Saddled with a new mortgage that he can barely afford, recently divorced dad David Vanowen (Ford Austin) decides he can save some money by installing his septic system. He’s not a licensed contractor or even a construction worker — he’s a computer programmer — but the always optimistic Vanowen tells himself, how hard can it […]
Author: John Black
[Review] AMITYVILLE POLTERGEIST (2021) Gloomy Spooks and Lady Ghouls
Desperate to make cash and too squeamish about selling his blood for money, Jim (Parris Bates) decides to take a job housesitting. It sounds like a pretty sweet gig: $100 a night, and all he has to do is make sure nobody breaks in and damages the place until the owner, Eunice (Rebecca Kimble), returns. […]
[Review] REDWOOD MASSACRE: ANNIHILATION – Cranks the Tension Up to 11
A group of people heads off into the woods to track down a deranged killer who, according to urban legend, slaughtered dozens of people a decade ago. Some of them have a direct connection to one of the victims, some are just there for the thrill of the hunt. One of them is there for […]
[Review] TOKYO HOME STAY MASSACRE – Messy Tribute to Gory Classics
It’s clear from the way they pay tribute to the filmmakers that came before that first-time writers/directors Kenta Osaka and Hirohito Takimoto watched a lot of horror movies before sitting down to create Tokyo Home Stay Massacre. Some of their tributes will be immediately identifiable, such as the spooky creature with the extremely long hair […]
[Review] THE DEVIL TO PAY is a Rare Gem
“They want nothing from you and God help you if you try to interfere.” It seems a little corny for husband and wife filmmaking team Lane and Ruckus Skye to begin their feature film debut with a dire quote from a 2010 census to underline the dangerous nature of people living in the remote region […]
[Review] BEAST WITHIN (2020) Falls Short of the Mark
Whether it’s a closeup of Lon Chaney Jr’s face getting hairier and hairier using lapse-dissolve photography in his various Universal Monster Movies or Rick Baker’s Oscar-winning full body transformation of David Naughton in An American Werewolf in London, the measuring stick for all werewolf films is the transformation scene. A good transformation scene not only […]
[Review] LAST LAUGH (2020) This Killer is No Joke…
It’s not much of a gig for Myles Park (Steve Vanderzee) being the opening act for a Hollywood sell-out trying to return to his stand-up roots to prove he is more than just a guy making bad movies for the money. But it takes place in a real theater and that sure beats telling jokes […]
[Review] THE FACELESS MAN (2020) Inspired Madness with a Dash of Confusion
The Faceless Man is a confusing mess. The first 10 minutes feel like a high school theater production of an angst-filled father/daughter melodrama that takes place in the middle of a crowded cancer ward. It’s badly acted, badly written, and almost bad enough to make you stop watching altogether. But please don’t. When the action […]
[Review] THE SILENCING a frustratingly messy movie filled with twists and turns that lead nowhere
The body of a teenage girl is found washed up by the banks of a river. Police arrive, look around for a bit and deduce that she wasn’t just killed. She had been hunted. It’s unclear how they leap to this conclusion given the minimal investigation, but it’s still just the opening minutes of The […]
[Review] COMPOUND FRACTURE – Sinister Tension Oozes Off the Screen
It’s been a long time since Michael Wolffsen (Tyler Mane) has been back to the family compound, and it’s not because his life away from home has been so fabulous he didn’t have time to look back. If anything he’s spent all those years obsessing over what he left behind, always worrying that someone or […]
[Review] IRRATIONAL FEAR Lacks Bite and Subtilty
A weekend retreat at an isolated cabin in the woods. What could possibly go wrong? It’s a bit of a rhetorical question since the old ‘cabin in the woods’ trope has been used to make dozens and dozens of horror movies, whether it’s a group of cabins at a summer camp (Friday the 13th) or […]
[Review] BABY FRANKENSTEIN – a Monster Movie in Desperate Need of Grisel and Gore
Let’s start with the fact that Baby Frankenstein is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a horror movie. Yes, it has a ‘monster’ in it and there is a bad guy that you want to see murdered in the most grisly and gory way imaginable. But nobody dies in Baby Frankenstein; nobody even gets […]
[Review] THE TENT – Equal Parts Confusion, Frustration, and Satisfaction
An apocalyptic event has taken place leaving David (Tim Kaiser) alone in the woods with little more than a pocket knife, a few meager supplies, and a battered old tent. As if that wasn’t bad enough there are things, evil things, waiting just outside the tent to get him the minute he lets his guard […]
[Review] COVEN – Tense, Exciting, and Fresh
A coven of four young witches seeks to recruit a fifth as part of a late-night ritual to summon a demon from their past. So they gather in a candle-lit circle in a spooky ruin and offer a blood sacrifice. The original four get a small cut and bleed a little; the new girl gets […]
Review of DEAD VOICES
A pair of sisters head off into a cabin in the woods, armed only with a video camera and a suspiciously muscular psychic to try and contact the spirit of an old boyfriend, a soldier who they think was killed in Iraq although his body was never found. That’s the basic premise of Dead Voices, […]