horror movie review – Horror Ghouls

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/

The New York Ripper (1982)

Posted on August 15, 2025August 15, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

There’s a serial killer on the loose in the city of New York. What else is new?

It all starts simple enough like a classic detective crime story when a dog fetches a severed hand to his owner during a walk by the Hudson River. As we see a clear close-up of the dog having the hand in its mouth, the image freezes as the intro credits rolls over some cheesy jazz music, taken from the vinyl collection of Umberto Lenzi. Then we meet Lieutenant Fred Williams who’s on the case. He’s a chain-smoking apathetic soon-to-retire cold fish of a guy who fucks hookers and probably reeks strong odors of tobacco mixed with some cheap cologne a mile away. Not the most sympathetic individual, but nor are the rest of the people we meet here. Welcome to New York and enjoy the smell. But I’d never leave the city without at least tasting the pizza.

The kills escalate in more brutal ways when young women around Manhattan are getting butchered, the one in a more brutal way then the other. Already six minutes in we have one of the many red-herrings when a woman accidentally bumps into some dude’s car with her bicycle, where we also have some stiff n’ cheesy (dubbed) dialogue:

– Goddammit, why can’t you watch where you’re going??

– I’m sorry, I was thinking of Boston. (Eh, huh? Ok.)

– You women should stay home where you belong! You’re a menace to the public! And you got the brains of a chicken!!!

– And you’re an asshole. Ciao.

After they both go on board the Staten Island Ferry, our Boston lady takes a little revenge by writing “SHIT“ with her lipstick on his windshield while he’s probably in the toilet and jerking off. You go, girl! In pov view we see someone approaching the lady and catches her in the act. We assume that’s an off-duty police officer only until the person speaks gibberish in a Donald Duck voice before the girl gets stabbed to death. From here on it snowballs into a messy whodunnit sleaze-fest mystery where we jump from one character to the next, until we have so many shady faces to suspect as the killer that you’ll lose count.

One could argue that Lucio Fulci just saw Maniac (another New York based serial killer film from 1980) while he scoffed, took a sip of his red vine and said to himself while waving his hands enthusiastic like a true Italian: This is kids stuff. I can turn up the sleazyness all up to eleven, or maybe even higher! And with that said, this is not your typical Lucio Fulci dish that’s usually served with tons of maggots, slimy corpses spiced with cobweb-filled ghoulish scenery. This is a way more grounded detective/crime story that is quickly to be overstuffed with sleaze, nudity, softcore scenes, a bizarre toe-banging-rape scene, and a series of graphic kills that was more than enough keep the filmed banned in the UK until 2002. But even though the maggots are absent, The Big Apple is rotten to the core, where you could more or less say the citizens themself are the maggots, as misanthropic as it sounds. Because the film treats all the characters as worthless scum as if they have zero value to the society, and Lucio Fulci makes damn sure to kill them in such a way that it leaves as little as possible to the imagination.

Then we also have the grimy, urban and decaying environments of New York that mirrors the drained-out empty shells of the characters with their broken dreams and lonely beds. We also follow a mysterious upper-class lady who’s in the audience of a Live Sex Show where she hits a small tape recorder so her husband can jerk-off to the couples moaning sounds. That’s how creative we had to be decades before the internet. This woman is also a pathological nymphomaniac who fucks around with shady dudes in the city. There’s no empathy to find here. Only desperate and compulsively-driven desires to fill the next sexual/fetish cravings, whether it is a quick load with hookers, or chasing young ladies through graffiti-filled subway trains where I guess the stench of piss and shit is soaked in the air like a sponge. The New York Ripper is co-written by Gianfranco Clerici, who also shaped Ruggero Deodato’s House on the Edge of the Park (1980), so that alone should tell what kind of a dark alley this is. Even though the effects isn’t always as convincing as on paper, the nature of the killings are as grisly as it can get. Throats get sliced, nipples and eyeballs gets cut in half (Takashi Miike took notes) and a broken glass bottle gets shoved into someones vagina. All in pure classic giallo-style, of course.

The sexual aspects is here for a reason and not just added as just a meaningless shock value, even though the film goes so far in some certain scenes that you can’t avoid speculating if Lucio Fulci just wanted to make a straight-up porn film instead. The motives of the killer is as bizarre as the demented Donald Duck voice, but that’s giallo for you. Some shoddy dubbing and cheesy use of jazz music may cause some unintentional chuckles. But underneath those hiccups The New York Ripper is mean-spirited, nihilistic and misogynistic to the bone. Sick and morbid entertainment for sick and morbid people. Plain and simple. Fulci nods proudly in his grave. And if you’re easily offended when it comes to simulated violence against women, I’d rather put on a film like Blood Sucking Freaks (1976). I’m sorry, that was rude and unemphatic of me to say. The film has gotten several uncut releases during the last 10-15 years and got a 4K Ultra HD release from Blue Underground in 2020.

Director: Lucio Fulci
Writers: Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, Lucio Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti
Country & year: USA/Italy, 1982
Actors: Jack Hedley, Almanta Suska, Howard Ross, Andrea Occhipinti, Alexandra Delli Colli, Paolo Malco, Cinzia de Ponti, Cosimo Cinieri, Daniela Doria
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084719/

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/

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Posted on August 8, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in the 70’s, and Gilderoy is a sound engineer traveling all the way from Britain to the Berberian Film Studio in Italy. He’s going to work on a film about horses…or so he thinks. When he arrives, the film producer Francesco tells him that the film is actually an Italian giallo film, called The Equestrian Vortex. Well, this wasn’t what Gilderoy signed up for, but he still decides to work at the studio to add the sound effects, or do “Foley work“ as it’s also called. Using inventive ways to add sounds to the film’s gory scenes (which we actually never see) he uses vegetables and mixes voiceovers from the session artists. At the same time, Gilderoy is struggling with colleagues who pretty much treat him like shit (but then again they also do so to each other), feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the work he’s doing, and he starts to detach from reality.

Berberian Sound Studio is a British psychological horror film from 2012, directed by Peter Strickland and co-written with Jon Croker. Strickland made a short film of it in 2005, where he said that he wanted to “make a film where everything that is usually hidden in cinema, the mechanics of film itself, is made visible. Berberian… turns this on its head. Here, the film is out of view, and you only see the mechanics behind it.“

This is one of those films where the tired-out phrase “isn’t for everyone“ truly fits. I’d think you’d have to inhabit at least a tiny interest to the art of sound editing, old-school moviemaking and Italian giallo in order to get the most out of a movie like this. It starts off on a somewhat comedic level, where the timid Gilderoy is struggling to set boundaries and voice his opinions, surrounded by the typical 70’s “Italian machismo“ culture. Then it gets increasingly bizarre as Gilderoy’s mental state starts deteriorating.

The sound effect making, where watermelons are smashed and cabbages are split in half, sometimes showing pieces of damaged and rotting vegetables all over the place, made me imagine an alternative universe where this would be a Terrifier-level horror movie for vegetables. There’s something about not seeing the actual scenes Gilderoy is making the sounds for, but just hearing the sounds, seeing the descriptions, and hearing the actresses screaming. It certainly leaves a lot to the imagination! And if The Equestrian Vortex was an actual film, I wouldn’t hesitate giving it a watch.

Eventually, the movie ventures pretty far into cuckoo-land and what really happens and what happens only in Gilderoy’s head isn’t all that clear. The ending is somewhat ambiguous, and if you’d think there would be some kind of Evil Ed development here you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’s more like a surrealistic, dark dream without much of a conclusion.

Berberian Sound Studio is an amusing and strange film, and while the ending didn’t quite land with me I found the overall experience to be enjoyable.

Director: Peter Strickland
Writers: Peter Strickland, Jon Croker
Country & year: UK/Germany, 2012
Actors: Toby Jones, Cosimo Fusco, Antonio Mancino, Fatma Mohamed, Salvatore Li Causi, Chiara D’Anna, Tonia Sotiropoulou, Eugenia Caruso, Susanna Cappellaro, Guido Adorni
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1833844/

Bring Her Back (2025)

Posted on August 5, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Piper is a girl who is partially sighted (played by Sora Wong who has a real-life condition of coloboma and microphthalmia). Despite her efforts, she struggles to find friends, but she’s pretty close to her step-brother Andy who both live together with their father, since Piper’s mother died. One day, they find their father dead in the shower, and Piper is sent to live in a foster home. Since neither of them wants to split up, Andy comes along, hoping to get custody once he turns 18 which is in just a few months. They are sent to live with Laura, who is also fostering a mute boy named Oliver. Laura is eccentric, to put it mildly, and it’s obvious from the start that Andy is the third wheel here while Laura seems to be all over Piper. They learn that Laura once had a daughter who drowned in the backyard pool, which might explain some of Laura’s odd behavior…but there also appears to be more to it than that. Not to mention Oliver, who appears to be both mute and mentally impaired. Soon Laura also starts to undermine Andy’s mental state, using insidious tactics to make him seem unfit to care for his sister. Something is very wrong in the house, and Laura’s dark plan is about to come into fruition, as she plans to bring her dead daughter back to life.

Bring Her Back is the second horror film from the Australian duo Danny and Michael Philippou, where they had great success with Talk to Me from 2022. The story is written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman, who was also one of the co-writers for Talk to Me. The movie is released by A24, and has so far grossed $27.5 million against a budget of $15 million.

The Philippou brothers certainly proves that Talk to Me wasn’t just a one-hit-wonder: their newest film is even more unsettling and atmospheric. All the actors are delivering great performances here, where the bond between Andy and Piper comes off as believable and with convincing ethos. The boy playing Oliver is creepy as hell, and Sally Hawkins (who also played the protagonist in Guillermo del Toro’s Shape of Water) does an excellent performance as the unbalanced, grieving mother who’s desperate to do anything to bring her dead daughter back to life. The theme of death, trauma and grief was also substantial in Talk to Me, and I really love how they’re able to present it as something so incredibly dark and ominous. Grief, being a part of everyone’s life in so many ways, gets a thick layer of gloom where all the characters have their own fill of it. What wouldn’t one be willing to do if they could bring a loved one back to life? We all know the answer to that question: most of us would do quite a lot, and some would even do everything.

While there is a somewhat basic occult story underneath Bring Her Back, it’s the execution that makes it such a great watch. There’s a constant feeling of creeping dread, you always anticipate something horrible to happen. And while the horror is mostly subtle, the scenes where the bad things start happening are truly visceral and often unexpectedly unnerving. Timing is everything, nailing it without the use of unnecessary jumpscares. There’s a lot of innuendo before the actual, purest hell breaks out, and some of these lead up to several incredible wtf-ish disturbing moments.

Bring Her Back is a bleak, unsettling and oftentimes heartfelt horror movie, which continuously builds up the dread. Now we can only look forward to what the Philippou brothers are going to do next, which will at least be the sequel of their first film which is simply titled Talk 2 Me.

Directors: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Writers: Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman
Country & year: Australia, 2025
Actors: Billy Barratt, Sally Hawkins, Jonah Wren Phillips, Stephen Phillips, Sally-Anne Upton, Mischa Heywood, Sora Wong, Kathryn Adams
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32246771/

Aquanoids (2003)

Posted on July 29, 2025July 29, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Aquanoids, or Aquanooooids, like Johnny Depp would have said it, is a silly Z-grade amateur-hour creature/feature flick where we have a sea monster that looks more like a rejected, drunk band member of Gwar who’d fallen into the ocean, and just decided to stay in the water and kill everyone who comes near him.

The film starts in the year 1987 in Santa Clara Island, California, where a couple is having a swim. Guess what happens. They get dragged down the water and killed by an unseen monster as a random guy is watching the “traumatic“ incident through his binoculars. And, of course, this random guy will be important later. Much later. Sixteen years later, to be precise, in the present day (2003) where a coastal town in sunny California is celebrating the 4th of July. God bless America. As the town is in full festive mode, the young girl-next-door, Vanessa, actually has far more important things to do. Because she’s an environmentalist, you see, and would rather spend her time to save our green planet by diving into the ocean to pick up trash. Greta Thunberg would be impressed. As she gathers her good karma points, she gets a glimpse of our sea-creature. Ooh, scary. She hops on a water scooter and heads straight to the town’s mayor, Frank Walsh, to beg him to close down the beaches. Because the aquanoids are back, she says, despite we’ve only seen one. Dream on, honey. Haven’t you seen Jaws, or if you dig a little deeper, Humanoids From the Deep? Here we also meet Clifton Jefferson, a mafia-looking guy who does some dirty work for Mayor Walsh, and who also looks like a Joe Pesci cosplay from Goodfellas. And if Mayor Walsh talked like Kermit the frog, I wouldn’t doubt for a second that he was played by Jordan Peterson.

Anyway, as Mayor Walsh won’t do shit because he’s exactly what he looks like: a super-shady bad guy, Vanessa and her roommate are handing out warning papers while they shout dangerous waters! dangerous waters! No one believes them though. The only one who does is Ronald Jackson, the random guy we saw at the beginning. And no, he’s not played by Eric Roberts. He’s the one and only witness of the aquanoid that killed 17 people back in 1987, and is just seen as the town’s crazy person. He now spends most of the time at the local bar being a traumatized alcoholic, and just wants to be left alone. The news and rumors of the aquanoids start to spread, and suddenly the local Hard Boiled News (yes, really) pops up to have a quick chat with none other than Jackson. Poor guy doesn’t get a break. Mayor Walsh and Joe Pesci, sorry, Jefferson, don’t like that the rumors of the aquanoids are spreading to the public, and that’s for more than one reason. The “plot“ here is thrown all over the place, and there’s just too much to spoil (or maybe not), but let’s just say that you’ll be more shocked than anything by how corrupt this Mayor is. And I also bet that he’s on a certain client list.

Aquanoids is directed by Reinhart ‘Rayteam’ Peschke. Rayteam who? He worked primarily in the Camera and Electrical Department on films such as Volcano (1997), The Usual Suspects (1995), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) With Aquanoids, you’d get the impression that Rayteam one day went through some of his old and forgotten childhood stuff in the attic, found some tapes of a home-made horror movie he made with some friends, neighbors and uncles during some summers in his early teens, and said to himself: I want to release this hidden gem on DVD. This is also the one and only film he directed.

The title, screenshots and the trailer speak more or less for themselves. If you’re familiar with these kinds of retarded, zero-budget home-made turd movies, you know what you’re gonna get. It’s amateur-hour from start to end (with a short and welcoming runtime of 1 hour and 13 minutes) with a dumb plot, bad acting, absurd dialogue, cheesy music, a series of WTF-moments, an unexpected and “shocking“ twist, and of course some cheap gore.

The highlight of Aquanoids is actually not the monster itself, which we barely get a clear glimpse of, but our two goofy antagonists, Mayor Walsh and Jefferson, as these two actors try very hard to act dead seriously. If Walsh looks somewhat familiar aside from Jordan Peterson, he’s the guy who had the deadly handshake with the Joker in his most-known-for-movie on IMDb, Batman (1989). And I’m not surprised if the one who looks like Joe Pesci has auditioned for all the Martin Scorsese films, and in his all-boiled-up frustration tricks people into believing that his most-known-for-movie, Aquanoids, is actually an alternative title for Jaws. And enough schadenfreude for today.

Director: Reinhart Peschke
Writers: Mark J. Gordon, Eric Spudic
Country & year: USA, 2003
Actors: Laura Nativo, Rhoda Jordan, Edwin Craig, Ike Gingrich, Laurence Hobbs, Suzan Spann, Robert Kimmel, Christopher Irwin, David Clark, Doug Martin
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338726/

The Bay (2012)

Posted on July 25, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, there’s a cozy town called Claridge. A reporter named Donna Thompson, totally fresh in the game, has decided to cover the local’s celebration of 4th July, but amidst all the fun a lot of the citizens start falling ill. And severely so. The hospital gets overwhelmed with patients, and the head doctor calls the CDC who believes it must be some kind of viral outbreak. Things keep getting worse, with people dying showing some really bizarre symptoms, like severe lesions and their tongues missing. What could be the cause of this? Well…some months earlier, two oceanographers discovered that the bay had high toxicity levels, and even encountered multiple fish that had been consumed from the inside out, by some kind of mutated isopod. Hmm…could this have something to do with the chicken farm nearby that have polluted the bay when dumping their chicken excrement and god knows what else into the water? One thing is for certain: everything turns into full chaos mode as people keep dying.

The Bay is a found footage horror movie from 2012, directed by Barry Levinson and written by Michael Wallach. It is based on a story created by the duo. The inspiration for the film came when Levinson was asked to produce a documentary about the problems facing the Chesapeake Bay, a project he chose to abandon when he learned that Frontline was already covering the issue. Deciding to make use of all the research, he produced a horror film instead and promoted it as “80 percent factual information“. The movie was shot on locations in North Caroline and South Carolina.

The Bay is a horror movie that may feel like yet another zombie-outbreak movie at first, but instead its playing around with a concept that sells itself as something that “could have happened“. While that is a bit of a stretch, of course, it’s still a horror movie that can make you quite uncomfortable, especially if you’ve either experienced or are aware of just how much damage bacteria and parasites can do to a human body. I’m still getting chills from remembering some of the episodes of the Monsters Inside Me series that was broadcast on Discovery…bloody nine hells, how disturbing some of that actually was..! And while a horror movie like this is of course exaggerating things, it’s kind of nasty to think of how close it still is to reality. Yes, the parasitic isopod eating tongues is a real thing: it’s called Cymothoa exigua. Not believed to be harmful to humans in real life, though…so, uhm, I guess that’s a relief…

The format, found footage docudrama, works pretty well for a movie like this. It feels a little chaotic at times with all the “footage“ put together in order to form the narrative, but this only adds to the perceived realism as the citizens are literally thrown into a deadly chaos. The extremely fast-acting way the parasitic infections occur in people reminds us a bit of the typical zombie-infestation buildup where things go from zero to a thousand in the blink of an eye. No one knows what’s happening until it’s too late, and then there’s the inevitable societal crumble. In that regard, the realistic approach falters a bit, but strengthens the horror elements.

Overall, The Bay is a nice found footage horror film which makes you more afraid of the tiny things in the water that you can’t see, rather than any big monster. Probably not a good watch for those suffering from Parasite phobia, though…

Director: Barry Levinson
Writers: Michael Wallach, Barry Levinson
Country & year: USA, 2012
Actors: Nansi Aluka, Christopher Denham, Stephen Kunken, Frank Deal, Frank Deal, Kether Donohue, Kristen Connolly, Will Rogers, Kimberly Campbell, Beckett Clayton-Luce
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1713476/

Sharktopus (2010)

Posted on July 22, 2025July 22, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

Nathan Sands is a geneticist (or just a mad scientist, if you will) who has been hired by the U.S. Navy to create a new weapon. Together with his daughter Nicole, they have created a large intelligent shark with the tentacles of an octopus, because that sounds like an excellent idea where nothing can go wrong. A sharktopus, in other words, but for some reason they have decided to simply call it S-11. They control the creature by using a device on its head, which gives electromagnetic pulses. Because an attachment to such a creature’s head which is the entire means of control over it sounds like the greatest idea ever, right? Well, as can easily be imagined, the S-11 gets rid of the annoying device, and swims along to Mexican waters to create some mayhem and perhaps enjoy some human burritos. Sands and Nicole must find someone that can help them capture the monster, and meets up with a cocky dude named Andy Flynn who is apparently the most suited for the job. The catch is: the monster must be captured alive. Easier said than done! As Nicole and Andy tries to follow its tracks, a pesky news reporter called Stacy Everheart and her henpecked cameraman Bones starts pursuing the story of the year.

Sharktopus is a SyFy horror film produced by Roger Corman and directed by Declan O´Brien, which later sparked a franchise. And ohhh boy, could this one have been a total rotten fish of a stinker if it wasn’t for the obvious tongue-in-cheek approach and the self-awareness displayed here. It’s made as a “so-bad-it’s good“ movie, and that is a much harder achievement than one might initially expect. Few movies that aim for this setup manages to pull it off, but Sharktopus is one of those exceptions. It delivers exactly what it promises, and you’d have to be an idiot if you were to take it seriously for even a split second. It’s yet another movie where I’m glad we have badges instead of ratings here on Horror Ghouls…

The setup is pretty simple: crazy scientist creates monster, monster runs amok, heroes must stop it. The characters are pretty bland, with Eric Roberts as Nathan Sands being the most decent of the bunch. That being said, the over-acting and clunky performances from several of the actors here is what offers some decent laughs, plus the hilarious kill scenes mixed with bad CGI effects. Not to mention campy lines like:

– Oh no, not like this! Arrrgghhhhhh! (while attempting to convince the viewer they have really been caught by those crappy CGI tentacles)
– Damn you Sharktopus!
– You can stop staring at my rack. They’re just boobs. They’re not gonna get up and dance or anything.
– That guy was killed in front of us inches away. Inches away! Gosh. He was kind of a nice guy, you know? Smell a little funky, but he was okay. Now he’s dead.

Yeah…if I haven’t made it pretty clear already, Sharktopus is indeed a horrible movie, but for all the good reasons. It’s a lot of stupid fun, and a nice watch for the shark week!

Also, in 2023 the movie actually had a remake…from China, of all places. And to be honest it looks more like they tried to make a remake of Deep Rising. Currently not available officially anywhere outside of China…but as of now, there’s YouTube…and here’s a link to the trailer.

Director: Declan O’Brien
Writers: Mike MacLean, Stephen Niver
Country & year: USA, 2010
Actors: Eric Roberts, Kerem Bürsin, Sara Malakul Lane, Sara Malakul Lane, Héctor Jiménez, Liv Boughn, Julian Gonzalez Esparza, Blake Lindsey, Peter Nelson, Maija Markula
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1619880/

I Drink Your Blood (1971)

Posted on July 15, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

This grimy, low-budget Grindhouse classic wastes no time as we are thrown straight into an obscure Satanic cult ritual in the woods in the middle of the night, led by the charismatic sociopath Horace Born. He is a self-proclaimed Capricorn who was born in Hell and reborn on Mother Earth to do Satan’s work with his group of hippie Satanists called “The Sons and Daughters of Satan“. Sounds wholesome. They drink blood spiced with LSD as they’re buck naked before sacrificing a poor chicken (for real). A trigger warning for animal cruelty. The whole act is spied on by Sylvia, who is the girlfriend of one of Horace’s cult members. And Horace won’t have any of that. After a quick chasing scene with some funk music, she is caught, where we can only assume that she is gang-raped off-screen, before she barely makes it home alive. Next day Horace and company’s hippie truck won’t start and have to walk to the nearest town, which is Valley Hills, a small hillbilly town in the bumfuck of nowhere.

They buy a box of meat pies at the local bakery before they seek shelter in an abandoned hotel – where they completely trash the place and wreck havoc while they chase a bunch of scared rats to barbecue and eat for dinner. Yum, Burp and Hail Satan. These were trained rats, by the way, which were also used in Willard, another horror film from the same year. The dead rats we see in the barbecue scene were already dead prior to the film, if we’re gonna trust the trivia section on IMDb. Anyway, when Sylvia’s grandfather learns that this Satanic cult is in town, he decides to pay them a visit to confront them with a shotgun. But because he’s a slow, old fool, he fails miserably and gets beaten before they pour some LSD into his mouth. Even though they’re kind enough to spare his life, his grandson and Sylvia’s younger brother, Pete, who’s also been spying on them, is the next to spit on their grave. He takes the shotgun to finish his granddads’ revenge, but on his way he shoots and kills a rabid dog. And one can say that things gets really interesting from here on.

Because listen to this: Pete, the smartass, takes a sample of the dog’s rabies-infected blood, mixes it with the meat pies that Horace and co eventually eat and… well, it doesn’t go exactly as imagined. Instead of dying instantly, they slowly turn into deranged zombie-like foaming flesh-eaters, who end up attacking the townsfolk and turn Valley Hills into an apocalyptic rabies warzone which can be described as Night of the Living Dead meets The Crazies. Only, this one is far more out there than these two combined, sprinkled with more LSD, schlock and unhinged, unapologetic B-movie madness. We can say the intention of Pete was good, but man, talk about shitting the bed. Heads are rolling, limbs chopped apart, and one dude has his teeth falling out as he gets piggybacked stronghold, and some other bizarre WTF moments. It’s a full-on riot with lots of sadistic, goofy fun. Plain and simple, and not much deeper than that. I Drink Your Blood was also the first film to have the historic achievement to be stamped with an X-rating. Hats off.

I Drink Your Blood is available on Blu-ray from Grindhouse Releasing, and was once upon a time on Tubi. Don’t bother looking for it on YouTube as it’s filled with pixelization censoring.

Writer and director: David E. Durston
Country & year: USA, 1971
Actors: Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury, Jadin Wong, Rhonda Fultz, George Patterson, Riley Mills, John Damon, Elizabeth Marner-Brooks, Richard Bowler, Tyde Kierney, Iris Brooks
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067229/

Robowar (1988)

Posted on July 11, 2025August 14, 2025 by HorrorGhouls

This Italian-produced Predator ripoff starts in the midst of a full-blown bulletstorm mayhem in the jungle of the Philippines, and a group of commandos are sent to the green inferno to see what the hell is going on. We meet the four trigger-happy testosterone-filled walking ballsacks with the colorful code names Killzone, Blood, Papa, Diddy Bop and Quiang. And together they make the team called BAM, which stands for (yeah, you already guessed it) Bad Ass Motherfuckers. Can’t get more 1980s than that. They stumble upon fresh-fried corpses as they explore the territories. They rescue a damsel-in-distress from getting chased by a group of horny guerrillas. She is a young, blond nurse who goes by the name… Virgin. Sounds like she’s in the wrong movie, no?

Anyway – As they go deeper in the jungle, things start to smell more cheesy, as they’re getting hunted by an alien-looking killer robot, called ~~Predator~~ Omega One. He’s a high-tech renegade humanoid who shoots the deadliest lasers through an arm cannon and wears a silly costume where a biker helmet was used to give him the flair of RoboCop, another well-known film you’ve maybe heard of. Instead, we have just another thick layer of cheese. Now it starts to smell. And his appearance is as intimidating as…someone who has dressed up to attend a Halloween party at the local gay bar. To build up some suspense and tension, we see from his POV perspective through his lousy, low-pixelated sensor while he mumbles gibberish like a demented Indian scammer on crack cocaine. So, come get some!

Robowar is directed by schlock maestro of Italian Trash Cinema Bruno Mattei (here under his most used pseudonym as Vincent Dawn), written by the couple Rosetta Drudi and Claudio Fragasso. Fragasso also got the honor of playing the RoboPredator, which made him faint two times during the shoot due to the extreme heat. Claudio Fragasso also did the most Claudio Fragasso thing to shoot a random sequence without zero context to the rest of the film. Of course. Robowar was originally meant to just be a Vietnam-war film, inspired by Apocalypse Now (1979), shot in the hot n’ sticky Philippines and all, but when Mattei saw Predator during a lunch break, he did what he usually did: put in elements of said film to cash in on its current success. And we can only imagine what the film would look like if he had also played Contra. That being said, Mattei had already made the war film Commando Strike the year before, also in the Philippines, where I guess the leftovers of ammo, cheese, testosterone and set pieces to blow up were enough to fill Robowar. Mattei also made Commando Strike 2 the same year, aka Trappola diabolica. So yeah, Signor Mattei sure got to make his epic war films, one of which by coincidence became a Predator ripoff, and one of the mockbuster films I bet that The Asylum wish they had made some 30 years ago. And that alone says it all.

Some quoteworthy (white) lines:

– Fuck it, Diddy. Quit moving around like you’re jerking off, you’re making me seasick.

– Why do they have nicknames?
– You should know what the group is called. “BAM”.
– BAM?
– Big Ass Motherfuckers!

– Drug addicts and fags. I bet they got AIDS too, huh, Quang?

– Technology hasn’t got feelings! (I bet that Jason Blum does not agree on that one, bwhahahahaha…!)

Director: Bruno Mattei
Writers: Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi
Original title: Robot da guerra
Country & year: Italy/Philippines, 1988
Actors: Reb Brown, Catherine Hickland, Massimo Vanni, Romano Puppo, Claudio Fragasso, Luciano Pigozzi, Max Laurel, Jim Gaines, John P. Dulaney, Mel Davidson
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096000/