We’re in a small town in Scotland, where rookie police constable Rachel Heggie is on patrol. Suddenly she witnesses a car strike some mysterious man in a trenchcoat, who seemingly disappears after getting hit. The driver of the car, Francis “Caesar“ Sargison, is a familiar face to the police so Heggie is quick to arrest him. After she brings him into the police station, Sgt Jim Macready charges Caesar for reckless driving. So in a cell he goes, where there’s already another guy who is in for beating his wife. Now, the only thing Heggie needs to do, is finding the mystery man wearing a trenchcoat (and no, it’s not Castiel, but this could have easily belonged somewhere in the Supernatural universe) and she radios two other police officers for the task. It appears his disappearing act wasn’t too solid, as they quickly locate him and brings him in for questioning. He’s covered in scratches, goes by the name “Six“, and carries a notebook with a list of names. Soon, it becomes apparent that this mysterious dude is on a mission, and the names in his notebook are from people who have committed horrible acts and not done anything to atone for them. And it is also soon revealed that nearly everyone in the police station have dark secrets of their own…it’s not only the ones behind bars that are the bad guys…
Let Us Prey is a supernatural horror film from 2014, directed by Brian O’Malley (who also directed The Lodgers from 2017) and co-written with Fiona Watson and David Cairns. And if you’re in for something fun, gory and supernatural this might just be right up your alley! While you become aware very early in the movie that you’re watching one of those “pray for your sins“ kind of story, it does so with a bit of almost cartoonish glee by giving us a bunch of characters that truly deserves it. The characters are all interesting enough, where he have the protagonist Heggie who is struggling with something from her past, and is pretty much the only likable character among the bunch, except from perhaps Six himself. The others are…mostly a bunch of horrible a-holes. They’re all having a history of violence and wrongdoings, and we’re certainly looking forward to see them finally pay for their misdeeds.
The movie is mostly very fast-paced with few dull moments, with a fitting John Carpenter-esque synth score by Steve Lynch. It also becomes bloody and gory at times, where especially towards the end we get full-on mayhem where one of the bad guys covers himself in barbed wire and tries to become Rambo and blast everything to pieces. Crazy and fun! And since the majority of the characters here are deliberately unlikable, it goes a long way to have a devilish “antagonist“ who isn’t really the bad guy here.
Let Us Prey is one of those popcorn movies that is simply a good time, with lots of violence and fun and a finale that goes wild!
Director: Brian O’Malley Writers: Fiona Watson, David Cairns, Brian O’Malley Country & year: UK/Ireland, 2014 Actors: Liam Cunningham, Pollyanna McIntosh, Bryan Larkin, Hanna Stanbridge, Douglas Russell, Niall Greig Fulton, Jonathan Watson, Brian Vernel, James McCreadie, Sophie Stephanie Farmer IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3148348/
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/
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/
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/
“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/
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/
I am you. And you are me. And we are here Yo. I am the dreamer and you are the dream. Deez nuts.
Whitley Strieber woke up on a December night in 1985 in a little room surrounded by what he calls “nightmare creatures“. A needle was put into the side of his head and he was raped by a machine. He then woke up, again, this time in his bed, as if he just had a wild fewer dream after eating too many mushrooms. Happens to us all. Although Strieber had already, at the time, reached success as a horror writer with The Wolfen and The Hunger (both made into films), his nonfiction Communion: A True Story, based on his bizarre abduction experience, would be the bestseller. The book was released in 1987 and was adapted two years later to the silver screen by schlock filmmaker Philippe Mora from a script by Whitley Strieber himself. Christopher Walken was cast to play Strieber. What could go wrong?
Well, from the get-go, Strieber already acts like an eccentric and unpredictable goofball, and maybe the last person you’d believe was kidnapped by aliens in track pants. No I’m not kidding. Strieber lives in a New York apartment with his wife and son where he writes his books while wearing a wolf mask and cowboy boots with no pants, like the best writers do. Where he hides the cocaine is no one’s business. Whitley’s nightmares starts during a weekend at a remote cabin far in the woods where a bright light shines over the area. No one can explain what happens, and after they head back to New York, Whitley acts more strange and erratic, as if he wasn’t already. After he sees visions and snaps at a Halloween party, Whitley’s wife, Anne, is concerned about his mental state and their marriage, and sends him to a psychiatrist to do some hypnotic regression therapy. And, well, get ready for something really special, where we get to see funny-looking aliens and creatures that could be from the puppet warehouse of Charles Band.
Yes, this is what you could call a weird-ass movie. Whitley Strieber had a friendship with Philippe Mora that went way back to the 1960s, but it would soon be clear that they weren’t much on the same page after all. Mora focused way more on Strieber’s mental collapse, as if he was just gone ko-ko while he tried to balance a normal family life as a frustrated writer. And he didn’t like that, and was not a fan of how Christopher Walken portrayed him. Can’t really blame him, even though Christopher Walken is the highlight here. The film plays more as a humiliation ritual for Strieber, if not a parody of American UFOlogy, where he only comes across like a super pretentious nutcase where even Fox Mulder would roll his eyes. Or maybe that’s just the price for having the director of Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf to make your biopic about getting ass played by aliens.
Christopher Walken got complete freedom to do whatever he wanted with the role and improvise whenever he felt like it. And his performance here can be described as schizophrenic at best. He shows his real reaction by laughing because of how funny the aliens looked. Director Mora kept it in the film as he thought it made it more disturbing. And we laugh as much with him as at him. The scenes with the aliens are pure comedy and bizarro hour where you have the classic cinematic moment of close encounters of the fourth kind, which on paper should be terrifying, traumatic and disturbing but, well…not here. Christopher Walken doesn’t even try to look scared, even when he’s about to get analprobed where he randomly says It looks like you’re gonna sing White Christmas. Yeah, sure. Bruh. Whatever. And if dancing with aliens wasn’t enough, he also sees himself cosplaying as Gomez Addams. Weird, Weird, to quote R. Zegler. Communion is open to endless interpretations, if you even manage to take this seriously.
Director: Philippe Mora Writer: Whitley Strieber Country & year: UK/Australia/USA, 1989 Actors: Christopher Walken, Lindsay Crouse, Frances Sternhagen, Andreas Katsulas, Terri Hanauer, Joel Carlson, John Dennis Johnston, DeeDee Rescher, Aileen Fitzpatrick, R.J. Miller IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097100/
… 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
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/
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/
We’re in a small town in Scotland, where rookie police constable Rachel Heggie is on patrol. Suddenly she witnesses a car strike some mysterious man in a trenchcoat, who seemingly disappears after getting hit. The driver of the car, Francis “Caesar“ Sargison, is a familiar face to the police so Heggie is quick to arrest him. After she brings him into the police station, Sgt Jim Macready charges Caesar for reckless driving. So in a cell he goes, where there’s already another guy who is in for beating his wife. Now, the only thing Heggie needs to do, is finding the mystery man wearing a trenchcoat (and no, it’s not Castiel, but this could have easily belonged somewhere in the Supernatural universe) and she radios two other police officers for the task. It appears his disappearing act wasn’t too solid, as they quickly locate him and brings him in for questioning. He’s covered in scratches, goes by the name “Six“, and carries a notebook with a list of names. Soon, it becomes apparent that this mysterious dude is on a mission, and the names in his notebook are from people who have committed horrible acts and not done anything to atone for them. And it is also soon revealed that nearly everyone in the police station have dark secrets of their own…it’s not only the ones behind bars that are the bad guys…
