Top Ten Horror Movies of 2020

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my most anticipated horror movies of 2021, and now it's time to do my favorite horror movies of 2020.  While this year was kind of a bust for new theatrical releases, horror was actually able to thrive a bit.  Granted, we still had a lot of big movies pushed back to next year, but horror has an advantage over a lot of other genres in this regard: many of the best horror movies are small indie films that would've gone straight to streaming services or VOD even if theaters were open.  Because of that, we still got a lot of good new horror this year, so I didn't have to pad this list with mediocre releases that wouldn't have had a chance without the pandemic.  I really love all of these movies, so without further ado, here are my top ten horror films of 2020.

10) Scare Package

Scare Package is an anthology movie that came out on the horror streaming service Shudder back in June, and it's one of the best meta horrors I've ever seen.  Imagine if Randy from Scream was in The Cabin in the Woods, and you'll have a decent idea of what this film is like.  It lovingly and hilariously pokes fun at some typical genre tropes (especially the ones that don't make much sense) and some of the ways we fans often talk about horror, and it's an absolute delight to watch.  It's funny, it has heart, and it's made by people who love the genre just as much as we do.

9) Host

Host is another Shudder movie, and when this one came out back in July, it took the horror world by storm.  It's a found footage movie, but instead of using camera footage, it takes place over a zoom call.  It's about a group of friends who hold a virtual séance, and when one of them accidentally invites an evil presence into their call, all hell breaks loose.  That might sound generic and lame, but I promise you it's not.  This movie takes a super simple premise and turns it into cinematic gold, so you're going to be seeing this one on a lot of top ten lists this year.

8) Vampires vs. The Bronx

Vampires vs. The Bronx is a Netflix movie that came out back in October as part of their Netflix and Chills lineup, and it's about a trio of kids in the Bronx who have to fend off a group of vampires who've taken up residence in their neighborhood.  This movie has laughs, great characters, menacing vampires, and a great message.  It's pretty much the total package, so even though Netflix movies are known for being very hit or miss, this is definitely a big hit for them.

7) Sputnik

Sputnik is a Russian movie that actually wasn't on my radar until about a month ago.  I completely missed its release, but then I got a screener for it through one of the websites I write for.  And I'm super glad I did because this movie is fantastic.  It takes place in the 1980s, and it's about a Soviet cosmonaut who returns to earth with an alien monster living inside of him.  Going into this film, I was expecting a monster movie along the lines of Alien, but instead I got a Guillermo del Toro-esque drama with horror elements, and it completely works.  It's a slow burn that focuses more on the characters than the monster, and it exceeded all my expectations.

6) Color Out of Space

Color Out of Space originally premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, but it was released to the general public in January of this year, so it still counts as a 2020 film.  It's based on the H. P. Lovecraft story "The Colour Out of Space," and it does a great job of capturing the essence of that story while also updating it and bringing it into the present day.  It's about a family that encounters an alien creature that's literally just a color, and it wreaks absolute havoc on their lives.  I know that sounds really weird and probably a bit ridiculous, but the movie actually pulls it off.  In good Lovecraftian fashion, this film taps into our fear of the unknown and reminds us just how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things, so if you never imagined that a color could be scary, this movie will prove you wrong.

5) Love and Monsters

Love and Monsters is a post-apocalyptic monster movie set seven years after the earth was taken over by giant, mutated versions of normal animals like bugs and lizards, forcing humanity to live in underground bunkers to stay alive.  It's about a young man who decides to leave his bunker one day and travel across the surface to go see his girlfriend, and along the way, he meets some really interesting people and fights some scary monsters.  This movie gets a lot right, but I can sum it all up by saying that it does the absolute most important thing that any monster movie needs to do: it strikes a perfect balance between great characters and really cool monsters, so in my book, it's the best creature feature of the year.

4) Impetigore

Impetigore is an Indonesian movie that came out in its home country in 2019, but it was released here in the states on Shudder in 2020.  It's a folk horror about a young woman who travels to her ancestral village to take possession of her family's house, and soon after she arrives, she realizes that the villagers have other, much more sinister plans for her.  This movie was written and directed by Joko Anwar, who also made another fantastic movie called Satan's Slaves, so I was really excited to see what else he could do.  And I was not disappointed.  Unlike way too many horror movies today, this one doesn't feel the need to throw jump scares at you every five seconds.  Instead, it's a very atmospheric film.  Even when nothing all that strange is going on, it's just dripping with creepiness, so it keeps you hooked from beginning to end.  On top of that, this movie also has an intriguing plot and characters that you root for, so it works on pretty much every level.

3) The Dark and the Wicked

The Dark and the Wicked is another movie that came out at a festival last year (Fantasia) but was released to the public this year.  It was written and directed by Bryan Bertino, the same guy who did The Strangers, and it has the same bleak, pessimistic tone that his first movie had.  In fact, you might even say that this film is basically just The Strangers transposed from home invasion to supernatural horror.  It's about a family that's beset by a demon, and much like the killers in The Strangers, the demon in this one just toys with them before finally finishing them off.  It's a really bleak portrayal of evil, and I have to admit that it got under my skin in a way that few films ever have.  In fact, I can count on one hand the movies that have affected me the way this one did, so I couldn't help but put it near the top of my list.

2) Relic

Relic is an Australian movie about a woman with dementia who goes missing for a few days.  Her daughter and granddaughter go to her house to look for her, and when weird things begin to happen, you start to think that this might be more than just a bad case of dementia.  Soon afterwards, the woman shows up out of the blue and refuses to talk about where she went, and their situation just gets scarier and scarier.  I absolutely adore this movie.  My grandmother died from Alzheimer's, so horror films that deal with dementia really resonate with me, and this is hands down the best of the bunch.  It does a great job of depicting what dementia is like for both its victims and their families, and it also shows us how we should treat people afflicted with this terrible disorder.  It's atmospheric, it's beautiful, and it has a great message, so in some other years, it probably would've taken the #1 spot on my list.

1) The Invisible Man

But this isn't any other year.  This is 2020, and my favorite movie of any genre this year is The Invisible Man.  It's a modern updating of the classic H. G. Wells novel (and its 1930s film adaptation), and I can't say enough good things about the job that writer/director Leigh Whannell did with it.  He took a very sci-fi concept and made you feel like it could actually happen, and he used it to unmask a very real and very pervasive evil in today's society: abusive relationships and the lack of empathy towards women who experience them.  I could go on and on about this movie, so I'm going to control myself and just leave you with this: Leigh Whannell's last movie, Upgrade, was really good, and it made me interested to see what he would do next.  But this movie immediately catapulted him into the upper echelon of horror directors working today, so now I'm not just interested to see his next project.  I absolutely can't wait to see it because I'm confident that it'll land a spot near the top of my list once again no matter what year it comes out.

New Theatrical Movie Review: Monster Hunter

Monster Hunter is an action-monster movie based on a video game series of the same name, and it came out on December 18.  It was written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, the same guy who did the Resident Evil movies, and it's about a group of soldiers who get sucked into another world filled with huge, vicious monsters.

Going into this film, I had heard that it was a dumb, fun monster movie, and I thought I would really like it.  Dumb, fun monster movies are right up my alley (for example, I loved Rampage from a few years ago), so I was very much looking forward to this one.  Unfortunately, it's a bit too dumb, and its faults really take away from the fun, so I came out of the theater pretty disappointed.

I had a few problems with this movie, but by far the biggest one was the monsters.  If you're going to make a dumb, fun monster movie, you have to have fun monsters, but this one didn't.  For about the first hour of the film (and it's only an hour and forty minutes long), pretty much the only creatures you see are these giant spider-like things, and while they're cool enough, they get boring rather quickly.  This kind of movie needs variety in its monsters (like Kong: Island or this year's underseen gem Love and Monsters), and an hour of giant spiders is the exact opposite of that.

To be fair, there is one creature that's not a spider, but it's not terribly interesting either.  It's basically just a generic burrowing monster à la Tremors or the sand worms from Beetlejuice.  It's not bad, but it doesn't add nearly enough variety to this first part of the film.

Then, in about the last forty minutes of the movie, you see some different monsters, but rather than make you excited to see something new, they just make you realize how derivative the film is.  We've seen giant spiders and burrowing monsters a million times before, and this second batch isn't any different.  Some of them look like dinosaurs (there's even a stampede scene that reminded me a lot of Jurassic Park), there's a dragon that looks like a knockoff of Smaug from the Hobbit trilogy, and there's another monster that looks like a cross between a dragon and a xenomorph.  Admittedly, a xenomorph-dragon sounds pretty cool, but in the context of this movie, it's just another derivative creature that doesn't add anything new or interesting to the genre.

That's all pretty bad, but to be honest, I might've been able to forgive it if the human characters were fun to watch.  Unfortunately, they weren't.  Almost all of the soldiers die in the first few minutes, and then the one survivor teams up with someone who's been there for much longer and who knows the ins and outs of that world.  Paul W. S. Anderson could've done some pretty interesting stuff with that setup, but he instead chose to make his characters paper thin.  They're not terrible; there's just nothing particularly likeable about them.  In fact, they're so generic that they're almost not even real characters.  They're just excuses to see more monsters, and given how bad the monsters are, that's not a good thing.

Last but not least, we have the final twenty or thirty minutes of the movie.  This last bit opens up the world a little and implies that there's a lot of mythology behind this place and these monsters, but the film holds it all back like a tall kid holding a candy bar above his head while a short kid tries in vain to reach it.  It's really frustrating, and it's made even worse by the final scene.  It ends kind of like the original Mortal Kombat, with the good guys getting ready to square off against another monster right before the credits roll, and it feels like the filmmakers purposely held off on explaining the mythology just to get us to come back for a sequel.  It felt like a big slap in the face, and it killed any last vestige of interest I may have had in a potential sequel.

So all in all, I would not recommend that you go see this movie.  It's just a mix of elements taken from other (and better) films and put together into a frustratingly unsatisfying story.  If you like dumb, fun monster movies, go watch something like Rampage, Pacific Rim, or just about any Godzilla movie.  They're all much better ways to spend your time than Monster Hunter.

Most Anticipated Horror Movies of 2021

2020 has been an absolutely crazy year in just about every respect, and movies have been no exception.  The vast majority of major releases got pushed back to 2021, including several horror films that had the potential to be big hits.  Thankfully, 2020 is almost over, and it looks like there might finally be a light at the end of this pandemic tunnel.  That's great for a lot of reasons, but for the purposes of this blog, it means that we might actually get all the movies we're looking forward to next year.  It feels like the last time that happened was a lifetime ago, and it's great to have some realistic hope that it just might happen again.  To celebrate the end of this dreadful year and the hope of a better 2021, here are my ten most anticipated horror films of the coming new year.

Morbius

Morbius isn't what most people normally think of when they think about horror, but I'm putting it on this list anyway.  It's based on a Marvel Comics anti-hero named Michael Morbius, a scientist who unintentionally turns himself into a kind of living vampire, and it hits theaters on March 19.  Horror is my favorite genre, but I'm also a huge fan of comic book movies, so if you make a comic book movie about a horror character, I'm totally in.  What's more, while the movie is part of Sony's new Spider-Man universe (which started with 2018's Venom), the trailer seems to imply that it's also connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so I'm just chomping at the bit to see what treats this film has in store for us.

A Quiet Place Part II

Next, we have a movie that needs no introduction.  A Quiet Place is one of the most popular horror films of the past few years, so obviously the sequel is going to land a spot on this list.  It comes out on April 23, and it follows the Abbot family (the people from the first one) as they venture out into unexplored territory.  The early reactions (it was originally supposed to come out this year) say it's another winner, so I can't wait to see what new silent horrors John Krasinski has in store for us this time.

Last Night in Soho

Last Night in Soho is probably my least anticipated movie on this list, but I'm still looking forward to it.  It's a psychological thriller with some sort of time travel element, and it comes out on April 23, just like A Quiet Place Part II.  We don't know much about this film, but it's going to be directed by Edgar Wright, the guy behind the zombie classic Shaun of the Dead.  That's enough to get me intrigued, so while I'm admittedly not going crazy with excitement for this movie, I'm definitely interested to see what Edgar Wright does with his next foray into horror.

Godzilla vs. Kong

Going from my least anticipated movie on the list to my most anticipated movie in any genre, Godzilla vs. Kong is exactly what it sounds like.  It's Godzilla fighting King Kong, and it hits theaters on May 21.  I'm a huge kaiju fan, and in my opinion, Legendary Pictures has been doing an amazing job with these two monsters in the past few years, so I absolutely cannot wait to see them pit these two giants of cinema against each other for the first time in almost sixty years.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

I think The Conjuring is the best horror movie of this millennium, and I think The Conjuring 2 is one of the best horror sequels of all time, so of course I'm excited for the third entry in the series.  However, I have to admit that my excitement for this one is a bit tempered.  James Wan (in my opinion the best horror director working today) is stepping down from the franchise to work on other projects, and I'm not convinced that the new director will be able to continue the magic of the series.  But I'm willing to give it a shot, so I'm still going to be first in line to see The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It when it comes out on June 4.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Sure, sequels made multiple decades after the originals are notoriously hit or miss, but that doesn't mean I can't be optimistic about a new entry in the original Ghostbusters series.  Afterlife is a new sequel to Ghostbusters 2, and it comes out on June 11.  I'm a big fan of both of the original movies, so I'm crossing my fingers and praying really hard that this new one honors their legacy and shows a whole new generation "who you gonna call."

Candyman

I'm not a huge fan of slashers, but one of the few slashers I really like is the original Candyman.  It's about way more than just a guy going around killing people, so it gives us some real narrative substance, something this subgenre often lacks.  I don't know if this new reboot/sequel is even going to come close to the original, but since it's produced by Jordan Peele (who wrote and directed Get Out and Us), I'm willing to give it a shot.  It comes out on August 27, and hopefully it can capture at least some of the same magic that makes the original so much better than your typical by-the-numbers slasher.

Halloween Kills

Another slasher that I really like is the original Halloween, and while I'm not a big fan of the rest of the franchise, I think the 2018 sequel is fantastic.  Sure, it has some stupid teen slasher tropes, but it also tells a really compelling story about Laurie Strode's lifelong struggle with trauma after her encounter with Michael Myers.  I have no idea what they're going to do in this new one to make it stand out from the slasher pack, but I trust that the guys who made the only good Halloween sequel can do it again.  Halloween Kills comes out on October 15, just in time for your, well, Halloween viewing pleasure.

Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley is a new Guillermo del Toro movie that's supposed to come out some time in December of 2021.  It's a psychological thriller about a carnival worker who gets by on deception and manipulation, but one day he meets a woman who's even more dangerous than he is.  Other than that basic plot synopsis, I don't know too much about this film (it's based on a book, but I've never read it), but the fact that it's directed by Guillermo del Toro is enough to pique my interest.  I don't like every movie he's ever made, but I do like most of them, so I'll always be excited whenever he comes out with a mysterious new project.

Malignant

The last movie on this list doesn't have a release date, but it is supposed to come out at some point during 2021.  We don't know much of anything about Malignant except that it's directed by James Wan and that it's supposedly a giallo film (a precursor to slashers, this style was popular among Italian filmmakers in the 60s and 70s).  I'm not much of a giallo fan (I like them even less than slashers), but I'll watch any horror movie James Wan directs.  Like I said before, I think he's the best horror director working today, so even if he's dabbling in a subgenre I don't generally like, I'll still be there whenever this movie finally hits theaters.

Catch-Up Review: Sputnik

Sputnik is a Russian movie that came out in its home country back in April, and it was released in limited theaters and on VOD platforms here in the states this past August.  It takes place in the 1980s, and it follows a Soviet psychiatrist who's recruited by the military to examine a cosmonaut who came back to earth with a dangerous alien organism living inside of him.

I went into this movie expecting an Alien-style space monster movie, but what I got was so much more.  It's a very slow burn, and while you do eventually get to see the creature in all its vicious glory, it never turns into a full-blown horror movie.  It's really more of a Guillermo del Toro-esque drama with horror-centric elements, and it's fantastic.

The film takes about a half hour to set up the characters and the plot, and when it finally shows you the creature, it just raises a whole bunch of questions.  Then, after that initial reveal, the bulk of the movie is about the psychiatrist and her military colleagues studying the monster and trying to answer those questions.  You get a few scenes of legit horror, but it's mainly people talking and trying to figure out what makes this thing tick.  It's really intriguing, and the movie keeps your interest the whole way through by making you want to find out more about this creature and what happened to the cosmonaut.

Seeing this all unfold is the best thing about the movie, so I won't say anything more about the mystery of the alien creature.  It's best to go in as blind as possible, and I wouldn't want to ruin the experience for you.  What I can say, though, is that the film grounds this mystery with strong characters that you grow to like, and it even gives you a bit of the cosmonaut's backstory.  By the end of the movie, that backstory becomes an important part of his arc, and it also gives the entire story a bit of an emotional underpinning.

On top of that, I can also tell you that the monster is really cool.  The design isn't the most original thing in the world, but it's good enough.  It'll look pretty familiar to seasoned genre vets, but it's not such a blatant ripoff of other creatures that it becomes distracting.  What's more, when it goes all out and attacks people, the thing is just as brutal as you would expect.  It pulls no punches and takes no prisoners, so fans of monster action will definitely enjoy those moments.

But this thing isn't just a mindless killer.  Again, I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm going to have to be vague.  Suffice it to say, there's more to this creature than just a thirst for blood.  The filmmakers find a way to flesh it out a bit as an actual character rather than simply a force of nature.  It doesn't talk or communicate like an actual person, but it's more than just your typical animalistic monster.

All that being said, I do have to give one caveat about the creature.  It's CGI, and I only saw the movie in standard definition (in case you're wondering, no, I didn't download it illegally; I got a standard def screener), not high definition.  The monster looked fine to me, but I can't guarantee that it'll look great if you watch it in high def.

All in all, I really enjoyed Sputnik.  It wasn't on my radar when it first came out, but I'm super happy that I eventually found out about it and got a chance to watch it.  It has a cool monster, characters you root for, and an intriguing plot, and in my opinion, it's one of the best horror movies of the year.  In fact, unless a slew of great new genre films pops up in the next few weeks, it's going to land a spot on my top ten of 2020, so I highly recommend that you check this one out.

Christmas Horror Movie Recommendations

It's December, which means that just about everywhere you turn, you'll see houses decorated for Christmas, you'll hear radio stations playing Christmas music, and you'll see way too many channels showing Christmas movies.  What's a horror fan to do during this time?  Can we celebrate the most wonderful time of the year in a way that suits us, or do we have to resign ourselves to watching Elf and Hallmark movies?

Thankfully, there are plenty of Christmas horror films, so we can happily get into the spirit of the season without abandoning our favorite genre.  We just need to know what's out there, and that's what I'm here to help you with.  I've put together a list of five of my favorite Christmas horror movies that you can watch this holiday season.

The Nightmare Before Christmas 

Let's begin with the most universally beloved movie on this list.  People of all ages and with all different kinds of tastes love The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Its monsters aren't so creepy that they'll scare non-horror fans away, but they're cool enough that we genre fans still love them.  It's the perfect middle ground in that regard, so you can watch this film with just about anybody.

But it's not just about the monsters.  It also has a really great story.  It's about a monster who's grown tired of constantly being scary, and when he discovers Christmas, he instantly falls in love with it.  In fact, he loves it so much that he kidnaps Santa and tries to do Santa's job himself.  This all goes terribly awry, and he has to scramble to fix it before it's too late.

It's a heartwarming tale about diversity, broadening our horizons, and recognizing that we need other people, especially those who are different from us.  It celebrates the differences among us and tells us that those differences are a real strength, so if you're looking for a fun horror movie that the whole family can watch and learn from, The Nightmare Before Christmas is just the film for you.  

Gremlins

Gremlins is another beloved classic, although it's not quite on the level of The Nightmare Before Christmas.  It's a horror-comedy about a man who buys his son a pet called a mogwai, and the creature comes with a few very important rules the kid has to follow.  Unfortunately, he gets a bit sloppy, and that one mogwai turns into a hoard of mischievous gremlins that run around town destroying things and causing a whole lot of trouble for all the residents.

Unlike the other movies on this list, this one isn't really about Christmas.  It simply takes place around Christmas time, but there are a few scenes that really lean into the holiday setting.  For instance, at one point in the film, a bunch of gremlins show up at someone's front door, and they start singing a Christmas carol.

All in all, Gremlins is quite possibly the best example of a horror movie that's considered a classic simply because it's really, really fun.  It's just a hoot seeing the creatures run around town and cause a mess while imitating normal human life (the Christmas carol scene is just one of many examples), so if you're a fan of monsters, this should definitely be on your Christmas watch list.

Krampus

As you might've guessed, Krampus is about the infamous anti-Santa figure of German folklore.  Whereas Santa brings children presents if they've been good, Krampus punishes kids who've been bad, and in this movie, the main characters have been very bad.  It's about a family that basically hates one another, and Krampus comes to punish them for their lack of Christmas spirit.

Much like Gremlins, this one is also a horror-comedy about a bunch of monsters.  While Krampus himself is obviously the main bad guy, he brings a bunch of minions with him, and they're almost as much fun to watch as the gremlins.  Then, when the big guy himself shows up, he's just as terrifying as you would expect.

But unlike Gremlins, this one doesn't just happen to take place on Christmas.  It's soaked in the themes, imagery, and traditions of the holiday, so if you want a creature feature that truly revolves around Christmas, you should give Krampus a watch.

A Christmas Horror Story

Of all the movies on this list, A Christmas Horror Story is hands down the most purely horror.  It's not an animated children's horror movie, and it's not a horror-comedy.  This is just a straight up horror movie.  It's an anthology film, and all of the stories in it center around Christmas in some way.  For example, there's a segment about a family going to get a Christmas tree, and there's another one where Santa Claus has to defend his home from Krampus.

Like all anthologies, some of the stories are better than others, but there aren't any complete duds.  They all work to some extent at least, so at no point will you find yourself too tempted to fast forward to the next segment.  In particular, the wraparound story stars William Shatner as a radio DJ, and he's a lot of fun to watch.

So if you're looking for a straight up horror movie this December, give A Christmas Horror Story a shot.  It's a bevy of fun Christmas scares that forms a good counterbalance to many of the other films on this list, so it will round out your holiday horror viewing quite nicely.

Rare Exports

Finally, let's take a look at a horror movie that's all about Santa Claus.  Rare Exports is a Finnish movie that reimagines Santa as a demon-like creature that kidnaps and tortures children who misbehave, and a long time ago, he was trapped in ice by the people he terrorized.  However, his frozen prison has recently been discovered, and it's up to just a handful of people to keep him from wreaking havoc once again.

This movie puts a cool twist on the evil Santa trope (he's not just a guy in a Santa costume who goes around killing people), and it creates an interesting mythology in the process.  It's one of the more original Christmas horror films you'll see, and that alone makes it worth watching.

On top of that, it also has likeable characters that you easily root for, so you become invested in the story.  Unlike way too many throwaway horror films, you actually care what happens to these people, and that makes all the difference.  In short, Rare Exports is a creepily delightful Christmas horror movie, so if you're a fan of creative twists on traditional mythology, I highly recommend checking this one out.

New(ish) Netflix Movie Review: Cadaver

Cadaver is a Norwegian movie that came out on Netflix on October 22 as part of their Netflix and Chills lineup.  There was so much new stuff coming out on various streaming platforms around Halloween that it took me a month to finally watch this one, and I'm glad I did.  It has its flaws, but on the whole, I quite enjoyed it.

It's set in a post-apocalyptic world where food is really scarce, and it follows a family that gets tickets to a mysterious dinner show that ends up being way more than they bargained for.  The family wonders how these people have enough food to feed an entire audience, and soon after the play starts, they realize that something isn't right with the event.

I don't want to say much more about the plot because for about half its runtime, the movie is all about the mystery of what exactly is going on.  Once you realize that something is wrong, the situation snowballs and gets weirder and weirder with just about every scene.  This mystery is super intriguing, and it kept my eyes glued to the screen waiting to find out what was coming next.

On top of that, Cadaver is also a very atmospheric film.  It doesn't just show you the mystery unfolding onscreen.  It makes you feel the mystery as well.  You feel all the confusion and disorientation that the main characters are experiencing, and that makes the plot all the more compelling.  It pulls you into the story and makes you feel like you're right there with the characters.

Then, at about the halfway mark, the movie starts giving you some answers.  It slowly pulls back the curtain and lets you in on its secrets, and the explanation is just as sinister as you expect it to be. There's some really nasty stuff going on at this show, and the main characters find themselves forced into in the fight of the lives.

That being said, the second half of the film is a noticeable step down from the great first half.  While I did enjoy the explanation of the strange goings-on at this show, I also thought it wasn't quite as satisfying as the mystery itself.  The first half built it up so much that I was expecting something a bit more interesting than what I ended up getting.  Don't get me wrong, the second half of the film is still good; it just doesn't quite live up to the great setup in the first half.

Aside from the slightly disappointing payoff, the only other real flaw in this movie lies with the characters.  They exist solely to serve the mystery of the strange dinner show, but there's not much to them beyond that.  While they're not terribly bland, they're not particularly interesting either.  They do their job well enough, but they don't really add anything to the movie on their own.

In the grand scheme of things, though, those aren't egregious flaws.  They didn't ruin the movie for me, so I still walked away pretty happy after the credits rolled.  It's admittedly not a must-see film, but it's pretty good.  And it's especially appreciated during this pandemic-induced dearth of new theatrical releases.  While there are a few good movies playing in theaters right now (like Come Play and Freaky), the immediate future is pretty bleak.  Thankfully, we have nice little streaming movies like Cadaver to fill that void, so if you're itching to see some new horror, I'd recommend giving this one a shot.  It's definitely worth a watch.

New Theatrical Movie Review: Freaky

Freaky came out on November 13, and it might very well be the last new movie I see in theaters this year.  If it is, then my movie-going year went out with a bang.  It's a horror-comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton, and it was directed by Christopher Landon, the same guy who did the Happy Death Day movies (which makes perfect sense because Happy Death Day is a horror take on Groundhog Day, and this one is a horror take on Freaky Friday).

Vince Vaughn plays a serial killer known as the Blissfield Butcher who tries to kill Kathryn Newton's character, a high school senior named Millie, but he instead causes them to switch bodies.  The next morning, Millie wakes up in the Butcher's body and he wakes up in hers, and it's just as hilarious as you would expect.

Vaughn is hands down the best thing about this movie.  He does a phenomenal job playing a teenage girl stuck in the body of a middle-aged man, and he's gut-bustingly funny.  He changes everything from the tone of his voice to the way he moves, and it's spot-on.  There are even times when he has to fawn over the guy Millie has a crush on, and those are some of the most amazingly awkward scenes in the entire movie.  Simply put, on the comedy side, Freaky works spectacularly.

On the horror side, the film isn't quite as good, but it still works pretty well.  It's a slasher, and it leans into that subgenre more heavily than you might expect.  This is a gory film, and it has several hardcore kills that are going to really please slasher fans.  Admittedly, this isn't my preferred kind of horror, but even I appreciated how well the movie emulated the classic slashers of the 80s and 90s.  Granted, it's not nonstop gore all the time, but when the Blissfield Butcher kills people, he's brutal.

And not just when he's in his original body.  After the switch, he continues his murderous ways, and Kathryn Newton does a really good job playing him.  She's mastered the sinister look and attitude of a serial killer hiding in someone else's body, so she really makes you believe that she's the Blissfield Butcher.

On a similar note, Freaky is also a love letter to the slasher genre.  It makes some really great use of the slasher tropes we all know and love, and it has some cool callbacks to classic slasher movies like Halloween and Scream.  Even some of the weapons the killer uses are very reminiscent of the most famous killers the genre has to offer.

All that being said, the movie isn't perfect.  For example, as funny as it is, it also has several jokes that fall flat.  Luckily, there's almost always a really funny joke soon afterwards that makes up for it, but I did notice a number of bad ones.  More than that, though, I'd say that the worst part of this movie is probably the family drama between Millie, her mother, and her sister.  Millie's father passed away a year before the events of the film, and her family is still reeling from the loss.  The movie tries to make something of this, but it ends up feeling generic and halfhearted.  It's not bad enough to really take away from the film, but it doesn't add anything to it either.  It's kind of just there as a narrative thread that you notice without caring much about either way.

But those are relatively minor quibbles, so on the whole, I would give Freaky a big thumbs up.  It works well on both the comedy and horror fronts, so it gives you pretty much everything you want from it.  It's a really fun time at the theater, so if you're itching for a night out or you just want to see something new on the big screen, I'd definitely recommend checking this one out.

Classic Movie Recommendation: The Monster Squad

The Monster Squad is a 1987 horror comedy that's basically The Goonies with monsters.  It's about a group of kids who love monsters so much that they have their own monster club, and one day they have to defend their town from real-life monsters who want to take over the world.

This movie is a love letter to the classic Universal Studios monster movies of the 30's, 40's, and 50's.  It features Dracula, Frankenstein (the monster, not the doctor), a werewolf, a mummy, and a gill-man (the monster in Creature from the Black Lagoon), and it treats these horror icons with the love and respect they deserve.

The filmmakers didn't have the rights to Universal's creature designs, so they had to come up with their own looks for the monsters, and they did it almost flawlessly.  They found a way to make the monsters look different enough to avoid a lawsuit but still similar enough to pull at fans' nostalgic heartstrings.

Similarly, while some of these monsters have meatier roles than others, they all get their moments to shine.  For example, there's a funny scene where the mummy hides in a kid's closet, and when the monsters mount their final attack, the gill-man has a cool scene where he gets to show just how dangerous he really is.

Of all these classic characters, though, the heart of this film is undoubtedly Frankenstein.  He gets a great character arc with an emotional climax that's almost as powerful as the end of Bride of Frankenstein, and actor Tom Noonan gives arguably the best performance in this role since Boris Karloff.  If you're at all a fan of this monster, you will absolutely love this incarnation of him.

But Frankenstein isn't the only standout of this movie.  Dracula also shines, due mainly to actor Duncan Regehr's great performance.  He plays the count with the suave class of Bela Lugosi and the cruel bloodthirstiness of Christopher Lee, so every time you see him onscreen, he's exactly what you expect Dracula to be.

After the monsters, the other strengths of this film are hands down the characters and the dialogue.  Child actors are notoriously hit-or-miss, but these do a really good job.  They play their roles quite believably, and they have great chemistry together.  Several of them even add some real emotional depth to their characters, so by the time all hell breaks loose in the third act, you're really invested in the story because you genuinely care about whether they make it out alive.

This film also gives us some of the best one-liners in horror movie history.  While most comedies lose their laugh-out-loud factor after you've seen them a few times, there are a few moments in this film that always make me laugh no matter how many times I see it.  These jokes call back to previous events in the movie, so they have an added punch that goes beyond mere cleverness.  They piggyback on your love of the characters, so because the characters are great, the jokes are that much better.

All in all, The Monster Squad is just a super fun monster team-up movie.  It's basically The Avengers for monster fans, and it has the great characters, great one-liners, and great emotional beats to go along with that description.  If you're a fan of these classic monsters, you should definitely check this one out.  You will not be disappointed.

New Theatrical Movie Review: Come Play (No Spoilers)

Last week, I wrote about The New Mutants, the first movie I've seen in theaters since the pandemic started, and this week, I want to talk about the first brand new release (The New Mutants was already two months old when I finally saw it) I've been able to see.  Come Play is a supernatural horror film that came out on October 30, and it's about a non-verbal autistic boy who encounters a monster from another dimension that comes into our world through technology like cell phones and iPads.  He says he just wants to be the kid's friend, and he's willing to kill anybody who gets in his way.

This movie was written and directed by first-time filmmaker Jacob Chase, and while this debut has its flaws, I'm excited to see what Chase follows it up with.  The film starts with an intense scene that builds up dread and suspense just about perfectly, and throughout the rest of its runtime, Chase proves that the opener wasn't just a fluke.  In particular, he does a great job of using various tech devices in really creative ways to create some very spooky scenes.  This guy knows how to do scares and tension, so he has a bright future ahead of him.

Along similar lines, the monster was pretty cool too.  The creature design was good, and it's actually a fairly fleshed out character.  Unlike most movie monsters, he's not simply an evil being that does evil things.  I don't want to spoil it, so I'll just say this: Jacob Chase manages to turn this creepy monster into a genuinely sympathetic character that's more interesting than most villains in any genre, let alone horror.  This adds a narrative layer that you don't normally get in horror movies, and it's really cool seeing a monster done in this unconventional way.

As good as the horror elements are, though, the best thing about this movie is by far the main character.  I work with autistic kids, and let me tell you: Come Play does a fantastic job of portraying autism.  It captures some of the telltale signs of the condition in a realistic and believable way, and child actor Azhy Robertson does a fantastic job of bringing that all to life.  If I didn't know any better, I would've thought that he really was autistic.

What's more, Robertson also does a fantastic job of portraying his character's emotions without talking.  Since the kid is non-verbal, Robertson has to convey what he's feeling through facial expressions and body language, and he does it brilliantly.  Simply put, this might be the best performance I've seen by a child actor since Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense.  It's just that good.

All that being said, Come Play isn't perfect.  The main flaw is that the human drama isn't nearly as strong as the other elements.  In particular, it has an undercurrent of familial dysfunction, but that didn't really add anything to the movie.  It felt generic and halfhearted, almost like it was just an excuse to show off all the good things the film does.  It didn't exactly detract from the movie, but it definitely didn't help either.

That's a fairly big flaw, and it keeps this movie from being as good as it could've been.  If the story were up to par with the scares, this film would've been great.  As it is, it's merely good, but that's good enough.  Even if we weren't experiencing a dearth of new theatrical releases, a good new movie is always a treat, and it's all the more welcome at a time like this.  All in all, I was very happy with Come Play, so if you want to go back to the movies and see something creepy, I'd definitely recommend checking this one out.

Catch-Up Review: The New Mutants (No Spoilers)

After about 700 delays and release date changes, The New Mutants, a superhero/horror genre mashup that closes the book on Fox's X-Men universe, was finally released earlier this year on August 28.  Unfortunately, many theaters across the United States were still closed at that point, and many people, including me, weren't able to see it when it came out.  Thankfully, theaters by me opened up recently, so I finally got a chance to see it last weekend.  It's about a bunch of teenagers whose mutant powers have just emerged, and they're trapped in a hospital where they're ostensibly being taught how to control their powers (but you know there's something nefarious going on).

I'm a huge fan of both superheroes and horror, so I was really looking forward to this one.  The superhero genre needs to do new things and go in unexplored directions if it's going to avoid audience fatigue, and what better way to do that than to blend it with the best genre out there?  That sounds like a recipe for success, but unfortunately, this film did not live up to its promise.  The best way I can describe it is to compare it to a baseball team that can't get its pitching and hitting to work together.  When the team pitches well, it hits poorly, and when it hits well, it pitches poorly.  That's pretty much what this movie felt like.

For most of its runtime, the story was pretty generic.  The hospital ends up not being as benevolent as it seems, and it's run by an evil corporation that does evil corporation things.  The film hits the plot beats you expect it to hit, and it's decent enough that it would've been passable if the other elements of the movie had been good.  The problem is that those other elements didn't keep up their end of the bargain.  The characters were bland and one-dimensional, and the scares were generic and halfhearted, so the decent-enough storyline ended up being just another thing not to like about this film.

Then, when the characters and the scary stuff finally became good, the story got bad.  It's tough to talk about what exactly is wrong with it without spoiling it, so let me just say this.  In some ways, it reminded me of the end of Justice League.  One of my biggest problems with that movie is the way the Justice League defeats the villain, Steppenwolf.  They're fighting him with everything they have, and all of a sudden Superman shows up and wipes the floor with Steppenwolf, making all the other heroes pretty much irrelevant.

The final battle in The New Mutants is similar to that in a certain sense, but it's even worse.  It's not simply a matter of who actually defeats the bad guy (although that's definitely part of the problem); even more so, I have an issue with the way they do it.  It's just really anticlimactic, and it's not the way a superhero fight should end.  I know that's vague, but it's tough to explain it without getting into spoilers.  If you see the movie, you'll know what I mean.

So at the end of the day, unless you absolutely need to see The New Mutants, I would suggest giving it a pass.  It's not terrible, but it's not particularly good either.  It has some elements that work and a few cool moments, but those elements never come together at the same time to make an enjoyable movie.  It's sad to see one of the pioneering franchises of the modern superhero genre go out like this, but such is life.  You win some and you lose some, and this is definitely a loss.

Halloween Movie Recommendation: Trick 'r Treat

When most people think of a good Halloween horror movie, the first one that comes to mind is usually the original Halloween.  It's one of the greatest horror movies of all time, and it's hands down the most famous movie ever made about the spookiest night of the year.

But I would suggest that there's another movie that's just as essential for your Halloween viewing: Trick 'r Treat.  This film is popular in the hardcore horror fan community, but outside of that circle, it's virtually unknown.  It's a 2007 movie that for some inexplicable reason never got a theatrical release, so it went straight to video with a million other forgettable movies.  However, this one caught on with genre fans, and in horror circles, it's rightly considered essential viewing for our favorite holiday.

It's an anthology film, but it's different from most other movies in that style.  It doesn't just tell discrete, unconnected stories.  Rather, it moves back and forth from story to story, much like a regular movie with multiple subplots does, so it feels much more cohesive than your typical anthology film.  On top of that, the stories are very interconnected as well.  They all take place in a single town one year on Halloween night, and there are several narrative threads that run through more than one story in the movie.

So what makes Trick 'r Treat such a great Halloween film?  Like I said, all the stories take place on Halloween, but there's a lot more to it than just that.  This isn't one of those movies that just uses Halloween as a setting but then pretty much forgets about it later on.  No, the holiday permeates every story in the film.  They're all about different ways that people celebrate this night, and the victims in the various stories are pretty much all people who've broken some Halloween tradition.  For example, there's a kid who smashes jack-o'-lanterns and a woman who takes down her decorations before the night is over, and both of them get punished very severely for their misdeeds.  In this way, the movie celebrates the "rules" and traditions of the holiday, so if you're a big fan of Halloween (as almost all big horror fans are), you're sure to appreciate the hell out of Trick 'r Treat.

All that being said, great concepts alone don't make great movies, and the filmmakers behind this one didn't forget that.  This movie is also executed really well.  For one, even though the stories are all relatively short (as are all anthology stories), they're a lot more complicated than you normally expect from this style.  Many of them take unexpected twists and turns, so you never really know what's coming next (and if you think you do, you're often wrong).  On top of all that, the movie is just super fun.  It has some cool and intriguing monsters, and that's really what Halloween is all about.  It's about having fun with horror and just enjoying the genre, and this movie gives you a chance to do exactly that.

So this Halloween, don't limit your horror movie viewing to films that share the same name as the holiday.  Michael Myers is great, but there's more to Halloween horror than just his movies.  If you're a horror fan but you you've never seen Trick 'r Treat, then do yourself a favor and check it out.  It's well deserving of its place in the Halloween horror fall of fame, so it more than merits a spot on your holiday watchlist.

The Haunting of Bly Manor Review (No Spoilers)

The Haunting of Bly Manor is Netflix's follow-up to their 2018 hit show The Haunting of Hill House, but it's not a sequel.  It's an entirely new story based on the works of horror writer Henry James, especially his famous novella The Turn of the Screw.  It's about an American woman who goes to work as a live-in caretaker for two orphaned children in England, and soon after she arrives, spooky stuff begins to happen.

I think The Haunting of Hill House is one of the greatest horror stories I've ever seen in any format, and Bly Manor is done by pretty much the same creative team, so I was super excited for it.  Granted, I wasn't expecting it to be quite as good (lightning in a bottle is hard to catch twice!), but I still had very high hopes.  Unfortunately, though, I found it pretty disappointing.  On the whole, it's a mixed bag that stars out with a ton of potential and then squanders it as the show goes on.

The first few episodes were really good, and they set up some intriguing supernatural mysteries that I was excited to dive into.  I also really liked the characters, I thought the acting was very good, and Bly Manor itself was really cool.  Those last three elements remained pretty constant throughout the nine-episode run, and they were the only thing that made it worth watching (other than the fact that I'm such a big fan of Hill House that I had to see this one through to the end).  But everything else just went downhill after about episode three.

The deeper the show got into the main ghosts and what exactly they were trying to do, the more bored I became.  At one point, their interactions with the characters even reminded me of Sinister 2.  If you've never seen that movie, don't go looking for it.  It's not good, and one of the worst things about it is that it lets you see way too much of what the ghosts are actually doing.  When it comes to showing evil spirits onscreen, less is usually more, but the filmmakers behind Sinister 2 apparently never got that memo.  And that's how I felt about parts of The Haunting of Bly Manor.  They showed you way too much of the ghosts and their attempts to influence the people in the manor (especially the kids), and it just ruined the mystique of the story.

On top of that, there were also a few supernatural mysteries they set up that literally went nowhere.  One of them ended up not even being supernatural, and the other one just dropped out of the story at a certain point.  They never explained it, and looking back on it, it doesn't make any sense in the context of the show's mythology.  It seems like they just put it in there to add some spooky moments, but they forgot to make it work as part of the overall narrative.

Speaking of the overall narrative, that was another problem I had with the show.  One of the things that made Hill House so great is that it had a clear narrative direction.  Sure, it had various narrative threads and subplots, but they all pointed in the same direction and eventually melded into one overarching story.  Bly Manor, on the other hand, isn't nearly as tight.  The different subplots and narrative threads go in several different directions, and it often feels like you're watching more than one show.  Even when they come together at the end, it still feels like multiple stories artificially grafted together rather than a single, cohesive narrative.

And then we have the horror elements.  Much like the show as a whole, I had mixed feelings about them.  On the one hand, there wasn't nearly as much actual horror in it as I was expecting.  In fact, at times it didn't even feel like a horror show.  Sometimes it felt more like a drama that kind of just happened to have a few ghosts.  And even when the show did have spooky scenes, they often felt disconnected from the rest of the narrative.  It seemed like many of these moments were just shoehorned in because the show wouldn't have had enough scares otherwise.

On the other hand, when the scary stuff happened, it was generally pretty good.  Even when the horror elements felt a bit detached from the rest of the story, they usually worked quite well in their own right.  The show did atmospheric suspense scenes really well, and several of the ghosts looked pretty terrifying.

At the end of the day, I would say you can skip this one if it wasn't on your most-anticipated list, but if you were such a fan of The Haunting of Hill House that you just need to watch its follow-up, then I'd say The Haunting of Bly Manor is worth checking out, even if it's just to satisfy your curiosity.  It gets enough right that it's not entirely a waste of your time, but it also gets enough wrong that I can't recommend it unless you were really excited to see it.

New Movie Review: The Binding (No Spoilers)

The Binding is an Italian film that was released on October 2 on Netflix as part of their Netflix and Chills lineup.  It's about an engaged couple, Francesco and Emma, who travel to Francesco's childhood home with Emma's daughter Sofia.  Francesco is excited to introduce them to his mother for the first time, but the trip takes a turn for the worse when they realize that Sofia has become the target of a nasty curse.

Netflix original movies don't have a great reputation, but they've been starting to turn that around these past few months.  On the horror front alone, they came out with a Korean zombie movie called #Alive in September, and on the same day The Binding came out, they also released another movie called Vampires vs. The Bronx.  I really enjoyed both of them, and after watching The Binding, I'd say it belongs firmly on that same list.  This is another good original horror film from Netflix, so we genre fans just might have to start giving them a bit more respect.

The best thing about this movie is the way it manages to draw you into the story and keep you interested the whole way through.  When the main characters arrive at the house, some creepy things start to happen, but you don't quite know what exactly is going on.  Sometimes you think Francesco's family are the ones hexing the girl, and other times you think they're actually the good guys, but you can't be sure either way.  To take just one example, there's a scene where Francesco's whole family visits for dinner, and before they eat they say a prayer that sounds slightly off while still managing to be just Christian enough that you don't really have any concrete grounds to accuse them of anything.

The film keeps its secrets from you until it wants you to know them, and once you do figure out who's good and who's bad, it throws even more twists and turns at you.  The curse that's afflicting Sofia has an interesting backstory, and the movie keeps your eyes glued to the screen as you slowly learn what exactly it's doing and why it's targeting her.

The other main strength of the movie is its creepy moments.  The first half of the film is more about atmosphere than outright scares, and Director Domenico Emanuele de Feudis does a good job of letting you see enough of the creepy stuff to keep you interested without showing too much too soon.  Then, in the second half, when he clues you in to what's actually going on, you finally get a good look at the thing/person (I'm being intentionally vague so I don't spoil it) that's causing all the trouble, and it looks pretty cool.  It's nothing mind-blowing or extravagant, but what you do see is done well enough.

My only real issue with this movie is that the characters aren't super interesting.  They're not bad by any means; they're just nothing special.  They exist only to serve the supernatural intrigue, so they don't add anything of their own to the film.  The movie would've been really good if it had better characters, but as it is, it's just regular good.

So if you're looking for some good new horror to watch this Halloween season, I would recommend The Binding.  It's not going to become an all-time classic of the genre, but it's way better than what we've come to expect from Netflix original movies.  You'd do well to give this one a watch, and it's especially worthwhile given the fact that we have no major horror movies coming out in theaters for the foreseeable future.

Hidden Gem Recommendation: It Follows

It Follows is an indie horror movie that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014 and received a theatrical release in March of the following year.  It follows (no pun intended) a teenage girl named Jay who has sex with an older boy named Hugh, and he passes on a mysterious curse that a previous sexual partner once passed on to him.

This curse involves a supernatural entity that walks towards Jay at a slow, Michael Myers-like pace, and if it ever catches her, it will kill her.  She can run away from it, but wherever she goes, it will keep following her and eventually catch up to her.  The only way she can escape it is to have sex with someone else and pass the curse on to them, but if it kills that person, it will go back to chasing her.

One of the most unique things about this film is that it never reveals the creature's true form.  The monster is visible only to those who've been cursed by it (even if they've passed it on to others), and every time we see it, it looks different.  Sometimes it takes the form of people Jay knows, and other times it looks like random strangers, which makes for a very paranoid viewing experience.  Since the creature can look like anybody and since almost nobody can see it, you're never quite sure where the thing is until it's too close for comfort.  It makes you constantly scan the screen for anybody walking in a slow, straight line towards Jay, so even when the characters are just sitting around talking in a seemingly safe environment, you feel an incessant anxiety that eats away at you throughout the entire movie.

Then, when you realize the monster is finally onscreen, it becomes scary in a different but equally effective way.  Sometimes, Jay doesn't even realize the thing is there, but since we do, the tension mounts higher and higher with every slow step it takes.  Other times, Jay does recognize it, and even though she can easily run away from it (since it walks so slowly), the film still manages to unnerve you.  Just knowing that this monster is slowly walking towards her and that there's nothing she can do about it is really distressing.  Plus, when it takes a seemingly harmless form, like that of an old person, the juxtaposition of a harmless exterior with a really dangerous reality hiding beneath it is really unsettling.

The other main strength of this movie is its meaning.  On the surface, it seems like it's just a metaphor for STD's, but it actually goes deeper than that.  Throughout the film, one of Jay's friends is reading a book on an e-reader, and every so often she'll read snippets of it out loud to her friends.  By the end of the movie, you realize that all of these excerpts are about the inevitability of death, and that's the key to understanding the film's meaning.

The monster symbolizes death, which comes for us all, and there's nothing we can do to stop it.  No matter how far we run, it will keep coming for us, and it will eventually catch us regardless of where we may be.  Even if we pass on the curse of death by having children (just like people pass on this movie's curse by having sex), we're still on its hit list, so we're not off the hook.

That may sound like a depressing meaning, and in a sense it is, but like I said in my recommendation of Re-Animator, good art deals with profound truths of the human condition even if they're unpleasant truths.  That being said, this movie does deal with that truth in an uplifting way.  I don't want to spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that by the end of the movie, the characters left on the monster's agenda give a great example of how to face the inevitability of death.  They show us that we can't let our mortality dominate our thoughts and cripple our wills.  We have to bravely face our inescapable destiny and just live.  It's all we can do, so we should do it as best we can.

It's a shame that more people haven't seen It Follows, as I think it's one of the best horror films of this millennium.  It has a wildly original plot, it has an underlying sense of paranoia that doesn't go away until the credits roll, and it also gives us some real substance to think about.  This movie comes with my highest recommendation, so if you're looking for something new to watch, you should give this one a shot.

New Movie Review: Antebellum (No Spoilers)

Antebellum is a new horror movie about a black author named Veronica Henley who somehow gets mixed up in time and must escape a plantation in the Antebellum South.  It was originally supposed to come out back in April of this year, but it was postponed due to the pandemic.  It was rescheduled for August, but then it got pushed back a second time, and it finally came out through VOD on September 18.

While I wasn't really sure what to expect going into this one, I was looking forward to it because it seemed to have an interesting premise and it's the first film intended for theatrical release (at least originally) that I've been able to see since theaters across the nation shut down around six months ago.  Unfortunately, I was really, really disappointed with it.  This movie is just plain bad.

For starters, for most of the film's runtime, I had no idea what it was about.  Sure, I knew the basic description I gave in my intro paragraph, but the movie doesn't clue you in to anything more than that until over an hour in.  It begins in the past, and for the entire time you're there, nothing that happens moves the plot forward.  It's all just a cinematic lecture about how bad slavery was, and it gets old really quickly.

Then, when you finally jump to the present, it gets a bit better, but it's still very light on actual plot.  You get to know the character of Veronica a bit, but you're still not sure where the narrative is headed.  Only when the two timelines begin to merge do you finally understand what the movie is actually about, but once that happens, the movie somehow gets even worse.

I don't want to spoil it in case you decide to see it, so I'll be vague.  Suffice it to say that you learn almost immediately how the two timelines get tangled, and the explanation for it is entirely underwhelming.  It fails on both the literal, narrative level and the metaphorical, thematic level.  As a narrative twist, it's downright bland.  It's way less interesting than the mystery it explains, much like how pulling back the curtain on a magic trick takes away the intrigue that makes you care about it in the first place.

And on the thematic level, it's a metaphor for racism that somehow manages to say both too much and too little at the same time.  At its best, it tells us that modern American racism has roots in slavery, but that's not news to anyone.  Everyone knows this, so it doesn't add anything to our national conversation about race relations or enrich anybody's understanding of the subject.  And at its worst, this narrative choice seems to equate modern racism with slavery, which is going way too far.  Yes, racism is definitely still a problem in our country today, but we've made significant progress nonetheless.  To imply that we haven't is just factually incorrect.

All of that being said, though, this movie does have a few bright spots.  The acting is pretty good (especially lead actress Janelle Monae); the transitions between the two timelines are really cool; and there are even a few times where they make you think you've switched timelines but you really haven't, and those shots are very well-done.

However, those bright spots are few and far between, so on the whole, I have to recommend that you give this movie a pass.  It fails to have anything new, interesting, or important to say about racism and race relations in America today, and it conveys its dull message with an equally dull narrative.  Simply put, there's just not much about this movie that makes it worth watching.

Hidden Gem Recommendation: The Taking of Deborah Logan

The Taking of Deborah Logan is a found footage possession movie from 2014 about a documentary film crew that spends some time with an Alzheimer's patient named Deborah Logan and her daughter Sarah.  Their purpose is to make a film about Deborah's disease, but they soon learn that she's afflicted by something much worse than just a neurological disorder.

Much like Relic from earlier this year, this film does a great job of depicting Alzheimer's and integrating it seamlessly with the supernatural.  Not only does it portray the disease accurately (my grandmother died from Alzheimer's, and much of what Deborah does in this movie reminds me of my family's experiences), but it also blurs the line between Alzheimer's and possession.  Up until the third act, you're never quite sure if Deborah's strange behavior is due to her illness or to supernatural forces, and that makes for an intriguing twist on the possession subgenre.

Along similar lines, the movie also eschews the traditional demon possession storyline that we've seen a million times since The Exorcist, instead giving you an original mythology and background to Deborah's affliction.  She's not just possessed by a demon who enjoys being a jerk for its own sake.  No, there's a specific reason why this supernatural force is targeting her, and the movie does a great job of slowly unraveling that mystery as the film goes on.

All of this works so well largely because of actress Jill Larson's performance as Deborah.  She does a fantastic job of portraying both an Alzheimer patient and a possession victim, sometimes simultaneously.  Up until the movie goes full-on supernatural, you can never quite tell if she's trying to act possessed or just ill.  In particular, she really excels at being calm but having a look of pure evil on her face.  Even without saying a word or moving a muscle, there are times when she just looks wrong, and that's as creepy as anything else in the film.

And speaking of creepy things, the scares in this movie are really well done too.  Director Adam Robitel takes full advantage of both the blurred line between Alzheimer's and possession and Jill Larson's ability to play both afflictions perfectly.  He knows when to be subtle and when to be more in your face; he knows when to have things jump out from the shadows and when to sit back and just let the creepy atmosphere work on its own.  Simply put, this guy knows how to make a horror movie, and it shows.

The only real issue I had with the film is that in a couple of scenes set in dark rooms, you can't help but wonder why the characters don't just turn the lights on.  That's admittedly a bit of a nitpick, and it by no means ruins the movie, but it's noticeable enough that it does take you out of those scenes a tiny bit.

Despite that one flaw, though, this is still a really good movie.  It has good acting, good scares, and most importantly, an intriguing twist on your basic possession storyline.  It's refreshing to see such an original film in such an overdone subgenre, so if you're a fan of supernatural horror in general or possession films in particular, you should definitely check out The Taking of Deborah Logan.  You do not want to miss this one.

Netflix Recommendation: May the Devil Take You

I've been thinking of doing Netflix recommendations for a while now, but I've been hesitant because movies can leave the service pretty quickly.  I wouldn't want to recommend something and then see it go away just a few weeks later.  But I decided to finally take the plunge with this one because it's a Netflix original, so it won't be leaving any time soon.

May the Devil Take You is an Indonesian film that came out in 2018, and it's about a young woman named Alfie who learns a dark secret about her father's past.  It starts off with a man named Lesmana (who we later learn is Alfie's father) making a deal with the devil, and then during the opening credits, we see a bunch of newspaper headlines that tell us about his immediate business success, his marriage to an actress after his first wife's suicide, and his eventual downfall.

When the story picks up again, he's in the hospital with a mysterious illness, and Alfie goes to visit him.  While there, she has a terrifying encounter with an evil spirit, so she decides to go to her father's old house and look for answers about his condition.  She bumps into her step-siblings and step-mother, and things quickly take a turn for the worse when the truth about Lesmana's past comes back to bite the ones he loves most.

Once the horror gets going, the film takes on a very Evil Dead kind of a feel.  Much of it is very reminiscent of that franchise, even down to some of the small details, but it never sinks to the level of cheap knockoff.  Writer/director Timo Tjahjanto takes elements from that beloved franchise and makes them his own in a way that feels comfortably familiar.

In fact, I was pretty impressed with Tjahjanto's directing in general.  The film had a number of pretty spooky scenes, and I thought he struck a good balance between showing a lot of gore while also letting some of it take place offscreen.  I never felt like the gore was over-the-top, but I also didn't find myself wanting the movie to show more.

In addition, Tjahjanto also shows a good feel for how long to linger on the suspenseful shots.  There are a few times where you know something bad is going to happen to one of the characters, and the film makes you suffer in white-knuckled anticipation for just the right amount of time before finally releasing the tension and unleashing the pain.

And speaking of the characters, they're another strength of this film.  While none of them are super fleshed out, I found them to be quite effective for the most part.  You dislike the ones you're supposed to dislike, and the rest are all quite likeable.  In particular, the main character Alfie and her step-brother Ruben are the standouts.  Alfie doesn't have a great relationship with her step-family, but Ruben is able to bridge that gap and connect with her in a way that I really appreciated.  It's nice to see genuine goodness and love in movie characters, especially in horror films filled with darkness and evil, and Alfie and Ruben's relationship is a bit of a bright spot in an otherwise rather bleak family situation.

All in all, I really enjoyed May the Devil Take You, and if you're a fan of gory supernatural horror (especially if you like the Evil Dead franchise), I think you'll enjoy it too.  Netflix original films usually aren't very good, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one.  While I have a few minor quibbles with it (for example, the characters made a few bizarre decisions that seemed to come entirely out of nowhere), I didn't notice any egregious flaws.  It's a fun, well-directed horror movie, so if you're looking for something to watch on Netflix, you should give this one a shot.

Classic Movie Recommendation: Re-Animator

Re-Animator is a cult classic from 1985 that's loosely based on H. P. Lovecraft's short story "Herbert West–Reanimator."  It's about a medical student named Herbert West who invents a serum that can revive the dead, and when he and his housemate Dan Cain begin to test the serum on humans, things go terribly awry.

For me, this film works on two levels.  On the one hand, it's a fun zombie movie that puts a different spin on the subgenre.  The vast majority of zombie films involve some sort of apocalypse where all the dead mysteriously begin to rise and the entire human race needs to fight for survival, but this one is different.  These zombies are scientifically reanimated, and depending on how soon after death they're revived, they can even retain some (or all) of their personality and intellect.  That makes for a unique story that stands out in the subgenre while still delivering on the gory fun we've come to expect from movies about the living dead.

But even more than the zombies, the real star of this show is Herbert West.  Actor Jeffrey Combs plays him with a focused intensity that borders on the psychotic but never goes quite that far.  The character lives on the thin line that separates genius from insanity, and Combs absolutely nails it.  Herbert is a treat to watch every time he's onscreen, and since he's the driving force of the story, you get a whole lot of that treat.

On the other hand, Re-Animator is much more than just a fun popcorn flick.  It's an extended meditation on death, grieving, and our futile attempts to put an end to those realities.  After beginning with a brief prologue introducing viewers to Herbert, the film quickly moves to Dan as he tries to revive a dying patient in a hospital.  His attempt fails, and it really upsets him, setting the tone for the rest of the story.  The shadow of death looms over the entire narrative, so the idea of a scientist who invents a way to revive the dead naturally plays as a metaphor for all of humanity's attempts to overcome death.

Unfortunately, Herbert's serum causes more trouble than it's worth.  The vast majority of the people he revives come back as more or less mindless animals with only the faintest hint of their former personalities, and the one person who comes back with all of his intellectual faculties intact ends up being the villain of the film.  So at the end of the day, all of Herbert and Dan's attempts to conquer death end in failure.  Humanity is no closer to finding a way to live forever than it was when the movie started, and the final scene really hammers this idea home.   It mirrors Dan's opening scene in a clever way, making it clear that humanity's fight against death is futile even with Herbert's reanimating serum.

While this obviously isn't a happy subject to talk or think much about, it's still a profound truth about human existence, and good art is supposed to capture those truths even when they're unpleasant.  That's exactly what this movie does, but it manages to do so with a really fun story, so it lessens the brunt.  It balances out the sadness of its theme with a whole lot of fun, and that makes the theme much more palatable than it otherwise would be.

So if you're looking for a movie that gives you the cinematic yin-yang of a deep theme wrapped up in a fun horror story, or if you want a zombie film that does something other than rehash the same premise we've seen a million times before, then give Re-Animator a shot.  It's not on the level of the all-time greats like The Exorcist or Halloween, but it's a legitimate horror classic that most fans of the genre will probably get a kick out of.  If you consider yourself a horror fan but haven't seen this one yet, you should definitely check it out.

Catch-Up Review: The Wretched (No Spoilers)

The Wretched came out on VOD and in limited theaters back on May 1, and due to the dearth of new theatrical releases at the time, it was actually #1 at the domestic box office for six weeks in a row.  It's about a teenager named Ben who goes to live with his father after his parents split up, and while there, he encounters a dangerous creature that makes families forget their children and then kidnaps and eats them.

On the whole, this is probably my least favorite movie that I've liked all year (of any genre).  It's enjoyable enough, but it has its fair share of problems.  Most glaringly, the majority of the characters simply aren't very likeable.  For example, one night the main character Ben is supposed to have dinner with his father and his father's new girlfriend, but he ditches them at the last minute and goes to a party instead.  Then, about halfway through the party, he ditches the girl he went with and goes swimming with another girl.  This is the guy you're supposed to be rooting for, but he's kind of a jerk, and you almost want the monster to kill him.

Similarly, the plot isn't anything to write home about either.  For the most part, it's a very generic supernatural monster story.  Some weird things start happening, the main character soon begins to notice some of them, then he learns about the creature, and eventually he tries to destroy it.  That's not a bad plot, but it's not anything we haven't seen a million times before.

All that being said, though, I did like this movie, so despite these flaws, the pros still outweigh the cons.  In particular, the horror elements are its saving grace.  For example, the design of the monster is really cool, and whenever it's onscreen, even if it's just standing still without moving a muscle, the creepiness always amps up to some pretty fun levels.  The co-directors find just the right camera angles to make this creature as scary as possible, and even when it's not front and center, they know how long to linger on the suspenseful shots to draw out the maximum amount of creepy anticipation without taking so long that they lose their audience.

Another cool thing about this movie is the way the monster goes about its business.  It doesn't just want to quickly kidnap or kill people and then move on to the next victim.  No, it makes families forget their kids so they have no clue that anything ever happened, and that adds a nice little wrinkle to the movie's rather familiar plot.  Plus, as the creature does this, it possesses people and uses their bodies to get to the other family members, and that allows it to be creepy in an entirely new way.  So even though the plot as a whole isn't super intriguing, the monster is interesting enough that you'll want to stick around to see what it does next.

But the best part of the movie, the part that really shines and tips the scales in its favor, is the third act.  Like most horror films, the first two-thirds of this one are mainly plot-driven with a sprinkling of scares and suspense here and there, but after those first two acts are over, the movie goes all out on the horror.  Just about every shot takes full advantage of the directors' skill with suspense and creepiness, so even if you find the first hour or so of the movie a bit boring, the final 20-30 minutes are well worth the wait.

At the end of the day, The Wretched isn't a must-watch, but it's not a waste of your time either.  Nobody is going to call it a masterpiece or a triumph of horror storytelling  (the way movies like The Invisible Man and Relic are), but it does have enough good genre elements that it's worth checking out.  It gets by pretty much entirely on the strength of its monster and its scares, so if you like monster movies, you should give this one a shot.

Hidden Gem Recommendation: Dog Soldiers

When it comes to werewolf movies, the pickings can be frustratingly slim.  Aside from The Wolf Man (the original, not the 2010 remake), An American Werewolf in London, and maybe The Howling, this subgenre hasn't given us any all-time horror classics that most film fans can recognize.  Instead, good werewolf movies usually fall more on the cult classic level.  They tend to stay off the general public's radar and are known mainly to hardcore horror buffs.

And that's unfortunate because some of them deserve to be way better known than they are.  In particular, I think Dog Soldiers is one of the best horror movies of any subgenre that most people have never heard of.  It's a British film that came out in 2002, and it's basically a mixture of Night of the Living Dead and Aliens but with werewolves instead of zombies or aliens.

It follows a group of soldiers who travel to the woods of Scotland for a training exercise, and soon after they arrive, they're attacked by a pack of werewolves.  They eventually find their way to an empty house and try to survive the night there as the werewolves attempt to break in and kill them.

That's a fairly simple premise that isn't going to blow anybody's mind, but the filmmakers fill it out with three key elements that really make the movie shine.  For one, it has good human characters.  I feel like I say this just about every time I write a recommendation or review, but it's essential if you want to make a good movie in any genre.  These characters aren't just nameless, faceless cannon fodder.  They have real personality traits that make them unique individuals, and the film also humanizes them quite a bit.

For instance, one night before the werewolves attack, the soldiers are sitting around a fire talking about what scares them, and one of them claims that nothing can scare their sergeant.  However, the sergeant admits that's not true.  He says that the thought of never seeing his wife again terrifies him, and then he tells a story about the scariest thing he ever experienced in the line of duty.  These soldiers could've easily been little more than fantasy macho men with no fears or weaknesses, but the filmmakers chose to make them real people instead.  They're human beings just like you and me, so you care what happens to them, and you want them to survive their ordeal in one piece.

Secondly, we have the werewolves.  The creature effects in this movie are great, as these lycanthropes look every bit as terrifying as supernatural man-eaters should.  They're not just human beings who look a little wolfish.  No, these are real monsters.  They're legit wolves that look like they could tear you apart in seconds.

Interestingly, though, you never really get to see them in their human form.  Right from the get-go, they're just terrifying monsters who want to kill the soldiers, and they stay that way for the entire movie.  That's a really risky choice, as the werewolf subgenre is usually at its best when it focuses on the dichotomy between man and wolf, but this film pulls it off.  These werewolves work just fine as bloodthirsty monsters, and you don't need to see them any other way.

But don't get the wrong idea about them.  They're not just mindless savages.  Once the soldiers get to the house, the werewolves display much greater intelligence than you would expect.  They don't just rush their prey and try to overwhelm them with brute force.  No, they plan their attacks just like the soldiers plan their defense, resulting in a cat-and-mouse game that holds your attention much more firmly than a straightforward guns-versus-animals battle ever could.

Finally, we have to talk about the action.  The best thing about it is how much tension the film manages to create in its action scenes.  You learn very quickly that the human characters are no match for the werewolves one-on-one, so every time the monsters appear, you think it could be the end for the soldiers.  Every fight feels like it might be their last, so it really draws you in and makes you feel the urgency of their situation.

Then, when the werewolves make their final attack in the third act, all of that ratchets up to ten.  It's do or die, so you know that one way or another, this will be the soldiers' last fight.  And they really make this last fight a good one.  Because the humans are so outmatched by the monsters, they have to use anything and everything in the house as weapons, resulting in a crazy battle that feels almost like an extended Jackie Chan fight without the pinpoint martial arts expertise.  It's just about the most fun you'll ever have watching humans duke it out with supernatural man-eaters.

So if you're in the mood for a werewolf movie, or if you want a film that satisfies your craving for both action and horror, I would highly recommend Dog Soldiers.  In fact, I would even say that after the all-time classic werewolf movies, this is probably my favorite film in the subgenre.  It's just that good.  It has heart, it has great monsters, and it has great action, so you really can't go wrong with this underseen horror gem.

Hidden Gem Recommendation: Overlord

Overlord is an action-horror movie that came out in November 2018, and for some reason, it never got the recognition it deserved.  It was almost entirely overlooked by audiences, so even though it's less than two years old, most people don't know about it.  And in my opinion, that's a real shame.  While it's not an all-time classic, it's still a really good movie that combines genuine horror with likeable characters and cool action.

It's set in World War II, and it follows a group of American soldiers who are dropped behind enemy lines to destroy a German radio tower in preparation for the D-Day invasion.  Their plane is shot down, and only a handful of them make it out of the wreck alive.  The few survivors band together to complete their mission, and along the way, they discover that the Germans are conducting terrible, unnatural experiments to create an invincible army that their enemies will be helpless to fight against.

From the very first scene, the movie drops you right in the middle of the action.  It starts out with the soldiers flying to their destination, and after only a few minutes they begin to take heavy fire from German anti-aircraft artillery and are shot down.  After that intense opening, the film slows down a bit and gives you some time to get to know the characters, and that narrative choice really pays off later on.  These filmmakers understand that a good movie requires more than just good scares and good action.  If you don't care what happens to the characters, those other elements will be little more than just visual noise.

And in this movie, you really care about the characters.  While some of them are somewhat stock personalities, like the cold-hearted veteran who's all about the mission and the wide-eyed newbie who wants to help everybody he meets, the actors play their roles well enough that even these overdone tropes feel fresh and enjoyable.  You get to know each of the main soldiers as a unique individual, and you establish an emotional connection with them, which in turn makes you really care about them.  You want them to come out of this horrifying scenario in one piece, so when the action and scares pick up again, you feel the fear and the suspense much more acutely than you would if the characters were just generic cannon fodder.

Even the main bad guy is pretty well-done.  You don't get to know him nearly as well as you come to know the good guys, but the little bit the film does tell you is enough.  He's a pretty despicable human being, and when you get good guys that you really care about facing off with a bad guy that you really despise, it makes for some engaging storytelling.

But Overlord is about more than just good characters.  The pace begins to pick up again when you discover the Nazis' secret laboratory and the nefarious experiments they're conducting, and it's super intriguing.  The movie wisely refrains from answering all your questions right away, choosing instead to build up the suspense and let your curiosity linger for a bit.  You want to know just what these scientists are doing, so your eyes become glued to the screen as you search for answers.

From there, the movie slowly builds up its WTF factor until an awesome third act that makes good on all the promises of the first two thirds of the film.  As the American soldiers fight against a monstrous enemy to complete their mission, the movie pulls the curtain back on the Nazis' secret experiments and shows you the full extent of the horrors they've been working on, and it's great.  It combines some of the best elements of the action and horror genres into a slick, cohesive whole that satisfies your cravings for cool monsters and fun fight scenes.

At the end of the day, Overlord is a relatively simple story that's executed really well.  It isn't going to blow your mind, but the filmmakers squeeze every ounce of potential from it and manage to make the film way better than it has any business being.  In particular, they find a perfect way to balance character development with the faster-paced action and horror scenes.  The movie never slows down so long that you get bored with it, but it also never devolves into mindless action devoid of emotional grounding.

Admittedly, this isn't the kind of film that can transcend its genre and appeal to people who don't normally like action-horror, but if it sounds like something you would enjoy, you should definitely check it out.  With likeable characters, fun action, and really cool horror elements, this tragically underseen gem deserves to reach a much wider audience than it did when it was first released back in 2018.

Hidden Gem Recommendation: Tigers Are Not Afraid

Tigers Are Not Afraid is a Mexican dark fantasy/horror movie written and directed by Issa Lopez.  It originally came out in 2017, but it reached a wider audience (including me) when the horror streaming service Shudder released it in America last year.  Even with its release here in the States, though, it's still not very well-known outside the horror community, and that's really unfortunate because it's more than just one of the best horror movies of the last decade.  This is one of those films that can transcend the genre and appeal to people who aren't normally horror fans, so I would even say that it's one of the best movies to come out in years, horror or not.

It follows a girl named Estrella whose mother goes missing, and she eventually becomes part of a "gang" of homeless orphans.  The kids get into trouble with a real gang, a human trafficking ring known as the Huascas, and in particular with their leader, "El Chino."  The movie is a riveting tale about the kids' fight for survival against both the dilapidated conditions of their crime-torn city and the dangerous Huascas, and while that's a fairly simple premise, it has a few twists along the way to keep it interesting.

But the plot isn't the best thing about this movie.  By far, it's the characters.  Child actors are notoriously hit or miss, but the ones in this film do a great job of bringing their little gang to life.  You see that they're just regular kids who were dealt a really crappy hand and who are trying to make the best of it, so you genuinely care about them.  You can't help but root for them to succeed, and you remain engaged in the story because you want to know how they make out in their struggle to survive.  You feel their pain when tragedy strikes, and you're genuinely happy for them when they get a chance to have fun.

Adding to that emotional connection are the cinematography and the score, which combine to tell a story all on their own.  They do a great job of conveying just how bad things are in this city, and you really feel for all the residents, not just the kids, because they have to deal with constant crime, the threat of premature death looming around every corner, and firefights that can erupt at any moment.  The drab atmosphere is palpable throughout the film, and it serves as a perfect backdrop for the story.

And then we have the supernatural elements, which all focus on the main character, Estrella.  She's haunted by visions of ghosts, which you eventually find out are El Chino's victims crying out for a chance to bring him to justice; she often sees small, magical creatures flying around; and at the beginning of the movie, she's given three magical pieces of chalk that each grant her one wish.  She eventually uses all three, and her wishes come true in unexpected but creative ways.  All of this mixes surprisingly well with the hard-hitting, bleak realism of the orphaned children and the devastation wreaked by the gangs and crime organizations in the city.  They form a sort of cinematic "sweet and sour" flavor, blending these two contrasting elements in a way that is very reminiscent of Guillermo del Toro's artsier movies like Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone.

There is, however, one big difference between this movie and del Toro's films.  Guillermo del Toro tends to avoid overt scares, but Tigers Are Not Afraid embraces them.  Granted, it's not the kind of movie that's going to give many seasoned horror fans nightmares, but it has its moments.  In fact, even though the scares aren't super terrifying, they're still done really well.  They're not just poorly thought-out genre clichés or lazy, tacked-on jump scares.  No, they flow naturally from the story itself, and they feed off your emotional connection to the characters.  You feel the children's fear because you care about them so much.

All in all, I can't recommend this movie enough.  In many ways, Tigers Are Not Afraid is what horror should be.  Issa Lopez understands that a great horror movie has to be a great movie first and foremost, and it shows.  This is so much more than just a horror movie.  It's an enthralling story that mixes its scares with real, heartfelt emotion, and that's a combination that just can't be beaten.  So if you haven't seen this one yet, definitely check it out.  You won't be disappointed.