american horror movies – Horror Ghouls

Jaws (1975)

Posted on July 24, 2026July 26, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

For this year’s shark week special, we’ll start off with the biggest fish of them all, the ultimate shark horror movie. The one and only movie that scared people away from the beaches and even lakes and swimming pools (!). It scared the bejeezus out of a lot of people, and some even carries that galeophobia to this day. Yes, we’re of course talking about Jaws from 1975, an instant classic when it came and still remains one, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. While Psycho made people afraid of showers, Jaws made people afraid of the ocean.

The story starts off in the New England beach town of Amity Island, and we are presented with the first kill almost immediately. A group of young people are partying at the beach, and one of the girls decide to go for a late night swim, while her too intoxicated boyfriend drunkenly collapses and passes out in the sand before being able to join her. Lucky for him, as we soon see her pulled underwater and dragged around like a ragdoll. By what, we don’t see, but of course we have a hunch. Next morning, her partial remains are found washed up on the beach, and when the coroner concludes that this is caused by a shark attack, police chief Martin Brody wants to close the beaches for people’s safety. But, oh no…that won’t do, since the town’s summer economy would suffer! Mayor Larry Vaughn won’t have any of such nonsense, of course. So what happens next is that everything is swept under the rug, no shark here, false alarm, fake news, probably a boating accident. Then the young boy Alex Kintner is killed at a crowded beach, where everyone gets the pleasure or watching nature’s brutality at its finest. And now, of course, it’s time to take it seriously enough to put a bounty on the shark, causing a full-frenzied amateur shark hunting by the local fishermen. Soon afterwards, some of them catches a tiger shark, and the Mayor once again declares the beaches safe. Ding-Dong, the shark is dead! Or maybe not. Slicing it open, there are no human remains inside its stomach. It’s also not as big as the presumed culprit should be, which is more likely to be a great white shark of the much larger kind.

And yes, much of the plot’s key points have been copied, referenced, and parodized numerous times over the years: a giant killer shark (or other creature) plus a town not wanting to take it seriously because of tourist money and local traditions, or something similar. It’s a no-brainer that a movie’s huge success will always make people try to copy it, and there’s no doubt that Jaws has inspired numerous shark and creature feature movies, and continues to do so, because there’s just so much it got right. One of those things include Spielberg’s decision to use lesser known actors. He said that actors who were more anonymous would help the audience find it more believable, as “stars bring a lot of memories along with them, and those memories can sometimes … corrupt the story“. True words. Besides, we all know that the real star here is the shark anyway, so…

Originally, this was actually not meant to be a Steven Spielberg film at all. John Sturges was first considered as director, then it went to Dick Richards instead, but he was dropped from the project. One of the reasons was apparently that he had a habit of describing the shark as a whale…I guess he mistook it for a Moby Dick story. Steven Spielberg became aware of the position and really, really wanted the job, and it all ended with the producers signing him to direct. The producers actually also wanted to train a great white shark for the movie. Uh…yeah, nope. Of course that was not possible, so that’s where “Bruce“ came into the works, which were three full-size pneumantically powered prop sharks. And the film crew nicknamed the shark props after Spielberg’s lawyer Bruce Ramer. Fun spin on the old phrase “all lawyers are sharks”.

The movie was shot mostly on location at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. It was also the first major motion picture to be shot on the ocean, and yeah…the production was troubled where both the budget and schedules went to shit. To top it all, the main star of the movie, Bruce himself (the mechanical shark) malfunctioned all the time, causing Spielberg to focus more on the shark’s ominous presence than showing it very often. Which may very well have been art by accident, as this movie is definitely an excellent example of how less is more when it comes to showing off the “monster“. Add to it the excellent theme by John Williams, which has become so iconic you’ve probably heard it even if you haven’t seen the movie, and you’ve got the shark’s threatening presence in just a minimalist theme song. That’s no small feat. And despite being a movie that doesn’t show the “monster“ all too often, it doesn’t drown in loads of unnecessary subplots or character interaction that doesn’t drive the story further (which can be an issue in some creature features). The pacing is really good, there’s a constant sinister vibe overlaying the movie due to the shark’s elusive presence. And of course, we have some kill scenes which are really well done.

I’ll admit, Jaws holds a special place in my heart as one of the very first movies to actually scare me. Like, literally. I saw it at a very young age, and as someone growing up in a coastal town where boat life and spending time nearby the ocean and fishing during the summer was a way of my normal everyday life, the idea of a giant shark prowling underneath the waves literally scared the piss out of me. Most of the other horror movies I’d seen was too fantastical and removed from reality to really give me any “but what if“ impact. And while there aren’t even any great whites here in Norway, and the only shark species that roam the Norwegian waters are no threat to humans, it still instilled a deep-rooted fear in me which persisted. At the same time I also got fascinated by sharks, and I already had a love and fascination for ideas of sea monsters and the like, so overall I guess you can say that the movie kind of got me hooked.

If there is one downside with this movie, it’s how the public perception of sharks turned very negative, causing wide-spread trophy fishing and “revenge hunts“. I’d say that this is a people problem, not a movie problem though…both Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg expressed regret over how the movie caused such an impact on the real-world shark population. That being said, shark populations have also suffered from industrial overfishing and the shark fin trade. Humans will always remain the most dangerous creature, no matter what.

Jaws was the highest grossing film in history until the release of Star Wars two years later, and in 2001 the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the US National Film Registry. While there’s a huge ocean of shark movies out there, Jaws still takes the biggest and sharpest bite compared to all of them.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb
Country & year: USA, 1975
Actors: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Carl Gottlieb, Jeffrey Kramer, Susan Backlinie, Jonathan Filley, Ted Grossman, Chris Rebello
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/

The Primevals (1994/2023)

Posted on July 21, 2026July 21, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Enter production hell that is The Primevals, fifty years in the making that even outlived its creator. Yes, this dream passion project about evil lizard people already started way back in the late 1960s by stop-motion animators David Allen, Jim Danforth and visual artist Dennis Muren. The project went through several pre-productions throughout the 70s and 80s with several scripts and titles, such as The Glacial Empire and Primordium: The Arctic World. The British horror studio Hammer Films was interested in the project at one time in the 1970s, but it fell through due to creative differences. In 1978, David Allen met film producer Charles Band where he pitched the concept with the new title The Primevals, but again, it fizzled out because of reasons.

In the meantime, David Allen started to work with Charles Band with stop-motion effects in films such as Laserblast, The Dungeonmaster, Dolls, Puppet Master, Subspecies and Bride of The Re-Animator. He also worked in bigger productions like The Howling, Willow and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. So even though the name David Allen doesn’t ring any bells, and you’re a kid of the ’80s and ’90s, you’ve surely seen some of his standout work. Then the 1990s came and David Allen still refused to give up The Primevals, because the ’90s was after all the decade of optimism. And after Charles Band had some great success with his new-established company Full Moon, much thanks to a distribution deal with Paramount Home Video, he finally decided to produce the film. This would also be the most expensive and ambitious Full Moon film to date. The principal photography for The Primevals was completed in Romania in 1994 with some scenes shot in the Dolomites mountains in Italy, and the project finally seemed to reach the light outside the tunnel.

Then came post-production hell, a lot due to Full Moon ending their collab with Paramount Home Video and the money dried out. Allen did what he could to finish the project in his sparetime for the next five years until the pull got plugged when Allen died of cancer in 1999, age 54. RIP. Fast-forward to 2018 when Charles Band launched an Indiego campaign to collect over $40,000 to get the film finished once and for all. The post-production was then handed over to stop-motion animator Kent Burton and a small team of visual effects artists. The film was finally released in 2023 at the Fantasia Film Festival. The Primevals is now available on DVD/Blu-ray and Full Moon Streaming. Also check out the making-of documentary Lost To Time: Unearthing The Primevals.

So… the plot goes like this: We start off somewhere in a snowy mountains in Tibet where some locals fight against a big yeti, in pure Ray Harryhausen-style. After they defeat the yeti it gets taxidermied and brought to a University, and a small team of scientists go on an expedition to Nepal to search for its origin. The team is led by Matt Connor and the anthropologist Dr. Claire Collier, and they’re not the most interesting people to follow. But the plot thickens when they arrive in Tibet and discovers a mysterious futuristic-looking tower in the mountain. And then they suddenly fall through the ground after a quick avalanche and find themselves in a grotto. Luckily for them the entrance is not far away which leads them to a another pre-historic dimension, not so unlike what we saw in Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012). But instead of nazis we have stop-motion lizards, aliens and other weird stuff. Good luck, have fun and don’t die.

I have to admit that I didn’t know about this project until recently, which to my understanding have been closely followed by more die hard Full Moon fans throughout the years. As going in more blind minus the hype and the anticipation, other than it looked interesting enough judging by the trailer, I’d say: It’s fine. It’s more impressive on the technical aspect than scriptwise. Some of the set-designs, matte paintings and use of miniatures look pretty remarkable, and you can also tell that every single penny was put on screen in terms of production value. The use of CGI, which there is very little of are added when necessary, just as it should. The element, besides the stop-motion, that gave me some extra tickle on the nostalgia bones, were the underground castles, that took me back to films like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). This is more or less a throwback film to a bygone era, as much as it is a passion project to showcase Allen’s love for stop-motion on the most epic scale he was able to reach. The sad thing is that he never got the chance to see the final product of his own magnum opus. What can you say… life’s not fair.

Then you have the human characters which are nothing much to speak about. It’s wooden and by default at its best, like most of Full Moon films where the stop-motion creatures have way more emotions than the actors. There’s some dead meat here and a lot of talking and exposition since the budget never reached the lengths to fully flesh out the pretty over-ambitious story on a visual standpoint. A very common issue when we have a concept that would need a bigger boat to reach the full potential. That said, the third act really pays it off with some fun stop-motion action, actors in ape/monkey costumes and more, and has overall enough of the retro charm to spark some classic sense of wonder that will make you feel like a kid again.

Director: David Allen
Writers: David Allen, Randall William Cook
Country & year: USA/Romania, 1994-2023
Actors: Juliet Mills, Richard Joseph Paul, Leon Russom, Walker Brandt, Tai Thai, Eric Steinberg, Robert Cornthwaite, Dolph Scott, Kevin Mangold, Jeffrey S. Farley, Billy Scudder
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9352178/

Alligator (1980)

Posted on July 17, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in the year 1968, and we see a teenage girl who has gotten herself a baby alligator. Sounds like the perfect pet, right? At least the girl loves the little thing. Her parents, though, are not quite as thrilled. After finding alligator-poo on his clothes, the father flushes the poor baby alligator down the toilet, in agreement with the mother while they plot finding some excuse when their daughter gets back home. A-holes. Well, that’s not the end of baby gator, of course.

Fast forward 12 years later to 1980, body parts are exiting the sewers and getting police detective David Madison involved, a slightly world-weary “tired of all this bullshit“ guy who is still struggling with the the loss of his partner in a botched case in St. Louis, which has given him a reputation of being extremely unlucky for whoever should be assigned as his new partner. And David once again proves to be a “partner-killer“ when the rookie cop Kelly willingly goes with him to check out the sewers, and becomes a gator snack. Oops. David’s still got a long way to go if he wants to beat Chuck Steel out of that department, though.

David, with two recently lost partners, missing locals, and also mysterious dog carcasses appearing in the sewers, finds himself in search of more than just a giant alligator. He teams up with herpetologist Marisa Kendall, who (surprise, surprise!) actually happens to be the baby alligator girl from the opening scene, and they develop some kind of (rather uninteresting) romance. To top it all David’s also got the problem of a receding hairline, which seems to be a big issue for both him a lots of other people for some reason. Apparently is was the actor himself, Robert Forster, who insisted on adding these jokes on behalf of his real-life thinning hair.

So, here we have the creature feature film Alligator from 1980, directed by Lewis Teague (who also made Cat’s Eye) from a screenplay by John Sayles. It was produced independently and released by Group 1 Films, and became somewhat of a box office flop in North America, but became more successful in other territories, and of course, have garnered a cult following since. Now, you might have heard about the “alligators in sewers“ urban legend, based on how people allegedly flushed alligators down the toilets. Yes, they sold these as pets back in the day, with people buying them and probably thinking they looked so cute as babies, and freaking out once they realized that they actually grow…you know, like babies usually do. In 1967 alligators were listed as an endangered species which stopped the sales, but the myths and legends about giant gators surviving in the sewers lived on, and inspired this movie.

And yes, this is a B-horror movie through and through, but as far as creature feature flicks go this one does at least give us a good amount of actual creature scenes. And it really tries to go all the way, and you don’t have to wait ages before something starts happening. Sewer workers are chomped up, a kid gets eaten after falling into a swimming pool, a wedding reception is totally wrecked (don’t worry, those people were just a bunch of rich, arrogant and not-quite-innocent douchebags anyway) with the latter being the most fun scene of them all. The effects are pretty solid, mixing many good old-school practical effects with an actual real-life alligator. The name of the real-life alligator was Morris, and he starred in several other films aside from this one. Last year he passed away from old age at his longtime home, the Colorado Gator Farm. R.I.P. big guy.

Overall, Alligator is one of those creature features that delivers the goods without too much dilly-dallying or uninteresting subplots. There’s a lot of fun to be had here with a campy and solid charm, combining the creature horror with some humor and action.

A direct-to-video sequel called Alligator II: The Mutation was released in 1991, but that one’s got jack shit to do with the original.

Director: Lewis Teague
Writers: John Sayles, Frank Ray Perilli
Country & year: USA, 1980
Actors: Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Michael V. Gazzo, Dean Jagger, Sydney Lassick, Jack Carter, Perry Lang, Henry Silva, Bart Braverman, Morris
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080354/

Evil Dead Burn (2026)

Posted on July 14, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

The young French bird Alice (Souheila Yacoub) has sought the good life in ‘Merica, but has already realized that the grass isn’t much greener on the other side. Because we soon learn that her husband, William, is an abusive piece of poo. The scars she’s wearing around the waist can tell. After he dies horribly in a car accident and burns alive as if it was pure karma, Alice should take that as a blessing, get the fuck away and never look back. But then the movie would pretty much be over and not much to talk about. So thanks for staying to the cost of our morbid entertainment, I guess. She doesn’t shed a tear during the funeral, because who would, and doesn’t hesitate to take off the wedding ring. The rest of the family only give her the stinkeye, and things only get worse when they have a gathering by the dinner table in her in-law’s old moldy house in the countryside. Soon, the gathering quickly escalates to hell on Earth, just like one would imagine every Thanksgiving crashout since 2016.

Now, if the circumstances didn’t look bad enough on the surface, we learn that the house was owned by none other than the mystery man who we have heard on the old tapes during the franchise for over forty years. So don’t worry, this is an Evil Dead movie, through and through. He’s the grandfather of Alice’s in-laws where William’s younger brother has gathered all his notes and, of course, the Necronomicon to hopefully write a book about it. Grampa also made a mythical dagger hidden somewhere in the attic, the only weapon that can kill the deadites. And the deadites want that dagger before it gets in the hands of Sam and Dean, or maybe Ash, if he’s still out there. So yes, the deadites actually have an important mission here other than to reek hell and mayhem. That leaves us back to the car crash where the lakeside deadite (the one we saw in the beginning of Evil Dead Rise) possesses William’s dead body which eventually reaches the meatsuit of his dad, where it all explodes by the dinner table when he suddenly stabs their dog to death with a fork.

So, the third installment of the “gritty/serious/trauma“ phase of the Evil Dead franchise, as I like to call it, is directed by the Frenchman Sébastien Vanicek and co-written with Florent Bernard. The original plan was to have Lee Cronin return as director after the success of Evil Dead Rise, but he chose to make Evil Dead Mummy instead. Producer Sam Raimi then handpicked Vanicek after watching his directorial debut Vermines (2023). And what a great pick to spice up the franchise with some spicy French Extremity. Yes, this entry is maybe the most brutal and mean-spirited of them all as Vanicek approaches the material with much of the same raging energy which Alexandre Aja did back in 2006 with The Hills Have Eyes. The Frenchmen just know how to cook when they’re at the their hungriest, or just to quote Orson Welles: Aaaaaah the French…

And yes, the film is heavy on metaphors, because we’re after all in the 2020s. The word Burn in the title is as much the metaphor of burning the bridges of toxic relationships as burning in hell, and let’s be honest with ourselves: many of us can relate either we want to acknowledge it or not, and I’m always in for it to gleefully witness a rotten family tree getting destroyed from the inside in the most brutal ways by the demons they’ve created themselves. You get what you fucking deserve, like Joker once said. And with that said, while this family is as much the villains as the deadites, this is an Evil Dead movie in the purest form that builds up to a a fierce non-stop demonic haunted house ride that rages as fast as a song by Cannibal Corpse. And while the franchise has never been rich on plot, this one also dig more into the lore. The deadites have also developed some new skills, if I’m not mistaken.

The gory highlights are rolling like rotting pearls on strings here with some creative and flawless practical effects. My favorite is the one in the beginning at the lake where someone’s face gets torn apart by fishing lines. Demon dad shoots himself several times in the skull as he smiles in front of the family to show that nothing can kill a deadite. You have brutal car fights where fingers get chopped off by the car door, and the one that should be the most painful, where Alice gets a pen shoved straight into her eardrums. And she reacts as if she just got a small splinter on her thumb. We all know that the French have a strong threshold for pain, but still. Just barely touching the eardrums with Q-tips is torture. Souheila Yacoub gets a lot of beating, if she hasn’t gone through hell already, and is a very likable final girl to root for. The only redeeming character who isn’t a malignant narcissist like the rest of the family is their youngest son Joseph (Wednesday actor Hunter Doohan) as he’s trapped in the hellish crossfire.

There’s also a particular slimy gross-out moment here to mention that includes dentals, and if you thought that the similar scene from Evil Dead Mummy was yucki, this one takes it almost one meter further. Fans of Jackass or Lucifer Valentine will probably slurp this like liquid candy though.

The humor is very subtle and almost absent as it follows the same serious tone as the previous two, but there are some freudian laughs to be had here. The demented crazylady in the wheelchair cracked me up when she got dragged down the stairs and have no clue what’s going on. And I’m not the only one who saw the clear parallels to the Baker family from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. The only thing missing was a thick southern accent. Welcome to the family, hon. I find it funny how we have gotten more Resident Evil in other films in later years, unintentionally or not, than in the actual Resident Evil films. The only thing that drags the film down a bit is the CGI at the climax, which unfortunately looks pretty shoddy in contrast of all things considered. But all in all, Evil Dead Burn is another strong entry in a franchise that has survived for over 40 years. Six films in and not one single dud and still manage to feel fresh and new for the classic audiences (wink wink). That must be a record for a horror franchise. So let’s have a toast with a shot of fresh candle wax. Yum.

The next installment, Evil Dead Wrath, was wrapped already in May, but don’t hold your breath — for whatever reason we have to wait until 2028 for that one.

Director: Sébastien Vanicek
Writers: Florent Bernard, Sébastien Vanicek
Country & year: New Zealand/USA/Canada, 2026
Actors: Souheila Yacoub, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand, Greta van den Brink, Tandi Wright, Alain Chabat, Maude Davey, George Pullar, Keanu Karim, Victory Ndukwe, Tapiwa Soropa
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31170389/

It Follows (2014)

Posted on July 7, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

A girl is running out of her home, terrified and constantly looking after someone…or something. After getting inside a car, she drives away and later that night she ends up at a beach all alone. On her cell phone, she tells her parents that she loves them, and that’s the last call she ever makes. The next thing we see is the girl’s brutally mutilated corpse in the morning sunlight. And yes, this remains one of the very best opening scenes in modern horror movies, as it effectively introduces us to what could happen to the victims here in a very simple yet brutal and terrifying way!

Then we head over to our protagonist, Jay Height (Maika Monroe), who goes to the movies with her boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary). Suddenly, Hugh asks her if she can see a girl wearing a yellow dress, which she can’t. He then freaks out and urges them to leave. Well, we all have those moments of not wanting to meet a specific someone from our past, right? Nothing to worry about…and absolutely no red flags when a guy freaks out so much over seeing someone that he makes you leave the theater before the movie is finished. At least Jay’s naive enough to not put much thought into it, and later they have sex for the first time in his car. How romantic…until he chloroforms her. When Jay wakes up, she’s tied to a wheelchair in an abandoned building, and while she might have a thousand and one different reasons circulating in her head why he wanted to do this to her, at least there’s no way she expected this: he explains that he is followed by some demonic entity that wants to kill him, which takes appearance of random people and only he can see. The only way to throw it off your trail (at least for a while) is to have sex. Yes, you just need to fuck around, plainly and simply. Then the entity will follow the person you had sex with instead, but here’s the catch: once that person is killed, it will come back to get you. So: he urges Jay to keep having sex with people to keep the entity at bay. Talk about the worst STD ever.

Jay is of course bewildered and probably a little heartbroken too. One thing is being unlucky enough to encounter a man (or woman) who only uses you for sex, but this is on a whole other level. At school, she notices an old woman walking towards her. And surprise, surprise…no one else can see this lady. And what is essentially a rather normal-looking old grandma who might have escaped from a nearby care home, is here turned into one of the most creepy scenes ever, just outright chilling…and that’s pretty much what the movie delivers throughout the rest of the playtime: lots of really creepy and even outright scary scenes, packed with tension and paranoid suspense throughout!

It Follows is a supernatural horror film from 2014, written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. It grossed $23.3 million worldwide against its $1.3 million budget, and has later been deemed a modern horror classic. Mitchell’s inspiration for the film was based on some recurring dreams he had in his youth, all centered around him being followed. The movie was shot in Detroit, Michigan, and in the scene where Hugh has Jay tied to the chair, the interiors were shot at the abandoned Packard Automotive Plant. They had originally planned to shoot it at some other location, but that place became an active crime scene as a murder had been committed there. Always good to have a backup-plan, I guess.

I remember back in the day (yikes, it’s already been 12 years since this movie’s release already!) when It Follows hit the theaters. Naturally, we were excited to check it out as it had received a fair amount of buzz, and to be fair, this movie certainly deserved it. It’s actually the last movie that was able to give me the willies. To be honest, I actually miss the feeling of a movie being able to scare me a little…not that there haven’t been any scary movies afterwards, of course! There’s been plenty of them…but the more horror movies you see, then, well…desensitizing can be a bitch. Then again, I certainly don’t miss the times of not wanting to go to the bathroom at night, so I’ll take that win at least.

Much of the movie’s unsettling atmosphere and tension is thanks to Mike Gioluakis, who said that both he and Mitchell were fans of the still photographer Gregory Crewdson, with the somewhat surreal suburban imagery which suited It Follows so well. There’s a heavy use of wide-shots, making us constantly looking for something within the frame that might be creeping towards the protagonist. This is what makes It Follows so genuinely creepy! It is all about how it makes the entity look like everything from completely normal people to something a lot more uncanny. You never know who it is, or where it is. It makes you paranoid, and it craves that you pay attention to everything that happens on screen. I also love the retro music score, composed by Disasterpeace (Rich Vreeland).

And while there have been many interpretations about metaphors, including that it’s about STD’s (Sexually Transmitted Disease, except in this case it would be more like a Sexually Transmitted Demon), it mostly serves as allegories for transition into adulthood, assault, and the inevitability of death. Death always creeps towards us, and it might have been very close to us at certain times too. And, to quote the director himself: “We’re all here for a limited amount of time, and we can’t escape our mortality, but love and sex are two ways in which we can – at least temporarily – push death away.”

It Follows remains, and will most likely do so, a horror classic that still holds up very well and has for sure been an inspiration to many others. A sequel has been in the talks for years, but it wasn’t until 2023 when a sequel entitled They Follow was announced to be in development. Filming is set to begin sometime this summer.

Writer and director: David Robert Mitchell
Country & year: USA, 2014
Actors: Maika Monroe, Jake Weary, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe, Bailey Spry, Claire Sloma, Mike Lanier, Ingrid Mortimer
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3235888/

Thinner (1996)

Posted on July 3, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Our story starts in the world of the upper-class people, where obese lawyer Billy Halleck lives in a typical upper-class house in Connecticut together with his wife Heidi and their daughter Linda. Days go by as usual, where Billy recently defended the Mafia boss Richie “The Hammer“ Ginelli, because that guy could never have actually killed anyone, right? Innocent as a lamb! So Billy celebrates together with the Mafia boss as yet another murder charge has been acquitted. And it becomes obvious that Billy’s favorite means of celebration is eating, he’s literally obsessed with food and looks the part. While driving home one night, after berating him for his eating disorder, his wife has the sudden bright idea to give him a blowjob while he’s behind the wheel. What could possibly go wrong…well, it ends with Billy running over an elderly Romani woman named Suzanne Lempke from the traveling Romani carnival that recently arrived in town. The woman dies, and you can probably already guess where this goes: the upper-class lawyer gets help from his close friends Judge Cary Rossington and police chief Duncan Hopley, making sure he won’t spend a single second in prison or face any consequences whatsoever.

Now, horror movies have taught us over and over that you do not mess with the Romani people, so what happens next is inevitable: Suzanne’s devastated father puts a curse on Billy when waiting for him outside the courthouse, touching his cheek and simply says the word “thinner“…and that’s that. Definitely a much more easy and laidback way to put a curse on someone compared to what happened in Drag Me to Hell. And Billy…well, he believes he’s been blessed rather than cursed. He can suddenly keep eating like a pig and surprisingly lose weight! And he keeps eating…and keeps losing weight. His wife becomes worried it might be a sign of cancer, but his tests comes back fine. As Billy gets literally thinner and thinner, he starts realizing that something ominous is going on here. And when he also finds out that his friends, the judge and the police chief, are suffering from strange illnesses as well, he can no longer deny that what seemed to be pure luck at first turned out to be a diet from death.

Thinner is a horror film from 1996, directed by Tom Holland (most known for directing Fright Night from 1985 and Child’s Play from 1988). It is based on a Stephen King novel from 1984 with the same name, which he actually wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The movie did not get well received upon release, and got mostly negative reviews. Now, as many Stephen King adaptions go, this is by far any kind of masterpiece for sure, but it’s entertaining, and that’s enough for me.

The story starts off rather whimsically, where you can’t quite catch the tone. There’s a dark story underneath but also it’s rather goofy, and you can’t help but feeling the comedy-tone all over the place with Robert John Burke (who plays Billy) wearing that fatsuit. The effects aren’t that bad, though, they’re perfect for a campy little thing like this. Classified as a body horror movie, it’s mostly Billy’s friends that go through the most extreme changes, though, and while Billy gets, well, thinner, we don’t see him end up like the guy in The Machinist or anything even remotely close. Thankfully, I might add.

As for the morals of the story, there’s no doubt who’s the real villain here. It’s not exactly subtle, either, with the movie opening with him getting a Mafia boss free from (yet another) murder charge. Billy isn’t sympathetic, and neither are his friends who are more than obviously in on everything. Corruption and camaraderie goes hand in hand, and we are not supposed to think they’re the good guys. They’re a bunch of arrogant upper-class a-holes who think their lives and well-being are more important than others. “White Man from Town“ is an a-hole. And, while you may not think he “deserved“ to have a curse put upon him, you can’t exactly sympathize that much with him either, especially as the story goes along…because the whimsical tone really does take a shift and turns everything into a much more gloomy revenge-fueled story. Despite going a tad bit darker than the initial setup would make you believe, it’s still fun, even with its rather bleak ending.

Like the majority of Stephen King movies, Thinner is one you watch when you want something silly and campy, where you can just lay back and enjoy on a lazy evening with some popcorn or candy.

Director: Tom Holland
Writers: Michael McDowell, Tom Holland
Country & year: USA, 1996
Actors: Robert John Burke, Lucinda Jenney, Bethany Joy Lenz, Time Winters, Howard Erskine, Joe Mantegna, Terrence Garmey, Kari Wuhrer, Michael Constantine
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117894/

Backrooms (2026)

Posted on June 2, 2026June 2, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in the year 1990, and we start off by seeing some scientists from the Async Research Institute watching some recovered footage from Naren Warne, a researcher who went into an expedition into the large extradimensional space known as “the Backrooms“. This is a large place consisting of seemingly endless liminal spaces and weird rooms. We see the guy attacked by some kind of entity, and then we head over to furniture store owner Clark instead.

Clark is nowhere near where he really wants to be in life. He wanted to be an architect, but ended up selling furniture instead, a job he appears to despise rather than being grateful for having. His coping mechanism for dealing with his resentment over “failing“ in life is…yup, you guessed it: Mr Whiskey, of course! If being miserable, why not make sure to ruin everything else in your life at the same time, eh? At least that gives him yet another excuse to continue drinking. And as can be expected, Mr. Whiskey has only exacerbated his troubles by making him even more angry, irritable and petulant, lashing out at his wife and frequently coming home late at night, drunk as a skunk. The correct spelling for all of that is d-i-v-o-r-c-e. So Clark, now sleeping in one of the unsold beds in his furniture store, regularly visits his therapist Mary Kline. She’s got her life a lot more together than her client, no doubt, but we learn early on that she’s also got issues of her own to deal with. She grew up with a mentally ill mother, and the house where they lived together has been demolished, something she seems to struggle a bit with. She’s having a keepsake from the place, more or less as her own personal trauma token. Despite her own issues, she’s doing her best to help her clients and especially Clark, but unfortunately his anger and resentment proves to make him very treatment resistant…which is often the case with people who go to therapy because they want to feel better, and not because they want to be better.

As Clark is having more than enough on his table, trying to dress up as a pirate in order to film a funny commercial for his store (and literally falling on his ass instead) there’s also a new problem: the electrical bill is mysteriously high, and the store building occasionally gets flickering lights. As if his financial issues weren’t bad enough already. He calls for an electrician, who finds some really oddly placed colored switches that don’t connect to anything in the store. One night, Clark goes into the basement of the store where he notices a glowing slit in the wall, and discovers that he can walk right through it. On the other side is the infamous Backrooms! Clark is as oblivious as a rock of this fact, of course. He’s got no idea where, what, how or why, but he’s curious. Who the hell wouldn’t be. And now he’s got something new and interesting to fill his time with: exploring the seemingly never-ending place of weird, empty hallways and rooms, all filled with malformed furniture and other strange stuff. He also discovers that, despite how empty the gigantic place at first seems to be, there’s definitely something else there, too…

Backrooms is a sci-fi psychological horror film, written by Will Soodik and directed and co-scored by Kane Parsons in his feature length directorial debut. Kane, inspired by the Backrooms creepypasta and the 4Chan post that started it all, made an entire web series based on it. He also made the horror short The Backrooms from 2022, and at the time he was only 16 years old. Parsons was approached by several studios regarding a feature film, and in 2023 this was officially announced. Filming began in summer of 2025, and ended in August the same year. It’s a joint production between A24, Cherning Entertainment, Atomic Monster, and 21 Laps Entertainment. In order to create the liminal space environments for the film, they built a set across four sound stages, with more than 30,000 square feet. That sure as hell is a lot of yellow wallpaper and carpeting, which were actually sourced locally in Canada to avoid the impact of the U.S. tariffs. Due to the setup of these areas, the actors found the environment physically challenging and some were reportedly even getting lost on set.

The term “liminal space“ really took off back in 2019, spawning subcategories like Dreamcore and Weirdcore. The empty, nostalgic and slightly uncanny vibe of these kinds of images managed to capture the interest of a lot of people, giving nostalgia to some and the heebie-jeebies to others. And in this movie, they have specifically used the aesthetics of the old “original“ backrooms image, with the yellow color palette and all. And while Parsons’s horror short from 2022 mostly focused on the exploration and being chased by some kind of monster, this movie gives the entire story of the backrooms some surprisingly deep psychological metaphors, including the monsters inside and why they’re there.

And while speaking of certain metaphors and meanings, there was one scene in particular that really got to me: we see the living room of Mary’s childhood home, with all the clutter and newspaper in front of the windows. Then the camera moves downwards, and we see a slightly different version of the room…more simple, less clutter, but still the same room. And as the camera keeps moving downwards, we see several other versions of the room that gets more and more distorted each time…and this, of course, represents how memories can sometimes mess things up entirely, or like Clark mentions to Mary after exploring the Backrooms, he thinks that the place is the way it is because it “remembers“ and recreates. “The more times it remembers something… the less it does“. This reminds me so much of how things can also be remembered and recreated in dreams, and we all have probably experienced something similar where a dream or memory doesn’t really fit with what was real. For example, I actually very clearly remember my late grandmother’s house, which was torn down just some years back…but when I dream about it (which I often do, actually, and it’s one of the few things that can bring me in a lucid state) things started to gradually look “wrong“. First off, my grandmother is never present in those dreams anymore. The house is mostly empty, aside from her favorite chair and a few other things. The rooms are now often bigger, have a darker wallpaper, the hallways are longer…sometimes there are new floors, new rooms, etc. Whenever I dream about this house, the recreation is kind of based on a memory that was already wrong…and this is what really resonated so much with me during that scene in Backrooms to the point where it literally gave me chills.

While the psychological aspects are very much a huge part of the movie, it’s not without a solid, creepy atmosphere. When we see Clark exploring the surreal rooms there’s always an underlying tension, and when there’s a monster nearby it’s more about its presence than it actually being seen. The big rooms and other areas are definitely part of the experience itself, totally nailing the liminal space aesthetic. Some people that aren’t into this kind of thing will probably find the exploration parts a little slow, but I absolutely enjoyed every second of it. And I also love that the entire movie is set during the 90’s.

Backrooms is definitely a movie that will resonate stronger with some than others. It isn’t just about scares or the horror aspects of it, but also the deeper psychological levels that is more or less the essence of liminal space and its offspring.

Director: Kane Parsons
Writer: Will Soodik
Country & year: USA/Canada, 2026
Actors: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, Avan Jogia, Robert Bobroczkyi, Ember Ambrose, Krista Kosonen, Philip Granger, Katharine Isabelle
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26657236/

Obsession (2025)

Posted on May 29, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

“Be careful what you wish for“… yeah, there you have an old aphorism. We so often think we know exactly what we want, without thinking over what the fulfillment of said wish would cause. Like the angry child who stomps up the stairs and shouts “I hope I never see any of you jerks again!“ to his family. Yeah, we all know the feeling of wishing something in the heat of the moment without thinking it over more properly, and we also know that the story of the aforementioned child has a happy ending and that the wish wasn’t really fulfilled. Not all stories about people having their wishes come true have a happy ending, though.. not everyone gets a cheerful genie in a lamp. Sometimes they get the monkey’s paw.

In this story, we start off with what could be the buildup for a romantic comedy. Baron Bailey aka Bear has deep feelings for his childhood friend Nikki Freeman, but he doesn’t know how to tell her. He also fears that his feelings won’t be reciprocated, and that it would ruin their friendship. One day Bear comes home, finding his cat Sandy dead from having eaten some of his oxycodone pills (kudos for the movie for making this scene an emotional one instead of just a shock-factor one, as is too often done with dead animals in horror movies). Still grieving, he is persuaded by Nikki to go out with their friends. He decides to buy her a gift, and ends up in a mystic shop where he buys a novelty toy called a “One Wish Willow“: some kind of stick that, once broken, can grant a wish. Only one wish per person, though, with only the first stick counting, so no use stacking up. Naturally, he just thinks of this gift as something silly and fun, but eventually ends up being the one who opens it and wishes for Nikki to love him “more than anyone in the world“. Poof, wish granted! Nikki is now head over heels for him, which should’ve been the best thing ever.. right? Well, not so much, because Nikki isn’t just in love with him, she’s obsessed in all the wrong ways.. maybe Bear should’ve been more careful with how he phrased that wish.

Obsession is a supernatural horror film written, directed and edited by Curry Barker. Barker has earlier uploaded some of his works on YouTube, including his found footage movie Milk & Serial. It was his 2023 horror short The Chair that made Film Producer James Harris of Tea Shop Productions to reach out with an interest of turning it into a feature, but Barker pitched him with Obsession instead. He had gotten some inspirations for it after watching an episode of The Simpsons, where Homer interacts with a monkey’s paw. Jason Blum under Blumhouse Productions joined as executive producer after the film’s festival premiere last year.

Together brought some relationship issues and unnerving codependency themes on the table last year, and this year we’re having a horror movie about a horribly codependent relationship mixed with an extreme borderline FP (Favorite Person) dynamic in a relationship. And I was honestly not prepared for just how tense this movie actually managed to be! While it has, more or less universally, been hailed as a modern horror masterpiece, it isn’t really that original or “groundbreaking“ if you look at it on a surface level. It is the execution, the build-up of scenes and the always smothering tension and the psychology that makes this movie so great.

Despite all the tension, the movie becomes darkly funny at times and I have to give some big thumbs up for Inde Navarrette’s performance as Nikki. She is genuinely frightening, with her erratic and often insane behaviour, mixed with what can only be perceived as so much pain and anxiety that she’s not able to function properly. However, while Nikki is the frightening one just from her erratic and dangerous behaviour, there’s still no doubt as to who’s the real “villain“ here. Bear may at first look like the ultimate nice guy, seemingly sweet and sympathetic, but it is his underlying selfishness that causes his downfall. Also…who the fuck wishes for someone to love them more than anyone in the world..? That’s just crazy…and while Bear is never really presented as the villain (or victim, for that matter), he is the one who created the situation, but instead of looking for a solution as soon as possible he just embraces it, with little regard to how this has literally broken Nikki. He has, although unwittingly, turned her into something that is no longer the person he fell in love with…in fact, she’s barely a person at all anymore.

Obsession is without a doubt a masterful horror rendition about a very fucked up relationship, with the underlying message of being careful what you wish for. Definitely one of the highlights of the year! Currently Curry Barker has two other movies upcoming already: a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie and one called Anything But Ghosts, with Blumhouse as producer, where the filming was wrapped on 11 April this year. Barker has mentioned that this film “exists in the same universe as Obsession”. Sounds interesting for sure, but no release date for this one as of yet.

Writer and director: Curry Barker
Country & year: USA, 2025
Actors: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Andy Richter, Haley Fitzgerald, Darin Toonder, Anthony Pavone
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt37287335/

Passenger (2026)

Posted on May 26, 2026May 26, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Yeah, you’ve probably already heard the flying monkeys yelling from the rooftops that this is the worst horror movie of the year because Obsession is a masterpiece. Bollox. But if that’s so, then I guess all horror movies have already sucked since 1973 after The Exorcist. Someone said it best: Not all horror movies need to be the best horror movie ever, or the scariest movie since the scariest movie. Sometimes it’s OK to just be good, or just OK to be OK, like enjoying a quick fat cheeseburger.

Passenger is basically a haunted house movie on wheels where we follow the young lovebirds Tyler and Maddie from Brooklyn as they set out for a six-week road trip across the USA in a nomad van, protected with a Saint Christopher necklace and a Bob Ross bobblehead on the dash. “No mistakes, just happy accidents“, as he famously said. We all love Bob Ross, but to be more safe than sorry, they should also add bobbleheads of Ed and Lorraine, and maybe Bob Larson, you know, just to be sure.

Their relationship gets put to the test when they hit some, well, bumps in the night, pun intended. Because there’s one golden rule for road nomads to follow: If you must drive at night, don’t ever stop, if the road is haunted/cursed. And you better know what the hobo codes mean. If the morbid curiosity wouldn’t first get the best of me, I’d also stay away from Clinton Road. A specific country road is more haunted than others, where our love couple stops by (Uh-oh) an ugly car accident (that we see in the opening) where they instantly get attached to a curse of a demonic, ghoulish old geezer known as, yes, you guessed it: The Passenger. To make it more obvious and not subtle at all, their van gets marked with three scratches. Maddie is the first one to see visions and gets her head fucked with, while her boyfriend has a hard time believing her. Pretty much the same set up like in every episode of A Haunting. But instead of being isolated in some house, they’re isolated on rural country roads where there’s hardly any street lights. And I think I would prefer a haunted house on wheels over a deep house.

And, of course, like any curse, we eventually have to pick up the pieces to solve the puzzle before losing grip on reality. To be on the safer side, they stack up the whole van of all the Saint Christopher necklaces they can buy, to hopefully “beat the devil out of it“.

Even though Passenger doesn’t reinvent the wheel, no pun intended, André Øvredal showcases that he still manages to make the woods look haunting with some creative use of lights, like he did back in the Troll Hunter days. A scene that sticks out is when a film projector gets used as a flashlight, and an eerie liminal space sequence at an empty parking lot. Moments like this, where the film gets more room to breathe and lets the atmosphere sink in while the imagination goes rampant, are the strongest part. A fun nod to The Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) at the beginning as well. And yes, the bag of clichés is unfortunately not left home in Brooklyn, where you have some of the typical lame straight-forward jumpscares with loud boom-sound. And it has to be said that getting pulled from the ground into darkness while screaming at the camera just makes me eye-roll. The demonic entity could also have been explored more.

That said, Passenger is overall an enjoyable flick, with some inventive scares, grim woodsy atmosphere spiced with vibrant, stylish flair. It’s far from Øvredal’s scariest film, as he himself claims, but it’s surely a big step up after his previous one, The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023). Now that he’s back on track again, and found his way back to the campfire, I hope for More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Director: André Øvredal
Writers: Zachary Donohue, T.W. Burgess
Country & year: USA, 2026
Actors: Jacob Scipio, Lou Llobell, Melissa Leo, Joseph Lopez, Miles Fowler, Alan Trong, Devielle Johnson
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33763941/

The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

Posted on May 19, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

… and no, we’re not talking about Simon Cowell. We follow the tragic odyssey of Steve, who’s on a space flight to Saturn (which I first assumed was the sun) where he gets exposed to some radiation of the Saturn rings. Next, we see him at a hospital bed, his face covered with bandages. His arms are like fried chickens, and we can only imagine what his face looks like. Well, it doesn’t look good. He sees himself in a mirror where he looks like a mix of an outcast from Tromaville and a zombie escaped from a Lucio Fulci filmset. He panics, kills two nurses and runs away in the Californian desert. I’d guess he had no health insurance.

Only two (yes 2) actors are credited in the opening sequence: Alex Rebar as The Incredible Melting Man, and Burr DeBenning as Dr. Ted Nelson. In other words; it’s really reassuring to know from the very start that there’s at least one surviving doctor in the house, ’cause Melty needs help ASAP. Instead, he now goes around and kills everyone he stumbles upon, and eats their skin in hope to slow the melting process. Sorry bud, but that only works in silly horror movies. Oh well. While Melty goes on his murder spree, Dr. Ted tracks him down by following his gooey footprints with a radiation detector. Good luck.

The Incredible Melting Man is the title, and that’s what you get. No clickbait BS. And the film is, for the most part, as self-aware as the title suggests — a throwback to the schlocky, cartoonish and campy monster films from the 1950s that are not to be taken seriously for a second. The producers, however, wanted more horror and less silliness, where some scenes were edited as a silent film, of all things, that were later removed. So much bullshit escalated behind the scenes that writer and director William Sachs almost replaced himself with Alan Smithee. The incoherency and tonal shift is all over the place where you have kids smoking cigarettes, and a scene with an elderly couple with goofy music that could be something from a sitcom. Then there’s the horny photographer with his blonde model in the middle of the desert, where I guess Roger Corman gave some input. Because it’s after all the 1970s where you gotta show some tits, even a little.

We see right away that the strongest part here is the make-up effects, done by Rick Baker, which later was the inspiration for a certain melting man in RoboCop (1987). Gallons of goop mixed with syrup and paint were used to make it look like Melty was constantly, well, melting. The actor who plays Melty, Alex Rebar, hated the process and being in make-up, and turned out to be quite a primadonna. He even refused to wear several of the prosthetics, and said to Rick Baker once that I’m a big star in Italy, you know. Baker replied: I’ve never heard of you, and you’re playing The fucking Incredible Melting Man, so cut the crap! Haha, I bet that crushed his ego. This is no masterpiece, but a fun little dumb campy schlock filled with Z movie charm, some gory moments (most notably a floating head), and it surely lives up to its title.

Writer and director: William Sachs
Also known as: Smeltende terror (Norway)
Country & year: USA, 1977
Actors: Alex Rebar, Burr DeBenning, Myron Healey, Michael Alldredge, Ann Sweeny, Lisle Wilson, Cheryl Smith, Julie Drazen, Stuart Edmond Rodgers, Chris Witney
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076191