american horror movies – Horror Ghouls

Wrong Turn (2021)

Posted on March 14, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Jen and her boyfriend Darius are going on a hike to the Appalachian Trail, together with two other couples: Adam and Mia, and Gary and Luis. When they arrive at the small town in rural Virginia, they immediately get on the wrong foot with some of the locals. And when they begin their hike, they do of course commit the worst mistake of all which have been warned about so clearly: going off the trail. Every year, people die when hiking the Appalachian Trail, but sure…let’s tempt fate a little. It doesn’t go long until something happens: a huge tree trunk suddenly rolls down the hill and Gary gets crushed by it. Luis is totally distraught over the loss of his boyfriend, and on top of it all they cannot find their way back. They have no choice but to set up camp for the night, and the next day they wake up to find their cellphones are gone…and they also can’t see Mia anywhere. Close by, they find an old plaque dated “1859“, commemorating the creation of the “Foundation“, which were a group of settlers who fled to the mountains because they believed the end of the US was near. Obviously, they still live there, and the people who enter their realm do not get out alive.

Wrong Turn (aka Wrong Turn: The Foundation) is a horror film from 2021, which is some kind of reboot of the Wrong Turn franchise. It is directed by Mike P. Nelson and written by Alan McElroy, who is the franchise’s creator. It was theatrically released for only one day, on January 26, 2021, by Saban Films. It received fairly positive reviews, and grossed $4.8 million at the box office and $2.1 million in home sales. It is also the first film in the Wrong Turn franchise to actually have been filmed in the United States, as the previous ones were filmed in Canada and Bulgaria.

Wrong Turn is taking a different approach in this reboot, and instead of a bunch of inbred cannibal hillbillies killing off innocent travelers, it’s now a cult that’s behind it all. The cult, who is calling themselves the Foundation, believed in making an ideal place for themselves. Doesn’t sound that bad, right? Well, we all know that the creation of some people’s Utopia inevitably ends with the birth of some kind of Hell on earth, and this is no exception. While the previous installments in the franchise had the lunacy of the hillbillies as the threat, the cult’s vision of a perfect world and how to treat everyone who doesn’t fit in it, serves as a possibly even bigger threat. That being said, the build-up involves a bit of justified reaction from the cult due to the previous behaviour of the hikers, so there’s an attempt at trying to justify the view from both sides here. At least until a certain point.

There are some kills here that are grisly enough, and while there’s isn’t very much of this kind the ones displayed are effective enough. There’s a definite feeling of being lost and trapped between the characters, and while there are some things that fails to make everything entirely convincing all the time, it was a fun enough watch. Also, the ending was a nice touch.

Wrong Turn is a decent enough horror film and a reboot that does things a bit differently from the previous films in the franchise. I can see how this would easily put off many of the fans of the earlier films (very much like Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin did to that franchise’s fans), but as an easy-going horror flick for a lazy day this is a perfectly fine pick.

Director: Mike P. Nelson
Writer: Alan B. McElroy
Country & year: USA, 2021
Actors: Charlotte Vega, Adain Bradley, Bill Sage, Emma Dumont, Dylan McTee, Daisy Head, Matthew Modine, Vardaan Arora, Adrian Favela, Tim DeZarn, Rhyan Elizabeth Hanavan
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9110170/

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021)

Posted on March 11, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Margot was abandoned as a baby outside a hospital, and the only thing she knows is that her mother came from an Amish family living at the Beiler Farm. She decides to make a documentary about her past, and brings with her some friends: Chris, the cameraman, and Dale, the soundman. They meet up with her blood relative Samuel, who leads them to the place where Margot’s mother came from. There they meet Jacob, the patriarch of the commune and also Margot’s grandfather. They’re welcomed, and soon strange events start happening. Margot gets some cryptic signs indicating that her mother, Sarah, is still alive and at the location somewhere. They also find a small church that is locked up, and they’re told they’re not allowed to enter. As more and more red warning signs start blinking, things have already gone too far before they realize that they’re all in danger at the isolated Amish farm.

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is a supernatural horror film from 2021, and despite the title, it doesn’t have jack-shit to do with the franchise aside from the name. It’s written by William Eubank, and produced by Jason Blum and Oren Peli. It’s the 7th film in the series, despite that Ghost Dimension from 2015 was promoted as the final installment. Next of Kin is very much a stand-alone film, and was originally planned for a theatrical release but then COVID-19 happened, and it became the first Paranormal Activity film to not get shown on the big screen.

It was released mostly to negative reviews, and to be honest, it very much escaped our interest back in 2021 mostly because of it seemingly being yet another film in the PA franchise. Sure, we really did love the first movie when it came out back in the day, its simplicity felt very fresh and effective, but there’s a limit to how interesting it was able to keep that premise going. The people who love the movies in this franchise, however, would definitely be put off due to the fact that this movie has nothing to do with neither the characters from the franchise, or anything else. It’s like this movie was written as something completely independent, but then they decided to slap “Paranormal Activity“ in the title in hopes of more attention. While this might have gained the movie more viewers, I also think the problem was that the ones who wanted a new PA movie would be left dissatisfied, while those of us who had grown tired of these movies were more likely to turn a blind eye. Oh well.

As we decided to check it out this year, we were left with a feeling that this movie is by no means any masterpiece, but it’s far from a bad one either. One of the major elements that keeps you engaged is the mystery behind Margot’s Amish family, her mother, the isolated farm and the creepy little church. The surroundings makes for some decent atmosphere, and the isolation of the Amish farm and the people living there are creepy enough even without any supernatural intervention. And speaking of, the supernatural elements are put a little in the backseat for the majority of the film, as it mostly plays out as a mystery where Margot is trying to find out what happened to her mother. To be honest, the entire movie could even have done well without anything supernatural in it.

Overall, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is a generic but pretty fine found-footage horror film, that doesn’t really feel like it belongs in the PA universe. The movie is playing more on the mystery elements than the supernatural ones, so just watch it while having in mind that the title could simply have been cut to “Next of Kin“.

Director: William Eubank
Writer: Christopher Landon
Country & year: USA, 2021
Actors: Emily Bader, Roland Buck III, Dan Lippert, Jaye Ayres-Brown, Tom Nowicki, Jill Andre, Alexa Niziak, Colin Keane, Ari Notartomaso, Michael Short, Al Garrison
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10515988/

Fallen (1998)

Posted on March 7, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

John Hobbes is a Philadelphia Police Detective, who is about to visit the serial killer Edgar Reese who is on death row. Despite this, Reese is in a pretty good mood, and during their conversation he grabs Hobbes’ hand and says something that at first is assumed to be pure gobbledygook, but is later identified as Syrian Aramaic. Later, when Reese is about to be executed, he mocks everyone who is watching. Not in Gacy-style by telling them to kiss his ass, but by singing “Time Is on My Side“ by The Rolling Stones. When the show is over, the world is one psychopath less. Or is it? Shortly afterwards, Hobbes and his partner Jonesy investigates a string of new murders which is reminiscent of Reese’s style, making them think there’s a copycat on the loose. As Hobbes digs further, he finds that something demonic is pulling the strings.

Fallen is a supernatural horror thriller from 1998, directed by Gregory Hoblit and stars Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, Embeht Davidtz, James Gandolfini and Elias Koteas. It received mixed reviews, and earned only $25.2 million on a $46 million budget. It has later started gaining a bit of a cult following where the common audience appears to be a lot more appreciative than the critics.

Supernatural horror movies about demon hunting and possessions are a dime a dozen, and if you’ve also seen the Supernatural TV series, this movie will feel like very familiar and well-trodden territory. Now, with this being a movie from 1998, it’s kind of fun to check out something that precedes the others and it definitely holds up well on its own. The supernatural elements are for the most part portrayed as a more mysterious part of the movie, mixing well with the detective elements. There’s no graphic violence or any actual scares here, but the mystery entwined with the supernatural elements makes it exciting enough for a popcorn evening. There’s also a fair amount of familiar faces here: Donald Sutherland plays a grumpy no-bullshit kind of guy as usual, and John Goodman fits well as the upbeat and jolly policeman. James Gandolfini, most known for his role as the mafia boss Tony in the TV series The Sopranos, hasn’t become the well-known mafia character yet and here he is walking around with a 70s mustache. Denzel Washington who is playing the protagonist is also doing a good job at playing a rational character who is very much forced to believe all the strange stuff that keeps happening around him.

Those who watched Nefarious (2023) saw the similarities to Fallen, and I also think that the Supernatural series might’ve been inspired as well. Still, the plot of Fallen is also similar to a movie from 1990 called The First Power, where a policeman hunts a serial killer called the Pentagram Killer, who’s been brought back to life by Satan. That movie received mostly negative reception, but ended up being a financial success anyway (then again, it had a much lower budget).

Overall, Fallen is a pretty nice supernatural thriller, which will probably feel a bit familiar if you’ve ever seen Supernatural or any of the demon-hunting movies or series that’s been released over the years. The movie is, however, pretty easy to feel comfortable with as it doesn’t overplay the supernatural events to the point of it becoming too cheesy, and it’s fast paced enough to have a lasting popcorn-entertainment effect. It also has a pretty nice twist at the end, and while I’ve gotten a bit tired of movies focusing too much on leading up to a twist, this one came more like a sly little surprise, and that’s something I can appreciate.

Director: Gregory Hoblit
Writer: Nicolas Kazan
Country & year: USA, 1998
Actors: Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, Embeth Davidtz, James Gandolfini, Elias Koteas, Gabriel Casseus, Michael J. Pagan, Robert Joy, Frank Medrano
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119099/

The McPherson Tape (1989)

Posted on March 4, 2025March 4, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Uh-oh…Here comes the little grey men! With their sticky faces and lasers. So let’s demonstrate our Second Amendment by shooting them straight in the mug to show them who’s the good guys here. Can’t get more Americana than that, besides having a collective, chronic and crippling fear of aliens/lizard people (and Bigfoot). God bless America.

The McPherson Tape is a penny-budget amateur found footage film that starts during a birthday party with the Van Heese family at an isolated farmhouse in Connecticut. The year is 1983 and Michael has just bought a shiny new VHS camera to document the five-year-old Michelle blowing out the candles. Then suddenly the electricity goes out…

Michael and his brothers head out in the pitch black darkness to get a clue on what happened, and what they see not so far from the house is a UFO and three tiny aliens from a certain Steven Spielberg film. It’s, of course, all blurry, grainy and unfocused since there was no budget to build a decent-looking spaceship. As the pussy pants they are, they run back to the house in full panic mode, grab the shotgun and shoot one of the poor aliens. Thoughts and prayers.

Now we just wait for the remaining aliens to take revenge on these morons. Because it’s hard to give a single frick about the family. The grandmother seems more irritated by being in the film, while the youngest of the cast, Michelle, looks more bored and wants to play cards rather than pretend to be scared. There’s a lot of yelling, arguing and such to amp up the tension as they’re isolated in the house while Michael, the cameraman, moans constantly like as if he hasn’t jerked-off since last week: Ahhh – Ahh – Ahhh – Ahh – Ahhhh – Ahhh – Ahhh – Ahhh …

The McPherson Tape is written and directed by the young and upcoming filmmaker Dean Alioto, who made the film during one night after a week of rehearsals. A friend of his funded the budget of $6,500 and the film got a distribution deal. And here’s the starting point with the wild circumstances around it, all from the funny conspiracy theories and how people actually believed that this was legit proof that aliens walk among us. Because listen to this; after the distribution deal, the warehouse burned down with all the copies of the film and Dean Alioto bitterly wrote the film off as a big loss. Life went on as he continued to work in the television industry without realizing that the distributor had managed to send out dozens of copies before the fire. One of these VHS cassettes ended up in the hands of a prankster who re-edited the opening and closing text. He/she then spread pirated copies to the UFO community where the audience around the US burst into full hysteria mode as they believed that this mysterious home-made film was real. Rumors also spread that the authorities were trying to seize video copies, which, yeah, of course. The most profiled people who ate this up were the UFO expert Tom Dongo and the retired Lt. Colonel for the U.S. Army stated that I am not convinced that this thing is a hoax. Dean Aliato eventually got his lost film under the radar, as it lived a life of its own, which he apparently had forgotten about, and made a public statement that the film was just a fake amateur reel. But too late as the floodgates are fully open.

The original title for the film was actually U.F.O. Abduction, but got called The McPherson Tape during its resurrection at the UFO conventions in the 1990s, despite there’s no one in the film with that name. Huh…

Dean Aliato didn’t seem to have higher ambitions than making a silly film packed in a new unique format that we haven’t seen before, and all credits goes to him for being as ahead of his time with the found footage genre as he was. By all means. This would maybe be seen as the first Blair Witch if it got the theatrical release. And somehow it did, but only very limited at UFO conventions where the popcorn was replaced with mushrooms. But the product itself is way too sloppy and naive to be taken seriously, even back in 1989. I’d probably be more impressed if this was made in the 1950s or in the wake of Orson Welle’s radio drama The War of the Worlds. I couldn’t avoid laughing when we saw the glimpses of the aliens more closely, here played by three eight-year-olds in the most stereotypical and generic looking costumes possible. So it has its amusing entertainment value during its short runtime of 70 minutes, but mostly for the wrong reasons. The controversies behind it make it even funnier with the fact that there are UFO “experts“ even to this day in the year of 2025 who is convinced that this is 100% authentic. Because believing in aliens in the USA isn’t just a matter of believing, it’s a full-blown religion.

Dean Alioto remade the film in 1998 for the TV channel UPN, titled Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County. It never got a physical release but can be watched on YouTube. Despite a higher budget and more professional actors, the film is even worse than the original and gives an impression that it was made just to mock the gullible minds who still refused to believe that The McPherson Tape was not real. And guess what: several UFO “experts“ actually did. Yes – again. Fool me once, fool me twice. I’d bet that the same audience got some sleepless nights after Oren Peli’s hidden space turkey Area 51 (2015) and would have no problem believing that ALF (the ’80s sitcom) was abruptly canceled with the most brutal cliffhanger because the US Government found out that he was played by an actual real alien.

Writer and director: Dean Alioto
Original title: U.F.O. Abduction
Country & year: USA, 1989
Actors: Tommy Giavocchini, Patrick Kelley, Shirly McCalla, Stacey Shulman, Christine Staples, Laura Tomas, Dean Alioto, Kay Parten, Ginny Klekker, Rose Schneider
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169005/

The Monkey (2025)

Posted on February 25, 2025March 6, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

The pilot Petey Shelburn enters an antique shop in the hopes of getting rid of a drum-playing toy monkey, saying he wants it to be someone else’s problem. Suddenly, the toy monkey starts playing its drums, which causes a chain reaction where the shop owner gets killed. Petey on the other hand disappears, never to be heard from again. This leaves his wife, Lois, to raise their two children Hal and Bill alone. Several years later, in 1999, the two boys discover the toy monkey while going through their father’s belongings. Curious, they wind its key, and the first victim is their babysitter Annie. They realize that the toy monkey caused it for some reason, and when Hal gets tired of Bill’s constant bullying he decides to wind up the toy once again in the hopes it will kill his brother. Instead, their mother suffers a sudden aneurysm and dies as soon as Bill comes home. Obviously, the monkey doesn’t take orders. Hal chops the toy in pieces, and disposes of it before they move to their aunt Ida and uncle Chip. There, the monkey reappears and another death ensues. The brothers then decide to try a final attempt of getting rid of it by sealing it inside a box and throwing it into a well. And, well…according to the law of horror stories, nothing that is cast into a well will remain hidden forever. Twenty-five years later, Hal is estranged from his brother and barely has any contact with his son Petey. Then, Bill suddenly calls because he thinks the monkey is back.

The Monkey is a comedy horror movie written and directed by Osgood Perkins, and is loosely based on a short story from 1980 by Stephen King. Originally, Frank Darabont (director of The Mist from 2007) held the film rights to this story, but the project never materialized.

We’ve come to know Osgood Perkins as the master of atmospheric slow-burn horror movies (with his debut The Blackcoat’s Daughter and last year’s hit Longlegs), and this time he wanted to try something completely different. Perkins wanted to give the film comedic elements because he thought it was more fitting for a film about a killer toy:

“I took liberties like a motherfucker. They [Atomic Monster] had a very serious script. Very serious. I felt it was too serious, and I told them: ‘This doesn’t work for me. The thing with this toy monkey is that the people around it all die in insane ways. So, I thought: Well, I’m an expert on that.’ Both my parents died in insane, headline-making ways. I spent a lot of my life recovering from tragedy, feeling quite bad. It all seemed inherently unfair. You personalize the grief: ‘Why is this happening to me?’ But I’m older now and you realize this shit happens to everyone. Everyone dies. Sometimes in their sleep, sometimes in truly insane ways, like I experienced. But everyone dies. And I thought maybe the best way to approach that insane notion is with a smile.”

While the film does have a lot of the moody visuals which is identifiable in Perkins’s earlier works, the suspense is unfortunately lacking so it all feels a little misplaced. There isn’t really any actual tension here, and the kills are mostly setup as pure jokes. Nothing wrong with that, but it gets a bit repetitive, and the comedy parts fall a little flat for me and gives a feeling of trying a little too hard which just makes it stumble. I’ll admit I did like the design of the monkey toy itself, it’s similar enough to the original toy with cymbals (the Jolly Chimp from the 1930s) while giving it a slightly ominous flair without going over the top (like with the Annabelle doll). I can easily imagine that it would have worked pretty well in a more serious movie, too. In many ways, I think this movie is a little reminiscent of movies like Wish Upon, with a dose of Final Destination. It’s kind of silly, kind of gory, and never tries to fool you into taking any of it seriously. The premise itself is of course totally bananas: a toy monkey causing someone to die every time it’s playing the drums. It was also fun to see some well-known faces throughout the movie. Also fun to see Perkins himself playing a minor role here, as the eccentric uncle Chip.

Granted, The Monkey isn’t any masterpiece, but there’s no doubt that it’s still granted a success. The film has already grossed $20 million against a budget of $10-11 million. Not much of a surprise when keeping the success of Longlegs from last year in mind (although these two films can barely be compared), and the trailer for The Monkey got millions of views.

My verdict? The Monkey is a movie where the kills are the most entertaining and fun part, and the movie is best enjoyed when turning off your brain completely and not expecting anything similar to what Perkins has made earlier. I’m fine with him wanting to do some monkeying around for a change, but I also personally hope that we’ll see more of his slow-burn atmospheric horror movies in the future.

Writer and director: Oz Perkins
Country & year: USA/UK/Canada, 2025
Actors: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Elijah Wood, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, Osgood Perkins, Tess Degenstein, Danica Dreyer, Beatrix Perkins, Kingston Chan
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27714946/

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)

The Collector (2009)

Posted on February 18, 2025February 21, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Arkin O´Brien is a handyman who is working for the Chase family. He’s a former convict, and his wife is in debt to loan sharks who wants to get paid due by midnight. Arkin then desperately makes a plan: he decides to steal a valuable ruby from the Chase home. After all, the family was going on a vacation so the house would be empty, so this would be like stealing candy from a baby, right? No such luck, though. While there, he finds that someone else got there before him, and they’re not after the ruby or any other valuables…he sees the father of the family getting dragged down into the basement by a masked man. Not only that, but when Arkin tries to call 911, he discovers that the entire house has been booby-trapped and rigged with all kinds of deadly devices. Even the windows have been boarded up and lined with razors. When he finds out that the entire Chase family has been captured by this masked madman, he discovers that the little girl of the family has been able to hide. He decides to try and save her, despite feeling like a fly trapped in a spider’s dangerous net.

The Collector is a horror film from 2009, written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, and directed by Dunstan. The original script was titled The Midnight Man, and was actually at one point considered a spin-off prequel to the Saw franchise as some kind of origin story of Jigsaw. Fortunately, as this movie stands very well on its own, this idea was dismissed by the producers and the script was re-written into an original story.

Despite the re-write of the script, the Saw/Jigsaw-esque traps are very prominent throughout the movie, and they are always sadistic and inventive. I also find the spider-like appearance and antics of the masked man to be quite enjoyable, making him stand out a bit from the all too generic slasher/serial killer villain by giving him some features of his very own. His victims are trapped in his spiderweb, so to speak, and you just gotta admire how the guy manages to put the most elaborate traps all over the place in no time. It’s like Kevin from Home Alone grew up to be a serial killer.

The kills are brutal and gory, delivering plenty of graphic moments. The serial killer comes off as mysterious and pretty creepy, with no background story or any actual motive or reasoning behind what he does. We do realize there is some kind of fascination towards bugs or especially spiders (there are also several spider shots throughout the film), and the black glowing contact lenses he appears to be using which makes his face appear more bug-like. He “collects“ one from each of his killing sprees, but for what reason, we can (at least for now) just speculate. In this movie the character was played by Juan Fernández.

While The Collector is, overall, a pretty fun time, you can’t really help but noticing a few puzzling and nonsensical things regarding the killer. Why take everything to such great lengths by booby-trapping the entire home, when he’d already captured the family and had them tied up? It wasn’t like he expected any visitors. Not to mention how fast he could put up all those traps…but hey, all of that is nitpicking for a movie that doesn’t really take itself all too serious to begin with. It is a fun home invasion/serial killer thriller, with a bit of Saw meets Home Alone.

Director: Marcus Dunstan
Writers: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan
Country & year: USA, 2009
Actors: William Prael, Diane Ayala Goldner, Juan Fernández, Josh Stewart, Michael Reilly Burke, Andrea Roth, Karley Scott Collins, Madeline Zima, Haley Pullos, Daniella Alonso
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0844479/

Sequel: The Collection (2012)

Cat People (1982)

Posted on February 14, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Today, being Valentine’s Day, what better opportunity is there to write about an erotic thriller about killer werecats? So let’s dive into what Cat People from 1982 is all about:

In a primitive human settlement in what appears to be a prehistoric past, with surroundings that are slightly surreal and tinted with reddish colors which almost makes it look like it could’ve been at some other planet, a young maiden is tied to a tree in some kind of sacrifice. A black panther then comes and attacks her. Later, another girl enters a cave where another black panther is residing, but this time there’s no attack. Fast forward to present time, a young woman named Irena Gallier has traveled to New Orleans from Canada, in order to reconnect with her brother Paul. They were both orphaned when very young, and raised in different foster homes. Now, Paul lives with his housekeeper Femolly, and apparently likes to seek out prostitutes. One night, a prostitute named Ruthie gets violently attacked by a black panther, causing her death. The police are called, of course, but since it’s an obvious animal attack the zoologists Oliver, Alice and Joe are called to capture the wild beast, which proves to be a black panther. They bring the animal to the New Orleans zoo. Simultaneously, Irena notices that Paul is missing. Hm, what a coincidence. Irena decides to explore a bit on her own, and ends up visiting the zoo, where she appears to be mesmerized by the newly captured black panther and stays for so long that the zoo’s curator, Oliver, ends up confronting her and then takes her to dinner. Not only that, but he also offers her a job at the zoo’s gift shop. The black panther later tears off Joe’s arm which cause him to bleed to death, and then it manages to escape. Soon, Irena discovers that both she and her brother Paul has a shared heritage that is destined to turn out deadly for everyone involved…and especially those involved with them in intimate ways.

Cat People is a horror film from 1982, directed by Paul Schrader and it stars Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard, and Annette O´Toole. It’s a remake of the 1942 film by the same name, and also produced by the same studio, RKO Radio Pictures. It doesn’t have much similarities with the original, and as you might expect this version is considerably more explicit. Nastassja Kinski does an excellent portrayal as the mysterious, seemingly meek and beautiful woman who is able to enchant Oliver to the brink of total obsession with her. You can literally see the feline features in both her appearance and behaviour, so I’d say she was definitely a perfect cast for this role. The story, being set in New Orleans, gives the atmosphere and surroundings a definite European feel (which isn’t a surprise since New Orleans was a French colony until 1763, then it was transferred to Spain for a short period before transferred back to France in 1803).

Creature feature lovers will not get a full meal here as the creature effects and transformation scenes are used very sparingly. There is a little bit of gore, where the most graphic scene is the zoo worker getting his arm ripped off. So a little bit of gore, some monster effects and mostly plenty of nudity is what you’re in for here. The narrative doesn’t offer too much substance, and the movie is very much atmosphere and eroticism mixed with the thriller elements of how people are killed once the cat people turn into vicious black panthers. The reason for their werecat-turning is something akin to a curse: they turn into these beasts once they make love to a normal human, making them “doomed“ to stay a virgin or only have sex with “their own kind“.

Regarding the production and filming of Cat People, there’s a story about how Nastassja Kinski had an affair with the director, Schrader, during the production, and it all went so far that he planned to propose to her at the wrap party. This proposal never happened, as she didn’t show up and decided to ghost him afterwards. It took Schrader three months to track her down in Paris, and the only thing she had to say to him was “Paul, I always fuck my directors. And with you it was difficult“. Kinski has later claimed this story to be false in a 2001 interview with The Daily Telegraph. Aside from that little story, the filming apparently had a little bit of a hiccup when Paul Schrader was one day so stoned that he refused to come out of his trailer, causing a whole day of filming to get lost. This is something Schrader told himself, so at least that part isn’t just a rumour.

And now, it’s time for a kitty bit: the section “Big Cats“ of the New Orleans Zoo which is shown in the movie, was a set constructed in the Universal Studios back-lot.

Overall, Cat People is an erotic and visual experience, and pretty enjoyable overall. It also has its own theme song, called Putting Out Fire, with music by Giorgio Moroder and lyrics and performance by David Bowie. Ah, the good old days of theme songs..

Director: Paul Schrader
Writers: Alan Ormsby, Paul Schrader
Country & year: USA, 1982
Actors: Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard, Annette O’Toole, Ruby Dee, Ed Begley Jr., Scott Paulin, Frankie Faison, Ron Diamond, Lynn Lowry, John Larroquette
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083722/

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/

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/