I’ve written about my admiration for writer/director Damian McCarthy’s two previous films, Caveat and Oddity, in this column before. From the very beginning, his work had a personal style that separated it from the general horror film pack, combining a dark visual palette with a love for haunted-looking objects, all set in a modern Ireland…

I was lucky enough to be able to visit Japan a few years ago with a friend of mine, and like everyone in Tokyo (often considered the world’s largest city), we availed ourselves of the subway system. Although much effort is made to make directions and maps clear to all, the stations are massive and…

Could there possibly be a reason that movies about evil rich people sacrificing and hunting the poor for their own enrichment and amusement are showing up in our cinemas right now? Amoral elites demonstrating a sort of ignoblesse oblige? A shout of “Yes, kings!” before they release the hounds? It is unfortunately above my paygrade…

To repurpose a quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune, “I must not believe hype. Hype is the enjoyment killer. Hype is the little joy that brings total disappointment.” It’s hard not to buy into positive buzz for an upcoming film. Trailers are everywhere, and discussion of those trailers fills social media with hope. I try to…

Sometimes one wants a film filled with subtlety and nuance, cinema that plumbs the human condition and makes one a better person. Sometimes one simply wants a movie in which, to quote SCTV Farm Film Report sages Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok, many things get “blowed up real good.” Cold Storage is such…

The new year has unexpectedly graced us with a plethora of interesting and entertaining horror films this month in theaters or on streaming sites. In the interest of not just focusing on one and ignoring the others, here are some capsule reviews. Primate – I guess the title Primate sounded more marketable than Killer Chimp,…

Here’s the fifth and final installment of my list of the twenty-five greatest horror films from the past quarter century, starting from the bottom and gradually heading to the top. We’ve reached the Top Five, just in time to welcome the new year.  Here’s a link if you missed the fourth installment: The 25 Greatest Horror…

Here’s the fourth and penultimate installment of my list of the twenty-five greatest horror films from the past quarter century, starting from the bottom and gradually heading to the top by the end of this year. We’ve reached the Top Ten, just in time to provide some horrific holiday cheer.  Here’s a link if you…

Here’s the third installment of my list of the twenty-five greatest horror films from the past quarter century, starting from the bottom and gradually heading to the top by the end of this year. It’s my November attempt to give thanks for excellence. Here’s a link if you missed the second installment, here‘s where you…

The old saying, “Strike while the iron is hot” is never more meaningful than in the movie industry, where financing is hard to find at the best of times. After the success of Longlegs, director Osgood Perkins delivered two more pictures in the following year. The first was The Monkey, which I had mixed feelings…

Here’s the second installment of my list of the twenty-five greatest horror films from the past quarter century, starting from the bottom of the list and gradually heading to the top by the end of this year. Here’s a link if you missed the first installment. I’ll try to stay as spoiler-free as possible for…

Expectations in seeing a movie can make a lot of difference. When I saw the trailer for Bone Lake, I thought it was going to be yet another “young people in the woods meet the sharp side of a machete” flick, but when I actually saw the film, I was pleasantly surprised by its intelligence,…

A quarter of the twenty-first century is almost over, and there has been no lack of quality horror, filmic or otherwise, during that time. It seems like an appropriate time to take stock and being that this is a column about horror movies, I decided that a list of twenty-five films for 2025 seemed appropriate….

After a lifetime watching horror movies, I’ve come up with a few rules based on my observations. The first and most important one is: Nothing good ever happens in a basement. A subset to that rule is: Not as emphatic, but also skip the attic. I’d include a sub-subset, but I’ll let people figure out…

When writer/director Zach Cregger’s film Barbarian was released in 2022, horror fans recognized that rare thing – an original voice, with the talent to back it up. That combination doesn’t come around that often. Frequently one sees visual stylists working from scripts teeming with cliched tropes, or perhaps a small character study with decent atmosphere…

For some reason, Hollywood doesn’t seem to be making as many romantic comedies or dramas anymore. The reasons behind this are debatable, but the era in which Pretty Woman and When Harry Met Sally roamed the earth seems distant. Have no fear, however, because real-life married couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco have arrived to…

Last September I wrote a short review of writer/director Damian Mc Carthy’s (he prefers his last name spelled with a space between the “Mc” and “Carthy”) 2024 film, Oddity (here’s a link). I praised his distinctive and off-kilter sensibility and wrote that he was a welcome new talent to the horror field. That’s all true,…

Although 28 Days Later isn’t technically a zombie movie (the monsters aren’t revivified corpses, but people infected with the “Rage Virus”), it’s safe to say that after George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead series, it’s likely the second most influential zombie movie. Purists decried it for the inclusion of “fast zombies,” but overall, the…

As anyone who loves horror films already knows, one of the beauties of the genre is its breadth of styles and subject matter. Any genre that can handily include movies as diverse as The Haunting, Evil Dead II and Martyrs is impressively flexible. An examination of or focus upon death ties all horror together, and…

Back in 2000, a potential story for an episode of The X-Files was changed into a feature script and became the film Final Destination. That movie was a hit and became a franchise, spawning four sequels until the series paused in 2011. Fourteen years later and the death-defying series is back with Final Destination Bloodlines,…

Ten years ago in 2015, a video game called Until Dawn was released to general acclaim, which attempted to place the player inside a horror film to try and attempt to survive a deadly night. The goal of the game was to try to save yourself and your friends by making split-second decisions that would…

Locked is an English language remake of the 2019 Argentinean film 4×4, and although it came and went on local screens without making much noise, it’s worthy of a watch for several reasons. Eddie (Bill Skarsgård) has fallen on hard times and doesn’t have enough money to repair his car to pick up his daughter…

Who rules? That’s often the question in life, isn’t it? Whether it’s concerning a job, a religion or a government, the important thing to know is who’s actually running things. Is that person moral with good intentions or are they a narcissistic sociopath content to watch everything burn? It’s useful to know these things, because…

I’m a fan of writer/director Osgood Perkins. I think he’s one of the best filmmakers in the horror genre today, a distinctive stylist in a town in which originality is often not valued. His film, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, is a near masterpiece, and his surprise hit from last summer, Longlegs, was also excellent. I wrote…

Appropriately enough for a columnist writing for trailersfromhell.com, I’ve always loved movie trailers. I enjoyed the bombast of the classic ones (THE GREATEST ADVENTURE EVER PUT ON FILM!) and the way they skillfully promoted the films without ruining any of the plots. Alas, that time has long passed. Trailers today deliberately show you the entirety…

I am a fan of writer/director Leigh Whannell. It gets somewhat lost now under the weight of the attenuated franchise, but Whannell’s first feature (he co-wrote and co-starred), Saw, was a brutally clever low-budget surprise hit that announced new talents had arrived on the genre film scene. 2010’s Insidious breathed fresh life into the supernatural…