2020s horror movies – Horror Ghouls

The Advent Calendar (2021)

Posted on December 2, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Eva is a former dancer who is now wheelchair-bound, forced to live a paraplegic lifestyle. While she does her best to adapt to this new lifestyle, it’s obvious that she’s struggling. On Eva’s birthday, her friend Sophie comes by and gives her a gift she bought at a German Christmas market: an Advent calendar which looks very odd, and makes Eva even more cautious of it when Sophie admits to having actually stolen it. When opening a hatch, you get a candy just like in a traditional calendar, but these are different. Once she’s opened the first hatch, she’s trapped in the Advent Calendar’s power and must open and eat every single candy on the respective day. The hatches can also only be opened after 12 at night, so yeah, there’s some obvious spooky stuff going on here. While Eva’s greatest wish is, of course, to be able to walk again, she notices that the candies from the Advent Calendar seems to be helping, but each opened hatch comes at a cost. The question is how much Eva will be willing to sacrifice in order to get her greatest wish on the Advent Calendar’s last hatch on the 24th…

The Advent Calendar (original title: Le Calendrier) is a French horror film from 2021, written and directed by Patrick Ridremont. It’s a nice little holidays themed horror movie, with the focus being on a cursed Advent Calendar (we already have a ton of “evil Santa“ horror movies, so it’s nice to see something a bit different for a change). Our protagonist Eva, being in the vulnerable position she is, often finds herself going through all kinds of degrading behavior, especially at her job with her boss being a sleazy dick who just wants to replace her with someone who has functioning legs. And to top it all, her replacement even has a mocking attitude towards her. When these two gets their comeuppance, it feels rather satisfying, and here is where the story manages to mix the “dream come true“ with the “nightmare come true“ scenario: some of the hatches she opens, actually bring forth good things. Once the supernatural events come into place, it’s gradual enough to be written off as mere coincidences, until it becomes obvious to Eva that they’re not. Then there’s the hatches that brings forth…horrible things, more like sacrifices for what she’s receiving. It’s one of those stories where you can understand that the protagonist wants to keep going when she believes she will eventually reach her final destination, her biggest wish of being able to walk again. Then it all depends on whether or not Eva thinks that the way towards this goal was worth it in the end. A classic “careful what you wish for“ story, but wrapped together in an interesting narrative.

The cursed object itself, the Advent Calendar, looks really cool too! It resembles something that could’ve been displayed in an occult museum, designed in a way that makes it look both like an old antique but also like something made by people who really intended to conjure something from the depths of hell itself. It’s an object that isn’t made to look overtly scary, but it’s just uncanny enough to feel off. Which works perfectly in this movie. And like someone who used to enjoy the old-fashioned traditional advent chocolate calendar during the holiday seasons, I could reminisce a bit about the excitement of opening a new hatch. Yes, back then it was only a tiny piece of chocolate, but damn, we children of the 80’s weren’t very hard to please…

The Advent Calendar is one of those typical “cursed object“ horror movies, which does inevitably play on certain tropes and cliché’s but also delivers an interesting enough premise and a solid story and pacing to keep you engaged.

Writer and director: Patrick Ridremont
Original title: Le calendrier
Country & year: France/Belgium, 2021
Actors: Eugénie Derouand, Honorine Magnier, Clément Olivieri, Janis Abrikh, Cyril Garnier, Vladimir Perrin, Jérôme Paquatte, Laura Presgurvic, Isabelle Tanakil, Jean-François Garreaud, Olivier Bonjour
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt12496706/

Frankenstein (2025)

Posted on November 28, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

The year is 1857, and the crew of a Royal Danish Navy ship sailing for the North Pole discovers a severely injured man. Suddenly they are attacked by a huge, rage-filled and violent man, more resembling a creature to the crew than a human being. After this creature has killed and hurt several of the crew members, Captain Anderson uses a blunderbuss (a 17th- to mid-19th-century firearm with a short, large caliber barrel) and manages to sink the monstrous being into the icy water. Gone for good now, right? Hah. In the meantime, the man they just saved, Victor Frankenstein, explains that the creature is in fact his own creation. And he starts to recount the story of how it all came to be.

Frankenstein from 2025 is produced, written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, which has been a dream project for the guy for a long time. It was initially in development for Universal Pictures, but they killed it off and then Netflix came and brought it back to life, or Frankensteined it if you will (ha-ha). And as expected it is of course a beautiful gothic film in true Guillermo del Toro-style. While the beloved and well-known story of Frankenstein doesn’t need much of an introduction, it’s still worth noting that this story have actually rarely been told in a true-to-the-book fashion. While the story was written by 18 year old Mary Shelley in 1818, there have been numerous adaptions and re-imaginings over the years. Most famously the 1931 Universal Pictures movie with Boris Karloff as the monster, which created the iconic “Frankenstein’s monster“ look with the flat head and bolts on each side of the neck. This character is one of the most recognized horror icons, and you know who he is even if you haven’t seen any of the movies or read the novel. (Yet…despite how well known the story of Frankenstein is, though, there’s still an odd amount of people out there who believes that Frankenstein is the creature’s name…but I digress).

Guillermo del Toro’s version of the story has more in common with the book than many of the adaptations that’s been done over the years, but it’s still taking some turns of its own. Victor tells his story about how he grew up grieving his mother’s early death and getting hardened by his father’s abuse, and he becomes obsessed with becoming the greatest surgeon ever, aiming at being able to “cure“ death. Certainly no lack of ambition there, and certainly no lack of egotistical narcissism either. When he actually does manage to reanimate a corpse, which is of course an incredible feat even though the poor thing just looks like it wants (and needs) to be put out of its misery as soon as possible, the spectators aren’t exactly thrilled by what they see. The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh expels him, denouncing it as sacrilege. That doesn’t stop the doctor, because if there’s a will, there’s a way! Or more precisely, if there’s money, there’s a way, because his display also caught the attention of an arms merchant called Henrich Harlander, who offers Victor an unlimited budget to continue his experiments. And so, the body parts are harvested from hanged criminals and soldiers killed in the ongoing Crimean War, so the mad scientist can finally build his large creature to reanimate by harnessing lightning to send electric currents through the lymphatic system. And we all know that this becomes a success, creating the “creature“ which later becomes the bane of Frankenstein’s existence.

This movie is, visually, a treat from the very start to the finish. The cinematography, set designs and costumes are all top notch, but of course nothing less can be expected from a del Toro film. The cinematographer Dan Laustsen once again delivers a treat for the eyes, just like he also did in this year’s The Gorge. This is all offering up a romantically gothic banquet, perfectly scored by Alexandre Desplat’s atmospheric music.

Performances are overall pretty good, with Oscar Isaac as the narcissistic madman Victor Frankenstein who will stop at nothing to achieve is goal, and Jacob Elordi as the creature who is rightfully confused and scared at the start, until all the wrongdoings against him turns him into an angry beast. Although…I have to admit I was a little conflicted about the creature’s appearance in this movie, because…well…there’s nothing really monstrous about him. At the beginning he kind of reminds me a little of the Zora people in the Zelda games, with his blue-ish skin and all. He does change his appearance a bit later on as he evolves, but his looks are never unattractive. I get that this is an obviously more romanticized version, where the creature is a lot more meek than in the original story or many of the other adaptions, but it feels a little off how people then are so frightened of his appearance. He literally just looks like a big, handsome guy with scars on his face, who’s gone through some rough times. Maybe Hunkenstein would’ve been a good name for him.

Aside from the two main actors of the movie, it was also fun to see the beautiful Mia Goth in two supporting roles here, first as Victor’s mother (which we see very briefly), and then as Elizabeth who is the fiancée of Victor’s brother, but also Victor’s obvious love interest. Like in all classical “beauty & the beast“ stories we do of course get a connection between the creature and Elizabeth, as she’s very empathetic as opposed to Victor’s extreme egotistical personality. If there’s one thing I feel this movie robbed us of though, it’s seeing Mia Goth as The Bride. I honestly really thought that moment was coming, too, but it just fizzled out into nothing. Oh well.

Overall, Guillermo del Toro’s vision of Frankenstein is as expected a solid, beautiful gothic sci-fi adventure, and once again works both as a story of wonder and as a tale of warning about what could happen once humans are not fully cognizant of the things they create and the consequences it may bring. A tale as old as time, of humans riddled with arrogance, narcissism and greed…too often asking themselves “can I“, when more often they should have asked themselves “should I“.

Writer and director: Guillermo del Toro
Country & year: USA/Mexico, 2025
Actors: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Kyle Gatehouse, Lauren Collins
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1312221

Keeper (2025)

Posted on November 18, 2025November 18, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Liz has been together with Malcolm for one year, and in order to celebrate this anniversary they go on a weekend trip to his cabin on a secluded place in the countryside. When they get there, they even have a gift waiting for them which is apparently from the caretaker: a boxed chocolate cake. Yum! Malcolm really, really wants her to eat it, but here’s a twist: Liz doesn’t like chocolate. Who doesn’t like chocolate..? Malcolm seems somewhat stressed over this fact as he thought all girls liked chocolate. Apparently there’s still some things he doesn’t know about the woman he’s been together with for one year.

The chocolate-cake thing aside: if Liz was hoping for some real alone-time with her boyfriend, she’s in for a letdown. Malcolm’s obnoxious cousin Darren is nearby, and even interrupts them during their dinner and has brought with him a girl named Minka, a foreign model, whom Darren says can’t speak any English at all, which doesn’t matter as she’s obviously there to use her mouth for entirely different things than talking. Still…when Malcolm and Darren has a private talk in a different room, Minka notices the unopened cake and whispers to Liz that it “taste like shit“. Hmm. So Minka must have gotten her own cake earlier. That caretaker must really love baking. Despite the warning, Liz reluctantly takes a tiny bit of the cake later, though, just to be nice. And because Malcolm really, reeeeally wants her to taste it. Yeah, nothing fishy about that, no red flags at all. He just really wants you to enjoy some chocolate which you just said you don’t like…

If it wasn’t obvious enough already with several red flags literally waving right in front of Liz’s face, we soon get to see that things are about to get…weirder. Liz is having strange visions, and in the middle of the night she’s suddenly having an uncontrollable urge to eat the rest of the cake in the grossest way possible, and doesn’t even stop when she sees bloody severed fingers inside of it. Bon Appétit. The next day, Malcolm tells Liz that he needs to travel back to the city, but will be back later in the evening. And as you can imagine, things escalate while Liz tries to figure out what is really going on here.

Keeper is a supernatural folk horror film, directed by Osgood Perkins and written by Nick Lepard (who also wrote the script for Dangerous Animals). It was shot in its entirety while The Monkey was on hold due to the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes. During this time, several of the cast and crew that worked on The Monkey tried to keep things going, and Perkins and Ferguson then found a Canadian writer who was not part of the Writers Guild of America to write the script.

Perkins have had two successes in a row now: first with Longlegs last year, and then with The Monkey from earlier this year. It turns out Keeper is the one to break these ongoing financial successes at the box office, though, as it has so far only grossed $3 million at the box office against a budget of $6 million. And while one may think it’s partly due to the movie’s artsy and slow storytelling, this is kind of the regular recipe of a Perkins movie, with The Monkey being the one to stand out from the rest. Already from the very first scenes, there’s the Perkins style all over the place. There’s an ongoing sinister and odd atmosphere throughout the movie as we see scenes filmed from different kinds of angles and with filtered lenses. It’s both slightly ethereal at times, mixed with a dreamlike, uncanny vibe. And it sure does take its time, with a very slow buildup. It is still a story that’s very easy to follow, though, it isn’t a movie that keeps you guessing much. Just be prepared for another Perkins movie with a lot of creepy-weird atmosphere.

Performances are pretty good all around, where Tatiana Maslany portrays her role perfectly as the everyday woman looking for true love. We saw her a little bit in The Monkey as the mom of the two boys, and here she gets to shine as the protagonist. Rossif Sutherland also does a good job portraying Malcolm, who appears to be a decent man despite it being obvious from the get-go that something’s very, very fishy about him. The dynamic between the two, who are still rather fresh in their relationship but appear to slowly trying to figure each other out, works pretty fine until the point where certain things become a bit too obvious.

Keeper is overall a pretty decent slowburn horror that does require a bit of patience, and while arguably not one of Perkins’s best, it’s still a solid entry into his collection of atmospheric, artsy horror films.

Director: Oz Perkins
Writer: Nick Lepard
Country & year: USA/Canada, 2025
Actors: Tatiana Maslany, Rossif Sutherland, Claire Friesen, Christin Park, Erin Boyes, Tess Degenstein, Birkett Turton, Eden Weiss
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt32332404/

The Home (2025)

Posted on November 14, 2025November 14, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Max is a troubled young man. With one issue after the other we see him ending up getting arrested for graffiti vandalism. We learn that his life more or less spiraled downwards after his older foster brother, Luke, committed suicide. His foster parents are trying to get him on the right track by working out a deal with the police so he can work at a community service, or more specifically a retirement home out in bumfuck nowhere. It’s either this, or get a criminal record…not much of a choice for young Max, really. He arrives at the place and starts seeing strange things already, including an old man looking out from the fourth floor window. As ominous as that might seem, we’re at a retirement home…sometimes the most exciting thing is simply watching the clouds from your window. Max immediately starts working at the place as superintendent, and is (surprise, surprise!) told not to enter the fourth floor.

As Max starts befriending some of the old people at the home, more and more strange things start happening. Some of the residents are breaking into his room at night, some of them act very strangely, and he even witnesses a resident suddenly starting to bleed, among several other weird disorders. There’s more than enough warning signs to prove to Max that something is terribly wrong with the place, and he suspects that some answers may lay on the restricted fourth floor.

The Home is a psychological horror film directed by James DeMonaco (director of The Purge), co-written with Adam Cantor.

Retirement homes are a little bit of a horror in and of itself. We’re all afraid of getting old, whether we admit it or not. There’s something terrifying about losing so much control over the functions you could earlier take for granted, maybe needing help with the most basic things like getting up from bed or even wiping your own ass. As if that’s not frightening enough, there’s also the loss of memory and awareness. There are horror movies that portrays those illnesses themselves (like Relic and to some extent Next of Kin), while there are others where the growing old thing mixes with supernatural elements, like for example The Manor. We can try to convince ourselves that growing old is “just part of life“ and nothing to worry about, but…no one in their right mind would say that life and its many challenges aren’t terrifying. And with that in mind: to which lengths would some people go if they could avoid aging? Pretty damn far, I’d reckon.

This movie does start off with playing around a little with grief and loss, although we don’t know too much about Max or Luke at the very start to feel too invested in that part. We know Max really misses his brother even a decade after the died, and that much of this resulted in him not coping too well. This isn’t all, of course, as several more layers are unveiled regarding both Max, Luke, and things from the past. When Max arrives at the retirement home, it actually looks like a fairly decent place. The elders there appear to be happy, very well dressed, and having a great time overall. More or less the equivalent of what all of us hope for the final stages of our lives to be: decent enough to function well as a human being, and without too much physical or mental deterioration. Then Max starts seeing that the rose-colored picture of the retirement home is not what it seems.

The first half of the movie goes along rather slowly and a little bit sluggish. It does build up a bit of atmosphere and keeps the tension up by offering a few twists and surprises along the way. There’s also a rather grisly death scene in the middle of the movie that comes out of nowhere, which was a pleasant surprise as at that moment the pacing really needed a shift, and managed to offer one. And while I won’t spoil any of the twisty turns along the way, I think the saving grace for the movie is a totally bonkers finale which delivers a fun, blood-soaked and gory climax.

The Home is the kind of slightly dumb fun movie that, despite some pacing issues and not the most original plot, delivers a pretty fun time.

Director: James DeMonaco
Writers: James DeMonaco, Adam Cantor
Country & year: USA, 2025
Actors: Pete Davidson, John Glover, Mugga, Adam Cantor, Bruce Altman, Denise Burse, Stuart Rudin, Ethan Phillips, Nathalie Schmidt, Mary Beth Peil, Victor Williams, Marilee Talkington
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17023012/

Good Boy (2025)

Posted on November 11, 2025November 11, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Indy is a dog who lives with Todd, a man suffering from a chronic lung disease. Todd decides to take Indy with him and move to his late grandfather’s uninhabited house somewhere in the woods, despite his sister Vera being worried about him becoming far too isolated out there. Not to mention that the house itself has a certain bad history, with no inhabitants staying for long with the exception of their grandfather, who died there. The grandfather also had a dog, which went missing when he died. Vera appears to be a little superstitious and believes something in the house might have caused their grandfather’s death, but Todd just scoffs at her. Indy, however, starts experiencing strange things in the house and the nearby surroundings. Dark shadows looming in the corners, and the sound of a dog whimpering and barking. Meanwhile, Todd’s health gets even worse and he starts regularly coughing up blood, and also gets increasingly irritable towards both Indy and his sister Vera who keeps calling him. Indy is sensing that something evil is gradually getting a hold on them both…are they awaiting the same fate as Todd’s grandfather and his dog, or can Indy change what appears to be an impending disaster for them both?

Good Boy is a supernatural horror film directed by Ben Leonberg in his directorial debut, co-written with Alex Cannon. Leonberg got the idea for the film after re-watching Poltergeist (1982), and started thinking about how animals in haunted house films are known for sensing presences before the humans do. He thought it would be a fun idea to write a traditional haunted house script for a film with the perspective of a dog, and started on it in 2017 together with Alex Cannon. And the main actor of the feature, the Good Boy himself, is none other than Leonberg’s Novia Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever dog Indy, simply playing himself. Principal photography took place in Harding Township, New Jersey, and the filming process took over three years to complete. Much of the long process was due to, well, Indy being a dog, and not having a double like many animal-focused movies do. Leonberg also stated that a lot of Indy’s expressions were done by post-production techniques and the Kuleshov effect (a film editing principle where different shots can be interpreted with a deeper meaning and emotional impact when placed together). The movie had a budget of only $750,000, which the film has earned back many times over as it has so far grossed over $8 million worldwide.

While Good Boy may appear to play very hard on using a cute gimmick with little else to it than that, they have actually managed to deliver a movie that offers a solid haunted house story. Prior to watching this I didn’t really know exactly what to expect. Would it be like a longer episode of Animal Planet’s The Haunted, without the interviews? Well, not really. The movie does, in fact, tell the narrative solely from Indy’s perspective, which makes it a different experience in its apparent simplicity. While some of the story is told through the dialogue we overhear between Todd and Vera, the rest is a mix of Indy’s experiences, dreams and sightings. It’s a simple narrative for sure, but told in a steady way that never loses the pacing, and with a runtime of only 1 hour and 13 minutes it packs everything in well without outstaying its welcome. It’s all about creepy and ominous atmosphere from the very start, and there were several parts of the movie where that hopeless, disease-ridden feeling reminded me a little bit of Relic (2020). We see Indy in a rather hopeless situation as his owner gets more and more ill, trapped in a house where it’s all about illness, evil presences and echoes of past tragedies. And visually it looks great, using some clever perspective shots to portray the dog POV which often creates an unsettling effect.

Animals can sense spirits, they say. Well, anyone who’s ever owned a pet know that they can have this uncanny habit of staring at corners or spots on the wall for no apparent reason, creeping the fuck out of you. All for what was probably just a tiny bug you couldn’t see or a sound from the neighbor’s house you couldn’t hear. The notion of animals being able to “see spirits“ is something a lot of people believe, but then again, I’m pretty certain that we would “stare at nothing“ too if our hearing suddenly got a much wider frequency range or our eyesight got higher motion detection. I personally don’t think there’s anything supernatural to put into it, but the idea does at least make for some spooky animal-centered stories!

Good Boy is a very decent haunted house film, filled with creepy atmosphere. And yeah…gotta love Indy, he’s cute as hell and did an excellent job (and kudos to the creators for pulling this off, of course). This was also a pretty strong debut, so it will be exciting to see if Ben Leonberg decides to create more horror movies, animal-POV or not.

If you want some more animal-POV (or at least partially) horror movies, make sure to also check out Cat’s Eye (1985) and Bad Moon (1996).

Director: Ben Leonberg
Writers: Alex Cannon, Ben Leonberg
Country & year: USA, 2025
Actors: Indy, Shane Jensen, Arielle Friedman, Larry Fessenden
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35521922/

Exit 8 (2025)

Posted on November 7, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

A man is at a subway station, and it’s just a normal crowded and busy-as-hell day in Japan. On the train, he watches a woman holding a crying baby, who gets yelled at and harassed by an angry passenger who has become annoyed by the baby’s constant screaming. The woman desperately tries to hush her baby, telling the angry douchebag that she’s sorry…and no one bothers to step up for her. Not our protagonist, either, who seems bothered by the incident but decides to just block it out with his phone and earplugs. Just a normal day in an everyday phone-infested daily life where no one gives a shit.

As the man then gets off the train and walks the hallways of the subway station, his ex girlfriend calls: she’s pregnant! And she’s unsure what to do about it, and wants to hear his opinion, which only results in a lot of stammering and procrastination, until the signal is lost and he finds himself in what appears to be a strange and mostly deserted passage. There’s a sign saying he should take Exit 8 to get out of the station. Okey-dokey, then. As he keeps walking, he finds himself inexplicably stuck as he keeps returning to the same spot over and over, like walking in a literal circle with no exit to be found. And even stranger: the same man keeps coming, from the same place, whenever he gets back at the entry point. As he starts studying the signs and info posted around the place, he’s instructed to look for and identify any anomalies, and if he sees any, he should turn back instead of walking forward. As he notices slight changes after several walking rounds, he notices that if he follows these instructions, the level proceeds from 0 to 1, and upwards. But if he makes a mistake, no matter how far he’s gotten, he gets sent back to level 0 again. And the anomalies and incidents that keeps happening gets weirder and stranger the further he gets..

Exit 8 (Japanese: 8番出口) is a psychological mystery thriller from Japan, directed by Genki Kawamura and co-written with Kentaro Hirase. It’s based on a video game from 2023 by the same name, which was developed by Kotake Create. It was filmed in Tokyo during late 2024 to early 2025, for the most part in a built replica of the game’s underground passage.

Time loop films can be a fun and interesting concept, with a lot of things to play around with, everything from rather simple and upbeat ideas like Happy Death Day (or even the recent Until Dawn which was also based on a video game), or the more artsy ones like for example Koko-di Koko-da. In Exit 8, you not only get the loop concept, but it’s concentrated around a liminal space area which gives it an extra dreamlike and surreal feel.

Exit 8 is one of those mystery thrillers that never really offers anything that’s outright frightening in and of itself, but it’s the total feel of the place, the small oddities, weirdness and surrealism of everything. While I haven’t yet played the game this movie is based on, I have for a long time enjoyed games that involves liminal space surroundings and heavy surrealism (and while I’ve played several of these games over the years, none have really scratched that itch the same way as Yume Nikki did). What I think makes Exit 8 very effective in creating an eerie vibe with such a bright location, is the mix of familiarity with a deepening sense of something being very, very wrong about the place. And to be honest, it was actually a bit fun to follow the protagonist walking round and round while trying to spot some anomalies together with him.

While the game itself is just a surreal liminal space horror game with no actual narrative, this movie does add something to the mix which becomes rather apparent early on. There’s a lot of metaphors here, mainly about being indecisive and stuck in a self-inflicted loop of irresolution, especially when it involves guilt and responsibility. And the road to an actual solution seems like it’s never coming, and you keep trodding the same path over and over and often looking at so many external reasons why you’re stuck, instead of looking inwards and realizing the solution most often lies within yourself.

Exit 8 is a weird and minimalist psychological thriller that manages to keep the viewer engaged with what is a very simple premise. Perfect if you also like ideas featuring liminal space environments!

Director: Genki Kawamura
Writers: Kentaro Hirase, Genki Kawamura
Country & year: Japan, 2025
Actors: Kazunari Ninomiya, Yamato Kôchi, Naru Asanuma, Kotone Hanase, Nana Komatsu, Hikakin
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35222590/

The Gorge (2025)

Posted on November 4, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Levi Kane, a former U.S Marine Sniper, and Drasa, a Lithuanian covert operate, both receive a very special and top-secret mission: to guard a gorge from a tower placed at each side. They’re supposed to stay there for a year, and oh: they are not supposed to get in contact with each other. Or anyone else for that matter. Total isolation for a year, guarding a gorge that has…what kind of purpose, really? They’re not told, and obviously they’re not allowed to ask the questions either. Just STFU and do your job.

Upon arriving at the tower, Levi relieves his predecessor who explains that the location is kept hidden by some very powerful cloaking antennas. And the gorge itself is totally obscured by a thick fog, hiding whatever is down there from view. He also gives some cryptic explanations about the towers being armed to protect any attacks from the so-called monsters nicknamed “The Hollow Men“. Good luck, then, and try to stay sane. And the months pass by, rather uneventfully…until Drasa in the opposite tower decides to say screw it the no-communication rule, and manage to engage Levi in a conversation with written signs and a shooting competition. After all, it’s her birthday, so fuck the protocol! And what at first seems to be a night of fun and games, they suddenly get to see the first wave of Hollow Men attacks, where these creatures have started climbing the gorge. Levi and Drasa use the weapons of the towers, and blasts the creatures back to where they came from. And so the love story has just started. As Levi and Drasa starts bonding, desperately wanting to meet each other more intimately (and whenever there’s a will, there’s a way), things are in for a complete change of tone when Levi ends up having to parachute himself into the gorge during a Hollow Men attack. Drasa is quick to follow after him, and they are both finally figuring out what’s hidden down there.

The Gorge is a romantic science fiction horror film directed by Scott Derrickson and written by Zach Dean. It stars Miles Teller as Levi, and Anya Taylor-Joy as Drasa. The filming began in March 2023 in London, with the production at the Warner Bros Studios, Leavesden. Here, the interiors for the towers were built on a stage. They also used the home country of us Horror Ghouls, Norway, for certain filming locations: the Rauma River was used for the forest locations and the gorge exteriors.

The movie itself builds up a bit slowly, introducing you to the characters and their struggles, and offering just enough of a mystery about the gorge and what exactly is going on here. While the Hollow Men and the gorge’s hidden secrets are, of course, the main point of interest, the love story elements are a pretty major part of the film. Fortunately they managed to pull this off in a pretty good way. It was sweet without being cringe, and thankfully they didn’t do the painfully overused “characters hate each other by first sight and then falls in love later on“ trope. They have a cute connection from the get-go, with a chemistry that makes your root for them. But, all that romance thing aside: the best part of the movie, at least for me, is when they finally get down to the depths of the gorge itself. There’s so much ghoulish and spooky settings here! There’s reminiscences of Resident Evil and Sleepy Hollow all over the place, and it was something that actually caught me a bit off guard as I knew hardly anything about this movie prior to watching it, and went in mostly blind (which is my preferred way to watch most movies).

Visually, The Gorge looks beautiful much thanks to excellent use of scenery and practical effects. Of course some credit must go to the Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen (John Wick 2-4, The Shape of Water, and also the upcoming Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein movie) for the visual treats. It is such a fun sci-fi romance horror which is probably the most Resident Evil-esque film we’ve got so far (with maybe Zach Cregger being able to top that in 2026 with an actual Resident Evil film).

Director: Scott Derrickson
Writer: Zach Dean
Country & year: USA/UK, 2025
Actors: Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu, William Houston, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, James Marlowe, Julianna Kurokawa, Ruta Gedmintas, Oliver Trevena
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13654226/

Black Phone 2 (2025)

Posted on October 26, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in the year 1957, at Alpine Lake Camp during the winter. A girl is making a call from a phone booth placed nearby the camp’s frozen lake, a conversation that later proves to be an important part of the movie’s plot. Then we head further ahead in time, to October 1982. It’s now been a while since Finney Blake was able to kill his abductor, the serial killer called the Grabber, and is trying to cope with the trauma in his own ways. Which seems to involve beating the hell out of other students who dares to even glance at him the wrong way, and smoke a ton of pot. It goes without saying that the kid is basically just spiraling further down the darkest misery-filled rabbithole at this point, but I guess he didn’t exactly grow up with the best role models for how to cope with shit in healthy ways as his father kept drowning his sorrows with whiskey and beer, causing him to often be abusive and mean towards his children.

In this movie, however, it is revealed that the father has reached a three year milestone of sobriety, but is still struggling with urges that he determinedly resists. All the power and kudos to him for that. Another character who is struggling is Finney’s sister Gwen, who keeps having strange dreams…all of which lead to a clue about their mother having worked at Alpine Lake Camp. Together with Gwen’s date Ernesto (the brother of Robin Arellano who was one of the Grabber’s victims in the first movie), they travel to the camp which is a Christian youth camp. Upon arrival, a heavy blizzard traps them at the place where there are only a handful of other people, which are only staff. And the phone booth back from 1957? It’s still there, of course, just not in a working order…but we all know that ghosts don’t need things to work in order to make use of them for communication. It doesn’t take long before Finney receives phone calls from the dead, including the Grabber who vows revenge. And it also seems that there were some grisly murders of a group of young boys at the camp sometime back in the day…and their bodies still haven’t been found.

Black Phone 2 is a supernatural horror movie directed by Scott Derrickson, co-written with C. Robert Cargill and produced by Jason Blum. It’s a sequel to Black Phone, and stars several of the actors from the first film reprising their roles. The first movie, which was based on a short story by Joe Hill, became a success and a sequel was soon in the works. Hill mentioned that his inspiration for a sequel was the “iconic imagery“ of the Grabber’s masks. And while Hill didn’t write a story for the film, he did provide the concept for it which was simply put into this sentence: “A phone rings, Finney answers, and it’s The Grabber calling from hell“. Plain and simple.

While the first movie’s plot was primarily about a real and living serial killer, the supernatural aspects were also present as the character Finney was able to communicate with the killer’s earlier victims through a disconnected black phone. In that regard, it’s not much of a surprise that the Grabber has now turned into a vengeful ghost, and the movie doesn’t need to invent some kind of explanation for how it turned into something supernatural. Those themes were already totally present in the first. And while Finney was the protagonist in the first film, this sequel leans its narrative a lot more on Gwen’s character with her nightmares meshed with visions of the past. The siblings both have the gift (or curse, depending on your point of view) of being contacted by the dead, but while Finney’s contact is restricted by phone calls, Gwen gets contacted while she’s asleep, often causing her to sleepwalk while having the nightmares.

And speaking of the nightmares: I really love the grainy look of those scenes, which were primarily shot on 8mm film using a Super-8 camera. Not only does it give the viewer an immediate heads-up when we’re in dreamland, but it also gives those scenes such a haunting vibe. The dreams also don’t work as some kind of tease or false threat like so often in many other horror movies. The threat here is very real once Gwen falls asleep, where the Grabber has become some kind of Freddy Krueger entity that can kill you in your dreams. Hmmm…a camp, and a dead serial killer threatening to kill you while you’re dreaming? Yeah, you don’t really need to be a horror buff to notice the obvious Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street references here. However, that doesn’t mean the film ventures into some kind of rip-off territory, it’s very much its own nightmare set in the coldest, bleakest wintertime, but with some nods and references to horror classics and 80’s horror. Oh, and the ice skating scene? Yup, Derrickson confirmed that this was a nod to Curtains from 1983.

The synthwave-infused music score by Atticus Derrickson (the director’s son) layers the movie with a perfect dreamlike mood, often more calm and brooding than fast-paced and aggressive, which gives it a slightly hypnotic flair. There’s also many effectively creepy scenes, including the vicious killings of the boys from the camp. The winter setting with all the snow and ice helps setting a more isolated and trapped feeling, and there’s even a scene with a snowman that manages to deliver a spooky moment.

Black Phone 2 is a strong sequel filled with supernatural and bloody carnage. It’s a new addition to the formula of serial killers and the dead refusing to stay dead, but a fun and gory one where I wouldn’t really mind if they decide that death won’t be final this time around either. Serial killers rarely stay dead in horror anyway (like Dexter‘s son also realized recently) so perhaps we’ll see a Black Phone 3 sometime in the close future.

Director: Scott Derrickson
Writers: C. Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson
Country & year: USA, 2025
Actors: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Jeremy Davies, Anna Lore, Madeleine McGraw, Demián Bichir, Arianna Rivas, Miguel Mora, Graham Abbey, Maev Beaty
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29644189/

Satan’s Slaves 2: Communion (2022)

Posted on October 13, 2025October 14, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Three years have gone since the incidents in the first film. And since they lived in a reclusive yet more idyllic area by the woods, they decided it was a good idea to move into a Jakarta apartment building with neighbors up, down, left and right. Because don’t fear thy neighbor. Doesn’t sound like the dumbest idea, but when you first take a look at the place, you’d take the quickest U-turn back to the cabin in the woods and just tell demons to fuck off and touch some grass. Because I’m telling you, when you have a place like this that makes the building in Evil Dead Rise look like a five-star hotel, it’s better to just live in a tent or just under a bridge. Woof.

The place and setting also vaguely reminds me of a Hong Kong horror film called Rigor Mortis (2013). It’s one of those final destinations where you move into just to hang yourself in the tiny living room. So yeah, the setting itself plays the biggest part in Satan’s Slaves 2: Communion. So if you don’t fear thy neighbors, you’ll certainly fear thy place. Or in the worst case, both. Welcome to hell.

A quick trivia: the building used in the film was found by one of Joko Anwar’s followers on X. It’s located on the border of East Jakarta and Bekasi and has been abandoned since 2008. The only change is the open fields seen in the film. Here’s an exploration video of the place, done by a local YouTuber, where the images speaks much for themselves.

Despite being free from the ghosts n’ demons, life hasn’t been too kind to the struggling, near to the lower-class family Suwono. The financial safety they have left is close to be flushed down the toilet as the oldest daughter, Rini, works a dead-end job at a factory after dropping out of high school to be a surrogate mom for her two younger brothers. And where’s their dad, Bahri? He always comes home just in time for dinner, looking depressed, burnt-out and not saying much. One of the brothers adds some positivity to the conversation with his high ambitions to become a full-time gigolo when he grows up. Yay! At least, there’s no disgusting urinating on the floor here, like we saw in the first film (whatever that was about). But Rini has had enough of the situation and plans to leave for a university while she still has the chance before she turns 30. She couldn’t choose a worse day to leave as a big storm hits.

And with the storm comes something wicked… and to make matters even worse, the place gets flooded, the electricity cuts off and all the tenants are trapped in the building. So, the University has to wait. And we learn very early that an ancient burial site surrounds the place. Of course. A legion of ghosts will have a field day.

It starts subtle enough (or maybe not so) with kids almost being sucked into the chute by demonic forces, ghoulish figures that pops up to give some effective jumpscares, and we have a nice static nod to Poltergeist (1982). It gets more physical, to say the least, with an elevator scene where a group of kids dies in a heavy, brutal way. A dozen other residents also dies by the elevator crash that gets piled up in the cramped apartments, disturbing La Ilaha Illa Allah—chanting can be heard throughout the hallways, like in a certain fire temple way back in the day. The supernatural aspect is only the icing on the cake with the isolated surroundings and the sight of the fresh dead bodies lying around.

Writer and director Joko Anwar takes full advantage of the location where not a single room or hallway looks safe or welcoming. Although the old-school approach we saw in the first one is still here, Satan’s Slaves 2 has a way bleaker and nihilistic tone where the atmosphere is as heavy as the concrete environment. Communion also has its fair share of references and nods sprinkled throughout, but manages to be its own thing. And speaking of, there’s also some Stranger Things going on with a group of kids who explore the even more obscure rooms and corners of the building to find some hidden secrets as the storm rages.

We also see a glimpse of the underworld, or The Further if you will, in a very effective way, which I hope we get to see more of in a sequel. So much potential to develop a great franchise here, or at least, a trilogy.

And yes, this sequel is more connected to the first one, apart from just focusing on the same family where there’s still some dark secret to unfold (as in most families). That said, Communion is way more about the atmosphere, mood and the overall mysterious vibe than the story itself, like in the best Lucio Fulci kinda way. It’s unsettling, nightmarish and hellish. A haunted house ride, masterfully directed by Joko Anwar with sharp sound-design, superb make-up effects and just overall a morbid visual treat for all horror ghouls.

Satan’s Slaves 2: Communion became another big win for Joko Anwar and Indonesian horror as it became the highest grossing film in that country in 2022. After its limited theatrical release, it got acquired by Shudder, and as of now, there’s no physical release of the film. Thanks to the Norwegian streaming site SF Anytime, we got the access to see it.

Writer and director: Joko Anwar
Original title: Pengabdi Setan 2: Communion
Country & year: Indonesia, 2022
Actors: Tara Basro, Endy Arfian, Nasar Annuz, Bront Palarae, Ratu Felisha, Jourdy Pranata, Egy Fedly, Muzakki Ramdhan, Fatih Unru, M. Iqbal Sulaiman, Ayu Laksmi
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16915972/

Prequel: Satan’s Slaves (2017)

Original: Satan’s Slave (1982)

The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025)

Posted on September 12, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

The fourth and (for now) the farewell entry in the Conjuring franchise drifts far more from the actual case it is based on than ever before. The film starts back in 1964 where Ed and Lorraine have their first case together. They’re at a curio shop to investigate an antique haunted mirror. Lorraine is also fully pregnant, and the water goes as soon as she touches the mirror and sees a spooky vision of some demon. Ed rushes her to the hospital where Lorraine pushes out a stillborn. Oof. (My mind then played with the idea of Ed and Lorraine taking the fresh corpse of the baby home with them to perform a ritual to make a deal with the devil in order to bring the baby to life. Some decades later a pack of hellhounds would emerge to drag Ed and Lorraine to hell after the deal comes due, Supernatural-style. A predictable but fitting reason why the Smurl haunting became their last case, especially by looking at that sinister promo poster. Oh well.) After some hard prayers, the baby comes to life, and they name her Judy.

Then we jump to 1986 where She Sells Sanctuary are blasting from the speakers. Good times, for as long as it lasts. Jack and Janet Smurl with their four daughters and Jack’s parents are moving into a crammy duplex at a bleak and dreary suburb in West Pittson, Pennsylvania, where anyone would be bound to end up with chronic depression and alcohol problems before the first Christmas. The church-going family seems pretty happy, though, but they’ll soon learn that there isn’t much sanctuary to find here. It all starts when one of the oldest daughters gets an evil-looking gothic mirror as a confirmation present, something you’d see in Phantom Manor. And yep, it’s the same mirror we saw earlier. OoOoh…

The ceiling lights crash down on the kitchen table like a sledgehammer, Janet hears a cheesy whispering voice calling her name in the basement, Jack one night gets paralyzed and porked by a witchy Phoebe Waller-Bridge look-alike succubus. Fifty Shades of Ectoplasm. One of the youngest daughters gets spooked by a ghoulish grandma ghost with a demented Cheshire cat grin. A tall redneck farmer with an axe, also a smiley one, suddenly pops up around the house to terrorize the family. Their dog, Simon, is safe, for now.

Meanwhile, as hell is brewing in Pennsylvania, we spend some time with Ed and Lorraine’s daughter Judy, who’s now grown up and dating her future husband Tony. Judy looks collected on the outside but on the inside she’s broken, shaken and traumatized. Growing up with Ed and Lorraine as your parents does that to you. But the reasons are more generic than that: because Judy has the psychic powers of her mom and started seeing ghosts floating around her long before she realized that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. Life’s not fair. Ed and Loraine are now more or less retired from ghost hunting, much due to Ed’s failing health after he suffered a heart attack, and spends most of the time lecturing for a shrinking audience and being home, probably playing Ghosts ‘n Goblins on Nintendo. Tony gets the blessing of Ed and Lorraine to marry Judy after dating her for only six months. Hooray. He also bought the proposal/wedding ring only one (yes 1) week after they met. Uhm… red flags anyone? The Warrens have a barbecue party and play pingpong where we see one of the many cameos from previous films. Cheers. How’s Smurl’s doing?

Not that great. Things have gotten so bad that they’ve reached out to all from talk shows on TV to Larry King in hopes of getting some help. Doesn’t go so well. And the Warrens have no desire to help them. That’s only until Judy somehow gets drawn to the Smurl house, all the way from Connecticut. Why? Because.

Director Michael Chaves said in an interview with Bloody Disgusting that the Last Rites would stay true to the real-life Smurl haunting. BOOlshit. The Smurls seems more like an afterthought here as the main focus lies more on Judy and Tony, who had zero involvement with the case. We spend a lot of time with Judy and Tony and that’s the main problem. They’re not an interesting couple and the whole romance aspect is pure dead meat and filler-time that could easily have been tossed into the deleted scenes section. And the chemistry between these two is non-existent. It just feels hollow. A stark contrast to Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga.

The last twenty minutes or so is messy, stupid, eye-rolling and all over the place. The spinning mirror is so cartoonishly retarded that I almost expected Russel Crowe’s character from The Pope’s Exorcist to randomly chime in and end the film with a big ko-ko.

Even though the Last Rites was overall a mild disappointment, it has its strong elements when it comes to the technical aspect. It’s far from the trainwreck that was The Nun II. Michael Chaves gives a steady direction with great enhancement from cinematographer Eli Born. The retro 1980s esthetics are on point and the thing with the videotape camera, without spoiling, was a new and fresh idea. The few scenes in the Smurls’ house during the first and second half are the most interesting, especially if you’ve seen the movie made for TV, The Haunted, and read the book, which works best at reading as just pure horror fiction. Having that in mind, there are certain scenes here to wait for, especially the classic Janet? sequence in the basement. And they completely botched it, just like I expected. Then we have the mommy-mommy doll scene which is in pure style of James Wan and worked much better in the context of the film than in the first teaser trailer, where we saw a more goofy CGI ghost. The new design of the granny ghost, played by Fabrielle Downey, was a big quality upgrade which looks like a mix of The Bride in Black from Insidous and Mary Shaw from Dead Silence. The other two ghosts, the farmer with the axe and his succubus wife, make some solid appearances during the short amount of screentime they were given. And like the first two films, the child actors also delivers. Some few other classic Conjuring highlights sprinkled here as well. Too bad that the Smurl case itself is so rushed and undercooked.

So there you have The Conjuring: Last Rites – a very mixed and bloated bag with potential that was primarily wasted on romance and Hallmark family drama bollocks. If the film just had focused more on the actual case, the three grinning ghosts and the demon, whatever that was, this could maybe reach the quality levels of the first two. And if you haven’t seen the aforementioned TV movie from 1991, since the film has to this day not gotten a physical, nor a streaming release, and probably never will, it’s available on YouTube.

And here we have a quick local news segment about a young couple who bought the real Smurl house a week after the first teaser for the Last Rites dropped. They had no idea about the house’s history, off course. So it just remains to see if they also get swarmed with trespassing horror fans and ending up suing Warner Bros, like what happened in the wake of the first film back in 2015. In this case they should rather sue the real estate agent. Peace out.

Director: Michael Chaves
Writers: Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, James Wan
Country & year: USA, 2025
Actors: Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Mia Tomlinson, Ben Hardy, Steve Coulter, Rebecca Calder, Elliot Cowan, Beau Gadsdon, Kíla Lord Cassidy, Peter Wight, Kate Fahy, Tilly Walker, Molly Cartwright
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22898462/

Prequels:

– The Conjuring (2013)
– The Conjuring 2 (2016)
– The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)