Category Archives: Horror

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic

F CinemaScore Double Features: mother! (2017) and Moonchild (1972)

This is a new series centering on films which have received “F” scores from CinemaScore. CinemaScore polls theater-goers during a film’s opening weekend, gauging the average consumer’s thoughts on new releases. An F CinemaScore is potentially a PR nightmare for a film, as it indicates that, on the main, the people most excited to see a film on its opening weekend hated it.

We’ve covered F CinemaScore films on this site before, including Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly (which I think is fairly great) and the subject of this article, mother! With this series, we pair an ill-fated F CinemaScore movie with a second, thematically similar film and make a double feature out of it. Today’s double feature pairs Darren Aronofsky’s mother! with Alan Gadney’s New Age, surreal spiritual journey film Moonchild.

This is Part 1 of an ongoing series. However, future installments will be published on a new Substack newsletter called Bleeding Eye Cinema. Part 2 of the CinemaScore Double Feature series is already live at that site. On Bleeding Eye Cinema, we take a look at weird, WTF, underseen, cult, psychotronic, B- and Z-grade, and all other manner of headache-inducing movies. Come join us and let the CRT electron beams melt the jelly off your eyeballs!

Moonchild (Alan Gadney, 1972)

Moonchild begins with a quote from clairvoyant Edgar Cayce, an influential figure in what would come to be known as the New Age movement: “You may not even have to come back at all if you become perfectly developed in this life…”

One of Cayce’s trance-induced contributions to culture were his proclamations to the existence of fictional locations like Atlantis. Cayce may be the most fitting place to enter into Continue reading F CinemaScore Double Features: mother! (2017) and Moonchild (1972) →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Screamfest 2024 Movie Reviews

The Screamfest Horror Film Festival recently wrapped up its 24th annual edition at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Here are reviews of a selection of the program’s films.

Antropophagus Legacy

Dario Germani’s Antropophagus Legacy is, perhaps, a continuation of his 2022 film Antropophagus II, itself a sequel (if only in name) to the 1980 cult cannibal film Antropophagus.

This flesh-eating entry follows Hanna (Valentina Corti), who we meet recovering in a hospital bed after her husband’s death (which she is promptly accused of). It is revealed to Hanna by a nurse that Continue reading Screamfest 2024 Movie Reviews →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Terrifier 3 (2024) Movie Review

I do not own, let alone clutch at, pearls. When done right, bad taste is the best taste.

The problem with Terrifier 3, the latest in the hyper-violent splatter/slasher franchise from Damien Leone, is not the gore. Don’t get me wrong, the warning should be clear: the faint of heart ought to steer clear of this one. The squishy, bloody, extreme to the limits of extreme violence is not what makes the Terrifier films objectionable; no, that is the main draw. It is the reason why a niche audience propelled the third entry to the number one spot at the domestic box office.

The gore of it all is just fine. In fact, it seems integral to Leone’s macabre vision of the modern slasher. Some would argue that the extremes of Continue reading Terrifier 3 (2024) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Touched by Eternity — Fantastic Fest 2024

Touched by Eternity is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

The opening of Touched by Eternity suggests that the secret to immortal life is yeast. In particular, yeast KC1822V, which is the subject of experimental research to test its life-sustaining properties. A man who is never given a name, but he claims everyone calls him Fatso (Andris Keišs), lives alone in a trailer, watching video podcasts on the study of this yeast and purchasing it by the box load. He eats the yeast raw, despite the plea of scientists that doing so could be dangerous. This disclaimer proves to be, at least partially, true, as when the courier delivering the latest shipment curiously tries some himself, he keels over with foam bubbling from his mouth.

None of this is of too much consequence to the plot of Touched by Eternity, the quirky vampire film from Mārcis Lācis. Fatso stumbles upon a fitting substitute for immortal yeast: Egons and Carlos (Ivars Krasts and Edgars Samītis) two pansexual vampires that show up immediately following the delivery carrier’s poisoning in search of a screwdriver. Soon, Fatso is thrust into Continue reading Review: Touched by Eternity — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Apartment 7A — Fantastic Fest 2024

Apartment 7A is screening as part of the 2024 Fantastic Fest, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

I’d be lying if I said I’ve read Ira Levin’s 1967 novel Rosemary’s Baby. Although, it sits on my dining room table (because the one bookcase I own overflows). It is a burnt orange hardcover volume, slim, with similarly orange-y paper, as the book is from the original Random House printing. I found it on the side of the road when I was 16, in a box of other very old books ready to be tossed into the back of a garbage truck.

So I haven’t read it. But I thumbed through it after watching Natalie Erika James’ Apartment 7A, because it Continue reading Review: Apartment 7A — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

Horror, Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

2024 Fantastic Fest Program Preview

Austin, TX’s Fantastic Fest returns this September for its 19th edition, with eight days filled to the brim with genre films big and small. We will be covering a variety of films as they premiere at the fest. In the interim, here are some individual titles which may be worth adding to your watchlist.

The 2024 edition of Fantastic Fest will run September 19 to September 26.

Cloud (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the prolific genre filmmaker, is pushing 70. Yet, he has three separate projects circulating film festivals in the past year. One of them, Cloud, is officially Continue reading 2024 Fantastic Fest Program Preview →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Parvulos — Fantasia Festival 2024

Parvulos is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

I’m going to give Parvulos the benefit of the doubt when it comes to its politics, in that I’m assuming it isn’t trying to have a politics at all. I begin by saying that, because the premise of the film is that a raging, deadly virus out-paced the rollout of vaccine boosters, so the government put out an untested vaccine whose unintended side effect was zombie-ism. The film first poses the question: What if society crumbled because of a deadly virus. Then, as an end-of-first-act twist, it posits instead: What if society crumbled because of that virus’s vaccine?

This first act is a slow-developing world building section in which three brothers, living alone in a home in the country, struggle to Continue reading Review: Parvulos — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: House of Sayuri — Fantasia Festival 2024

House of Sayuri is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Koji Shiraishi, known for the unsettling Noroi: The Curse, gives us in House of Sayuri an initially by-the-numbers haunted house film that pleasantly surprises with a second act rug pull. The film focuses on a family moving into a new home, where strange things immediately start occurring. It becomes evident that a violent ghost is haunting the family, bringing death and darkness to anyone who stays the night in the house.

House of Sayuri spends a good portion of its runtime recycling the same scare formula. A person wanders through the narrow corridors of the new home at night, finds themselves in Continue reading Review: House of Sayuri — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Cuckoo — Fantasia Festival 2024

Cuckoo is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

I can’t help but feel that Cuckoo is a series of intriguing parts in search of a sum. Writer-director Tilman Singer introduces potentially fresh approaches to well-worn horror-thriller ideas, but these ideas never fully culminate in something satisfyingly original.

In the film, Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), a young rebellious teenager, moves from the United States to Germany to live with her father in a secluded estate in the Alps with his new wife and her young daughter. It is a decision she quickly regrets. Feeling homesick, she calls her mother and leaves a message saying as much. More than this, she is put off by the home, the neighboring resort at which she is given a job, and the people populating the area. In particular, Mr. König (Dan Stevens), the owner of the resort and Gretchen’s father’s employer, unnerves Gretchen.

Par for the course with horror films, strange and inexplicable occurrences start bringing themselves to Gretchen’s attention. Her mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) starts convulsing in her bedroom in an apparent seizure brought on by a sound coming from the nearby woods. Women coming into the resort lobby occasionally fall suddenly ill and vomit. Mr. König insists that Gretchen not Continue reading Review: Cuckoo — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: The Beast Within — Fantasia Festival 2024

The Beast Within is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

The Beast Within is the least fun werewolf movie I’ve seen.

Alexander J. Farrell, who is normally a documentary filmmaker, brings us this horror-lite werewolf picture starring Kit Harington. Harington, top billed, is more accurately the third lead in a film with only four characters. He doesn’t say a line of dialogue until the 23-minute mark, for one. While his character Noah is the one inflicted with the titular “beast within,” the film is centered around his young daughter Willow (Caoilinn Springall) as she comes to learn about the affliction that plagues her family.

The Beast Within is, ostensibly, a film about a werewolf. But the truer explanation of its premise is that it is a film about lycanthropy as a thin metaphor for Continue reading Review: The Beast Within — Fantasia Festival 2024 →