Reviews

Reviews, anecdotes, and the like related to Halloween, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, or the bizarre.

[Reviews]

Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed (2022) Review

This will be an even shorter review than my review of 2020’s remake of Destroy All Humans!. All I really need to say for Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed is… ditto. It’s just as beautiful and just as fun, but a whole lot bigger, with maps in the US, UK, Japan, Russia, and the

[Reviews]

The Last of Us Review

HBO’s The Last of Us stands bloody and gulping for air over a field filled with so many dead and mediocre video game adaptations for film and television. The new series places a high degree of confidence in its source material so fans of the award-winning PlayStation 3 original title, the even more masterful 2020

[Reviews]

The Pale Blue Eye Review

Netflix’s The Pale Blue Eye is really trying as a self-serious mix of thriller, murder mystery, and period piece drama. Following in the blood trail left by Christopher Hatton’s artful, but mediocre Raven’s Hollow, Scott Cooper’s The Pale Blue Eye follows a shadowy story of mutilation and murder at the famous military academy Westpoint where

[Reviews]

Resurrection Review

From the producers of Midsommar, Hereditary, and The Witch, comes Resurrection, an afflicted psychological thriller that wrestles with the theme of motherhood and past traumas in chilling ways. It’s an A24-style movie through and through and a return to directing by Andrew Semans (Nancy, Please). Semans wrote the script while he was battling with himself

[Reviews]

SMILE Review

SMILE recently passed the $200 million milestone worldwide to become the highest-grossing horror film of 2022 so far. Beyond its solid opening weekend, SMILE‘s week two drop was only 22%, the best second-week retention for a horror film since Jordan Peele’s Get Out way back in 2017. SMILE‘s surprising box office run sets it up

[Reviews]

Mad Love Review

Mad Love (1935) originally opened on a black screen with an audience warning very similar to Edward van Sloan’s Frankenstein (1931) opening (also written by John L. Balderston). But it was edited out prior to release. The released intro for the film is far better as the opening credits appear over a window before a

[Reviews]

Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities Review

“Open your mind to fear,” states the tagline for Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. We should be grateful for a solid new anthology series that is worthy of attention as we patiently wait for the return of Netflix’s Black Mirror. This new collection of frightful tales shows a great deal of respect for the

[Reviews]

Halloween Ends Review

It’s been all pumpkin mush after the fairly competent 2018 reboot of Halloween that set up a new premise and narrative framework for the long-running horror franchise with “The Shape” standing at its center. The overstuffed Halloween Kills expanded to examine the rotting effects Michael Myers has inflicted on the citizens of Haddonfield, Illinois. Halloween

[Reviews]

The Quarry Review

If you played Until Dawn and enjoyed it, it’s a no-brainer that you’ve gotta play The Quarry too. Described as a “spiritual successor” to Until Dawn, it’s pretty much all there. Made by the same developer (Supermassive Games) and written and directed by the same guy (Will Byles). All the same kinds of twists and

[Something More]

The Tragedy of Westworld

I was a fan of Westworld years before it was ever even conceived as a TV show, that’s because, and some of you may not know this, it was first a movie (released in 1973). The movie itself was well-made, but the concept was what made it special. It’s such a fun concept, the kind