An abused little boy retreats to a fantasy world in writer/director Davide Melini’s U.K. short horror film Lion, but his violent, drunkard father and intimidated mother (Tania Mercader as Amanda) come face to face with a harsh reality. Lion is still on its film festival run, and has claimed more than 263 awards so far, […]
A successful young couple, tired of living in their gorgeous San Francisco apartment, decide to look for an estate in Napa Valley where they can relax, start a family and live their version of the American Dream. It’s just their bad luck that the owner of the $3.2 million property they decide to settle down […]
Josh Lobo’s writing and directing debut I Trapped the Devil oftentimes feels like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone. More specifically, it is reminiscent of one episode in particular — episode 41 from 1960, “The Howling Man,” written by the legendary Charles Beaumont. Both stories deal with a person holding someone behind a locked […]
The Curse of La Llorona tells a story that will feel very familiar to all horror movie fans, the story of a curse created by a horrific family tragedy in the past that travels across time to terrorize an unsuspecting family. In this case, the curse starts back a few hundred years ago when a […]
When a film kicks off with a cold open of an injured man (Day, played by Theeradej Wongpuapen) groggily waking up in an empty swimming pool — six meters deep, with no ladder — being attacked by a huge crocodile, it has my attention. Thai survival horror/thriller The Pool is heavy on the suspense, if […]
It’s hard to believe it’s been 15 years since Mike Mignola’s comic book creation, Hellboy, first came to the big screen in a live action film, starring Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy) as the big red demonic superhero with Guillermo del Toro directing. It made enough money to spawn a sequel four years later, Hellboy […]
Imagine Film Festival, which runs April 10–20 at EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is loaded with amazing genre film fare from around the world. Among the outstanding slices of cinema offered during the fest’s first few nights this year were two films dealing with different types of domestic horror, and a behind-the-scenes documentary about […]
Imagine Film Festival, which runs April 10–20 at EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is loaded with amazing genre film fare from around the world. Among the outstanding slices of cinema offered during the fest’s first few nights this year were two films dealing with different types of domestic horror, and a behind-the-scenes documentary about […]
Imagine Film Festival, which runs April 10–20 at EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is loaded with amazing genre film fare from around the world. Among the outstanding slices of cinema offered during the fest’s first few nights this year were two films dealing with different types of domestic horror, and a behind-the-scenes documentary about […]
The 2019 edition of the Milwaukee Twisted Dreams Film Festival took place from April 4–7 at Times Cinema. Among the diverse range of features and shorts that screened there were two decidedly offbeat offerings, the animated crime film The Next Kill and the quirky creature feature comedy The Lake Michigan Monster. The Next Kill A […]
Mummy movies can be a tricky bag. Looking back at cinema history, you may only find a few solid entries: Karloff’s The Mummy; Hammer’s The Mummy with Cushing and Lee; or, The Mummy from the late Nineties. Discerning what makes the creature tick can be an elusive mystery. With The Blood of the Mummy, writer/director […]
Burned out at working the graveyard shift at a Boston hospital, Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) decides to seek a quieter life by moving to rural Maine with his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and their two children, Ellie (Jeté Laurence) and Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavoie). The quiet lasts about 24 hours. On his first day […]
Writer/director Larry Fessenden’s Depraved is a gory, thrilling modern adaptation of the Frankenstein mythos, replete with commentary on today’s society and many of its shortcomings. Like the majority of Fessenden’s directorial efforts, it’s a thinking person’s horror film, but one that pulls no punches in the visceral shocks department. Alex (Owen Campbell of Super Dark […]
“Oscar-winning horror movie” are four words genre fans don’t see strung together very often, but in 2017 they were deservedly wrapped around Get Out, the multi-layered masterpiece written, produced and directed by Jordan Peele. The film was nominated in four categories — Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing, Best Performance by […]
Arrow Video FrightFest Glasgow featured three films highlighted by powerful, mysterious female characters for its March 2nd screenings. These films ranged from subtle and understated to violent and gory. The Rusalka (AKA The Siren) Writer/director Perry Blackshear’s The Rusalka (retitled The Siren for its U.K. release), his follow-up to his terrific debut They Look Like […]