2020s horror movies – Horror Ghouls

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)

Dead Talents Society (2024)

Posted on September 5, 2025September 5, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

In the world of the living, we have Golden Globe Awards, while in the underworld they celebrate the Golden Ghost Awards. As the name implies, the awards are given to the ghosts that manages to scare as many people as possible, much aided with today’s social media where “scary videos“ are shared all over the internet. While it may sound like a silly award show made just for fun, there’s a darker backside to its popularity, something a rookie ghost girl (who is unnamed in the movie) discovers when she suddenly starts experiencing her body disintegrating. Much like we could see in Disney’s Coco (2017), the dead are at risk of disappearing if they are not remembered by the living. Rookie realizes that her piano competition certificate, which was her token in the world of the living that valued her existence the most, had been accidentally discarded when her family moved away from their house and her former home. Unlike the premise in Coco where you’d only disappear if no living person remembered you at all, the dead people in this movie have it much, much worse. Rookie will perish in 30 days as the result of her memory having faded due to the loss of her token. With the help of her ghost friend Camilla, she decides to join the entry contest for the Dead Talents Society, where a dead person can receive a permit to work as a ghost in the living world which must be signed by a haunting agency. What better way to keep being remembered by living people than constantly scaring the shit out of them and hopefully ending up in a viral video, right? And while Rookie’s performance at the entry contest is terrible, she catches the attention of a guy named Makoto, who is the agent of a washed-up ghost named Catherine. Together they try to make Rookie able to scare people so she can get her ghost working pass. No easy task, of course, when the competition is…deadly.

Dead Talents Society is a Taiwanese horror comedy from 2024 (released on Netflix this year) directed and co-written by John Hsu. After his success with Detention from 2019 which was based on a Taiwanese video game called Red Candle Games, he wanted to do something more lighthearted and funny. And he sure did! If the Beetlejuice movies had an Asian spinoff, then this movie would be as close as you could get. While Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) aimed a lot for nostalgia, this one aims more for a more modern audience where social media is a huge part of everyone’s life. And yes…for this millennial and old-fashioned Ghoul lady, that premise sounds like something totally out of my field of interest, but holy haunted fuck did this a movie turn on all my feel-good switches!

In Dead Talents Society you get presented with an afterlife that is colorful and vibrant, but also with its fair share of darkness. What makes the movie shine, though, are the interactions between the living and the dead, where the whole premise is that ghosts are desperately trying to scare people in hopes on becoming popular enough to avoid the fate of disappearing completely. And the deaddies in the afterworld have made an entire show for this, the Golden Ghost Awards (which is an obvious parody on the Golden Globe Awards). Needless to say, you’ll be getting more than a few references to real urban legends, Asian horror in general, and viral videos.

The characters are fun, with Rookie being the typical shy, lack-of-belief-in-herself character that keeps growing throughout the movie, aided by those around her. The defamed ghostress whose haunted hotel gig just isn’t as popular anymore, appears to be cold and arrogant while being much softer than she first leads you on to believe. Then you have fake-moustache-guy Makoto who’s got his own secrets. A loving group of misfits with dynamics filled with charm.

Just like how watching Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon makes you see slasher movies in a slightly different way afterwards, Dead Talents Society has the same effect on horror movies featuring ghosts. All the preparations to pull off the perfect scare, the perfect reaction from the living, making them notice things at just the right time…holy hell, how stressful that could actually be..! And this movie shows that off so perfectly, where they do everything from drawing letters on the wall at just the right time, moving a chair at the right moment, all totally dependent on getting their victim’s full attention in the hopes of conjuring up a scare big enough to become an urban legend. Poor ghosts, it must be a hell of a job indeed…so the next time I watch a horror movie with ghosts, I’m probably gonna think “I wonder how much stress and effort the ghost must have gone through to pull that off“…

The movie does have a fair share of social commentary/satire mixed in with all the silliness going on, including a very clever satire on the ghost-hunting YouTubers. Mostly, though, it’s a portray of the influencer lifestyles and how some people will literally do anything to keep from losing their fame. So many people are craving the attention to be seen, often chasing ridiculous trends in hopes of getting enough recognition and hopefully get that one successful viral video which will provide their continued success. Which, of course, is never really the case anyway. Even in the afterlife, some of the biggest hits from earlier are at the risk of oblivion as few things will stay equally popular forever, and if you get popular, it will always be a constant struggle to stay at the top. The movie mixes comedy with some intriguing themes of life and death, love and loss and the desire to be seen.

Dead Talents Society is so much fun, a high-energy horror-comedy with a lot of colorful spooks and even a bit of heart. A total feel-good film for everyone who wants something a bit spooky-silly!

Director: John Hsu
Writers: John Hsu, Tsai Kun-Lin
Country & year: Taiwan, 2024
Original title: Gui cai zhi dao
Actors: Gingle Wang, Sandrine Pinna, Zach Ireland, Chen Bolin, Yao Yiti, Nina Ye, Chang-Ying Hsieh, Pai Ching-I, Yen-Tzu Lin, He-Hsuan Lin
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17079606/

Together (2025)

Posted on August 26, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

A search party is combing through the woods, calling out for a missing couple. Two of the search dogs end up in a cave, where they drink from a strange pool of water. Later that night, the dogs start behaving very strangely, and the owner is woken by their whining and commotion in the kennel. When he shines his flashlight on them, he’s met with a horrible sight: they’ve been fused together.

After this little horrific scene, we head over to our protagonists: Millie Wilson who is an elementary school teacher, and Tim Brassington who is an aspiring musician. They are going to move to the countryside where Millie has gotten a job, and they’re throwing a going-away party with their friends. Here, Millie has decided to make it extra romantic by proposing to Tim…which ends up totally embarrassing when he delays his answer and appears totally hesitant. Ouch. So, was this just Tim being taken aback and having an unfortunate moment? Well, not exactly. Despite having been together for some time, Tim and Millie are having more than a few issues, where their relationship has ended up in codependency due to Tim’s mental issues. Tim suffers from PTSD after his parent’s death, he is depressed, he doesn’t have a job, and keeps more than one foot in the past, not willing to fully commit to Millie…but at the same time, he’s not willing to let her go and clings to her as some kind of lifeline rather than a partner he wants to spend his life with. Millie, on the other hand, is getting tired of his lack of commitment, his lack of sexual interest in her, and his immaturity. On the night after the going-away party and botched proposal, Millie asks him straight out if he really wants this relationship, because if they don’t split up now before the move, it will just be harder later. Oh, that’s some real prophetic words right there! Tim desperately claims it is what he truly wants, and so they move to the countryside after all, with all their issues still in tow. They decide to go on a hike near their home, and fall down a cave. The same cave where the dogs were in at the beginning of the movie, of course. Tim decides to drink some water from the pool, and that’s the start of another chapter in their relationship issues. Now they find themselves getting closer and closer each day…but not in a good way.

Together is a supernatural body horror film written and directed by Michael Shanks in his directorial debut. It stars Dave Franco as Tim and Alison Brie as Millie, a real-life married actor couple who have been together for over 13 years and married since 2017.

This is obviously a film where the themes are deeply rooted in metaphors, specifically codependency but also several other layers. Tim’s problems with commitment while simultaneously being afraid of letting her go, while Millie starts wanting to pull away due to his lack of interest in both her and their relationship, reminds me a little about how some people’s biggest fear is ending up alone (and thus settling for a partner they don’t really want) while others are the opposite, and would rather be alone than living with a partner who just settled for them. And the latter is, at least to me, much more understandable. Who wants to be together with someone who looks at you as someone they’re “stuck“ with because they can’t get what they really want? Someone who may find the comforts of the things you bring into the relationship to be enjoyable, but have trouble showing commitment, desire for you, or even an interest in your well-being…who the fuck wants that, right? Because these traits is what Millie also experienced once they fell down the cave: she’s quick to ask if he’s ok and check on him, and only minutes later she gives him the cold assertion “I’m okay, by the way“ because he couldn’t be arsed to even ask her. Yay. But, here’s the twist: that’s not because he’s an uncaring asshole, he is genuinely flustered when being reminded. It simply wasn’t on his mind because he’s used to her caring for him, not the opposite, which is just another trait of the classic codependency relationship. None of these characters are “good“ or “bad“ which could’ve easily been the case in a setup like this. Tim isn’t lacking commitment because he doesn’t care about her, he just hasn’t learned how to properly do so due to his trauma, depression, and immature fantasizing about a rock-star life and something that’s unachievable anyway. When your mind live in a fantasy world, what you’ve got in real life will always seem “meh“ no matter how good it actually is. Neither of them are flawless, both are struggling, something that comes off as believable due to some great performances by Franco and Brie. The chemistry between the characters always appear raw and heartfelt, which I guess is much thanks to the fact that the actors are a real-life couple that’s been together for many years.

The lovecraftian backstory regarding the cave is for the most part left ambiguous, but we do get a more detailed explanation of what the cave used to be and how it was used. The body horror elements, despite not being as crazy as what could be seen in last year’s Substance for example, are overall pretty solid as the movie uses some practical effects which look pretty nice. In a scene where the couple merged their arms together, they wore a prosthetic that effectively conjoined them together for hours on end, resulting in them having to use the restroom together. Must’ve been…not exactly fun. Aside from the body horror, there were also some surprisingly good scenes which were effectively creepy, especially the scene with Tim’s parents and the one with Millie behind the door. But for the most part, the movie is more of a fun popcorn entertainment movie with a nice slice of the bizarre.

Overall, Together is a weird and icky movie about codependency, and the fear of losing oneself in a relationship and the oftentimes messy complications of love.

Writer and director: Michael Shanks
Country & year: Australia/USA, 2025
Actors: Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31184028/

Locked (2025)

Posted on August 22, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Eddie Barrish is a jobless guy who tries to find ways to provide for his daughter Sarah. That often involves some options that are…not exactly legal. He tries searching for unlocked cars he can rob, but struggles to find any good valuables to sell at the pawn shop. One day, he finds that a luxury SUV is unlocked, and of course he thinks he’s just hit the jackpot. Well…not so much. Once inside, he finds that the entire vehicle has locked itself, trapping him inside. Kicking, screaming and literally trying to tear the car apart in order to find a way out, he realizes that the car has been made with the intent to keep you, well…locked. It’s also sound proof, and with one-way mirror windows so no one can see inside. Once Eddie is totally exhausted and out of options, he accepts an incoming call on the car’s screen. The caller, who is the owner of the car, is called William and explains that he’s sick and tired of experiencing break-ins, so he decided to build a trap. What follows is a claustrophobic journey with two men from very different viewpoints and perspectives, where one must fight for survival.

Locked is a thriller from 2025, directed by David Yarovesky (who also directed Brightburn from 2019). It stars Bill Skarsgård as Eddie, and Anthony Hopkins as William. The film is a remake of an Argentine action film from 2019, called 4×4.

We all know that regret can come in many forms, but none is more common than the regret that comes not from the actions themselves, but having to face the consequences of them. Eddie, while being an obvious scumbag and criminal, is someone who is also struggling in a world that’s not exactly rigged in his favor. Yet, it still doesn’t mean that he couldn’t have taken better choices, but he is undoubtedly in a more difficult situation to do so. In many ways, this movie is not just a simple survival thriller where someone is trapped in a confined environment, it also mixes a lot of social commentary. Throughout Eddie’s entrapment, he is forced to question his morals and choices. At the same time we have William, who we may understand the motivations of to some extent, but who is also suffering from lack of depth in his views. The movie could have expanded on these clash in views and challenged the viewer much more, but we do have some fairly valid arguments from both sides. William, for example, hasn’t just set up a car as a trap to lure in thieves so he can torture them and teach them a morality lesson just because he’s been robbed a couple times, there’s a backstory here where we can understand how he got to the tipping point and simply wanted revenge. The film, like its original, deals with themes of the struggles of the common people and the privilege of the wealthy. Compared to the original film 4×4, both characters here have certain motivations we can at least partially understand. In the original, the thief was a pretty big douche with hardly any redeeming qualities, though, maybe except for the “Jiminy Cricket“ thing. In this film, Eddie comes off as a much more likeable person, despite very flawed.

While Locked doesn’t go too far with its violence, there’s still some amusing ways that William is torturing Eddie. Whenever he tries something, he gets electrocuted. He’s starved, overheated, and gets blasted with a looped polka song for hours. Yay! There’s a certain fun dynamic between the two, and each try to challenge their world views and biases. Ultimately, Eddie is of course the only one who does a proper soul searching.

Locked is a pretty nice thriller that blends philosophy with horror elements and is fueled by strong performances from a great cast. A fun watch!

Director: David Yarovesky
Writer: Michael Arlen Ross
Country & year: USA/Canada, 2025
Actors: Bill Skarsgård, Anthony Hopkins, Ashley Cartwright, Michael Eklund, Navid Charkhi
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26671996/

Dangerous Animals (2025)

Posted on August 19, 2025August 19, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Captain Tucker runs a tourist attraction called Tucker’s Experience, where the tourists are put in a shark cage to enjoy the sight of those dangerous animals in relatively safe surroundings. The tourists Greg and Heather are ready for such an experience, and of course they’re completely ignoring all the red flags. When some guy who is going to take you out on a boat suddenly seems very interested in how nobody else knows that you’re there, then…it’s time to turn around and just goooo…but of course not. So, a bit later when they’re out on the open ocean and ready for the cage dive, Tucker starts preparing them by telling them to do a few breathing exercises to loose the tension, and then…starts singing Baby Shark doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo. Another major red flag right there! Greg becomes shark food, and Heather’s dragged to the cabin of the boat and reserved for a later purpose. The most dangerous animals are those on two feet.

Now we head over to the drifter Zephyr, who ends up in some kind of romcom-like scenario with the real estate agent Moses. They both start bonding over their love of surfing, and have a one night stand. Zephyr just drives away in the middle of the night, not quite as interested in something more like Moses apparently is. She decides to do a little night surfing, and who does she encounter in the parking lot where no one else is around? None other than Tucker, of course. He abducts her, and is soon to find out that she’s the most feisty animal he’s captured thus far. That’s what he wanted, though…a little bit of a challenge, for once. A fish you need to use a lot of strength and stamina to reel in. Zephyr might be more of a fighter than he initially expected, though…

Dangerous Animals is an Australian survival horror film, directed by Sean Byrne (The Devil’s Candy) and written by Nick Lepard. In 2024, production begun on the Gold Coast, Queensland, which contributed with over $10 million to the state’s economy.

Serial killers have different ways of exposing of their victims, and a movie about a shark-obsessed killer who feeds them to the sharks? Well, that’s gotta be an interesting take for sure. Tucker, played by Jai Courtney, definitely works great as an unhinged and sadistic guy, filled with just the right bit of charisma and craziness. While the movie does have a fair bit of excitement and thrills, don’t expect to have some truly grisly shark attack scenes here though. The sharks aren’t the danger, it’s the serial killer who’s the only baddie here, so the story pans out more as a stalker-killer ride. Which is fine, even though I would have loved to see some more shark-mayhem. The movie is rather laidback on the gore, which was a little disappointing considering the bloody film poster. Oh well. It makes up for it by keeping up the pace at a good level throughout, and offering enough suspense.

Overall, Dangerous Animals is a fun and fast-paced survival horror movie, and despite feeling that it lacked a little bit of extra bite it was still a fun experience.

Director: Sean Byrne
Writer: Nick Lepard
Country & year: Australia, 2025
Actors: Hassie Harrison, Jai Courtney, Josh Heuston, Josh Heuston, Ella Newton, Liam Greinke, Rob Carlton and a bunch of dangerous animals
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32299316/

Weapons (2025)

Posted on August 12, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

In Maybrook, Pennsylvania, something strange happened one night. At exactly 2:17 a.m. seventeen children suddenly woke up, ran out of their homes and disappeared. All of these children were from Justine Gandy’s class, where the entire classroom would be empty the next day with only one exception: Alex Lilly, the only child who didn’t end up missing that night. Police investigation begins immediately, but yields no results. Alex doesn’t know anything, and Justice doesn’t know anything. One month later, the desperate parents of the missing children demand answers, and decide that Justine must know at least something. After all, it was her class. She’s put on leave, and immediately turns to the alcohol for comfort as she’s being harassed by the townspeople who believes she’s guilty in some way or other. Justine, sincerely not knowing anything and also being concerned about Alex, the only kid left from her class, starts doing a bit of investigation by herself. One day, she follows him home, and notices that the windows of his house are all covered in newspaper…

Weapons is a horror film written, co-produced and directed by Zach Cregger. It has so far grossed over $70 million against a budget of $38 million. Zach Cregger also had a financial and critical success with Barbarian (2022), and immediately started working on a new spec script which was inspired after the death of a close friend of his, Trevor Moore. The screenplay ended up in a bidding war between Netflix, TriStar Pictures, Monkeypaw Productions, Universal Pictures, and New Line Cinema, where the latter won. Jordan Peele, with his company Monkeypaw Productions was one of the participiants in the bidding war, and after losing he parted ways with his longtime managers Joel Zadak and Peter Principato. I guess the success of Weapons was foreseen by a lot of people, considering the heavy interest in securing the rights…

When we saw Weapons at the big screen we knew very little about it and went in as blind as possible, and yes: this is one of those movies where knowing as little as possible definitely heightens the experience. The movie starts off with the mystery that’s also revealed in the trailer and descriptions of the movie. A narrator with the voice of a young child tells you what happened, and you follow the aftermath of the children’s disappearances. There’s an ominous vibe to it all, something dark and brooding, and if you’re blessed with seeing this movie while still being oblivious as to what’s actually going on, you’ll definitely have some fun trying to figure out and speculate where it’s all going. While Barbarian very obviously red-herringed the fuck out of you, this one keeps you constantly guessing while slowly creeping towards the reveal, which I’m going to be honest, wasn’t at all what I initially expected. Weapons also has a lot of dark humor, mixed with some pretty grotesque scenes where some of them honestly caught me a bit off guard. It was quite the ride, for sure! There’s a lot I could have written about this movie, but as I think the best experience is to watch it as blindly as possible, I’ll refrain from going much further.

Underneath Weapons, you might be surprised to realize that the story is actually a very generic horror story, but it’s the non-linear way it’s told and the mix of narrative choices here that makes everything work out so perfectly. Instead of a bland, overused formula with ingredients you’re all too familiar with, it twists everything on its head and presents it to you in a completely different wrap-up. I’m repeating myself like a broken record here, but: go in as blind as possible, and enjoy this twisted and unpredictable horror adventure!

Writer and director: Zach Cregger
Country & year: USA, 2025
Actors: Scarlett Sher, Julia Garner, Cary Christopher, Jason Turner, Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams, Alden Ehrenreich, Whitmer Thomas, Callie Schuttera, Amy Madigan
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26581740/