american horror movies – Horror Ghouls

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

They Will Kill You (2026)

Posted on May 15, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Asia Reaves and her younger sister Maria are trying to escape from their abusive father, but this doesn’t go too well. It ends up with Asia shooting him (not dead, though) and running away while abandoning Maria. Asia is, of course, arrested and has to spend a long time in jail, all the while Maria has to remain in their father’s custody.

Fast forward 10 years later, we see Asia arriving at a place called The Virgil, which is some kind of exclusive high-rise building in NYC. She’s there to become a new maid, and as the building manager Lilith Woodhouse welcomes her inside, Asia quickly learns that this place is filled with a wealthy cultist elite. And yes, they’re satanic and commit human sacrifices…what a shocker. As Asia was planned to be their latest sacrificial lamb, things take an unexpected turn as she’s come prepared and stacked with lots of weapons, plus badass fighting skills like she’s been taking lessons with Pai Mei. And things really turn deadly, bloody and crazy! Asia finds herself in a bigger challenge than expected, though, when it appears the satanic cultists respawn like low-level enemies in a video game, no matter how many times they are killed. A nice perk they’ve been given after all the human sacrifices…

They Will Kill You is an action comedy horror film directed by Kirill Sokolov, co-written with Alex Litvak. The movie was filmed in Cape Town, using the South African Mutual Life Assurance Society building, CGI’ing the hotel’s name “The Virgil“ on it. Virgil is a reference to Dante’s Inferno, where the ancient poet Virgil is leading Dante through the nine circles of hell. Sokolov said that the inspiration behind the film came from when he and his wife moved to a different city in Russia, where they rented an apartment on the 17th floor. They started joking amongst themselves how the whole building probably belonged to some kind of cult and that eventually they’d end up sacrificed. I’m sure there’s a lot of large apartment buildings that will easily give off that kind of feeling…

Prior to watching this movie, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. Something fun and fast-paced, sure…but would it be as bloody and crazy as I hoped? Well, it certainly was, because goddamn, does the movie hit hard with its blood-soaked frenzied ride! There are the good old blood-fountains, a fair amount of gore and totally insane scenes like the one involving a disembodied roving eyeball. Wicked! It was what I had hoped it would be and then some, for sure. It does absolutely not hold back, there’s so much over-the-top moments that I got some Braindead and Re-Animator vibes all mixed with Kill Bill and a dose of the good old Sam Raimi. And, if I’m going to be completely honest…I actually got more of a Sam Raimi feeling from this film than Send Help from earlier this year…

Zazie Beetz who plays Asia, delivers her performance with just the right amount of ferocious and unhinged brutality. Her little one-person-army is kicking satanic ass all over the place while she must battle her way through the hordes of cultists. They Will Kill You is bloody, ultra-violent and outrageous in such a fun way, and as far as horror-action movies go this is top-tier entertainment. If you want a thrill-ride filled with blood fountains and craziness, you should definitely check this one out!

Despite this being such a fun, bloody and upbeat movie, it didn’t fare too well at the box office with $19 million against its $20 million budget. Oof. Perhaps this had a bit to do with Ready or Not 2 being released at the same time, who knows. Hopefully it will grow in popularity over time.

Director: Kirill Sokolov
Writers: Kirill Sokolov, Alex Litvak
Country & year: USA/South Africa/Canada, 2026
Actors: Zazie Beetz, Patricia Arquette, Myha’la, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, Willie Ludik, David Viviers, Gabe Gabriel, Viktoria Korotkova, James Remar
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31728330/

What Josiah Saw (2021)

Posted on May 12, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

On an isolated farm somewhere in Texas, Thomas (“Tommy“) Graham lives with his alcoholic father Josiah. Tommy is a man with intellectual disability, and his father Josiah…well, let’s just say he doesn’t seem to be the best company for Tommy. Between emptying one bottle of whisky after the other, Josiah rambles on about all kinds of things, including when he saw a leprechaun farting a rainbow of of his ass. Josiah has seen quite some things, it seems. But this story isn’t about something as jolly as rainbow-farting leprechauns, as you might’ve guessed. The Graham farm has a dark and troubled past, and we get a flashback story to how Josiah’s wife Miriam hanged herself from a tree in the garden while Tommy and his two siblings were still young. And speaking of his siblings…they’re not faring too well off either.

Tommy’s brother and sister are Eli and Mary, who are twin siblings. They have long since left the farm, and have more than enough troubles to deal with. Eli is a drug addict, gambler, and you can add sex offender to the list. Scumbag, in other words. Mary is struggling with trauma and tries to live a normal life wanting a child of her own…which is a problem since she decided to have a tubal ligation operation 20 years back. When she was young she was convinced she wouldn’t want to become a mother, but now there’s a total u-turn for that…because her apparently wrecked marriage and the feeling of emptiness inside will be totally fixed if they can just have a baby, right..? Pfft. Then, when the three siblings all receive a letter from an oil company wanting to buy the farm and the land around it for oil drilling, it sounds like an opportunity that’s very hard to say no to. Except Eli and Mary now have to return to the place…and face the horrors from their past.

What Josiah Saw is a Southern Gothic psychological horror drama film from 2021, written by Robert Alan Dilts and directed by Vincent Grashaw in his directorial debut. While this movie is mostly a psychological drama, the horror elements are more than present enough. I really liked the bleak, dark atmosphere that remained like a blanket over the entire movie, even in the segments that took quite different turns than I imagined.

Now, they say all families have their issues. And that’s no doubt true, but some have far more serious issues than others. In this twisted family drama there are past trauma and horrific acts committed, all presented in chapters where each one focuses on each of the siblings. When we start off with Tommy, there’s that oppressive and dark vibe already from the very start, sprinkled with some supernatural elements. When coming into Eli’s segment, though, there’s a very big tonal shift and we’re suddenly in a drug-drama with child-napping gypsies. Not…exactly what I expected. It all still connects and blends with the rest, and in order to fuel the story and climax it was pretty much needed to spend some time with each of the characters. They all have committed sins of the past and have had sins committed against them, and it all unravels towards the end.

There are some twists in this movie that can be figured out very early on if you pay enough attention to certain details, especially in one of the early scenes with Tommy. This didn’t ruin anything, though, as there’s more than enough mystery surrounding the three siblings and their past, and why things turned out the way it did and what Josiah actually saw. It also reminded me a little of another family farm horror movie from 2020, called The Dark and the Wicked. That one is pure supernatural horror very much throughout so they’re not all that similar in story, but it has some of that same vibe and atmosphere of an isolated and worn farmhouse and family drama coming to the surface.

What Josiah Saw is kind of a trauma film with more focus on the family drama than any supernatural stuff, and these kinds of movies are often a bit hit or miss with me. I really think the horror elements worked well here, though, bleak and gritty with a tense slow-burn and dark atmosphere. Not the kind of movie you put on when you want to have a fun popcorn type of time, but for those days when you want something a little gloomy.

Director: Vincent Grashaw
Writer: Robert Alan Dilts
Country & year: USA, 2021
Actors: Robert Patrick, Nick Stahl, Scott Haze, Kelli Garner, Tony Hale, Jake Weber, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Troy Powell, Louanne Stephens, Winston James Francis, Billy Blair, Anthony Gaudioso, Dana Namerode
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3097396/

Eegah (1962)

Posted on May 8, 2026May 8, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Eegah! The Crazed Love Of a Prehistoric Giant For a Ravishing Teen-Aged Girl! (Played by a woman in her late 30s) Eegah Had Never Seen a Girl, Until One Fell Into His Arms. Boy Fights Giant For Girl! Eeeeegahhh!

Yep, this is the retarded drunk clown show where Jaws himself from James Bond (Richard Kiel) plays a not-so-convincing prehistoric caveman with the cleanest skin and fakest beard, and lives on sulphur water. Then you have the incompetent sound guy who forgot to push the record button during most of the filming, later fixed with bad dubbing. Classic. Add some cringe and desperate nepotism to eleven where the director had some big hopes to plant his son as the new Elvis Presley. And according to the film’s poster: Desert dune buggy first time on screen! This film has it all.

So, this Eegah-guy (his name never gets mentioned, by the way) is wandering one night on some road not so far from the Californian desert with his club where he almost gets run over by Roxy. While Eegah looks like someone doing a Flintstones cosplay, the same could be said about Roxy, who looks more like Betty, as she wears a cute blue dress, and even talking like a low-IQ Hanna-Barbera character. After she faints of shock, Eegah heads back to the desert. Her boyfriend, Tom, suddenly shows up and takes her back to her dad. She tries to convince her dad, Robert (played by the director himself, Arch Hall Sr.) and Tom that she just saw a giant. And guess what — dad believes her, because according to the Book of Genesis, the giants once walked the Earth. Amen and God bless. Her boyfriend isn’t so sure, though. Here you have some of the dialogues between Roxy and Tom. Roll the clip:

Roxy: My dad still doesn’t believe! (Uhm, ok?)
Tom: Suuure he does.
Roxy: And neither do YOU!
Tom: I swear on my Elvis Presley LP. How big did you say he was?
Roxy: Oh, bigger than anybody YOU ever saw!
Tom: I bet you were scared, huh?
Roxy: A little. But I had the funniest feeling that he wouldn’t hurt me.

Next morning Betty, I mean Roxy, shows her dad the spot where she saw the giant. Watch out for snakes! Holy COW, he was standing right here WATCHING us, Tom says. Then he took off for Shadow Mountains. While Roxy’s dad flies to the mountains in a helicopter to search for this giant, our love couple spends some quality time by the pool. Here we get our first song number (of three) from Tom where he sings the love ballad of Vicky to Roxy while she has a little swim:

♫ ♪ I LoOOove You Vicky, Yoouu Know I DoOOo, Vicky Oh Viickyy ♪ …

My heart just melts. The random singing doesn’t come from nowhere though. Tom is played by Arch Hall Jr, the son of the director, who, as mentioned, had big plans to make him the new Elvis. He thought it was a good idea to utilize several parts of the film to showcase his talent, where he has more of the charisma as an average roadhouse singer while the songs are mixed with some laughable bad lip-sync. Hall Sr tried for the last time to put him that same year in the comedy/romance Wild Guitar. Didn’t go so well. Junior retired from showbiz in 1965 and was never keen on talking about his short-lived acting career ever again. Who can blame him.

Anyway… When Roxy’s dad goes radio silence, her and Tom goes out to the desert in a buggy where Roxy gets kidnapped by Eegah (no shit) and taken to his cave where she gets reunited with her dad. The cave entrance is, of course, filmed at the iconic Bronson Caves, which was also used in Robot Monster (1954) and numerous other movies and TV shows. The exteriors of Eegah’s cave looks as fake as you can imagine. It’s now up to Barney, I mean Tom, to save his girlfriend Betty, I mean Roxy, and her dad.

Some highlights:

— When Tom and Roxy are buggy-cruising through the desert while Roxy shouts Weee!, like Lucas the Spider.

— When Roxy shaves Eegah’s fake beard. Yes, really.

— When Eegah then eats some of the shaving cream. Comedy gold!

— When Eegah introduces Roxy to his dead, mummified family in the corner of his cave. Here it gets a little creepy.

— All of the Eegah’s mumbling dubbed “dialogue“.

— The fight scenes where Eegah bitch-slaps like a real caveman instead of using his club.

— When Eegah crashes a party and does everything he can to not destroy a single valuable thing with his big club, since there wasn’t any budget for expendable set pieces. The one and only thing he destroys during the entire film is a door.

— The whole movie.

Eegah is on the public domain and easy to find. Yabba Dabba Cheese!

Director: Arch Hall Sr.
Writers: Bob Wehling, Arch Hall Sr.
Country & year: USA, 1962
Actors: Arch Hall Jr., Marilyn Manning, Richard Kiel, Arch Hall Sr., Clay Stearns, Bob Davis, Deke Richards, Ron Shane, Addalyn Pollitt
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055946/

Stir of Echoes (1999)

Posted on April 28, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

In a working-class Chicago neighborhood, Tom Witzky and his wife Maggie are going to a party after getting a babysitter for their 5-year old son Jake. Lisa, who is Maggie’s sister, is a firm believer in the supernatural and claims that she can hypnotize people… and to this Tom just snorts and thinks of it all as pure nonsense. It all ends with the non-believer being put under hypnosis by Lisa, where she gives him a post-hypnotic suggestion (an instruction given to someone under hypnosis which they will carry out once the trance ends) telling him to be more open-minded. Yup, you can already imagine how this goes. Shortly afterwards, he begins seeing and experiencing things, and to top it all, it also seems that their young son Jake is doing so, too, and that Jake has been seeing dead people for much longer than both Tom and Maggie have been aware. Now daddy’s in for the ride too. What Tom and Jake are experiencing in the house, seems to be connected to the disappearance of a 17-year old girl named Samantha Kozac. It all turns into an obsession where Tom tries to turn the entire place upside down in order to find out what happened to this girl, and why he and his son keep seeing her.

Stir of Echoes is a supernatural horror film from 1999, based on a book by Richard Matheson, and written and directed by David Koepp (who later directed Secret Window from 2004 starring Johnny Depp, and You Should Have Left from 2020 once again starring Kevin Bacon in the leading role). Now, if you asked someone if they’ve seen that supernatural horror film from 1999, about a man and a boy seeing dead people, they would most likely answer “oh, yeah, you mean that film called The Sixth Sense“! At least they would not be very likely to answer “Stir of Echoes“. The Sixth Sense became a major success, while this movie more or less got thrown in the shadows…which is a little bit of a shame because this is a pretty decent supernatural thriller, but it came and went like so many other movies. Typical example of truly bad timing.

Now, one thing I tend to really love about supernatural horror movies, at least in the ones that goes for a darker and more serious tone, is the mystery and gradual build of it. All of that “what really happened“, “what is really going on“, that makes you wonder and anticipate the answers. In a story about a ghost you already know that the ghost is dead, but what you want to know is why and what happened to them. This movie works very well in that regard. Sure, there’s the usual ghostly tropes and clichés as can be expected, but the solid execution makes it very enjoyable for those who want a mystery-fueled supernatural horror film. Unless you’re one of those who expects people to reinvent the wheel for every new movie, of course.

Kevin Bacon is fine in the role as the skeptic man turned believer, and he’s often so irrational in his behavior that you almost start wondering what exactly is up with this guy. Yeah, we all know that seeing dead people can take its toll, but c’mon man, even your five-year old son is able to cope with this in better ways than you do! With that being said, a lot of people in the neighborhood seem to cope with things in the wrong ways, which of course goes a long way in describing how certain working-class neighborhoods who are striving to appear like a “decent upper-class” place, will often hide their issues rather than deal with them.

Compared to The Sixth Sense, there aren’t really any truly scary moments in Stir of Echoes, but it is an entertaining and mysterious supernatural horror film mixed with some crime elements, and one that should be a pleasant watch if you want a ghostly crime mystery from the end of the 90’s.

Note: David Koepp was also writer and producer of this year’s Cold Storage, which we haven’t seen yet but most likely will soon.

Writer & director: David Koepp
Country & year: USA, 1999
Actors: Zachary David Cope, Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Erbe, Illeana Douglas, Kevin Dunn, Conor O’Farrell, Lusia Strus, Stephen Eugene Walker, Mary Kay Cook, Larry Neumann Jr.
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164181/

Pretty Lethal (2026)

Posted on April 24, 2026April 24, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

A group of ballerinas from Los Angeles have gotten the opportunity of their lifetime: to attend a prestigious international competition in Budapest. Too bad the group have as much chemistry as water and hot oil. The teacher, Thorna Devenport, tries her best to make the girls work together but their differences are creating too much of a gap between them. You have rich and bratty Princess (yes, that’s her name), deeply religious Grace (fitting name, right?) Zoe and her hearing-impaired sister Chloe, and rebellious and street-smart Bones. Well, ahead to Budapest for the time of their life anyway…and of course, things go bad already from the get-go: there are mix-ups at the airport, resulting in them having to take a bus which breaks down. As they leave the bus to find a cab, they are invited to a place called Teremok Inn, which is run by a former prima ballerina called Devora Kasimer. Huh! What a coincidence. And this place is located in the middle of…bumfuck nowhere, it seems, with nothing but forest around for miles. How convenient…for some.

As they’re trying to wind down a bit inside the inn that looks like a colorful Haunted Mansion, the one red flag after the other is waving in front of their faces. Devora Kasimer is also the head of a small crime family, and bad things happen at Teremok Inn. Bad things that doesn’t really have anything to do with the American troupe, but they get mixed into the shit anyway, because, well…Europe is always so, so dangerous for Americans, ya know! At least according to American horror movies. After their teacher gets killed and the girls locked up and ready to be slaughtered, they finally band together and use their ballerina skills to survive.

Pretty Lethal is an action thriller film, directed by Vicky Jewson and written by Kate Freund. It premiered on South by Southwest Film & TV Festival on March 13, 2026, and released worldwide on Prime Video on March 25. It was originally announced as Ballerina Overdrive back in 2023 and was supposed to be filmed in Serbia, but things changed and it was instead filmed in Budapest, Hungary.

If you want something fun, colorful and vibrant, then this is it. This movie doesn’t only promise some kick-ass ballerina fights and blood ‘n gore to follow with it, it actually delivers. It is fast paced, highly energetic and so, so much fun! In stark contrast to the more dark and brooding Livide from 2011 (which is also a great horror movie featuring a ballerina), this one is a different kind of beast that pumps up the fun and action!

The choreography during the fight scenes are just awesome, and the fight where they take on a group of people in the inn’s pub while having Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers playing is pure gold. These ballerinas kick ass, and the Hungarian mob doesn’t stand a chance! That being said, I love how the movie doesn’t give them some kind of magical-girl superpower where they’re suddenly practically invincible. They get kicked around, punched and hurt too, their ballet-fu isn’t going to stop the Hungarian mob from being a very, very dangerous threat. But this is a bonkers setting where a high tolerance for pain, flexible bodies, and ballerina shoes armored with razor blades manage to beat guns and knives, and it works surprisingly well. Ballerinas are known for having a very high pain tolerance, often disassociating to perform their best, so it makes sense for them to endure as much as they do. A scene where one of them is being “tortured“ by a guy starting with pulling our her toenails makes for a nice gag – she’s a fucking ballerina, you idiot! A broken toenail is almost an everyday occurrence for these ladies…

Visually, the movie looks good with rich visuals and contrasts, with lovely interior matching the setting. Performances are solid, with all the ballerinas doing well with their roles, and Uma Thurman in the role of Devora Kasimer does a pretty good job on portraying a vicious crime-queen with a thick Eastern European accent. The hearing-impaired girl Chloe is played by Millicent Simmonds (A Quiet Place) who is deaf in real life.

Pretty Lethal is a high-energy wild ride from start to finish, with a lot of gore and silly violence, and it’s always totally aware of what it is. A fun time with some killer ballerinas who dance and slash their way out of danger!

Director: Vicky Jewson
Writer: Kate Freund
Country & year: USA/Hungary
Actors: Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Lydia Leonard, Avantika, Millicent Simmonds, Iris Apatow, Tamás Hagyó, Uma Thurman, Tamás Hagyó, Julian Krenn, Miklós Béres, Péter Végh, Adam Boncz
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26678938/

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026)

Posted on April 21, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Evil Dead Mummy, Egyptian Evil Dead, Evil Dead Wrapping, Bring Her Back from the Evil Dead, The Exorcist of the Evil Dead, Resident Evil Dead… a dear child has many names, as we say in Scandinavia. But what this is certainly not, is a new entry from the Universal Monsters Universe. To avoid more confusion and potential legal copyright issues, Blumhouse/Atomic Monster took the easy fix by adding the director’s name above the title — while the grimy, necro promo posters alone spoke loud and clear by itself that this is a whole new take on the mummy concept. And if you still expected something in the same style of the more lighthearted and adventurous approach of The Mummy from 1999 and only waited for Brendan Fraser to show up, well, then you have no one but yourself to blame (LOL). Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is pure mean-spirited horror, through and through, and to quote Emil from RoboCop: I LIKE IT!!

We’re in Cairo, Egypt, where the little girl Katie gets kidnapped by a creepy horse-faced-looking lady. She’s the type of person who looks like a walking spell, and has groomed Katie with candy for some time. Dad Charlie, who’s a TV reporter, runs after her through some narrow streets until he gets slowed down by a sudden sandstorm and loses them. The local police won’t do shit as the scummy lead detective only suspects the parents. What can you say…

Eight years go by where the family, Charlie, his wife Larissa and their two children, Sebastian and Maud, have since moved to dusty Albuquerque, New Mexico. Then the phone rings. Their daughter has been found – alive. Well, sort of. The bad news is that she was found in a sarcophagus, of all things, from a crashed cargo plane in the desert of Aswan — and is now in a locked-in catatonic state in a wheelchair looking like a ghoulish, rotting corpse that has just been dug up from the grave by Wednesday 13. Time has not been kind to her, to put it mildly. Besides all that, her heart is in great condition. Hm..

A top comment I’ve seen floating around is the lack of logic of bringing her back home in the condition that she’s in, rather than just discard her like trash and let her rot at the hospital. Well, if we’re gonna have some serious talk here about logic, and a quick psychology course for dummies while we’re at it, it could maybe have something to do with the sweet health insurance? Since this is the United States of ‘Merica, BOY, where the power of thoughts and pears are way more lifesaving than one’s basic rights to proper healthcare will ever be. Or maybe the parents aren’t, you know, just some cold psychopaths. I’m not a parent, so what do I know.

The big question is, of course, what the hell really happened to her, and why. Hell happened, that’s for sure. And Hell will happen again as soon as she gets rolled back home with her parents and two siblings. Katie starts to act more weird, uncanny and unpredictable with sudden violent tics, one that ends up headbutting poor grandma to a nosebleed. At night, she runs on all fours like a wild dog in the crawlspace to hunt for scorpions to eat before puking green goo. While this sounds more like a generic possession movie, you’ll be surprised…and disgusted… and maybe lose your appetite for the rest of the week.

Not to slip into spoiler territory, but yes, we have a possession thing going on here that was on full display in the trailers. But on the surface, this is actually a mummy movie — with even a mummy. Yeah, I know, I’m as surprised as you. There’s a lot to chew on here (and swallow, for that matter), just from the aggressive visuals alone, where Lee Cronin seems to be a big fan of the so-called split diopter-effect, shot by cinematographer David Garbett, who also did Evil Dead Rise (2023) with Cronin. It’s icky, which puts an extra flavor to it. The dusty and old, almost Resident Evil’ish haunted house-setting that is the home of the family in New Mexico works perfect for the backdrop. The heavy atmosphere is consistent with much of the same edge as the first two Conjuring films, mixed with the gritty detective aspects like Deliver Us from Evil (2014), without the rain, of course.

All the actors do a solid job, but Natalia Grace, who plays the mummy girl, doesn’t get enough roses. She has the perfect balance of looking like a vulnerable vegetable while at the same time reeking with the same intimidating force like Pazuzu, or maybe Mumzuzu in this case. The film is way more brutal and bleak than expected, especially having in mind that this is Blumhouse, where I assumed that only The Grabber had full access to the Splatter & Gore department. All, if not most effects are practical, and they all rip, in all literal sense.

Then there’s the already infamous gross-out scenes which goes all up to eleven during a wake/funeral scene that starts off with an old wine-sipping lady saying the embalming fluid is the new Botox. Haha. It’s something straight out from the dinner scene from Braindead where the pitch-dark gallows humor shouldn’t work, but it somehow does. Some moments here are truly disgusting, even for a ghoul like me — and after witnessing the young girl grinning with the uncanny teeth in full context, is now a still image that will lives rent-free in my head for a while. This could easily have been a muddled, tonal mess, especially judging by the trailers, but Lee Cronin manages to stitch it all together into a cohesive and highly entertaining dark wild ride where the runtime of two hours and fifteen minutes flew away like a crispy leaf on a windy autumn day. One of the best horror films of 2026.

Writer & director: Lee Cronin
Country & year: USA/Ireland/Spain, 2026
Actors: Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, Shylo Molina, Billie Roy, Veronica Falcón, Hayat Kamille, May Elghety, Emily Mitchell, Husam Chadat, Tim Seyfi, Mark Mitchinson
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32612507/