HorrorGhouls – Page 10 – Horror Ghouls

Bloodstone: Subspecies II (1993)

Posted on October 2, 2024January 1, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Bloodstone: Subspecies II starts right where the first one left off. We’re in Castle Vladislas where Michelle (portrayed by Denise Duff from here on) is a freshly-bitten vampire, lying in a coffin while her friends are killed by Radu. And speaking of Radu, who’s gotten his head chopped off… according to the vampire encyclopedia, it isn’t enough to just cut off their head, you know. Because you also have to burn the head on a stake to completely finish them. If not, the head will somehow magically attach itself back, like what happens here.

After Radu’s epic little awakening, he finishes his brother Stefan by shoving a stake through his chest, drinking his blood that jets like a fountain. Shows you just how wicked Radu really is. First his father, now his brother. Oh, my. Radu opens the coffin of a scared Michelle, and is about to finish her off as well. A little too late as the sun rises just in time to make Radu rush himself down to his crypt in the basement. There’s a lot to process in these first ten minutes, but after the sun has gone down again, Radu is too late —again— as Michelle has escaped the castle.

To make matters worse for Radu, she has taken the ancient relic, the Bloodstone, with her that was in the coffin with Stefan. Radu gets furious as he trashes the corpse of his brother like an unhinged drug-addict (like he metaphorically is) before he gets on Michelle’s tail, who’s jumped on a train to Bucharest. Michelle checks into a hotel and phones her sister Becky (Melanie Shatner) in the USA. Before Becky is able to get on the first plane to Romania, Michelle dies in the bathtub in her room, and… that’s it, I guess?

Lieutenant Marin (Ion Haiduc) spots two bitemarks on her neck, and like most level-headed Romanian people, the last thing on his mind is vampirism. He gets hold of the Bloodstone, which he assumes is a stolen antique. Well, not far from the truth. Anyway, on the way to the morgue, Michelle suddenly wakes up in the bodybag, scares the daylight out of the coroners, before she runs to seek shelter from the sun. In other words, her sister, Becky, will have a hard time tracking down Michelle in Bucharest. What a mess.

Meanwhile, Radu pays his mother a visit, simply called Mummy (Pamela Gordon). She’s a ghoulish witch skeleton who lives in a cemetery tomb, of course. And she’s not related to the Crypt Keeper, just to clarify. She’s also as evil as she looks and does what she can with her magic to help her beloved son to claim back the Bloodstone and catch Michelle, who he now has some other plans for. Becky gets help from the US Embassy Agent Mel (Kevin Spirtas) to find her sister.

While the first film was mostly filmed in the Romanian countryside, here we expand the horizon in the big city of Bucharest. And I wouldn’t be too surprised if this was also the first American film to be shot in the capital. However, this is peak Full Moon. The first three Subspecies films as a whole are the best thing they’ve ever created (alongside with the first three Puppet Masters), where the second is the grand jewel of the series.

There are some more interesting characters here as well. Denise Duff, who took over the role as Michelle, does an outstanding job here as she slowly loses her identity and has to adjust to the dark, addicted life as a bloodsucking vampire. Melanie Shatner (yes, the daughter of William Shatner) does a solid job as the concerned sister as well. Kevin Spirtas as Mel comes off as more flat and dry, while we have some subtle comic relief moments with Lieutenant Marin, who doesn’t buy any of this vampire-fairy tale boolshit. We also have the old historian Nicolai Popescu (Michael Denish), a charming little oddball. Radu’s Mummy, adds some more of the cheese factor as she looks like something from a 80s fantasy horror movie.

Everything here is of high quality, all from the cinematography, the story, pacing, the effects/make-up, the music to the acting. Everything just clicks. The advantage of the old city of Bucharest really enhances the mood and the stylish gothic atmosphere all up to eleven while Radu casts his dark shadow over the city buildings. The use of light and shadows and the contrast-filled visuals are alone a delight to watch. It looks menacing and beautiful at the same time, and if you weren’t tempted to visit Romania after the first film, this one surely will.

Writer and director: Ted Nicolaou
Country & year: Romania/USA, 1993
Actors: Anders Hove, Denice Duff, Kevin Spirtas, Melanie Shatner, Michael Denish, Pamela Gordon, Ion Haiduc, Norman Cabrera, Wayne Toth
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106436/

Prequel:
– Subspecies (1991)

Sequels:
– Bloodstone: Subspecies II (1993)
– Bloodlust: Subspecies III (1994)
– Subspecies IV: Bloodstorm (1998)
– Subspecies V: Bloodrise (2023)

Subspecies (1991)

Posted on October 1, 2024January 1, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Hey, now that the evil dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu has finally been shot and executed on national TV, and Romania has been freed from the communist party, maybe we should pay the country a visit? Charles Band with his brand-new film company, Full Moon Features, certainly didn’t hesitate. Because after disbanding his decade-long Empire Pictures, he needed something quite special to add to his new company. Full Moon had already produced the first three Puppet Master films with great success, but here comes the coolest piece of trivia in the history of cinema: Subspecies was not only the first American film to be shot in Romania, it was also the first vampire flick to be filmed in that country after the fall of communism. Talk about a double win!

Charles Band quickly scrapped together the title and the classic poster we see on the right before thinking about the script. Director Ted Nicolaou (who also directed the four sequels, plus the spin-off Vampire Journals) asked what the hell the small creatures that carry the woman on the poster was supposed to be. How could he know, it was something that was cool to have on the poster, so the writers just had to come up with something. They ended up being the ones we actually call the Subspecies, and Radu’s (the film’s antagonist) minions, which are just a tiny minor element to the films. They only appear briefly as a quick afterthought in the first two and in the second and the third one.

This epic saga starts with a silhouette shot of the famous Bran Castle where the king Vladislas (Angus Scrimm) in a big fluffy wig, probably borrowed from this guy, is having a drop from an ancient relic called the Bloodstone, the films precious MacGuffin. This stone produces saints’ blood as quickly as a porn stars’ ballsack, so the vampires can live in their own darkness without hunting down humans. And in comes Radu, one of the sons of Vladislas. He’s pure evil, inside and out, with long fingers that would make Count Orlok jealous. He wants the Bloodstone for some reason, even though he hunts down humans just for the hell of it. He wants the whole pie for sure, and the Bloodstone is just the cherry on top. He kills the king with a dagger, claims the castle, and Romania is no longer safe. So much for the execution of Ceaușescu. La dracu!

Then we meet a group of three young female students who travel to Transylvania to study Romanian culture and folklore. Our main girl is Michelle from the US (Laura Tate) who’ll be the main protagonist in the first four films. After meeting at the train station, they drive to a village in the countryside where we get a unique glimpse of an obscure, broken and piss-poor country where the dust after decades of dictatorship hasn’t even begun to settle. It’s grim and moody with all real sets and locations, which gives the film a more raw, organic vibe. The special effects are a whole other aspect, though, which I’ll come back to.

After settling in at an old hotel in the town of Prejmer, they meet the young man, Stefan. He and Michelle fall quickly in love. But there’s only one problem: Stefan is actually a vampire, you see, and the brother of Radu. And Stefan is the polar opposite of Radu, as he’s a good-hearted handsome chad who tries his best to live a normal, civilized life with mortals, thanks to the Bloodstone. Those days seem to be over, though, especially when Radu gets those precious young female students on his radar and starts to hunt them down. Rasnov Fortess was used as Radu’s hiding place, just to mention.

Full Moon made a malicious villain here with Radu, who’s best described as a more monstrous-looking Eric Draven. He’s played by the more unknown Danish actor Anders Hove, who also repriced his role in the four sequels. He brings back much of the primitive and animistic mannerism we saw with Nosferatu while he adds his own distinctiveness to it. The new aspect of Radu is that he talks with a raspy voice like someone with stage 4 throat cancer. And he never seems able to wipe his mouth after biting someone’s neck as he drools like a baby where even the hardcore goth girls would cringe and say “ew“.

The music/soundtrack here is really remarkable, constructed by four composers and performed by the Aman Folk Orchestra. It’s dark and moody, filled with classical tunes that go hand in hand with the obscure and eerie Romanian surroundings. The theme for the opening credits, enhanced in the next two sequels, became such a classic that the black metal band Marduk made a cover version dedicated to Radu, called Nightwing.

While we have a compelling vampire villain, the biggest credit goes to the use of locations, as already mentioned. We have forest landscapes, castle ruins, villages, old ancient buildings in general, and considering the harsh circumstances, the film looks way better than it probably should. Because there are some clearly rough edges here on the technical levels, especially the scenes with Radu’s minion creatures. They originally used actors in costumes with large sets which ended up as deleted scenes. The problem was, according to the director himself (from a journal he wrote during the production), was that they were played by drunk Romanians who I’d guess were still in celebratory mode after the death of Ceaușescu. And then there were the language barriers. So instead, we have some charming creatures made of claymation in stop-motion made by David Allen, who also worked on the Puppet Master films. The only thing missing is their shadow where the moldy B movie cheese really reeks, and it’s a positive thing that they have very little screen time. They look much better in the next two films though.

So, despite its bumps in the road, Subspecies is a solid and a very ambitious start to a nice, little trilogy that expands on its own twist on Eastern European vampire lore. I’m not sure how much impact this will have on today’s generation as this is a product from its time – but Radu, the locations, the overall atmosphere and the music alone make it worth a watch. The two sequels are great as well, especially the second. You can watch them all on fullmoonfeatures.com.

Director: Ted Nicolaou
Writers: Charles Band, Jack Canson, David Pabian
Country & year: Romania/USA, 1991
Actors: Anders Hove, Irina Movila, Laura Mae Tate, Michelle McBride, Ivan J. Rado, Mara Grigore, Adrian Vâlcu, Michael Watson, Angus Scrimm
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103002/

Sequels:
– Bloodstone: Subspecies II (1993)
– Bloodlust: Subspecies III (1994)
– Subspecies IV: Bloodstorm (1998)
– Subspecies V: Bloodrise (2023)

WHILE MORTALS SLEEP – Horror Short

Posted on September 29, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Follows a cold case novelist who seeks refuge at her friend’s vacation home after her career collapses.

Horror Short Sunday is here again, and this time we’re going into some cosmic horror territory with While Mortals Sleep. A novelist who has been following a cold case and now needs to seek refuge in an isolated vacation home that belongs to her friends, meets an odd couple with the cutest baby…

Director: Alex Fofonoff
Writer: Alex Fofonoff
Country & year: USA, 2022
Actors: Ronald Binion, Will Brill, Carie Kawa, Grace Morrison
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt16390818/

The Substance (2024)

Posted on September 27, 2024September 27, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Elisabeth Sparkle is an award-winning actress who hosts a popular aerobics show for TV. It’s been going great for a long time, she’s even gotten her own Hollywood Walk of Fame star! There is one problem, though…she isn’t getting younger. No one ever gets younger, of course, but for someone like Elisabeth Sparkle, who’s got her whole life tied around her looks and beauty, this natural process hits much harder. After shooting her aerobics show like always, on the day that is her fiftieth birthday, she needs to go to the restroom. She finds that the women’s restroom is closed off, so she decides to go into the men’s room instead. While inside one of the stalls, the producer enters talking loudly on the phone. The conversation is about her, of course, and in no kind terms he describes how they need to get rid of her and replace her with someone young and hot. Ouch. After he leaves, Elisabeth comes slowly out of the stall, looking at herself in the mirror and realizing that everything in her life has been turned upside down.

After being fired, she notices that her billboard is taken down which causes her to get involved in a car accident. She leaves the incident with only minor injuries, but in the hospital one of the young male nurses gives her a flash drive together with a note saying “it changed my life“. At home she plays the flash drive, which promotes a serum called “The Substance“, which will create another version of yourself: one that is younger and more “perfect“. This new version will still be connected to you and you will be as as one. Elisabeth, after some hesitation, decides to make her order. And thus, her new young and perfect version is born through a slit in her back, and she adopts the name Sue. In order to make this all work perfectly as per the instructions, they must switch after 7 days: one week with Sue, one week with Elisabeth. Everything seems to go perfect: Sue gets hired as the new host for the aerobics TV show, and is steadily rising towards more and more fame. But things soon turn out to not work so great after all…

The Substance is a satirical science fiction horror movie from 2024, with many body horror elements and a lot of dark comedy. The film is co-produced, written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, and stars Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid. The film was shot in France, in a studio in the Paris region and on location on the Côte d’Azur. Demi Moore was originally very nervous about filming full nudity scenes at the age of 61, and felt vulnerable (which, I guess, just goes to show the effect age has on us and our self esteem, just like portrayed in the film). Her 29 year old co-star Margaret Qualley, who plays the role as her younger version, also performed totally naked and Demi Moore credits her for making her feel more comfortable on the set, stating that she “was a great partner who I felt very safe with“.

Upon viewing this film we didn’t really know what to expect. And oh boy, were we in for a ride! Taking the concept of how society and the entertainment business treats aging, especially towards women, Fargeat has spun an intricate and twisted tale filled with a feminist satire and social commentary, mixed with some of the wildest body horror elements I’ve witnessed in a theater. Prosthetics and makeup effects designer Pierre-Olivier Persin really did a great job here, and the movie relying primarily on practical effects gives it the gross-out factor that CGI simply wouldn’t have been able to.

The actors are all doing great, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley are nailing their roles and Quaid is doing an excellent portrayal of a Hollywood sleazeball. With several creative scenes showing just how much of a creep that guy is, and how ultimately unattractive he appears with his foul behavior, yet no one around him is disqualifying him from anything due to his age. Most of the male characters here (with some exceptions) are excessively gross, displayed as powerhungry horny pigs that are male-gazing every woman they see, and treating them with complete disrespect and even contempt if they do not “fit“ their standards. It’s a bit overtly stereotypical, but also straight to the point in a setting like this.

Now, regarding the protagonist: while Elisabeth’s situation is without a doubt something that can make you feel sorry for her, I actually had problems feeling that much sympathy for her. Her actions and behavior throughout the whole process went pretty far in showing that she was, after all, just as shallow as the people who rejected her. The younger version of herself, Sue, also goes a long way with portraying a very narcissistic persona with little respect towards Elisabeth. But as the company behind the substance clearly reminds her: they’re one and the same. They may be two, but they are both from the same material, and have the same traits, and they both idolize society’s beauty standards and strive to live up to it by all means possible. One could argue that Elisabeth had no choice in the matter since her whole life “fell apart“ after getting sacked, but…eh, no. It didn’t have to. In fact, there’s a scene where she meets an old acquaintance, Fred, who tells her she’s “just as beautiful as ever“ and really likes her for who she is. She later calls this guy up, setting up a date, but it’s obvious that the only reason she’s doing so is because she’s in need of an ego-boost, which doesn’t lead to anything of course because her frail ego botches the date and she sets him up. I’m going to be honest: the only character I felt genuine sympathy for here, was Fred…

Now, with a movie like this it’s hard not to also delve into the major themes here. We often point fingers at Hollywood for setting absurd beauty standards for the female body, but honestly, fingers could as easily be pointed backwards to ourselves. In movies, on social media, and pretty much everywhere, there’s a very obvious worship of youth and beauty. Fillers, botox, facelifts, implants, liposuction…all kinds of procedures to make people look “better“ are presented towards a younger and younger audience, where people as young as being in their 20s start taking botox injections. People’s self-esteem is worse than ever, and that’s not just Hollywood’s fault. Living in a society that almost deems aging as something unnatural that must be avoided at all costs, there’s bound to be unreasonable expectations. There was a weird little case here in Norway some years back, amongst the financial elite: two middle aged men started a fight, after one of them had said “sleeping with a woman over 40 is like sleeping with a corpse“. The other guy found this to be a preposterous claim and said (this being under the 2016 election in the US): “not even Trump would have said something like that“. It was later also talked about how looking down upon women is a jargon in certain parts of the financial elite society (as with so many other places). One may laugh about it, make jokes about it, but…it’s deeply rooted in so many parts of our society. Not everyone’s got the balls to stand up to it though.

The Substance is a brilliantly gross, wild and thought-provoking movie. Behind layers of glitz and glam, nudity and body horror, there’s also themes of loneliness and fear, about being rejected for who you are by the people around you for doing something none of us can avoid as long as we continue to live: growing older. And perhaps a little reminder that we should not measure our self worth from society’s standards, otherwise we just end up being another part of the problem. And that ending…wow! Without spoiling anything, I just want to say it really goes wild and doesn’t hold back. I guess that for some people who wanted a movie more grounded, they might be put off by it, but goddamn I loved every second!

The Substance is considered to be an unofficial remake of a movie called The Rejuvenator, from 1988.

Writer and director: Coralie Fargeat
Country & year: France/USA, 2024
Actors: Margaret Qualley, Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia, Alexandra Papoulias Barton, Oscar Lesage, Joseph Balderrama, Robin Greer, Tiffany Hofstetter, Gore Abrams
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17526714/

The Deliverance (2024)

Posted on September 24, 2024September 24, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Ebony Jackson is a mother who’s struggling with an alcohol problem, and when drinking she’s often abusive towards her three children Nate, Shante and Dre. They have just moved into a new home, which is their third one within a short time. This time, Ebony’s mother Alberta has also moved in with them, a new-born Christian who’s suffering from cancer. As Ebony also has a criminal past, she’s under constant supervision from the Child Protective Services, and her caseworker Cynthia notices that things aren’t all that well in the house. And then the youngest in the home, Dre, starts talking to an imaginary friend called Tre. Yeah, that’s always good news. Flies start appearing inside the home, and Dre starts behaving strangely and is one day found in a catatonic state after having gone into the basement. Ebony now has to struggle with her constant cravings for alcohol, a problem that too easily lead her to being abusive towards the people in her life which she should have treated best of all, plus the Child Protective Services which are (and rightly so) keeping a close eye on her, and on top of all that there’s also something that seems to be possessing her own children and she’s at the risk of losing everything.

The Deliverance is a supernatural horror film directed by Lee Daniels, which was released on Netflix this year. It’s written by David Coggeshall and Elijah Bynum. The movie is inspired by the Ammons haunting case, which features the infamous Demon House which is no longer standing. The “true“ story goes like this: in November 2011, Latoya Ammons and her family of three children and her mother, moved into a house on Carolina Street in Gary, Indiana. Soon after moving in, they claimed black flies started swarming the porch, and things like footsteps in the basement, shadowy figures and other regular supernatural shenanigans started to happen. The family reached out to their physician for help, and he considered their behavior to be delusional which caused someone from his office calling the police, and the children were taken to the hospital where the youngest boy screamed and thrashed. When the Department of Child Services got involved in 2012, they believed the children were “performing“ for their mother, and sensational stories about the youngest by walking up the wall backwards started to get published in outlets such as New York Daily News. And then, like things often go with cases like this, a priest got involved and performed an exorcism. The family later moved to Indianapolis, and it’s said the events stopped after that. Then, in 2014, Zak Bagans from Ghost Adventures bought the house for $35.000, filmed a documentary in it which is titled Demon House. The house was demolished in January 2016.

Now, The Deliverance doesn’t stand out very much when it comes to demonic possession horror movies, and I have to honest and admit that I didn’t have very high expectations. We were intrigued due to the movie being based on this case, though, and we have also seen Demon House. What this movie does best, is not actually the supernatural parts, but the tension played out during the family drama, with the abusive alcoholic mother, her frightened children, and her cancer-suffering mother (who does the best possession scenes). And of course, the way it portrays poverty and the socioeconomics aspects. The start of the movie is without a doubt the most intriguing part, building up a tense atmosphere and establishes a sense of dread and mystery. The latter part of the movie goes into hackneyed demon possession fare, and drags along a bit too much. At least it uses demonic possession clichés rather sparingly, and lays off from overuse of CGI, which makes it easier to slog through. Overall, though, the movie is far from as bad as we initially thought it would be. In fact, the movie is on the whole pretty decent, it just doesn’t have the oomph to stand out very much.

So, all in all, The Deliverance doesn’t bring anything new that we haven’t already seen a plethora of times before, but it’s done with a solid hand.

Director: Lee Daniels
Writers: David Coggeshall, Elijah Bynum
Country & year: USA, 2024
Actors: Andra Day, Glenn Close, Anthony B. Jenkins, Caleb McLaughlin, Demi Singleton, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Mo’Nique, Omar Epps, Miss Lawrence, Javion Allen, Todd Anthony, Bryant Bentley
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4196566/

EAST HELL – Horror Short Film

Posted on September 22, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

A horror-comedy about two teenage goths that try to summon a demon using a satanic ritual they found on Reddit.

It’s another Horror Short Sunday, and this time we summon a demon in East Hell. It’s a fun horror comedy about two goth girls trying to summon a demon by using instructions from Reddit. Poor goat, though…

Director: Callum Smith
Writer: Callum Smith
Country & year: USA, 2017
Actors: Lauren Nicole Cipoletti, Cole Krell, Alexandra Noland, Allison Winn
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt7950466/

The Door (2009)

Posted on September 20, 2024September 20, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

David Andernach (Mads Mikkelsen) is a painter who’s cheating on his wife with the neighbor lady. One day, while busy with his affair when his wife is at work, he leaves his daughter unsupervised and she ends up drowning in the garden pool. His entire life falls apart: his wife understandably leaves him, he ends up with an alcohol problem, and five years later he’s still desperate for forgiveness. When he realizes none can be given, especially not from himself, he leaves his ex-wife a final message on the answering machine telling her he won’t bother her anymore. Then he tries to commit suicide by drowning himself in the same pool his daughter died in, but of course his ex-wife called for his best friend to go check on him after the not exactly subtle message. Later, when walking home, he suddenly sees a blue butterfly. Nothing really strange about that, except it’s wintertime. He decides to follow it (because, who wouldn’t follow after a blue butterfly in the middle of winter, right?), and is taken through a mystical corridor hidden behind some shrubs. He gets to a door, and on the other side exists in a world very much like his own, a parallel universe of sorts. Except for one thing: it’s five years earlier, and here his daughter is still alive. Knowing what’s about to happen, he manages to save his daughter from drowning in the pool while his other self is busy banging the neighbor. This means that in this world everything is the way he wants, but there’s only one problem: there’s now two of himself there. In order to live the life he desperately wants, being able to erase the hell he’s been living through for the last five years, he ends up killing his other self and buries him in the garden. Who could possibly suspect a murder when no one is missing, right? Except…things will not be that easy, of course.

The Door (original title: Die Tür) is a German science fiction thriller from 2009, directed by Anno Saul, based on a book by Akif Pirinçci (writer of the animated cat thriller Felidae). The story told here have the clear structure of an old-fashioned moralistic fairytale, told in a way where you will inevitably question what your own decision would have been in a similar situation. We all have things we regret, we all have our moments of “oh, if I could just turn back time…“ and believing everything would have been so much better. And maybe it would have been… or maybe not. Maybe everything would be even worse. There is no doubt in Hell, however, that someone would not have wanted to go back in time to save their own child’s life, despite the risks of things taking a different turn than hoped for or expected. Thus, The Door takes a common “what if I could have done it over again“ setting and turns it into something horrific, a dark fable playing on the darkness of the human psyche.

There are a few issues with the plot where some of it doesn’t make all too much sense. I haven’t read the book, so cannot make comparisons, and I can easily see how some of it may not have translated as well into film. Still, The Door is a nice sci-fi thriller that keeps you guessing with its many twists and turns.

Director: Anno Saul
Writer: Jan Berger
Originaltitle: Die Tür
Country & year: Germany, 2009
Actors: Mads Mikkelsen, Jessica Schwarz, Valeria Eisenbart, Thomas Thieme, Tim Seyfi, Stefan Gebelhoff, Suzan Anbeh, Heike Makatsch, Nele Trebs, Thomas Arnold, Karsten Dahlem, René Lay
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1223934/

The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)

Posted on September 17, 2024December 10, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Deedle, deedle, Blackcoat’s Daughter. What was in the holy water? Gone to bed on an unclean head. The angels, they forgot her.

It’s February, and the students at the Catholic boarding school Bramford Academy are about to get picked up by their parents for a week-long break. Kat, a freshman at the school, wakes up from a nightmare where she’s witnessed her parents dying in a car crash. And later her parents do not arrive to pick her up, and they cannot be reached by phone. At the same time, a senior student named Rose suspects that she might be pregnant, and has lied to her parents about when to pick her up so she can buy some time to get things settled. Kat and Rose ends up being the only two left at the school, aside from two nuns. Kat starts acting weirder and weirder, and receives strange phone calls.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter (aka February, and also aka The Daughter of Evil) is a supernatural horror film from 2015 written and directed by Osgood Perkins. It was his directorial feature debut, and stars Kiernan Shipka as Kat, Emma Roberts as Joan and Lucy Boynton as Rose. While Perkins have made several slow-burn horror films during the years, including the Netflix film I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016) and Gretel & Hansel (2020), he’s gotten most known for his recent satanic horror film Longlegs with Nicolas Cage himself playing a crazy satanic serial killer. And you could’ve easily believed that The Blackcoat’s Daughter belonged to the same universe, as they’re both having satanic devil-worship elements and the same dark, helpless nihilistic atmosphere. Just like the titular character in Longlegs, we here also meet a character who not only ends up becoming a victim to evil forces, but totally embraces it. The conventional portrayal of possessed people needing and wanting to be saved is turned completely upside down.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter is weighed with symbolism, with a narrative that explores the themes of mental illness, loneliness and longing, and how it can open up a crack that invites bad things in and lets them fester. The movie is divided in three parts, skipping a bit back and forth in time until we are left with the inevitably bleak and despairing ending. It’s a very dark and brooding film, never offering any kind of fast pace and the horror elements are often mostly subtle. It may require a bit of patience to fully get the most out of it, and is definitely a movie better suited for those that prefer slow atmospheric horror over fast-paced action and jumpscares. If you liked Osgood’s latest movie Longlegs, chances are you will also enjoy The Blackcoat’s Daughter.

Writer and director: Oz Perkins
Country & year: USA/Canada, 2015
Also known as: The Daughter of Evil, February
Actors: Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, James Remar, Lauren Holly, Greg Ellwand, Elana Krausz, Heather Tod Mitchell, Peter James Haworth, Emma Holzer, Peter J. Gray
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3286052/

THEY HUNT WITHOUT EYES – Horror Short

Posted on September 15, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Alone in the bush, a young man is hunted by something familiar… something without eyes.

We’ve arrived at another Horror Short Sunday, and today we’re taking a look at They Hunt Without Eyes, which shows us what could happen if a mannequin-virus started infesting people…

Director: Kasey Jonty
Writer: Kasey Jonty
Country & year: Australia, 2023
Actors: Clayton Menzies

Stopmotion (2023)

Posted on September 13, 2024September 13, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Suzanne Blaker is a stop-motion animator quite famous within the circle, but she’s unable to use her hands anymore due to arthritis. She still wants to complete her latest film, and for this, she needs help from her daughter Ella. Poor Ella is often overworked by her demanding mother, constantly having to do scenes over again and never doing anything the right way (at least according to her mother). Then Suzanne suffers a stroke and ends up in a coma, where Ella finds herself with enough freedom to do what she wants. Her decision is to finish her mother’s film, and she chooses to rent a studio apartment where she can work. There, she encounters a little girl who appears to be very interested in her work, and ends up guiding her towards completely new ideas for the film. Instead of finishing her mother’s “boring“ movie, she changes it to be about a young girl lost in the woods, who encounters a scary entity called the Ash Man. The girl keeps guiding Ella through the process, making her craft the dolls from meat in order to make them look more real, constantly pushing Ella to experiment more and using techniques she probably never thought herself comfortable with using.

Stopmotion is a psychological horror film directed by Robert Morgan, and it’s his feature length debut. The screenplay was written together with Robin King, and it stars Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale, 2018) in the leading role. Robert Morgan also made the horror short film The Cat with Hands (which I found out about some years back when Guillermo del Toro recommended his on his Twitter/X account) where stop motion is also used.

The movie is definitely a slow burn, and what first appears to be something that could lead to a final twist of some kind, ends up getting revealed very early during the movie. There isn’t really much of a mystery, there is no unraveling of Ella’s psyche, we very much know where she’s headed. Artists being at risk of getting consumed by their art, well that’s an axiom that’s been used more than a few times in movies, but here it doesn’t really get as disturbing as it could have been. Still, it manages to convey a very dark and uncanny atmosphere, and there’s a definite “A24-vibe“ over it.

The best part of the movie is, without a doubt, the stop motion scenes. The characters, setting and backgrounds for the animated stop motion scenes are actually very atmospheric and creepy, too bad we didn’t get to see even more of them. To be honest, I’d love to have a full horror short featuring this animation. It’s grotesque and macabre in a fascinating way, reminding me a little bit of Phil Tippett’s Mad God, and seeing the different techniques used only enhances this feeling. We see Ella using real meat in order to make stop motion, and that is not actually unheard of. This technique was also used by legendary stop motion animator Jan Svankmajer.

Overall, Stopmotion is a slow, dark psychological thriller with some really eerie stop motion scenes. Not for everyone, but certainly a strange little nightmarish tale.

Director: Robert Morgan
Writers: Robin King, Robert Morgan
Country & year: UK, 2023
Actors: Aisling Franciosi, Stella Gonet, Tom York, Therica Wilson-Read, Bridgitta Roy, Caoilinn Springall, Alex Freeborn, James Swanton, James Harris, Jaz Hutchins, Joshua J Parker, Nicola Alexis
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14852624/