2010s horror movies – Horror Ghouls

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell (2012)

Posted on October 20, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell is the one and only Japanese Evil Dead, also known as “The Lost Evil Dead remake“, and one of those films you’ve never seen. Well, thanks to Tubi, the only horror streaming service you need, we randomly came over this hidden relic earlier this year, and had no idea what to expect — other than some bizarre J-horror insanity, especially with a nutty title like this.

The best way to explain this short and simple, is as if a manic fifteen-year old got his religious calling card after watching Evil Dead, grabbed the parent’s 8mm and made his own magnum opus on pure impulse with his friends in the backyard. In other words: ultra-cheap, very primitive and Z-grade schlocky yet filled with crazy energy and dedicated, stubborn non-stop passion. And when it’s also from Planet Japan, you know you’re in for something extra and special. The film is written, produced, directed and edited by Shinichi Fukazawa, who of course, plays the bodybuilder from hell. He’s also behind the effects and make-ups. And this is, as we speak, the only film he’s directed.

We meet the young hunky bodybuilder Shinji, not Ashu, (played by the director himself) and his ex-girlfriend and paranormal journalist Mika. Since Shinji is without a job and has nothing better to do than pump iron, he tags along with Mika to investigate a local haunted house. They also bring a psychic priest. But this is not just some random house though; it’s the house of Shinji’s dad, who once lived there with a mysterious girlfriend. Aside from the trippy horrorshow that’s around the corner, we also have a lot of dark secrets and lore to be revealed during the one-hour runtime. The film was shot in Shinichi Fukazawa’s parents’ house, and since it was planned to be demolished, the young director got a whole free set on a silver platter to go wild and fire on all cylinders. And so he does.

The fun begins after the first dull twenty minutes. It all starts when the priest gets demon-possessed and trapped inside the house with our two protagonists. What we have next is more or less what the alternative title is: The Japanese Evil Dead, with some flair of Resident Evil, and even some well-known elements from The Grudge before The Grudge — and an extravaganza of splatter effects of various sorts with everything from cheap rubber limbs, eyes popping out, neck-biting, ball-grabbing, head-crushing with a barbell and even more trippy stop-motion effects. And gallons of blood. All done in the most naive old-school way possible. And yeah, there’s no Evil Dead without a golden shotgun, waiting to be used with the catchphrase See you in Hell… Baby! No sugar for the bodybuilder.

The production of Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell began in 1995 and making the film took 16 days. I’m kidding, it actually took him 16 years! Most of which I guess has to be editing stuff with some hardcore OCD involved, because, seriously. Body Builder in Hell got its first official release in Japan in 2012 when Shinichi Fukazawa self-distributed the film on a 100 limited DVD-R, in pure underground-style, before it was shown in theaters, only in Japan, of course. It was released on Blu-ray from Visual Vengeance in 2022. But if you expect some image restoration for your big 4K screen, you’d be disappointed. It’s necro like a death metal cassette tape from 1989, and that’s also the point, I guess. On the other hand, you get a c o o l poster. And owning a physical copy of this rare little gem is cool in itself.

Writer and director: Shinichi Fukazawa
Also known as: The Japanese Evil Dead
Country & year: Japan, 2012
Actors: Shinichi Fukazawa, Masaaki Kai, Masahiro Kai, Aki Tama Mai, Asako Nosaka
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6403680/

The Whisperer in Darkness (2012)

Posted on October 17, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Albert Wilmarth is a folklore lecturer at the Miskatonic University in Arkham. Albert have been receiving letters from a man named Henry Wentworth Akeley, who lives in an isolated farmhouse in Vermont. In the letters, this man claims that he’s got proof that there are creatures surrounding his farm, and they start exchanging letters back and forth. Albert, of course, is a skeptic, and he’s about to enter a debate with Charles Fort about the strange events during some heavy rains in Vermont. Unexpectedly, Henry’s son appears with photos of the creatures as evidence, and it all ends with Albert heading out to visit the man, and is shocked to find him in a completely frail state, immobilized to his chair and preferring the darkness. Yeah…nothing suspicious going on here, not at all…

Henry starts telling Albert about the creatures, how wonderful they are and how much knowledge they have. He also tells Albert something rather disturbing…they can, apparently, extract the brain from a human and place it in a canister where it can live indefinitely. In such a state, a human could even endure the dangers of space travel. How tempting! Or maybe not. Before Albert may start suspecting all this rubbish is only the result of too much isolation (and perhaps too much moonshine), he gets to see one of these “living brains“, who tells him about the journey to Yuggoth, which is where the creatures originally reside. And they urge Albert to take the trip too…

The Whisperer in Darkness is a sci-fi horrormovie from 2011, directed and produced by Sean Branney, Andrew Leman, and David Robertson, distributed by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. It is based on the Lovecraft short story by the same name. It’s made in black & white, intended to capture the look of the classic horror films from the 30’s. And just like their previous film, The Call of Cthulhu from 2005, they’ve managed to capture the moody atmosphere tinged with an underlying unease of the terror of the unknown. Visually, it looks great, and they’ve really captured the 30’s aesthetics.

Plot-wise, the movie follows the original story quite closely until the latter part where originally, the story ends much earlier. It’s during this latter part that the tone of the film takes a kind of shift, where new material is introduced that were not part of the original Lovecraft story. Then we get what I can best describe as some kind of adventure plot, and we even have full-on CGI monster displays which I honestly didn’t expect. And yeah…at this point it ends up straying far from the moody, mysterious vibe which is all about atmosphere and fear of the unknown (which is, of course, the substance of most Lovecraft stories), and they definitely took more liberties here compared to The Call of Cthulhu. Now, I personally don’t think any of this ruins the film in any way, and most of Lovecraft’s stories are a bit hard to put into a full-feature film since the main horror elements in the stories are not really the monsters or creatures themselves, but the mystery surrounding their existence and all the things we don’t know and their implications.

A big kudos to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society for bringing some of Lovecraft’s work to the screen while keeping so much of the original mood and atmosphere of the original stories. It’s impressive what they’ve been able to pull off with a very limited budget and mostly dedicated, talented amateurs. These movies are made with obvious love and affection for the original work, and that’s a pleasure to see.

Director: Sean Branney
Writers: Sean Branney, Andrew Leman
Country & year: USA, 2012
Actors: Stephen Blackehart, P.J. King, Zack Gold, Barry Lynch, Autumn Wendel, Annie Abrams, Daniel Kaemon, Matt Lagan, Casey Kramer, Sean Branney, Andrew Leman
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1498878/

Satan’s Slaves (2017)

Posted on October 12, 2025October 12, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in the Indonesian countryside, and the year is 1981. Mawarni, a once famous singer, has fallen ill and she is now bedridden. The royalties from Mawarni’s singing career are long gone as her popularity has faded, along with her health, so the family is also struggling financially. Their four children, 22-year old Rini, 16-year old Toni, 10-year old Bondu and 6-year old Ian who is deaf, are all trying to cope with the situation. The inevitable happens, and Mawarni dies. Shortly after her burial, Bahri, the husband, must travel to town in order to raise money for the mortgage payments. Rini, together with their grandmother Rahma, is now at home while experiencing strange events as they seem to be haunted by a ghostly presence. They also have the creepiest, most uncanny bathroom ever, with a well and all, where their grandmother eventually ends up dead inside. Was it an accident…or something else at play? Things go from bad to worse as there are more and more obvious signs of occult interference, and as Rini starts looking further into her deceased mother’s past, she finds there are ties to a Satanic cult.

Satan’s Slaves (Indonesian: Pengabdi Setan) is a supernatural horror film from Indonesia, released in 2017. It’s written and directed by Joko Anwar, and it’s a loose remake-prequel to the 1982 film which is called Satan’s Slave (and which we have already reviewed here on Horror Ghouls). Ever since starting his film-making career, Joko Anwar desired to make a remake of the original Pengabdi Setan. It was even his inspiration for becoming a filmmaker in the first place, after sneaking into a theater to watch it as a kid during the 80’s and then getting the full-on heebie jeebies from it. It’s the movies that scare the crap out of you as a kid that really gives the best inspiration later on, innit? Once he got everything sorted for the film’s creation, it took the production team four months (!) to seek out the perfect filming location to accurately represent the 80’s in which the film is taking place. Originally they wanted to film in Puncak Bogor, West Java, but the owner didn’t give them permission, so they had to continue the quest for the perfect place to film. They eventually hit the jackpot when they found an old house in the Pangalengan area, which they later redesigned to make it fit the 80’s aesthetic.

While the original Satan’s Slave from 1982 has some really good visuals and is quite atmospheric despite its rather cheesy vibe, it never really manages to come off as scary (probably a different story if you’re a kid during the 80’s sneaking into the movie theater to see it). Joko Anwar’s prequel/remake is totally different, delivering a brooding, dark vibe throughout. It mixes family drama, dark secrets, folklore and the occult in an investigative haunted house wrap, often reminiscent of the early Conjuring films. I guess you could say that Joko Anwar is Indonesia’s answer to James Wan.

There’s a lot of creepy visuals here, and the house where the family lives is always dark and gloomy. There’s even a bathroom with a well that looks like something straight out from a nightmare or a slightly surreal horror video game. Here, we do of course get several spooky scenes, including the death of the grandmother. As if the bathroom/well room wasn’t creepy and uncomfortable enough, there are also some scenes where two of the kids are urinating on the floor like the entire place is supposed to be a giant toilet. And no, this wasn’t supposed to be tied to any supernatural/occult stuff. It was…oddly disgusting. And I still have no idea why the hell this was a thing…

The story progression in the film is following a somewhat casual horror-investigation-mystery thread, where occult things start happening and the protagonist/s must try to figure out the who, why and what. With the title of the film, I guess it comes as no surprise that there is some kind of satanic goings-on here. And, yes, it’s in the veins of a regular “family gets haunted“ type of story, but with a different kind of flair than what we’re normally used to. I also really love the soundtrack, especially the vintage song Kelam Malam which has that perfect “spooky oldie days“ vibe (I’m also a sucker for oldies music). The songs were performed by The Spouse, Aimee Saras and ‘Tony Marle’.

Satan’s Slaves was a huge success in Indonesia, and ended up being the highest grossing Indonesian film during the year of its release, and it is indeed a very solid entry into the haunted house genre. There was later made a sequel, called Satan’s Slaves 2: Communion. And this one amps up the scares with a ton! Also check out Joko Anwar’s Impetigore from 2019.

Writer and director: Joko Anwar
Original title: Pengabdi Setan
Country & year: Indonesia/South Korea, 2017
Actors: Tara Basro, Bront Palarae, Dimas Aditya, Endy Arfian, Nasar Annuz, M. Adhiyat, Arswendy Bening Swara, Egy Fedly, Ayu Laksmi, Elly D. Luthan
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7076834/

Original: Satan’s Slave (1982)

The Woman in Black (2012)

Posted on October 7, 2025October 20, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

The year is 1889, and we’re in the village of Cryhin Gifford. Three little girls are playing in their nursery at the top floor of the house, when they suddenly notice a sinister presence in the room. Instead of running out in fear while screaming for their parents (as would be a normal reaction), the girls seem to come under the presence’s influence. They get up, walk towards the window, and jump to their deaths. Several years later, in 1906, we’re in London where the lawyer Arthur Kipps is waiting anxiously while his wife is giving labor. His son, Joseph, is born, but his wife Stella dies during childbirth. From one tragedy to another, just to make us aware pretty early on that this is a bleak and depressing story. Four years later, Arthur is still grieving and struggling, where his boss one day instructs him to visit Crythin Gifford in order to retrieve documents from the late Alice Drablow, who owned the infamous Eel Marsh House. Somewhat reluctantly, he travels there to find himself in a village where everyone is unwelcoming and suspicious of him, with the exception of the wealthy landowner Samuel Daily. The Eel Marsh House is located in a desolate marshland, where the pathway up to the place is sometimes inaccessible due to the high tides. Arthur also starts seeing glimpses of a mysterious woman in black, and each time he sees her, something terrible happens to one of the few remaining children in town. The townspeople blame Arthur, while Samuel tries to convince him not to fall into the superstitions of the villagers. But there are secrets at the Eel Marsh House that will reveal what really happened there, long ago…and it’s up to Arthur to make those secrets become unveiled.

The Woman in Black is a supernatural horror film from 2012, directed by James Watkins with screenplay by Jane Goldman. It is the second adaption of the 1983 Susan Hill novel of the same name, where the first adaption was made in 1989. This 2012 version stars the well known Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe in the leading role as Arthur Kipps (which makes for a very special fun fact: in the first adaptation Arthur Kipps is played by Adrian Rawlings, the actor who played Harry Potter’s dad). The movie was produced by Hammer Film Productions, Alliance Films, Cross Creek Pictures and the UK Film Council. It did pretty well at the box office, grossing $129 million worldwide against a budget of $15-$17 million.

While there are tons of movies about haunted houses and vengeful spooks out there, there’s not all too many that really carries that dark, brooding, classic ghost story vibe. You know the type: the ones with large Victorian mansions, dark hallways, sinister secrets, and so on. This, however, is one of those movies. Danielle Radcliffe, most known for his role as Harry Potter of course, is doing a great job playing a tormented and grieving lawyer who gets tangled up in a dark and dangerous mystery. With the perfect brooding locations, using Cotterstock Hall near Oundle in central England for exterior shots of the “Eel Marsh House“, Osea Island in Essex for the fictional “Nine Lives Causeway“ which leads up to the house, and the village scenes filmed in Halton Gill. It’s a beautiful looking film, drenched in gothic, gloomy atmosphere.

While this one and the first movie adaption from 1989 are very similar, they both have a few changes from each other and also compared to the book. And while this 2012 version has a lot more of the moody, dark and gothic atmosphere lingering throughout the entire movie, there were actually some scenes in the first movie that I honestly found creepier, especially the scene during the fog, which I found to be a lot more effective in its subtleness. Still, this one is focusing a lot more on the goth doom ‘n gloom vibe, which suits the film well being a Hammer production. After all, Hammer were pioneers in the gothic horror department.

The Woman in Black is a creepy, atmospheric and delightful ghost horror movie with a sinister vengeful spirit, an old village with unfriendly inhabitants carrying a secret, an old decrepit Victorian house as isolated as can possibly be, and so many other great ingredients for the perfect spooky haunting.

A sequel called The Woman in Black: Angel of Death was released in 2015.

Director: James Watkins
Writer: Jane Goldman
Country & year: UK, 2012
Actors: Daniel Radcliffe, Ciarán Hinds, Sophie Stuckey, Misha Handley, Jessica Raine, Roger Allam, Lucy May Barker, Alisa Khazanova, Ashley Foster
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596365/

Original: The Woman in Black (1989)

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Posted on August 8, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in the 70’s, and Gilderoy is a sound engineer traveling all the way from Britain to the Berberian Film Studio in Italy. He’s going to work on a film about horses…or so he thinks. When he arrives, the film producer Francesco tells him that the film is actually an Italian giallo film, called The Equestrian Vortex. Well, this wasn’t what Gilderoy signed up for, but he still decides to work at the studio to add the sound effects, or do “Foley work“ as it’s also called. Using inventive ways to add sounds to the film’s gory scenes (which we actually never see) he uses vegetables and mixes voiceovers from the session artists. At the same time, Gilderoy is struggling with colleagues who pretty much treat him like shit (but then again they also do so to each other), feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the work he’s doing, and he starts to detach from reality.

Berberian Sound Studio is a British psychological horror film from 2012, directed by Peter Strickland and co-written with Jon Croker. Strickland made a short film of it in 2005, where he said that he wanted to “make a film where everything that is usually hidden in cinema, the mechanics of film itself, is made visible. Berberian… turns this on its head. Here, the film is out of view, and you only see the mechanics behind it.“

This is one of those films where the tired-out phrase “isn’t for everyone“ truly fits. I’d think you’d have to inhabit at least a tiny interest to the art of sound editing, old-school moviemaking and Italian giallo in order to get the most out of a movie like this. It starts off on a somewhat comedic level, where the timid Gilderoy is struggling to set boundaries and voice his opinions, surrounded by the typical 70’s “Italian machismo“ culture. Then it gets increasingly bizarre as Gilderoy’s mental state starts deteriorating.

The sound effect making, where watermelons are smashed and cabbages are split in half, sometimes showing pieces of damaged and rotting vegetables all over the place, made me imagine an alternative universe where this would be a Terrifier-level horror movie for vegetables. There’s something about not seeing the actual scenes Gilderoy is making the sounds for, but just hearing the sounds, seeing the descriptions, and hearing the actresses screaming. It certainly leaves a lot to the imagination! And if The Equestrian Vortex was an actual film, I wouldn’t hesitate giving it a watch.

Eventually, the movie ventures pretty far into cuckoo-land and what really happens and what happens only in Gilderoy’s head isn’t all that clear. The ending is somewhat ambiguous, and if you’d think there would be some kind of Evil Ed development here you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’s more like a surrealistic, dark dream without much of a conclusion.

Berberian Sound Studio is an amusing and strange film, and while the ending didn’t quite land with me I found the overall experience to be enjoyable.

Director: Peter Strickland
Writers: Peter Strickland, Jon Croker
Country & year: UK/Germany, 2012
Actors: Toby Jones, Cosimo Fusco, Antonio Mancino, Fatma Mohamed, Salvatore Li Causi, Chiara D’Anna, Tonia Sotiropoulou, Eugenia Caruso, Susanna Cappellaro, Guido Adorni
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1833844/

The Bay (2012)

Posted on July 25, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, there’s a cozy town called Claridge. A reporter named Donna Thompson, totally fresh in the game, has decided to cover the local’s celebration of 4th July, but amidst all the fun a lot of the citizens start falling ill. And severely so. The hospital gets overwhelmed with patients, and the head doctor calls the CDC who believes it must be some kind of viral outbreak. Things keep getting worse, with people dying showing some really bizarre symptoms, like severe lesions and their tongues missing. What could be the cause of this? Well…some months earlier, two oceanographers discovered that the bay had high toxicity levels, and even encountered multiple fish that had been consumed from the inside out, by some kind of mutated isopod. Hmm…could this have something to do with the chicken farm nearby that have polluted the bay when dumping their chicken excrement and god knows what else into the water? One thing is for certain: everything turns into full chaos mode as people keep dying.

The Bay is a found footage horror movie from 2012, directed by Barry Levinson and written by Michael Wallach. It is based on a story created by the duo. The inspiration for the film came when Levinson was asked to produce a documentary about the problems facing the Chesapeake Bay, a project he chose to abandon when he learned that Frontline was already covering the issue. Deciding to make use of all the research, he produced a horror film instead and promoted it as “80 percent factual information“. The movie was shot on locations in North Caroline and South Carolina.

The Bay is a horror movie that may feel like yet another zombie-outbreak movie at first, but instead its playing around with a concept that sells itself as something that “could have happened“. While that is a bit of a stretch, of course, it’s still a horror movie that can make you quite uncomfortable, especially if you’ve either experienced or are aware of just how much damage bacteria and parasites can do to a human body. I’m still getting chills from remembering some of the episodes of the Monsters Inside Me series that was broadcast on Discovery…bloody nine hells, how disturbing some of that actually was..! And while a horror movie like this is of course exaggerating things, it’s kind of nasty to think of how close it still is to reality. Yes, the parasitic isopod eating tongues is a real thing: it’s called Cymothoa exigua. Not believed to be harmful to humans in real life, though…so, uhm, I guess that’s a relief…

The format, found footage docudrama, works pretty well for a movie like this. It feels a little chaotic at times with all the “footage“ put together in order to form the narrative, but this only adds to the perceived realism as the citizens are literally thrown into a deadly chaos. The extremely fast-acting way the parasitic infections occur in people reminds us a bit of the typical zombie-infestation buildup where things go from zero to a thousand in the blink of an eye. No one knows what’s happening until it’s too late, and then there’s the inevitable societal crumble. In that regard, the realistic approach falters a bit, but strengthens the horror elements.

Overall, The Bay is a nice found footage horror film which makes you more afraid of the tiny things in the water that you can’t see, rather than any big monster. Probably not a good watch for those suffering from Parasite phobia, though…

Director: Barry Levinson
Writers: Michael Wallach, Barry Levinson
Country & year: USA, 2012
Actors: Nansi Aluka, Christopher Denham, Stephen Kunken, Frank Deal, Frank Deal, Kether Donohue, Kristen Connolly, Will Rogers, Kimberly Campbell, Beckett Clayton-Luce
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1713476/

Sharktopus (2010)

Posted on July 22, 2025July 22, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Nathan Sands is a geneticist (or just a mad scientist, if you will) who has been hired by the U.S. Navy to create a new weapon. Together with his daughter Nicole, they have created a large intelligent shark with the tentacles of an octopus, because that sounds like an excellent idea where nothing can go wrong. A sharktopus, in other words, but for some reason they have decided to simply call it S-11. They control the creature by using a device on its head, which gives electromagnetic pulses. Because an attachment to such a creature’s head which is the entire means of control over it sounds like the greatest idea ever, right? Well, as can easily be imagined, the S-11 gets rid of the annoying device, and swims along to Mexican waters to create some mayhem and perhaps enjoy some human burritos. Sands and Nicole must find someone that can help them capture the monster, and meets up with a cocky dude named Andy Flynn who is apparently the most suited for the job. The catch is: the monster must be captured alive. Easier said than done! As Nicole and Andy tries to follow its tracks, a pesky news reporter called Stacy Everheart and her henpecked cameraman Bones starts pursuing the story of the year.

Sharktopus is a SyFy horror film produced by Roger Corman and directed by Declan O´Brien, which later sparked a franchise. And ohhh boy, could this one have been a total rotten fish of a stinker if it wasn’t for the obvious tongue-in-cheek approach and the self-awareness displayed here. It’s made as a “so-bad-it’s good“ movie, and that is a much harder achievement than one might initially expect. Few movies that aim for this setup manages to pull it off, but Sharktopus is one of those exceptions. It delivers exactly what it promises, and you’d have to be an idiot if you were to take it seriously for even a split second. It’s yet another movie where I’m glad we have badges instead of ratings here on Horror Ghouls…

The setup is pretty simple: crazy scientist creates monster, monster runs amok, heroes must stop it. The characters are pretty bland, with Eric Roberts as Nathan Sands being the most decent of the bunch. That being said, the over-acting and clunky performances from several of the actors here is what offers some decent laughs, plus the hilarious kill scenes mixed with bad CGI effects. Not to mention campy lines like:

– Oh no, not like this! Arrrgghhhhhh! (while attempting to convince the viewer they have really been caught by those crappy CGI tentacles)
– Damn you Sharktopus!
– You can stop staring at my rack. They’re just boobs. They’re not gonna get up and dance or anything.
– That guy was killed in front of us inches away. Inches away! Gosh. He was kind of a nice guy, you know? Smell a little funky, but he was okay. Now he’s dead.

Yeah…if I haven’t made it pretty clear already, Sharktopus is indeed a horrible movie, but for all the good reasons. It’s a lot of stupid fun, and a nice watch for the shark week!

Also, in 2023 the movie actually had a remake…from China, of all places. And to be honest it looks more like they tried to make a remake of Deep Rising. Currently not available officially anywhere outside of China…but as of now, there’s YouTube…and here’s a link to the trailer.

Director: Declan O’Brien
Writers: Mike MacLean, Stephen Niver
Country & year: USA, 2010
Actors: Eric Roberts, Kerem Bürsin, Sara Malakul Lane, Sara Malakul Lane, Héctor Jiménez, Liv Boughn, Julian Gonzalez Esparza, Blake Lindsey, Peter Nelson, Maija Markula
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1619880/

Jug Face (2013)

Posted on June 10, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Ada is a young woman who lives in an isolated backwoods community. Aside from selling their homemade moonshine in the nearest town, this community worships a pit that is said to have healing powers. The catch? The pit demands a sacrifice every now and then, because all good things requires a certain price to pay. One of the community members, a man named Dwight, gets visions of the next sacrifice and creates “jug faces“ from clay. The face on the latest jug must then be sacrificed to the entity that lives in the pit. Ada, visiting Dwight one day, notices his latest creation. Guess whose face is portrayed on it? Yup, it’s hers, of course. Terrified, she decides to hide the jug away. What then happens is a chain reaction of horrible events: she is arranged to marry a boy named Bodey, but Ada is already pregnant with her beloved brother’s child (yes, really). This is something she must try to keep a secret, but the worries don’t stop there. Ada is having a vision where she witnesses the death of Bodey’s sister, killed by the angered entity who didn’t get the sacrifice it wanted. Ada tries everything she can to escape both the community and the entity’s wrath, only to cause even more death.

Jug Face is a supernatural folk horror film from 2013, written and directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle. The jug faces in the movie was made by potter and sculptor Jason Mahlke, who designed them specifically for the film. And they certainly work in the movie’s favor, as they look like something that could be sold at an estate sale and later winding up in The Warren Occult Museum.

Many folk horror movies often deal with protagonists coming to visit certain isolated villages or communities, while this one tells a story solely from inside the community itself. They have lived for a long time with certain traditions, with the pit giving them protection from disease and also offering healing properties. What’s an occasional human sacrifice every now and then, right? And in order to make everything feel more justified, they let the entity pick the chosen one. And of course, like in the majority of all communities: you can’t really escape it.

Jug Face is definitely not a movie for the more casual horror audience. This backwoods folk horror movie delves into themes like incest, graphic depictions of having the period, and a miscarriage just to put the nasty cherry on top. There’s some gore during the killings, but not anything over the top, and most of it looks like leftovers from the local butchery (perhaps it even was, who knows). There’s still an unsettling atmosphere throughout, mixed with Ada’s isolation and lack of any easy escape route.

Jug Face is a pretty solid entry into the more bizarre hillbilly folk horror genre. A small-scale hicksploitation film that offers an interesting premise, and plays it along surprisingly straight-forward. Well worth a watch if you want something a little folkish, strange, and a little bit disgusting.

Writer and director: Chad Crawford Kinkle
Country & year: USA, 2013
Actors: Sean Bridgers, Lauren Ashley Carter, Kaitlin Cullum, Larry Fessenden, Katie Groshong, Scott Hodges, Daniel Manche, Alex Maizus, Chip Ramsey, Jennifer Spriggs
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2620736/

The Collection (2012)

Posted on February 21, 2025February 21, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Elena Peters is a teenager who goes to a party with friends. Upon seeing her boyfriend making out with another girl, she needs some space and ends up in an isolated room, where she finds a wooden trunk. Someone is inside, and when she opens it, Arkin (from the first movie The Collector) is released. This sets off a bunch of deadly booby traps, and Elena’s friends and a lot of the other party-people are killed left and right, while The Collector watches it all unfold until he kidnaps Elena for his collection. Arkin, on the other hand, manages to escape by jumping out of a window which causes him to break his arm. At the hospital, he is happy to learn that his wife and daughter are safe, but also learns that Elena has a wealthy father who has hired a team of mercenaries to hunt down The Collector. Arkin is the only known survivor that has been to The Collector’s place, and the mercenaries wants him to join them. They end up at an abandoned hotel, where everything is of course booby-trapped from top to bottom and we finally get to see some of The Collector’s collection…

The Collection is a horror film from 2012, the sequel of the 2009 film The Collector. Once again directed by Marcus Dunstan and co-written with Patrick Melton, the movie follows the story very much immediately after the end of the first one. The movie opens with a scene that, while it doesn’t surpass it, reminds me a bit of the opening scene in Ghost Ship (2002). This gives everything an even more over-the-top energy, and The Collector suddenly goes from a smart and sadistic serial killer to an outright Batman/Superhero-type villain. It’s just a bit too excessive to be especially believable, but who the fuck cares. Now it’s time for some non-stop gore action, and the serial killer’s domain are giving off more Saw-vibes than ever. The traps and conceptions inside the hotel always lead to gruesome deaths, and we also get to see some of The Collector’s displays…let’s just say it’s not only bugs that are inside those exhibits.

There are also a few horror references as well here, like the abandoned hotel which is called “Hotel Argento“ (obviously a nod to Dario Argento), and the mannequins in the hotel were also a nod to Maniac (1980).

Overall, The Collection is a fun gore-filled time which is a pretty decent sequel to the first movie, and just like the first it doesn’t require too many brain cells to watch. Sure, in some ways there are things that feel even more over-the-top and nonsensical than the first, but whatever. It’s a brainless serial-killer-villain gore ride, and works perfectly fine for what it is. The movie does end with quite the cliffhanger, so let’s hope that the third installment gets out of development hell soon. Because, yes, there is a third film underway, but it’s one that’s been going through a ton of setbacks: ever since announcing the third film in 2012, which will have the title The Collected, everything have moved at a snail’s pace and gotten one setback after the other. In 2019 a poster was unveiled, and filming began on September 23, 2019. Then, after eight days of filming, the production was unexpectedly shut down, with plans of starting up again in late October. Nope, didn’t happen. Then, it was said it would begin in 2021, but again no such luck. In April 2021, Dunstan claimed that props had been stolen from the set, and on top of that, he does not have the rights to the film so he couldn’t finish it on his own. And then, in 2022, it was reported that the production had been delayed but not cancelled, and finally in 2024 Dunstan revealed it’s in development. Damn, what a mess. So we’ll just have to cross our fingers and wait and see, hopefully we’ll get the third (and perhaps final) entry so this will be a pretty good trilogy.

Director: Marcus Dunstan
Writers: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan
Country & year: USA, 2012
Actors: Josh Stewart, Emma Fitzpatrick, Christopher McDonald, Lee Tergesen, Tim Griffin, Andre Royo, Randall Archer, Shannon Kane, Brandon Molale, Erin Way, Johanna Braddy, Michael Nardelli
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1748227/

Prequel: The Collector (2009)

Mom and Dad (2017)

Posted on January 28, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in a suburban town where a mother is putting on some music in the car for her child. Static starts playing…and she then drives her car to some railroad tracks and leaves her child to die there. Then we head over to the Ryans, a family consisting of the mom Kendall (Selma Blair), the dad Brent (Nicolas Cage), the daughter Carly (Anne Winters) and the son Joshua (Zackary Arthur). Things are, like in most normal families, stressful and a little strained here and there: the dad’s going through a mid-life crisis, brother and sister are picking fights with each other, and the mom is trying to occupy herself with taking fitness classes. The kids go to school as usual, and then the TV screens and radios starts transmitting the static we saw in the opening scene of the film. All hell breaks lose, and parents all over the place are going crazy and hellbent on killing their own offspring. Brent and Kendall are no exception to this mass hysteria, and the children must try to stay safe from the people who should’ve been the safest of all.

Mom and Dad is a black comedy horror film from 2017, written and directed by Brian Taylor (who also directed the recent Hellboy movie Hellboy: The Crooked Man from 2024). It had a limited release, and while getting a generally positive reception it underperformed badly, grossing only $286,313 against its $4 million budget. Still, Nicolas Cage said it was his favorite movie that he had filmed in 10 years, and John Waters named it as one of his top 10 favorites released that year.

Now, a movie about parents going insane and wanting to kill their children sounds like a pretty fun idea for a horror movie, right? While it could have been anything from a serious and grisly movie to something that takes itself too seriously, it fortunately takes the road of black comedy instead which fits perfectly here. It’s pretty fast-paced, and easily entertaining despite not exactly having the thickest of plot. Originally, I expected the movie to be a bit more gory, though… sure, there is a bit here and there but not that much as many of the kills are off-screen.

The major theme of the movie is parents feeling trapped in parenthood. There is a line in the movie, where Brent says: “I mean, I used to be Brent… and you used to be Kendall… and now we’re just… Mom and Dad “. And I think this rings true for many parents, who might end up losing themselves in a busy family life and not having enough time to nurture the relationship to their spouse, their hobbies, and all the other things that gets thrown into the backburner because when you become a mom and dad, that’s your priority. And of course, we understand that this is how it needs to be: no children ask to be born, and making this choice involves all those responsibilities. Some are able to balance being a parent with all the other things in life, and some end up feeling “trapped“ in their own self-made bed, regretting their life choices, regretting getting older, and putting the blame on the children they chose to have. This by itself doesn’t turn them all into child-killing crazies, of course, but something in this movie triggers these deep-laden feelings. It is not entirely clear what actually caused the murderous rampage by parents, except we know it’s got something to do with the static that starts playing everywhere.

Mom and Dad is an entertaining movie filled with madness and fun, and fortunately never takes itself too seriously. Cage is in full unhinged Cage-Rage mode which is always a joy to watch, and even Lance Henriksen shows up here as Brent’s dad to push things even further as all the moms and dads are on a killing spree. Overall a good time, despite not getting much of a conclusion to anything.

Writer and director: Brian Taylor
Country & year: USA/UK, 2017
Actors: Nicolas Cage, Selma Blair, Anne Winters, Zackary Arthur, Robert T. Cunningham, Olivia Crocicchia, Lance Henriksen, Marilyn Dodds Frank, Samantha Lemole, Joseph D. Reitman
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5462326/