169 Best Releases From the Genre Horror (Page 5)
They Live in the Grey
SimilarA Nightmare on Elm Street (1984),
Although this Shudder Original from Hmong filmmaking duo the Vang Brothers—Burlee and Abel—is part supernatural thriller and part domestic drama, it actually aims to be a character-driven paranormal picture above all else. The character in question is Child Protective Services worker Claire Yang (Michelle Krusiec), who is noted by her boss as an efficient case-closer until this latest one neck-deep in bizarreness. In the Langs’ household, everything is tense as the young Sopviuhie (Madelyn Grace) is hurt and scarred; all the logical deductions will point to her parents Audrey (Ellen Wroe) and Giles (J.R. Cacia) as the culprits. Continue Reading →
Studio 666
Is Satanic panic even a thing anymore? When’s the last time we’ve heard anything about backmasking, or songs somehow influencing impressionable teenagers to kill themselves? It’s entirely possible that this is all still a thing, and I’m simply too old and out of touch to know anything about it. B.J. McDonnell’s Studio 666, the feature film debut of Foo Fighters, is a lovingly hokey homage to a time when “the Devil’s music” was such a grave concern for parents (and Tipper Gore) that Congressional hearings were held about it, and lawsuits were filed against heavy metal bands in an attempt to hold them responsible for what was more likely caused by untreated mental illness and drug abuse. Continue Reading →
King Knight
Known for blending horror and comedy to varying success, writer/director Richard Bates, Jr. looks to find wit and wisdom through a coven of witches in King Knight, his latest collaboration with actor Matthew Gray Gubler. As the head of the coven, Thorn (Gubler), along with his high priestess partner Willow (Angela Sarafyan), give three couples advice, organize Beltane and other holidays, and collectively recognize the power of French star Juliette Binoche. Following the coven after Thorn’s secretive lacrosse-laden past is revealed, Bates’s film meanders along a path of hallucinations, low stakes interactions, and a high school reunion that neither satisfies nor energizes a project that outstays its initial, quirky welcome. Continue Reading →
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Try as they may (as of today we’re up to the ninth film in the series), no other film in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise has come close to the original. Oh, a few of them have been entertaining in their own bananas way, like part 2, but no sequel, remake, or origin story can recreate the bleak grittiness of the first film, no matter how many new members of the cannibalistic Sawyer family they add to it. Continue Reading →
Resurrection
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Festival) Continue Reading →
Pahanhautoja
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Festival) Continue Reading →
Speak No Evil
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Festival) Continue Reading →
Fresh
SimilarFargo (1996),
Rebecca (1940) Strange Days (1995), The Silence of the Lambs (1991),
Watch afterBarbarian (2022),
StarringSebastian Stan,
StudioHyperobject Industries,
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Festival) Continue Reading →
Scream
SimilarCube (1997), Cube Zero (2004), Klute (1971), Let the Right One In (2008),
Shaft (2000) Watch afterThanksgiving (2023),
StarringJack Quaid,
Say what you will about the Scream movies – while they’re almost as absurd as the movies they’re satirizing, they’re also each trying to say something. While the first movie was about slasher movies in general, Scream 2 explored the nature (and necessity) of sequels, while Scream 3 attempted (to less than successful results) a pre-#MeToo spotlight on sexual harassment, and, as an answer to the rise of Facebook and Twitter, Scream 4 focused on social media culture. Wes Craven set out to not just entertain and scare audiences, but to get them to think about what they were watching, exactly, and why. Continue Reading →
Le Calendrier
Similar28 Weeks Later (2007), Die Hard 2 (1990), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006),
Christmas horror exists for the same reason Christmas lingerie does, to slaughter some sacred cows and try for a little “shock the normies” shenanigans. It works, sometimes: consider Silent Night, Deadly Night, which so offended Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert that they read aloud on their show the names of everyone who worked on it, from director down to the catering team, in an effort to publicly shame them. Most of the time they’re egregiously silly, as attempts to make Santa Claus (too many to count), snowmen (the version of Jack Frost that didn’t star Michael Keaton), elves (Elves), and gingerbread men (The Gingerdead Man) scary have fallen flat. Now advent calendars are given a creepy sheen in Patrick Ridremont’s The Advent Calendar, but this time it mostly works. Continue Reading →
艷屍還魂記
The vampire has been a symbol of many things throughout history: pestilence, addiction, and even physical desire. But one of their most enduring symbolic roles is the aristocratic vampire as an allegory for the predatory wealthy. Writer/director David Verbeek adds to this rich history of parasitic oligarchs with his latest film, Dead & Beautiful. Unfortunately, this entry into the undead oeuvre lacks the bite needed to become an immortal classic. Continue Reading →
Last Night in Soho
Similar28 Days Later (2002), Cube (1997), Cube Zero (2004),
Shaft (2000) Watch afterNightmare Alley (2021), tick tick... BOOM! (2021),
Has any other director in recent years had as frustrating a creative decline as Edgar Wright? Discounting his feature debut—the 1995, no-budget A Fistful of Fingers—his streak was white-hot. Two series of Spaced both developed and prefaced his earnest eye for nerd culture, leading up to what would become his Cornetto Trilogy. His work was so loving, so finely tuned, and, especially in the case of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, some of the most pop-culturally keen around. However, Baby Driver couldn’t help but sit in neutral; it was a pet project missing heart. With that out of the way, perhaps there was something more substantial to come next. Continue Reading →
Night Teeth
Adam Randall’s Night Teeth, Netflix’s latest foray into vampire mythmaking, finds the streaming giant betting big on name recognition and slick visuals as blood splatters across Los Angeles. Following Benny (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), a broke college student who picks up two vampires on a mission to take over the city, the film leans on its bright, exciting initial energy. It constructs a world in which vampires and humans have coexisted peacefully for decades, giving enough information to intrigue but not enough to answer all necessary questions. Continue Reading →
Halloween Kills
Similar28 Days Later (2002), Minority Report (2002), Ocean's Twelve (2004), Saw (2004), The Dark Knight (2008), The Interpreter (2005),
StudioBlumhouse Productions, Miramax,
With the release of The Rise of Skywalker and the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the term “fan service” has come to mean going to extremes in order to please fickle audiences of a TV series or film franchise. Though framed as an acknowledgment and appreciation of fan support, it feels forced and phony, an Easter egg hunt where a plot should be. While David Gordon Green and Danny McBride’s 2018 reboot of Halloween was far from a perfect film, they were determined to make it their own, rather than continuing the same interminable, by then thoroughly ridiculous storyline. Its sequel, Halloween Kills, however, feels like whatever Green and McBride were originally trying to do was shoved aside in favor of winks and nods at the “true” fans of the series. The body count is much, much bigger, and almost laughably gory, but if you’re looking for any kind of coherent plot and characters not doing anything but the stupidest things imaginable, look elsewhere. Continue Reading →
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor
SimilarEyes Wide Shut (1999),
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Black as Night
The first two entries in the newest Welcome to the Blumhouse collection are a flawed pair of scary films.
Welcome to Welcome to the Blumhouse! This annual anthology collection of four new horror films from Get Out producers Blumhouse Productions, debuting on Amazon streaming, is back after its inaugural run in 2020. Conceptually, this seems like a nifty idea, a way to tackle bold new filmmaking concepts or styles that may not be as broadly accessible as theatrical Blumhouse fare like Fantasy Island. Unfortunately, titles like The Lie made the first iteration of Welcome to the Blumhouse feel like a grab-bag of movies that just weren’t good enough for the big screen.
This year, the four movies comprising the second edition of Welcome to the Blumhouse are all apparently fixated on institutionalized horror. The first two installments that have dropped (the other two films will premiere on October 9) are Bingo Hell and Black as Night, each tackling both a different strain of horror storytelling and a unique form of systemically ingrained injustice. A common trait across the pair of features, unfortunately, is a lack of consistently high-quality filmmaking. Here’s to hoping the next final two entries in this year’s collection wrap things up on a much stronger note. Continue Reading →
The Addams Family 2
Similar28 Weeks Later (2007), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006),
StudioBron Studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
The Addams Family characters have existed since 1938 and yet they’ve never felt as tired as they do in The Addams Family 2. A “kooky and spooky” family once known for subverting the norms is now the star of a movie that couldn’t be more ordinary. If you’ve seen one subpar computer-animated kids film from the last 15 years, you’ve probably seen all the worst bathroom and slapstick gags The Addams Family 2 has to offer. Here’s a feature that can’t be called a success unless it’s intended goal was to make one yearn for the sophistication of Hotel Transylvania 2. Continue Reading →
Nightbooks
SimilarThe Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005),
As evil witch Natacha (Krysten Ritter) exclaims in Nightbooks, she doesn’t like stories with “happy endings.” While it’s refreshing to have a children’s horror movie that doesn’t coddle the audience, Netflix's latest is hardly the spectacular, spooky adventure it packages itself to be. Instead, it’s more like the off-brand Halloween candy a kid might get trick or treating. It technically passes as a treat, but not one that will leave kids and parents coming back for more. Continue Reading →
Titane
SimilarA Real Young Girl (1976), Copying Beethoven (2006),
StudioARTE France Cinéma,
Julia Ducourneau's followup to her stunning debut Raw makes for brutal, beautiful, brilliant body horror.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.)
Titane begins with the pluck of banjo strings and an extreme closeup of chrome. It’s a clash that’s jarring and compelling: the earthy, fire-and-brimstone howl of David Eugene Edwards’s take on the American folk standard “Wayfaring Stranger” set against an almost voyeuristic tour through a car’s inner workings. Continue Reading →
Malignant
While we spent a lot of time debating whether or not “elevated horror” is a real thing or just something film snobs made up so they didn’t have to be embarrassed about liking a scary movie, gore fell to the wayside. There was a period when we weren’t getting an acceptable amount of blood and guts, in favor of understated chills and psychological trauma. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but it’s left something lacking in the genre. With Nia DaCosta’s take on Candyman and the upcoming Halloween Kills, however, it looks like old-fashioned look-between-the-fingers horror is back in all its splattery glory. Add to that list James Wan’s Malignant, often very silly, but always with a self-aware wink at the audience, with a body count that will satisfy even the most jaded horror fans. Continue Reading →
Deep Rising
KinoKultur is a thematic exploration of the queer, camp, weird, and radical releases Kino Lorber has to offer.
I’ll admit it. I believe in sea monsters. We know more about space than we do about the Earth’s watery, cavernous depths. I don't know what's out there! But what I do know is that the monsters in my mind, like all-natural monsters throughout history, embody all that is awesome and terrifying about Nature.
Deep Rising (1998) and The Strangeness (1985), two films recently released on home video by Kino Lorber, render such monsters on screen. They play on our deepest fears about the unknown natural world as well as our precarious place within it. Though opposites in terms of budget and financing, both of these pictures touch on similar themes and deliver similar results. Tangled together, these two tentacular tales teach us both about movie making and the deep anxieties lurking beneath the surface of our culture. Continue Reading →