This Review Is an Expansion of Our Original Review Published as Part of Our Coverage of Fantasia 2024 The stars of a 1980s professional wrestling league find themselves part of a Satanic cult’s ritual in Dark Match. SAW is a ragtag 1988 wrestling league managed by Rusty Beans (Jonathan Cherry) and featuring a roster of …
Horror film
The novel by William S. Burroughs is adapted for the big screen with Queer. As a result of his drug addictions, writer William Lee (William Lee) has been living as an exile in 1950s Mexico City, frequenting the city’s gay bars and sharing tales of homosexual misadventures with his friend Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman). Lee …
This Review Was Originally Published as Part of Our Coverage of Fantasia 2024 The stars of a 1980s professional wrestling league find themselves part of a Satanic cult’s ritual in Dark Match. SAW is a ragtag 1988 wrestling league managed by Rusty Beans (Jonathan Cherry) and featuring a roster of stars that includes Mean Joe …
Two Mormon missionaries find themselves in a deadly game to prove their faith in Heretic. Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are two Mormon missionaries who visit the house of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant). At first, Mr. Reed seems to be an incredibly kind man, who entertains the girls with theological discussion, …
A 10-year-old girl learns her family’s dark secret in The Beast Within. Willow (Caoilinn Springall) is a 10-year-old girl living on a fortified compound with her father Noah (Kit Harington) and mother Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings). Willow begins to suspect something is up with her parents after a series of strange events, including her grandfather Waylon …
A grieving 12-year-old comes to believe that his dead father has returned in Daddy’s Head. Issac (Rupert Turnbull) is led by his stepmother Laura (Julia Brown) into a hospital to say goodbye to his father James (Charles Aitken), who was gravely injured in an automobile accident and is about to be taken off life support. …
This Review was Originally Published as Part of TIFF Next Wave 2024 A 17-year-old girl discovers something sinister at a resort in the German Alps in Cuckoo. 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) is forced to move with her father Luis (Marton Csokas), stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick), and half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) to the Resort Alpschatten in …
A group of friends opening a restaurant in New Orleans unearth an ancient pendulum board in Witchboard. Emily (Madison Iseman) and her fiance Christian (Aaron Dominguez) are preparing to open a new Creole restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans. While picking mushrooms for the restaurant, Emily finds an old board, which she learns …
A non-believing medium reluctantly helps a young girl develop her gift in The Chapel. Every Halloween, a Spanish village unseals its central chapel to commemorate a girl named Usoa taken by Plague Doctors in the middle of the Black Death. Emma (Maia Zaitegi) is a young girl, who has been working with local medium Ivana …
The stars of a 1980s professional wrestling league find themselves part of a Satanic cult’s ritual in Dark Match. SAW is a ragtag 1988 wrestling league managed by Rusty Beans (Jonathan Cherry) and featuring a roster of stars that includes Mean Joe Lean (Steven Ogg), Lazarus Smashley (Leo Fafard), Enigma Jones (Mo Adan), Miss Behave …
A young female FBI agent is assigned to track a Satanic serial killer in Longlegs. Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is a young FBI agent with a strong intuition and possible psychic abilities. As a result of her unique abilities, her superior Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) assigns her to a serial killer case the FBI …
A serial killer stalks Hollywood in MaXXXine. Six years after being the sole survivor of the massacre in Texas, adult film star Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) plans to crossover into the mainstream by being cast in the horror film The Puritan II, directed by Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki). However, Maxine is tracked down by Louisiana …
The 2024 edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival is less than two weeks away. This morning, tickets went on sale for this year’s selection of films. As such, I thought I would list, in chronological order, ten of the films that I am most interested in seeing during the week that I will be …
A renowned shaman and revered geomancer encounters an ancient evil while cleansing a supernatural affliction for a wealthy family in Exhuma. Shaman Lee Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and her protege Bong Gil (Lee Do-hyun) are hired by the wealthy US-based businessman Park Ji Yong (Kim Jae-cheol) to cure a mysterious affliction on his newborn son. Hwa-rim …
The ambient slasher film IN A VIOLENT NATURE, written and directed by Chis Nash, opens in theatres this Friday, May 31, 2024, distributed by IFC Films and Shudder. In a series of Zoom interviews in promotion of the film, I spoke with both producer Peter Kuplowsky and actor Ry Barrett about this much-buzzed-about film. Make sure …
A 17-year-old girl discovers something sinister at a resort in the German Alps in Cuckoo. 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) is forced to move with her father Luis (Marton Csokas), stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick), and half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) to the Resort Alpschatten in the German Alps run by Mr. König (Dan Stevens). Gretchen finds out …
Demonic forces terrorize a family in a dilapidated apartment complex in Evil Dead Rise. Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) is a single mother living with her children Danny (Morgan Davies), Bridget (Gabrielle Echols), and Kassie (Nell Fisher) in an old Los Angeles apartment complex that is slated for demolition. The family is visited by Ellie’s sister Beth …
It has a few truly scary moments; however, the practically narrative-free experimental haunted house plot definitely isn’t for everyone
A darkly humorous mix of Child’s Play and The Terminator with some pop songs and dancing thrown in.
Three American filmmakers get more than they bargained for when investigating a ghost story in rural Quebec in Curse of Aurore. Casey Nolan, the host of the YouTube series Mind Seed TV, plays a video off a thumb drive found in a Dark Web mystery box. On it is footage shot by American filmmakers Aaron …
Disclosure: This review is based on a Rough Cut screener of The Devil Comes at Night, so any technical limitations have been ignored A washed-up boxer finds himself trapped in a house surrounded by a demonic cult in The Devil Comes at Night. Incoherent following a bar fight, Ben (Ryan Allen) is dropped off at …
A teenager kidnapped by a serial killer receives phone calls from the ghosts of the killer’s victims in The Black Phone. Finney (Mason Thames) is a 13-year-old boy who is bullied at school and subjected at home to violent outbursts by his alcoholic father, Terrance (Jeremy Davies). One day, Finney is taken after school by …
A family discovers that they are rapidly aging on a secluded beach in Old. Guy (Gael García Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) have traveled to the isolated Anamika Resort with their young children Maddox and Trent. After being impressed by the resort’s hospitality, the family is recommended that they visit a nearby isolated beach by the …
A corporate assassin begins to literally lose her mind in Possessor. Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is a woman who works for a company that uses mind implant technology to transfer Vos’ consciousness into a host body, which is then used to perform high profile assassinations, all under the watchful eye of her handler Girder (Jennifer …
A couple’s romantic getaway is disrupted the arrival of an older couple in The Beach House. Randal (Noah Le Gros) arrives with his girlfriend Emily (Liana Liberato) at his family’s beachfront property to reconnect with each other. However, it isn’t long until they discover that the house is also being occupied by Mitch (Jake Weber) …
This month I delve into the Canadian tax shelter era with the 1977 wilderness survival/horror film Rituals. Harry (Hal Holbrook), Mitzi (Lawrence Dane), Martin (Robin Gammell), Abel (Ken James), and D.J. (Gary Reineke) are five doctor friends, who go for a camping trip in an isolated stretch of wilderness. After the first night, the the men’s …
This month, I continue with the films of Vincent Price and one of this most well-known films. One night, François Delambre (Price) receives a call from his sister-in-law Helene (Patricia Owens) confessing that she killed her husband Andre (Al Hedison) in a mechanical press. In defense of this supposed murder, Helene tells François and Inspector Charas …
This review was originally published as part of my coverage of Fantasia Fest 2015 A young women undergoes a horrifying transformation in the body horror film Bite. Shortly before her wedding to her fiance Jared (Jordan Gray), Casey (Elma Begovic) goes on a bachelorette holiday to Costa Rica with her friends Jill (Annette Wozniak) and Kirsten (Denise Yuen). …
A young women undergoes a horrifying transformation in the body horror film Bite. Shortly before her wedding to her fiance Jared (Jordan Gray), Casey (Elma Begovic) goes on a bachelorette holiday to Costa Rica with her friends Jill (Annette Wozniak) and Kirsten (Denise Yuen). While swimming in an off-path spring, Casey gets bitten by something under …
The body horror film Thanatomorphose focuses on a girl (Kayden Rose), who lives on her own in an apartment. One day she notices that bruises have appeared over her body and that her hair is starting to fall out. As the days go by, more injuries appear and the girl’s boyfriend (David Tousignant) comments on …
From director Jesse T. Cook (Monster Brawl) and writer Tony Burgess (Ponypool) comes the utterly disgusting body horror film Septic Man. When a water contamination problem results in many deaths around the town of Collingwood, the mayor (Stephen McHattie) declares a state of emergency and evacuates the town. Meanwhile, a local septic worker named Jack …
On Friday October 13, 1987, Mark Fisher (Josh Ethier) was one of two men to disappear on during a series of strange events that occurred that night in a town in Maine. His friend Seth (Graham Skipper) insisted that strange lights in the sky were the cause of Mark’s disappearance. Two years later, Mark suddenly …
After playing the awards game with the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire and Oscar-nominated 127 Hours, director Danny Boyle returns to dishing out his unique take on genre films. In the case of Trance, what starts off as a fairly ordinary heist film, turns into psychological thriller in which the main protagonist begins to doubt the reality …
I am quite a big fan of David Cronenberg, so I was definitely interested when it was announced that his son Brandon was going to screen this year at TIFF. Based on what I’ve heard from the film’s debut at Cannes, the apple has not fallen far from the tree and the film hearkens back to David …