The Blogger Under the Stairs 