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  • Ten movies I don’t enjoy:

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    You can’t love everything, so here’s a list of films I just don’t like:

    1. Baskin- I never understood all the love for this film. It’s nonsensical, boring and predictable. I gave it a watch because everyone said how utterly unique and amazing it was, and I was utterly disappointed in the film that I watched. False starts, loose plot points and the writers working themselves into a narrative corner (while abandoning seemingly more interesting plot points) all served to ruin the film for me. Watch The Void instead
    2. Knock Knock- Keanu Reeves has been on a roll lately. John Wick and its sequel have revitalized the actor’s career and Hollywood presence but then there’s Knock Knock. I get it he did it for the simulated threeway and the somewhat interesting premise. Here’s the thing though, this is a bad, bad movie. Its premise was handled in far better fashion in Hard Candy and the production (the direction, writing and all that jazz) just feels flat and awful. Reeves does give it his all though, so there’s that. I found it lacking and not deserving of the time it took to get to the end of the film. Watch Neon Demon instead, Reeves is super creepy in that one.
    3. Hellraiser 3 and on- These are all lumped together because, even though they contain work by the great Doug Bradley, they are not good. These films are soulless cash grabs, made solely to extend the rights agreement held by Dimension. They really need to let the rights revert to Barker so he can do some justice for the long-dead series and get it back to its former glory. Honestly I am fine not acknowledging parts 2-10 but 2 is just so much fun. Update: the newest of these films is a reboot and not half bad. Could be that the franchise will survive the dissolution of Dimension Films, Hell Priestess is a bold touch as well.
    4. Them (ils)- a part of the new wave of French horror that swept the genre in the early 2000’s, this film is a pile of hot garbage. I loathed every second of it and found it entirely predictable and silly. Spoilers, the mysterious assailants are some local kids. Watch The Strangers instead if you are looking for a unique take on home invasion. Avoid this one.
    5. High Tension- I love Alexandre Aja’s other films, especially the insanity that is Piranha 3D (which is a talented filmmaker having the time of his life.) and Horns, which was a serviceable attempt at adapting the novel by Joe Hill. High Tension, or Haute Tension (or Switchblade Romance if you’re pretentious and smug and into trying to make people feel inferior. Seriously, you can only use this title if you’re British.) is one of those that I will never understand the love for. The ridiculous and inane twist (oh no, the heroine is actually also the bad guy) that comes in act three is more annoying and predictable than it is shocking. It does set up an interesting look at the themes of love and obsession but really those feel shoehorned in and then immediately left aside for shock value. I don’t even mind the twist all that much, it was a good idea except for the fact that Fight Club did it better. Or American Psycho. Or…well I am sure you see where I am taking this. It is a well made film, full of extreme gore and some unique kills but at the end of the day it is highly, highly overrated.
    6. Hostel- I get it, the movie was both transgressive and mainstream. It was the thing to watch when Eli Roth first released it, but it is not a good film either. It really isn’t. It was just ok. You want a good movie? Watch Cabin Fever. That movie was ridiculous and scary. Hostel is not. It’s extreme for extremity’s sake and it suffers for it. Also it basically spawned the utterly ridiculous Torture Porn sub-genre. A lot of money and time was wasted on the sub-genre and for what? It was a fad that faded away, and honestly I am glad that it has. Gore is great, but gore for gore’s sake starts to feel like an effects reel after a while. That’s what torture porn was to me, an effects reel.
    7. Cube-watch Saw instead. If you want a good film by Natali watch the utterly insane Splice. This film though? I just didn’t enjoy it, and ultimately I left the film feeling…let down? I think that might have been it. I guess it was built up into something great and then…blah, a competent film that—had it not been touted so highly—I might have loved. I guess I recommend Saw because I still remember how the end of that film left me reeling.
    8.  Human Centipede sequels/ Saw Sequels- the ‘Pede trilogy should have stayed a one off. I get what the director was doing and I admire that he did it, and that he managed to get so meta with it, but he didn’t have to. <Insert deep thought about pushing limits when you should consider why you’re doing it>. The Saw sequels tie into this idea. The first Saw was a novelty, and a solid flick. The subsequent films crumble under their house of cards logic, which becomes so convoluted that it collapses under the merest breath of scrutiny. The two Centipede sequels fall short in a similar way.  
    9. M3gan -This movie should have been so much better. Or at least way zanier. Better to leave this one for if you have nothing else going on. And ABSOLUTELY avoid the sequel.
    10. Candyman 2 and 3- the Candyman is not a slasher. The first movie is a masterclass horror movie about the memetic power of belief. The subsequent films traded that in for cheap slasher scares. I love Tony Todd and his iconic bogeyman, but the character deserved so much better after the carefully considered film that Bernard Rose gave us 33 years ago.  Thankfully Nia Decosta came along in 2021 and offered up a direct sequel to the first film that returned this franchise to its far more interesting roots.

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  • That’s UNCLE Peckerhead to you…

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    Uncle Peckerhead is funny and quirky and exactly the kind of light hearted horror romp I needed right now. The actors are authentic in their performances and they play well off one another in a relaxed and playful manner. For those who dig comparisons, I’d go so far as to say it vibes on the same cinematic frequency as Mallrats and Clerks (especially the hilarious sequence: What Happened With the Metalheads in the Parking Lot). While the leads are a trio of darling doofuses, charming and downright likeable, it is David Littleton as the titular monster thing—he prefers thing— who steals each and every scene he is in. From the explanation of his name to his ability to bake one hell of a scone, Littleton plays Peck as a lovable, charming, and misunderstood monster. Or maybe he is a conniving murderer, out to frame the band for murder and eat his fill of locals-as-cuisine along the way? 

    That’s what we are left wondering from the opening scene: a grisly, ruined corpse has its jaw removed by a large man as he wanders back towards a van. We are keyed up to think that this man is a monster pure and simple, and it is effective when Littleton first appears on screen clutching a purple flyer. There is a moment where you’re sure this guy is evil and he will kidnap these two and do nefarious things to them, but no! Peck simply asks to be left alone. He wants nothing to do with them until he’s faced with a cop car and the simple fact that he will be made for murder if he stays here any longer. So he offers the members of the down on their luck band, DUH, his van and his services as a roadie. And the result is a charming road trip flick filled with some poignant commentary on gig life and the struggles of starting a band as we follow Judy in her attempt to legitimize her band.  Those attempts are aided and abetted by Peck as he exudes Southern charm and does what he can to help the band. He sells merchandise, promotes the demo, and gets the crowd involved and eats promoters who don’t pay fairly. The band, for their part, quickly comes to love Peck, foibles and all. Still when those foibles involve the tendency to drink the spurting blood from the neck stumps of your freshly decapitated victim, you might be a bit harder to love than say an uncle with a bit of a drinking problem who loves to talk politics at family gatherings.

    The film flies by at a quick pace as the band tours and encounters a variety of issues as their tour unfolds in a madcap and splatterpunk adventure thanks to an excellent script and well paced film from writer-driector-editor Matthew John Lawerence. What will happen as tensions mount, the body count rises,and the tour comes to an end?

    This film is an absolutely rollicking good   time and worth a view if you get the chance.

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  • CABIN FEVER: PUSTULENT IN ALL THE WRONG WAYS

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    I am not sure what people were thinking when they greenlit the remake of Eli Roth’s 2002 debut feature, Cabin Fever. I’m not sure what any of the companies who put up the money for the film were thinking. I’m not sure what Eli Roth was thinking allowing this film to be made. Perhaps all the individuals involved were thinking, “Hey, it’s been 14 years! No one will remember the original! This will be easy! We have money we would like to just piss away, this is perfect!” and from there a movie was made.

    When I was in college, my friends and I came across some paintings by Salvador Dali that wound up in a consignment store. The paintings were actually prints of Dali’s original work that Dali, while bored one must assume, had painted over. The end result was original art, but recycled. The remake of Cabin Fever is just that. An exact remake of the original but painted with trappings of modernity, a faded cult classic painted over and recycled. The end result is a lazy, boring and sad hour and a half of deja vu. The only thing that I can think about the film as a whole is that Roth and co must have felt that the original was a bit dated, since the new attempt mentions “social media” and “Call of Duty” and weed (no scratch that, it was in the original too), also the character of Marcy sports nipple piercings and some tattoos this time around. Like I said, it is all super modern. All the problems that the film had and all the gags from the original are still there, but they managed to remove any of the shock value that the original brought with it (even the gore did not strike me as much as the original…oh wait, that is because I had already seen it before…). I spent the entire run time waiting for one fresh or original take to make this remake worth recommending, but there was nothing. The acting is fine. The direction is fine. The visuals are crisp and the colors are sharp. These mean nothing though when you consider that you have already seen this film before. 

    There is absolutely nothing here to recommend or to sing praise of, which is upsetting because they could have taken this film, this remake, and actually done some interesting things with it.Instead of taking away their ability to communicate with the standard issue “my phone has no service,” why not actually allow the kids to use social media to document the disease as it ate away at them instead of saving it for a ten second, random end-credits stinger? Why not let them self-diagnose their disease with WebMD? Why not try anything original at all? I don’t know. But I do know that I can save you some time. If you have already watched the original, then don’t bother with this one. If you haven’t watched the original, then, as with Dali painting over a print, I would suggest seeking out the original. 

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  • We are still here is still here 10 years on

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    WE ARE STILL HERE is an interesting mix of Lovecraft and ghosts, gothic spirituality and violent horror. Really WE ARE STILL HERE is little bit of of all of those things thrown into a pot that made a very delectable stew. So let’s dig in. 

    First up, the acting in the movie is solid. Every character is well realized and the film brings in some of my favorite genre actors (one of whom is also my favorite indie director) to help with that process. Barbara Crampton (everyone who attended our Reanimator screening got an eyeful of Ms. Crampton) plays Anne Sacchetti, a grieving mother and wife to Paul Sacchetti, played by Andrew Sensenig of W. and Upstream Color fame. Crampton brings just enough to the role without being or seeming overwrought. Her sadness, and hope, is apparent in every scene. Later we meet the Sacchettis’ friends Jacob and May Lewis. You’ll know the actress who played May, Lisa Marie, from Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood and Mars Attacks. Then comes my personal favorite: Larry Fessenden, who has acted in countless films and whose film Beneath still makes swimming in lakes an uncomfortable proposition. Fessenden is fantastic here in his depiction of a middle aged hippie spiritualist.   

    I went into this movie cold. I had no idea what to expect except that it was probably a ghost story given the title. It was that—a ghost story— but it was so much more than that as well. The cinematography is well composed and certain scenes are just stunning with the cold aesthetic of the winter landscape playing against the smoldering danger in the house. The creature designs are fantastic too, and yes there are creatures in this film. The ghosts here are unlike the ghosts from Crimson Peak. In that film they served as terrifying portents of the future or horrific reminders of the past. In WE ARE STILL HERE the ghosts are creatures of vengeance and flame; monstrous beings who are still seeking to protect their home. It makes for some intense and interesting viewing. 

    The movie is a slow burn, but with the third act comes a steady ramping up of the action and the action is earned and deserved, not just thrown in because the film needed some action. Add to that a reveal about the true purpose of the house and you’ve got yourself one interesting set-up. I feel like vague is really the only way to approach a film like this while reviewing it. I went in cold and warmed immediately to the film. I suggest you do the same.

    So to recap: great creature design, strong plot and themes and the approach of a ghost story through a Lovecraftian lens (can’t say more than this, spoilers!) make this one ghost story that deserves a moment of your time.  

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  • Fright Nights at the Fairgrounds: A retro review

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    Note: This article first appeared in 2015 on morbidmovies.com, a now defunct website dedicated to horror happenings in South Florida. It is republished here for posterity sake.

    Fright Nights at the South Florida Fairgrounds is a labor of love. Each November, the haunt designers and event organizers begin planning and crafting the next year’s event. They plot and plan and scheme, all in the hopes of creating the most terrifying experiences in South Florida.

    The haunt creators then work tirelessly for two months, from August thru September, for hundreds of hours, to bring their labors of love and terror to life.

    “I put in eight to 12 hours a day for the last two months,” said Kelly Goodman, co-creator and designer of this year’s New Orleans themed haunt, Memento Mori. She created this year’s haunt with designer and actor Brad Cain.  

    To give you an idea of the level of planning that goes into these houses, whose existence are as brief and brilliant as the colors of autumnal trees in the north, the idea for Memento Mori goes back three years to when Goodman attended the Legendary Haunt Tour. The Legendary Haunt Tour is an annual event which tours a different city each year, taken its attendees to two or three local haunted attractions that have achieved legendary status either within the city, state or have garnered national attention. The tour three years ago was in New Orleans. Goodman said she fell in love with the city and the haunts therein, with ideas and inspiration almost immediately swirling cyclonically around her mind. Three years later, the ideas that the event inspired within Goodman have finally gestated into what promises to be a creeptastic and terrifying haunt, complete with a ghost and monster filled bayou and an incredible replica of the streets of the French Quarter. 

    Memento Mori continues the story that Goodman started two years ago 

    “Each year I like to continue the story I started two years ago with Sunnyville Orphanage, where I had these twins who escaped. The next year they took up residence in the Flamingo Hotel and wreaked havoc there. This year they have moved on to New Orleans and become witches,” said Goodman.

    This year there are four total haunts for guests to explore: Memento Mori, Meadow Lakes, Beyond the Gates and Animal Farm. 

    Meadow Lakes was designed by first year creator Travis Martin. It tells the tale of a sickness spreading through suburbia and the government’s attempts to contain the spread of infection. Filled with fine details and splashes of gore in all the right places, Martin proves that he has what it takes to hang with the other haunt designers. 

    Beyond the Gates was the brainchild of Jeremy Schroader and offers guests a stroll through the afterlife. This offers some very unique and ambitious scares, including one that those of you with claustrophobia will want to avoid. Couple that with increasingly surreal details and scenes and you have yourself one awesome haunt. 

    Animal Farm is a twisted journey through a farm in which the animals have decided that Man’s dominion is no longer applicable. The haunt is outdoors and filled with places for creatures to hide. Be warned, creators Glennis McClellan and Craig McInnis and their vast cast (over 30 actors and volunteers are involved) are out to get you. 

    “Our main focus is the scare. We spend endless hours pouring over the details of the houses; from the flow, to the extravagant sets, to the character design and wardrobe,” said McInnis “Nothing is left to chance when it comes to ensuring our guests get an overdose of adrenaline and fear.”

    So what makes Fright Nights stand out? It’s not just their exceptional attention to detail or the hard work of Technicians Kevin Moore and Bill Goodman (who handle all the lighting and sound among other responsibilities) or their level of commitment, it’s the way event is run. Unlike other big attractions, the crew at Fright Nights will only send in groups of eight at a time. They want your terror to be maximized, and the only way to do so is to limit the size of the group being terrified. 

    “We care about that,” said McClellan. “We want our actors to surround you and terrify you.”

    Fright Nights at the South Florida Fairgrounds runs through Halloween weekend and costs $5 per haunt, $20 for all four and $25 for special RIP access. There is also a haunted midway with rides for children who are of an age not appropriate for such intense experiences as those this year’s haunts are offering.

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  • Horror in the West: Bone Tomahawk

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    How did a movie that can be boiled down to cowboys versus cannibals not get a full blown theatrical release? I know, I know, it is hard to fathom that an idea like that could somehow get its wide release as Video on Demand. Especially when that movie is as fantastic as Bone Tomahawk (the film only opened in 847 theaters but did $7 million in business). It’s right there in the title—Bone. Tomahawk.—the absolute promise of greatness (and yes the titular devices are utilized to great effect in the film.). Add to that awesome title and great premise a phenomenal actor—say like  Kurt Russell, replete with his Hateful Eight mustache—and you have the makings of a heck of a film.

    And it is! Bone Tomahawk is on par with the best Westerns of the last ten years. Russell plays the sheriff of the small town of Bright Hope. When a drifter comes to town, the sheriff is forced to shoot him in the leg when he tries to run. This particular drifter is on the run from a cannibal tribe of Native Americans whose burial ground he disturbed. When the raiding party of cannibals catches up with him at Bright Hope they steal some of the town’s horses, the sheriff’s deputy and the wife of a local construction foreman, Arthur O’Dwyer. O’Dwyer’s character is especially interesting because he is basically crippled from the get go, he suffered a leg injury that has left him with a handicap to overcome. O’Dwyer, the sheriff, his back-up deputy and the local badass gunfighter and dandy, Mr. Brooder, mount up and head after them. And that is it for plot. Simple and perfect, with lots of room to get to know our heros.

    That is one place that Bone Tomahawk shines. It develops the characters, and allows room for us to really get to like them. The dialogue is a big part of this. Each man in the party has a particular affectation when it comes to speaking. This idea could potentially become comical or grating but it completely works here. It also allows for great comments like: “Mr Brooder just educated two Mexicans on the meaning of manifest destiny” after Mr. Brooder has just gunned down two men who approached the camp at night. This gem and so many more can be mined from the minutes spent watching. The culminating effect of these lines and the amiable nature of the group help us to understand and truly enjoy the time spent with these characters. 

    Along the way we are treated to some gorgeous cinematography. This movie is stunning. The nature of the Western lends itself to such views, but the creators of Bone Tomahawk use the landscape perfectly to strike moods for the characters and to accentuate the danger that the crew finds themselves in. This works perfectly with the film’s slow burn approach. 

    The danger making a film like Bone Tomahawk is that it can get campy quickly, especially if you were making a horror/Western hybrid. Thankfully, the film is a Western that just happens to have some horror trappings. These trappings are largely confined to a blood soaked final act that I found thrilling and totally earned. The setup was perfect and the result well earned and deserved. 

    I can’t say anything more about this film, as doing so would certainly spoil it. I shall instead leave it to you, reader, to seek this film out and spend some time with it. It is time you will not regret spending.

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  • Pyewacket is a great word, and a solid film

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    Pyewacket is an ominous word. It seems harmless enough on the surface, a childish nonsense invective but when you really listen to the word…there’s just something about it that is off. Maybe it’s the way the word can be said as a swear, or uttered in prayer, with a low guttural sound, a harsh bark and a naming convention for a black magic ritual. 

    Pyewacket is also an unsettling horror film brought to us by Backcountry director, Adam MacDonald. This film is black magic gone wrong, represented in all the right ways. The dread creeps and compounds in Jaws-like fashion. The truth of the situation is always hard to read and this movie really brings that home time and again. In fact one could argue that the one true theme of this film is belief, in not being able to trust what you know. 

    “Be careful what you believe in.” This line is uttered by an author of occult literature to our heroine Leah (played well by Nicole Muñoz), and it truly defines the experience of watching this film. We the viewers are never quite sure what is actually happening as events unfold, and even at the very end there is doubt as to the fate of our protagonist. 

    This is due largely in part to the fine script by MacDonald. He throws you right in the mix, you the viewer are a part of the lived-in lives of these people on screen, as much a visitor as Pyewacket itself. The audience is challenged to make inferences about the lives on display here and it plays out really well, and helps keep the movie from becoming too predictable. Couple that with a mother who is  dealing with the stress of grief and loss poorly and a teenage girl dealing with loss and upheaval and the occult. We watch as these elements all slowly coalesce to a fine finish to the film.

    Also on display here is stunning cinematography by Christian Bielz. The use of drone shots kept the movie flowing constantly and stopped things from getting stagnant when it was just Leah or her mom on screen, and Bielz has a fantastic eye for composition of shots. The cinematography is, in my opinion, what sets this story apart from others in the same vein.

    The story does little to break new ground, and even tips its hat a bit in the second and third act. Which brings me to my only real critique of the film,this is a smart film but it gets dumbed down a bit by having to explain what exactly is going on and I felt that these exposition dumps, once with a group of friends and then again with the renowned writer over skype, disrupted the mystery and the tension the creators spent almost two acts growing.

    Ultimately Pyewacket is deserving of your attention and worth a rent off of Amazon, the elevator pitch should have been, “What if wishing harm on another went a little too far?” I could go into more detail and would if it didn’t end up veering into spoiler territory.So just take my recommendation and check this one out as soon as possible..

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  • WELCOME HOME: A QUICK NOTE

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    This blog is not interested in reviewing things as we think they should be. I hate critics that try to spout off and tell the reader why the film is “wrong” and “what could/should have been better/different.” Here’s a thought, tell me about the product we received as an audience, the one that someone took the time to create. If that product is incomplete or lacking, ask why; don’t mock and shred and destroy. Likewise, if a product is not what YOU as the VIEWER did not want, then too bad; the product was made the way it was and wishing it were otherwise will not help. I will not tell you to write your own or make your own version, when that happens you get one of two scenarios: the first is the cheap fanfic/slashfic phenomenon, wherein a fanbase latches onto a character and creates their own adventures and the second scenario is the reboot/recycle cycle that we witnessed with Star Wars and which we will soon see with Harry Potter. I WILL encourage you to create your own work, write your own stories, craft your own critiques and think pieces but please, just try to be original. That’s all, let the studios have their remakes. I’ll take the indies all day every day. As for this space? I’ll try to keep it just that, original or at least as original as I can make it.

    This space will be focused on exploring ideas in horror, sharing original fiction from a variety of writers, myself included, old clips and articles that I have produced in the past (for better or worse, I’m going to collate them all here) and, of course, reviews and recommendations. This has been a long time gestating, and I am happy to have finally reached the point where I can start this new endeavor.

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