It’s easy to see why a horror movie maker might want to set his story in a carnival haunted house: The jump scares come virtually prepackaged. If it’s a gag in the house designed to scare visitors in the film then it can also be used to scare the movie audience. As experience will tell […]
Directed by Jeff Broadstreet, as Roy G. Biv., Devil’s Junction: Handy Dandy’s Revenge is the latest killer puppet flick to hit the horror-scene. The director listed under a pseudonym should have been a red flag for what I was about to see, but I went in with bloody-colored glasses. Watching low-budget horror movies you expect […]
Sequels can be such a crapshoot. The good ones take a story you already love and advance it in new and interesting ways. The bad ones simply rehash the original in unoriginal ways, leaving the audience cheated of both their money and their memories of what made the first movie so good. Although there are […]
Seclusion in snowy climes is often a fine springboard for horror movies, with The Abominable Snowman (1957), The Shining (1980), and this year’s The Lodge springing to mind. Writer/director Can Türedi places the protagonist of his new short film Glass Cabin in just such an environment, and the result is a fine slice of psychological […]
Directed by Maria Lee Metheringham, Pumpkins is a fun little movie. It’s not very scary, mind you, but there’s something special about it, something in the DIY ethics you feel in every frame, that makes you want to root for it despite its shortcomings. Set in the pasturelands of the north of England, Pumpkins tells […]
If you subscribe to the notion that full moons can affect human behavior, just wait until you see what happens when the titular phenomenon occurs in eerie Canadian short film Red Moon (2019). The film, which won the Best Short award at this month’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, stretches beyond what are usually considered common […]
Maybe if it had a different title such as “Smile” or “The Tears of a Clown” and the main character that wasn’t tied in, however clumsily, with the DC Universe then director Todd Phillips and actor Joaquin Phoenix might have made something special with their tale of a troubled soul’s descent into madness. Because Joker […]
After androgynous high school student Cassie (Bianca Sanchez) is bullied by a quartet of mean-girl classmates in a campus bathroom, her mother (Melissa Connell) calls upon satanic forces to seek revenge in writer/director Aaron Immediato’s Bathroom Troll. This short film pays homage to Brian De Palma’s 1976 screen version of Stephen King’s Carrie while giving […]
In terms of squirm, Replace easily gets a 10 out of 10. Watching this creepy tale of a woman who “cures” her extreme-dry-skin condition by replacing her flesh with the skin of others is deeply unnerving. You may find yourself hitting the pause button every time she murders a young woman and starts to harvest […]
The Mexican horror short 9:40 plays like a classic episode of The Twilight Zone with a climax on steroids. The story may feel a bit familiar, and many genre film fans might well guess where it is headed, but writer/director Jorge Morrell and his cast and crew make the ride an intriguing one, nevertheless. Kristyan […]
“Unleash the horde!” It may not be the greatest line in cinematic history — or even the best line in Big Top Evil — but it sure does put a smile on your face when you hear it shouted out and then watch as the abandoned factory doors open to release a horde of murderous […]
Nocturne, the latest short film from writer/director Michael Trainotti, is a superb effort that takes the “Don’t open the door to strangers” motif to terrifying extremes. Erin (Sabrina Howells, who has appeared in previous Trainotti short films Beneath the Surface [2017] and One Dark Night [2018]) has just had a rough night arguing on a […]
There’s a great scene in the Tim Burton movie Ed Wood where the fledgling director meets with a sleazy Hollywood producer about a new project. “Is there a script,” Wood asks. “(Expletive) no,” the producer says. “But. there’s a poster.” It’s impossible to say if a similar conversation happened when the idea for Clownado first […]
Writer/director Mia Kate Russell explores the potential terrors of inaction in her Australian short film Maggie May, which offers up some of the most disturbing horrific images in recent memory, both onscreen and offscreen. Something is dreadfully wrong with Maggie (Lulu McClatchy of the 2012 features Crawlspace and 6 Plots), and though her relatives and […]
There are a lot of words used to describe horror movies: Scary, thrilling, terrifying, gruesome and gory just to name a few. But when was the last time you described a horror movie as “joyous?” Watching One Cut of the Dead is a joyous experience, one that will make you hit play as soon as […]