Looking at the work-in-progress list of my favorite 2014 horror films, I’ve noticed that many of them share the common trait of taking familiar ideas and injecting fresh life into them. Both The Taking of Deborah Logan and The Babadook, in particular, did just that, and so too does my latest addition to the list. …
I consider myself somewhat of a Bigfoot enthusiast, endlessly fascinated by the potential existence of the beast and eager to devour any film that promises to bring him to life. Unfortunately, horror movies featuring Sasquatch have been pretty bad over the years – and that’s kind of an understatement. It’s for this reason that I …
As a tie-in with their recent Blu-ray release, Vinegar Syndrome brought Christmas Evil to the Alamo Drafthouse’s New York location this past Friday night, allowing me to cross a big time goal off my holiday bucket list. And boy was it a treat. Directed by Lewis Jackson, Christmas Evil (originally released as You Better Watch …
As a hardcore fan of Black Christmas, I am inherently wired to hate Black X-Mas. Why? Because it’s a fucking terrible remake of Black Christmas. But I don’t hate it. In fact, I kind of love it. In last week’s 40th anniversary retrospective of the original Black Christmas, I talked rather extensively about the connections …
The best movie monsters are oftentimes metaphors for real world issues, whether we’re talking about the zombies in George Romero’s films or that big green dude in Godzilla. This year, you can add Mister Babadook to that list, as well as any list that collects together the horror genre’s most memorable icons. Written and directed …
It’s almost always impossible to pinpoint the horror movie that started any given sub-genre, though there are films within each that have more or less had that honor bestowed upon them. Though not the first of its kind, for example, The Blair Witch Project is nevertheless seen as the ‘first’ found footage movie, due mostly …
It’s somewhat unfair to review individual episodes of a TV show like The Walking Dead, as you can’t really judge any given season until the complete portrait is painted. The final strokes of this particular painting were revealed last night, as Season 5’s first half was neatly, and tragically, wrapped up. As a whole, Season …
By the time 1984 rolled around, Christmas was well on its way to carving out its own little niche in the horror genre, thanks to films like Black Christmas, To All a Goodnight and Christmas Evil. But it wasn’t until the ’84 holiday season that Santa Claus truly became a horror icon, when Silent Night, …
After three weeks of side stories, all of them finally came together on this past Sunday night’s episode of The Walking Dead, which essentially picked up right where each of those episodes left off. ‘Crossed’ was another filler episode before the impending mid-season battle, though a handful of important things went down… 1) OUR HEROES …
It’s never a good sign when a planned theatrical release is suddenly dumped to VOD outlets, which is precisely the fate that befell this latest effort from the ‘are you sick of us yet?!’ production company Blumhouse. Originally, Jessabelle was set for widespread theatrical release in January of this year, before being pushed back to …
