2024 – Horror Ghouls

Cuckoo (2024)

Posted on February 7, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Gretchen and her father Luis, Stepmother Beth, and the mute half-sister Alma moves to a resort town in the Bavarian Alps. Gretchen doesn’t really want to, but she can’t live with her mother anymore and needs to come with them. Yay. Her family are going to help building a new hotel there, and upon arriving the buoyant Herr König offers Gretchen a job at the front desk where she even manages to meet a love interest. So…maybe things won’t be so bad after all? Then, strange and bad shit starts happening of course. Several women are entering the reception desk while vomiting, and she also has an encounter with a terrifying hooded woman. Things start getting even more serious when Gretchen meets a detective named Henry, who is investigating a murder that happened on the premises. On top of it all, Alma starts having seizures. Gretchen feels compelled to both get the fuck away from there and also to find out what’s up with this resort, which soon proves to put both herself and her entire family in danger.

Cuckoo is a horror film from 2024, written and directed by Tilman Singer. It premiered at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival on February 16, 2024, and was then released theatrically in the US on August 9, and later in Germany on August 29.

This is one of those movies where you (unless you’ve gone and gotten the entire plot spoiler from somewhere beforehand) have no idea what it will be going for. All you know is that it’s going to be one of those unraveling mystery packages where you’ll be sitting like a bit of a question mark for some time during the viewing. And indeed, already from the start you are immediately teased with several little nuggets about the protagonist and her struggles, not knowing much more than that she misses her mother and keeps calling her. Her relationship to her stepmother and half-sister are barely existent, and her relationship to her father is strained and filled with underlying hurt. Atmosphere-wise, the Bavarian Alps and the beautiful landscape fits rather well to give off an isolated feeling, which ironically couldn’t make too much of a difference to Gretchen as she’s already alone and isolated with her own struggles. Everything Gretchen experiences almost feels like the result of a shroom-induced fever dream, where everything is just…well…off. Everything just feels weird, odd, and totally cuckoo, and this surreal vibe throughout is not even the movie’s raison d’etre. Let’s just say that the movie’s title is actually more literal than you’d imagine.

We do get a fair amount of time with Gretchen wandering around, taking her bicycle out for some exploring, finding out one piece of the mystery puzzle after the other until things start falling into place. Eventually, once the mysteries are revealed, we do venture into a total sci-fi-fiddle-faddle territory where it doesn’t really…make too much sense, I guess? It’s very much making up its own logic, and in some ways this makes for an even more surreal and trippy experience where nothing seems to be grounded in reality. Like one of those dreams you have that starts off with a certain familiarity to real life, and then everything ventures into total cuckoo-land where you later realize that dreaming is often like being temporarily mentally insane. I personally think the odd and surreal choices for the story in Cuckoo works pretty well, but I can see how some people might be put off by it.

Overall, Cuckoo is a weird film with a slightly dreamlike vibe to it, focusing a lot on a surreal mood and atmosphere and ends up going places you probably didn’t expect beforehand.

Writer and director: Tilman Singer
Country & year: Germany/USA, 2024
Actors: Hunter Schafer, Jan Bluthardt, Marton Csokas, Jessica Henwick, Dan Stevens, Mila Lieu, Greta Fernández, Proschat Madani, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Konrad Singer, Kalin Morrow
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12349832/

The Soul Eater (2024)

Posted on January 21, 2025January 21, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

In a remote little French town located somewhere in the mountains, there have been a series of children’s disappearance cases. An old legend from the area, about a malevolent creature referred to as the “Soul Eater“, is resurfacing when the town also gets plagued by several violent and gruesome deaths which apparently defy explanation. Franck de Roland, captain in the national gendarmerie, comes to investigate the missing children’s cases, and ends up together with police superior Elizabeth Guardiano who is investigation some of the recent murders. They do not get together all that well at first, but once it becomes obvious that both the murders and the missing children cases are in some way linked together, they need to cooperate.

The Soul Eater (Le Mangeur d’Âmes) is a French horror thriller from 2024, directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, known for their impressive debut Inside (2007) and other movies like Livide (2011) and The Deep House (2021). The movie is based on a novel from 2021, called “Le Mangeur d’âmes“ by Alexis Laipsker. The French duo have undoubtedly made a mixed bag of entries in the horror genre, where they started off with a solid debut but have also had some releases which didn’t hold up as strongly (like the Leatherface movie from 2017). This movie is a bit different from any of their previous entries as it’s more a standard thriller than a horror movie, despite the trailer more or less leading you on to suspect some kind of supernatural flick.

On surface level The Soul Eater doesn’t offer something especially unique or truly unsettling, but the setup is quite good and the sleepy little mountain town works well for establishing the right tone. It’s a place where you can easily imagine the people creating their own folklore and myths, surrounded by mountains and endless forests. The isolated location makes for some decent scenery as well, and you get a believable feeling of how this town has kept to themselves without much intervention from outsiders. And it’s in places like those that all kinds of bad shit can start to happen, of course. Like any decent mystery thriller, the secrets are unfolding gradually, and while it did have a few pacing issues towards the latter part, I never found myself bored.

Some may have hoped that Bustillo and Maury would get back into their old tracks with this new release, and thus it may come as a bit of a letdown that this is more a crime thriller than outright horror. It’s pretty fine for what it is, though, and it does have a creepy build-up regarding the mystery and a nice setting. Overall The Soul Eater is a pretty good murder mystery thriller, and while it’s not having very strong horror elements it stands as a decent release from the French duo. It still seems like we’re a long way from expecting another move in the same vein as Inside from them, though…

Directors: Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury
Writers: Annelyse Batrel, Ludovic Lefebvre
Country & year: France/Belgium, 2024
Original title: Le mangeur d’âmes
Actors: Virginie Ledoyen, Paul Hamy, Sandrine Bonnaire, Francis Renaud, Malik Zidi, Cameron Bain, Lya Oussadit-Lessert, Chloé Coulloud
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28821588/

Nosferatu (2024)

Posted on January 7, 2025January 7, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

A young girl named Ellen is filled with a soul-crushing loneliness, causing her to pray in despair and desperately seeking comfort from anyone…or anything. Unfortunately for her, her prayers are answered. Then, some years later in 1838, she’s happily married to a man named Thomas Hutter, and they live in the town of Wisborg, Germany. Her husband works as a solicitor and estate agent, but he’s struggling a bit financially and hopes to achieve some financial security for them both. His employer, Herr Knock, tells Hutter that there is a reclusive and eccentric count in Transylvania, Count Orlok, who wants to buy Schloss Grünewald, and asks Hutter to travel to the count’s place and seal the deal. Upon hearing this, Ellen is terrified and begs him to stay, but he dismisses her and heads off to the Carpathian Mountains while his wife stays with his wealthy friend, Friedrich Harding and his wife Anna. When he arrives in Transylvania, the locals try to warn him off, but of course he doesn’t pay heed to their superstitions. The evening he arrives at the castle, he meets the intimidating Orlok, dines with him and pretty much wants to finalize the purchase of Schloss Grünewald as soon as possible and get out of there. Instead, Hutter finds himself a victim to Orlok’s bloodlust. Finally managing his escape by falling out of a window and into the river below, he is later found by a nun who brings him to a nearby church where they start nursing him back to health. Meanwhile, Orlok’s coffin is on board a ship sailing towards Wisborg (and Ellen) bringing with him plague-infested rats and death.

Nosferatu is another remake/reimagined version of the 1922 silent movie by F. W. Murnau, a film that was a little too closely inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel from 1897 and almost ended up as lost media when Stoker’s widow took legal action and a judge ordered all copies to be destroyed. Thankfully, some survived, and there has since been several remakes and spinoffs made: Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) by Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski as Nosferatu, Nosferatu in Venice (1988) also starring Klaus Kinski as Nosferatu and originally intended to be a sequel to Herzog’s 1979 film and co-directed by Kinski together with Augusto Caminito, Shadow of the Vampire (2000) which is a movie based on the making of the 1922 film where Willem Dafoe plays Nosferatu/Max Schreck, and a 2023 crowd-funded remake with Doug Jones as Nosferatu. Not to mention all references in other media, even including Spongebob.

Robert Eggers had his directorial debut with The Witch (2015), and have since continued to impress with his blend of horror, mythology and folklore, which can also be seen in The Lighthouse (2019). A reimagining of Nosferatu done by this guy sounds like every folklore-horror lover’s dream. And while honoring the source material, he also adds his own flavour to it of course.

The development for Eggers version began in 2015, where he was very much thinking of it as a passion project. Many actors have been cast and re-cast since then, where Skarsgård was originally cast as Thomas Hutter, but then re-cast as Count Orlok (quite the change). To prepare for his role, he lost a significant amount of weight and worked with Icelandic opera singer Ásgerður Júníusdóttir so he could lower his vocal range. The prosthetic makeup took up to six hours a day to apply, and needless to say…he’s completely unrecognizable in this film. While you could clearly see some of his traits beneath his Pennywise makeup in IT (2017), he’s totally unrecognizable here. No wonder he considered his Orlok-transformation experience as “conjuring pure evil“. His looks as Orlok was also kept a secret prior to the film’s release, making a lot of people wonder what the result would be. And while some people found his moustache off-putting for some reason (sure, his looks differ a lot from the goblin/rat-like Orlok from the original) it’s easy to see what Eggers went for here, making him look more like an actual ancient Romanian count. Eggers have deliberately gone back to several of the actual folklore aspects regarding vampires and vampirism, where they were quite literally walking undead corpses.

The filming took place primarily in Prague at Barrandov Studios, and they were also shooting on location at the 14th-century Rožmitál pod Třemšínem Castle in Rožmitál pod Třemšínem, and Pernštejn Castle (also used as the location for Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre), Prague’s Invalidovna complex, and some exterior shots were captured in Corvin Castle in Romania, which is actually the castle where Vlad Dracula was briefly imprisoned. Great use of locations, without a doubt. The film was also shot on 35mm in color by cinematographer Jarin Blaschke,using special filters to adapt the desaturated look reminiscent of 19th century Romanticism. Another fun tidbit is that 5000 live rats were used in this film, and none of them were harmed or lost. There’s one scene featuring Willem Dafoe where he had to work with 2000 rats around him, which he didn’t mind as he’s an animal lover but admitted they could be a little unpredictable but were “great acting partners“. No musophobia to be spotted here, at least!

There’s certainly been put great attention to details in Nosferatu, with costumes, locations, sets and cinematography. Despite the film being dark and moody, it’s also manifestly gorgeous where it’s gracefully blending its grotesqueries with beauty. Regarding performances, I have to give praise to Lily-Rose Depp in her role as Ellen, she does a formidable job with her role as the haunted and possessed woman. Willem Dafoe is fun to watch as the Van Helsing-esque occult expert, and it’s especially fun to see him in this movie since he played Max Schreck/Count Orlok in the 2000 movie Shadow of the Vampire. The actors are all doing great, but there’s no doubt that the most impressive performance comes from Skarsgård himself where the transformation is utterly radical and he really does go all in. I have to admit, though, that I gave some involuntary chuckles when he first started speaking with the deep, slow, raspy voice where he sounds like he’s in desperate need of an inhaler. It took some getting used to, but once I did, I thought it suited the character pretty well, especially with how he otherwise looks like a literal decaying corpse. I also couldn’t really shake it from my mind how my brother, upon seeing a picture reveal of Skarsgård’s Orlok version, said he looked like “a grotesque Dr. Eggman“. Yeah…couldn’t really unsee it afterwards…thanks, bro.

There’s no doubt that the Eggers version of Nosferatu is a visual, stylish experience layered with ominous atmosphere and overt sexual undertones. It many ways it differs from both the original and its other remakes, with elements that will be enjoyable for some and off-putting for others, but we loved it through and through!

Writer and director: Robert Eggers
Country & year: USA/UK/Hungary, 2024
Actors: Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Bill Skarsgård, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney, Adéla Hesová, Milena Konstantinova, Stacy Thunes
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5040012/

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

Posted on December 20, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

The year is 1996, and the teenagers Owen and Maddy start bonding over a TV show called The Pink Opaque. The show is about two teenage girls, Isabel and Tara, who use their psychic powers to fight the supervillain Mr. Melancholy. Owen, who isn’t allowed to stay up late enough to watch the show, sneaks over to Maddy’s house so they can watch it together. Both of them live rather isolated lives, but Maddy ends up wanting to run away in order to escape her abusive stepfather. She wants Owen to join her, but he finds himself not being able to go through with it. So, Maddy ends up missing, and at the same time, The Pink Opaque is cancelled…

I Saw the TV Glow is a supernatural horror drama film, written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun. The series in the film, The Pink Opaque, was inspired by 90’s TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1990) and The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994).

If you’re familiar with A24’s repertoire, you know that they often release some really artsy movies (like Beau is Afraid). This one belongs to this category, as another unconventional arthouse film which is naturally divisive. They are also often filled with loads of metaphors and allegories, surrealism and awkwardness. I Saw the TV Glow looks, on the surface, to be some kind of 90s nostalgia throwback film, but it’s also layered as a much more complex coming-of-age movie. The director started writing the script three months after having begun hormone replacement therapy, and while wanting to make the movie about the transitioning of coming out, the director made the choice of leaving this more ambiguous. This makes the movie work as an allegory for a lot more, and portrays a lot of themes and situations many of us can recognize.

Now, I was born in the 80’s. This means I was a teenager during the 90s, and watched several of the typical 90’s TV shows, remembering some of them fondly. And there is a scene, where Owen in his older days decides to re-watch some episodes of The Pink Opaque, only to see that they’re not quite the way he remembered them. I think many of us can very much relate to how certain things are so layered with the rose-colored glow of nostalgia that we remember them so differently…not because they were different, of course, but because we were different. How the sort of magic that exists in your youth cannot be replicated in adult life, no matter how hard you try…and how you must simply come to terms with that, and find a new magic in your life and fill it with new interests and new things to do. Some people are not so lucky, though. In I Saw the TV Glow, Owen and Maddy become so consumed by the TV show The Pink Opaque because they use it as a coping mechanism.

I Saw the TV Glow is an arthouse movie that’s mostly an allegory for finding your identity. More surreal drama than horror, and definitely not everyone’s cup of Mad Hatter’s tea, but if you’ve lived for some time on this arduous earth, you’re most likely going to resonate with at least some of the themes it represents.

Writer and director: Jane Schoenbrun
Country & year: USA, UK, 2024
Actors: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan, Danielle Deadwyler, Fred Durst, Conner O’Malley, Emma Portner, Madaline Riley
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15574270/

Heretic (2024)

Posted on December 10, 2024December 10, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are two Mormon Church Missionaries, who ends up at the home of a man called Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) who has asked for their visitation. Reed is a bit of a reclusive, but the lovely smell of blueberry pie in the oven that he tells them his wife is preparing, is quick to put the young women at ease. They begin discussing religion, and Reed starts asking a lot of questions and makes a few uncomfortable comments about their faith. They are being served one red flag after another, until they have had enough and decide to leave. Only to find out that they can’t, of course. And now they are trapped in Reed’s house, where he puts them up to challenges and giving them lectures, claiming that he has found the one true religion. And he wants to show these young women his findings…

Heretic is a psychological horror film, written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (Haunt, 2019 and 65, 2023).

This is a movie where the few characters and limited location leave the actors with limited tools, but in the right setting such movies can work wonders in building up a tense atmosphere. This one certainly belongs in that category. The acting is good and the characters believable, where Hugh Grant really sells it as the coldly vicious villain. This was his second horror film since The Lair of the White Worm (1988), where romantic comedies have been his main department over the years. Well, it’s often nice to do something completely different after such a long time! Also, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East were both raised Mormon so they carry their roles with what appears to offer a good insight and a convincing performance.

As can be expected, the underlying critique of religious structures and the control they maintain is served through much of Reed’s lectures. And while you’ll probably ponder a bit what the so-called “one true religion“ really is, which Reed claims he’s found, you probably won’t be too surprised once it’s revealed. The film also doesn’t hammer it down on your head which “side“ you’re supposed to agree with the most. In fact, Reed is undoubtedly completely right with many of the things he lectures about to the young women, but Barnes and Paxton also provides reasonable views and thoughts on their own beliefs. Now, I am not a religious person myself, but I did find myself agreeing with the young women on certain points even though they weren’t “right“…like how Sister Paxton mentions how prayer experiments have shown that praying doesn’t help, but she still considers it a nice thing to do in order to offer comfort to someone else. Reed might be right in a lot of his conclusions, but just like certain religious aspects which he’s eager to criticize, he’s using his beliefs to commit and justify his actions and thus inevitably placing him in the same category as other religious fanatics trying to control others.

I don’t want to spoil anything else as this movie is best watched while knowing as little about it as possible. Heretic is a suspenseful and dark theological thriller, very dialogue-driven but mastering it with great skill.

In the film’s credits, there’s the statement “No Generative Al was used in the making of this film“. So thumbs up for that!

Writers and directors: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
Country & year: USA, Canada, 2024
Actors: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East, Topher Grace, Elle Young, Julie Lynn Mortensen
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28015403/

Sting (2024)

Posted on December 3, 2024December 3, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

In a somewhat dilapidated apartment building, a mischievous and rebellious 12-year old girl, Charlotte, gets an unexpected pet when a glowing object crash-lands in her aunt’s apartment. From said object, a tiny spider hatches (nothing suspicious about that, right?), and Charlotte decides to keep it and names it Sting. Upon feeding it, it keeps growing at an alarming rate (still nothing suspicious about that, it seems), but she still decides to keep her new pet a secret from the rest of her family: her mother, her step-father (who is a comic book artist that creates a project in collaboration with her, which proves to go a bit sour) and of course her baby brother who is too little to understand anything at this point anyway. Her biological father is living abroad and that’s the reason he can’t show her any attention (or at least so she’s told). A little family drama aside, the real problem here is Sting’s growing appetite which makes it search for other prey. While Charlotte keeps it in a jar, it’s smart enough to open the hatch and get outside to do a little night-hunting. And now the entire apartment building are in danger from a spider that keeps growing and keeps eating…

Sting is a horror film from 2024, directed by Kiah Roache-Turner. The director, being from Australia, said that the inspiration for this movie comes from his fear of spiders: “I have raging arachnophobia because I’m an Australian, and everything in Australia is trying to kill you“. Truer words could not have been spoken. I’m thankful for the tiny and harmful little buggers we have here in Norway! Here, you’re not likely to get killed by any wildlife, aside from the odd chance of getting in the way of a very angry moose. And even that is highly unlikely.

Now, Sting is yet another creature feature about a monstrous spider, which we’ve had a few entries of as of late and with some similarities. Just like in Vermin (2023), the story is taking place in an apartment building and affects the population there, and like in the cheese-flick Arachnid (2001) the spider comes from outer space. Other than that, it manages to stand on its own legs and differs mostly in how it’s got a nearly family-friendly tone over it, where it almost starts a little heartwarming while Charlotte bonds with Sting. Then, the grisly murders committed by the monster-spider are quick to remind us that this is a horror film after all. Hadn’t it been for the violent deaths, Sting could easily have been more of a children’s thriller (nothing wrong with that, of course).

The movie does focus a bit on family drama, and while some of it was fun enough (like the overly grumpy old aunt and her antics) others parts of it felt a little contrived. What makes the movie entertaining, at least for my part, is the spider itself and the mayhem it causes. Many of the angles, having the camera lead us into air ducts, claustrophobic little hallways and so on, helps building the suspense and a feeling that the creepy-crawly could be anywhere.

There’s also more than a few references to be found in the movie, where the most obvious is the girl’s name being Charlotte (a reference to Charlotte’s Web, a well-known story about a pig becoming friends with a clever spider named Charlotte). And one of the characters carrying a nail gun for “protection“ is most likely a reference to Arachnophobia from 1990. The special effects in the movie are also pretty good, with several of them being practical effects. Richard Taylor was involved in the effects for the movie (whose company, Weta Workshop, also made effects for Lord of the Rings among several others).

Sting is a satisfying little addition to the creature feature list involving spiders, with some very nice special effects.

Writer and director: Kiah Roache-Turner
Country & year: Australia, USA, 2024
Actors: Noni Hazlehurst, Jermaine Fowler, Alyla Browne, Robyn Nevin, Ryan Corr, Kate Walsh, Penelope Mitchell, Jett Berry, Kade Berry, Silvia Colloca
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20112746/

Oddity (2024)

Posted on November 26, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Dani is the wife of a psychiatrist named Ted Timmis, and she’s alone in their newly acquired country house which they are renovating. Suddenly, Dani realizes that something’s wrong, and a man named Olin Boole appears outside the house. Olin is one of her husband’s former patients, and he claims that there’s someone in the house with her, and demands that she lets him in. Naturally skeptical of this seemingly unhinged person, she refuses. Until she actually starts believing him…and opens the door. Then we fast forward to one year after Dani’s murder which Olin Boole was believed to be responsible for, and Ted’s got a new woman, Yana, in the country home and appears to have moved on pretty well. Dani’s twin sister, Darcy, has not…she’s a blind clairvoyant with psychometric powers, meaning she can touch an object and sense its story. She also runs an antique shop, of course. Ted promised to hand her the glass eye that belonged to Olin, who is also dead, so he makes a hasty visit and hands it to her. Shortly afterwards Darcy makes an unexpected visit to Ted’s residence, much to Yana’s dismay, and she’s brought with her an odd and creepy looking life-sized wooden mannequin as a gift…

Oddity is an Irish horror film from 2024, written and directed by Damian McCarthy. It was shot in County Cork, Ireland, in a converted barn where the director also shot his first film Caveat. He worked on both films simultaneously. The creepy mannequin was created by effects artist Paul McDonnell, and since McCarthy is a guy who frequently browses antique stores, many of the props we see in the film are from his own collection.

This film surely is a slow-burner, where atmosphere and a creeping sense of dread is the foundation of what is essentially a straightforward murder mystery. It does have that classic old-fashioned ghost story vibe to it, and while the mannequin doesn’t necessarily play as much of a role in this movie as I initially expected, it does serve its purpose. The setting where Ted’s country house is almost castle-like in its appearance, and of course located far out in the middle of nowhere, helps setting the mood and a feeling of isolation. Haunted houses, murder mysteries and revenge isn’t an uncommon mix in the horror genre, but it is the excellent atmosphere that lifts Oddity up from what could have been standardized and too familiar. The creepy looking doll is of course also what keeps the anticipation up even higher.

Oddity doesn’t have that much to play around it, but it makes it all work nonetheless. It’s pure atmosphere and anticipation, and while the murder mystery isn’t really all that mysterious, the story still unfolds slowly enough while keeping you guessing a little bit. The ending is almost a bit sardonic, but also quite satisfying.

Writer and director: Damian Mc Carthy
Country & year: Ireland, 2024
Actors: Carolyn Bracken, Johnny French, Steve Wall, Joe Rooney, Gwilym Lee, Tadhg Murphy, Caroline Menton, Ivan de Wergifosse, Shane Whisker
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26470109/

Salem’s Lot (2024)

Posted on November 22, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Ben Mears is a writer who has decided to return to his hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot in order to write a book about his childhood. When arriving there, he very quickly meets and befriends a woman named Susan Norton, just so we have established the love interest right away. At the same time, as kid named Mark Petrie must defend himself from the school’s bully, and a newcomer called Straker opens an antique store. This mysterious man, a European, has moved into the Marsten House which has been abandoned for a long time due to a history of murders. We soon learn that Straker is some kind of Renfield, and his vampire master is the Orlok look-alike Kurt Barlow. It doesn’t take long for people to start dying with strange bitemarks on their necks, and the survivors must try and combat the evil that has invaded their hometown.

Salem’s Lot is based on a 1975 novel by Stephen King, directed by Gary Dauberman. The novel was previously adapted for television in 1979, a mini series directed by Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist, Texas Chain Saw Massacre). There was also a sequel called A Return to Salem’s Lot which was released in 1987, and even a TV mini series called Salem’s Lot which was released in 2004. They sure have given the novel a lot of adaptions, but none ever got to be shown in the theaters, which includes this 2024 version. This movie also had a fair bit of hiccups during its production, to the point where many suspected the entire film would end up scrapped. In 2023, however, Warner Bros decided to release the film on Max.

The film’s reception was not particularly good, and the trailers didn’t exactly promise anything of golden standard either, and this dampened our expectations. Overall, though, we found it to be.. quite decent, actually. There characters are ok, although not portrayed in such an in-depth manner that you could give too much of a shit about any of them. There are some creepy atmospheric scenes and it was able to create enough suspense to keep your interest up. It’s even a bit campy, which shouldn’t come as a surprise in a movie where a 12-year old is running around killing vampires and saving people like he’s some primary school Van Helsing.

Overall, Salem’s Lot is pretty fine for what it is, there is some decent atmosphere here and there and Barlow can come off as creepy enough when you don’t get to see him too clearly. Many people prefer Tobe Hooper’s 1979 mini series, and others again prefer the book. Without making any comparisons between neither book nor previous adaptions, this movie works well on its own. You just can’t avoid being left with a feeling that they didn’t really hit the nail on its head compared to what was probably the intended original vision (which had a 3-hour long duration).

Writer and director: Gary Dauberman
Country & year: USA, 2024
Actors: Lewis Pullman, Makenzie Leigh, Jordan Preston Carter, Alfre Woodard, Bill Camp, John Benjamin Hickey, Nicholas Crovetti, Spencer Treat Clark, Pilou Asbæk, Alexander Ward
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10245072/

Trap (2024)

Posted on November 19, 2024November 21, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Cooper and his daughter Riley is going to Lady Raven’s concert, which is Riley’s reward for getting good grades. Cooper notices something strange about the place, though…there’s police everywhere, and when chatting up a guy selling merchandise he learns that the FBI is out to catch a serial killer known as “The Butcher“, because they have for some reason become aware that he will be at this concert. And this serial killer is none other than Cooper himself, of course. While trying to pretend everything is alright while his daughter is having the time of her life, Cooper manipulates and tricks his way into what he hopes will be an escape from the concert without getting caught.

Trap is a psychological thriller by M. Night Shyamalan, starring his own daughter Saleka as Lady Raven. Saleka is a singer-songwriter, and the idea for the film came when father and daughter one day had a conversation about combining a concert and a theatrical experience similar to Prince’s musical film Purple Rain (1984). The script was inspired by the Washington D.C. “Operation Flagship“ sting operation in 1985, where fugitives were lured to the Washington Convention Center under the pretense of free tickets, which resulted in 101 arrests. The songs in this film were also performed on stage as if in a real concert, and the shoot thus involved thousands of extras.

The concept of Trap is interesting enough, and when it became available on streaming we just decided to check it out. None of us had high expectations, but found ourselves to be entertained throughout the entire film, and sometimes that’s simply enough. It’s a somewhat simple cat ‘n mouse story where we witness the scenes unfold through the serial killer’s perspective, and it’s suspenseful enough while also having a slightly goofy vibe throughout. It’s definitely one of Shyamalan’s more carefree narratives, focusing more on pure thrills and fun instead of his usual cerebral and serious fare.

This being an M. Night Shyamalan movie you’re bound to wait for that plot twist to come which will turn everything on its head…but here’s pretty much a plot-twist in itself: there isn’t any. In a Shyamalan movie! Who would’ve thought. The movie does offer some twists and turns throughout the ride though, and some reveals and such, but none of what Shyamalan’s movies have become known (and often ridiculed) for. Not saying that his twists are always bad, because they really aren’t (just take his first horror movie The Sixth Sense for example), but this movie didn’t need any of that and is all the better for it.

Overall, Trap is one of those dumbly fun movies which is offering just enough thrills and suspense. Nothing groundbreaking and by no means a masterpiece, but all in all just an easy-going and fun thriller.

Writer and director: M. Night Shyamalan
Country & year: USA, 2024
Actors: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Alison Pill, Hayley Mills, Jonathan Langdon, Mark Bacolcol, Marnie McPhail, Kid Cudi, Russ, Marcia Bennett, Vanessa Smythe
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26753003/

Immaculate (2024)

Posted on November 15, 2024November 15, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

This is the so-called “twin film“ of The First Omen, even though the script for Immaculate was already written way back in 2014. Sydney Sweeney was 17 when she auditioned for the film to play an aspiring nun. Nothing much happened after that and the film fell into development hell. What a fitting situation for a nun film. However, the script stuck with Sweeney and after some well-earned money after being in the hit TV show Euphoria, she bought the rights to produce the film herself. So this clearly became a passion project for her. She hired Michael Mohan to direct, who she’d worked with on the erotic thriller The Voyeurs (2021), and got a distribution deal with Neon.

The film starts with a spooky opening scene with a young nun who fails to escape from a secluded convent, a place we, of course, are going back to later. As she’s about to get through the locked gates, she breaks her leg and gets captured by a group of obscure cloak-wearing persons who then… bury her alive. God bless.

Then we’re introduced to the rookie nun Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) who’s just moved to Italy, all away from Detroit, to devote her life to her great Savior. Because when she managed to survive after drowning under the ice of a frozen lake, and being clinically dead for seven minutes, she swallowed the shiny Christian pill and never looked back.

The first act is pretty straight forward. She settles in the convent where she meets a variety of nuns. Some are young, some are old, and then we have those you’d stay far away from. The convent is also far in the middle of the countryside where the sense of isolation starts to creep in sooner than later. The language barrier is also strong, as she can hardly speak Italian. But if she did, the film would’ve had to require subtitles. And Americans are too lazy to bother with such a thing, so …

While she does the best she can to blend in, she starts having nightmares and sees creepy visions in her bedroom. And after taking a bloodtest, she finds out that she’s – pregnant. Just out of the blue. Huh. The staff is, however, ecstatic as they now see her as a Virgin Mary with a gift from God himself, and against her will, hold her captive in the convent during her trimesters. From here on, the similarities to The First Omen goes in their separate directions, where Immaculate serves its own unique little spin on the nun/pregnancy horror sub-genre.

Director Michael Mohan does a pretty good job, considering this is his first horror film with primary romcoms under his belt. A big leap, for sure. Solid camerawork all the way through with tasty visuals where the inspiration from classic Italian horror films really shines. While there are some cheap jumpscares shoehorned in here, the film relies mostly on mood and atmosphere where we have the isolated eeriness of the convent to creepy catacombs, all shot on locations in Rome and the outskirts. No frontal nudity here, unfortunately, just to make that clear. Sydney Sweeney is, for some, known for two things, but she’s also a top tier actress who conveys layers of intense emotions with her eyes alone – while she carries the whole film with a big bucket of blood to the s h o c k i n g ending.

Director: Michael Mohan
Writer: Andrew Lobel
Country & year: USA/Italy, 2024
Actors: Sydney Sweeney, Álvaro Morte, Simona Tabasco, Benedetta Porcaroli, Giorgio Colangeli, Dora Romano, Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi, Giampiero Judica, Betty Pedrazzi, Giuseppe Lo Piccolo
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23137390/