Tag Archives: Horror

They’re coming to get you, Barbera.

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

Review: Hellcat — Fantasia Festival 2025

Hellcat had its world premiere on July 25 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Brock Bodell’s Hellcat is immediately intense. A rickety mobile home tearing down the highway is our setting. Inside is Lena (Dakota Gorman), who wakes to the jolting movements of the vehicle the home is hitched to. Assessing her situation, she finds herself padlocked inside with nothing in her pockets. A voice over an intercom (Todd Terry) tells her that she is “infected” (in a nice touch, the voice comes through the mouth of a taxidermy wolf head). This driver, Clive, claims to have found her injured, and that he is driving her to a doctor. But the red flags quickly start to mount as Lena investigates the trailer.

My immediate thought on being presented the premise is that the title of the film was likely giving the twist away, or that the title was a red herring. In either case, I would have preferred the lack of clarity that the film dropped me into. There is enough ambiguity to what is going on—until Continue reading Review: Hellcat — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Fantasia Festival 2025 Lineup Preview

2025. Another year, another Fantasia International Film Festival experience. Fantasia is a massive festival centering on international genre cinema. I love covering this Montreal fest. It’s selections are always diverse and offbeat, turning me on to pockets of the genre film space that I was not privy to. So let’s just get down to it. Five films in this year’s program (probably) worth adding to the watchlist. Let’s go.

This year’s Fantasia Festival runs from July 16 to August 3.

Every Heavy Thing (Mickey Reece)

I have seen three Mickey Reece films courtesy of Fantasia Fest, and they were all intriguing formal experiments. His work feels like the natural progression of the mumblecore/mumblegore genre (i.e., it’s lo-fi and low-key, but moves past the self-seriousness and intentional lack of effort that caused mumblecore to taper off in the first place). His films aren’t Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2025 Lineup Preview →

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

Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025) Movie Review

After spending time revisiting all of the Final Destination films, I found the long wet cement of my opinions on the franchise finally hardening. Until now, I wasn’t quite certain on the merits of the horror series in which the unseen force of Death gleefully slaughters special individuals who at first escape Death’s grasp. There is something fun about the premise, and in discrete moments this sense of fun comes to the fore. But often, these films are fairly mild in terms of horror and fail to nail the comedy tone that I think is necessary for these film to work at all.

Final Destination: Bloodlines, thankfully, fully understands the assignment. There are moments that lean towards serious drama, but in the main this film makes Continue reading Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025) Movie Review →

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

Final Destination 5 (2011) Movie Review

After a two-day marathon of all Final Destination films, what have I learned? That this franchise is as middling as I remembered it being. On the other hand, the downward trajectory that I remember this series having wasn’t exactly the case. I believe three is better than the first two, if only marginally. And four is one of the worst studio horror films out there. Then there’s five. I remembered Final Destination 5 being fairly bad, even as it leans more heavily into the humor (which I find a better option in the case of this series than going in the other direction). Perhaps I was a bit wrong.

The long opening sequence of Final Destination 5 does not look particularly good. Every about-to-be cadaver looks like a hunk of plastic moments before being sliced, diced, and pitched off the suspension bridge. But it is relatively exciting when compared to Continue reading Final Destination 5 (2011) Movie Review →

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

Final Destination 3 (2006) Movie Review

James Wong and Glen Morgan returned to the Final Destination franchise with the third installment, which some consider the high mark of the series. Final Destination 3 replicated, almost to the exact number, the box office performance of the first film ($54 million domestic, $112 worldwide). Narratively speaking, though, it is the first film in the series to consciously break from the characters and events of that initial film.

The opening premonition sequence stands out as one of the best the series has to offer. I personally still prefer the highway pileup in Final Destination 2 for its visual cohesion, but for the frenetic pacing of the rollercoaster disaster, Wong does succeed in making the action mostly clear and suspenseful. The scene plays out as all the others do: One person sees a strangely detailed vision of a horrific accident that kills dozens, then comes to and causes a massive scene. A few people get pulled away from the site of the oncoming accident as a result, setting the stage for the specter of Death to come and right the cosmic scales.

Inexplicably, a character who survives the rollercoaster discovers the crashed plane and the entire plot of Final Destination, so that the characters can get an easy jumpstart on understanding what is happening to them. The attempt for these sequels to Continue reading Final Destination 3 (2006) Movie Review →

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

Final Destination 2 (2003) Movie Review

After the financial success of Final Destination in 2000 ($53 million domestic, $112 million worldwide), New Line Cinema went ahead with a sequel. Director James Wong and writers Glen Morgan and Jeffrey Reddick did not return, leaving the sequel with a new creative team in David R. Ellis and screenwriters Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber (the latter two had no other credits at the time). Final Destination 2 would become the worst box office performing entry in the franchise (but it did provide a death so memorable and emblematic of the series that it features prominently in the TV ads for the new Final Destination: Bloodlines).

Final Destination 2 begins with the terrible decision of having a crackpot talk show guest describe the grand design of death and how the events of the first film couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. It’s a clumsy device to remind audiences of the plot of the first film, but it also creates a story world where characters are hyper-aware of the premise of the film they are a part of. Almost immediately, the protagonist, Kimberly (A.J. Cook), connects the freak accident she just experienced on the highway with the plane crash from the first film. This is efficient storytelling, I suppose, but it also lazily yadda-yadda-yaddas the finer points of the series’ premise.

The premonition sequence of the second film is fairly well-done. Some of the visual effects don’t look the absolute cleanest, but it is fun to watch the geography of the highway unfold, introducing our cast of characters and delivering a few gnarly gags. And the end of it is a genuinely surprising turnabout.

David R. Ellis, the director, spent much of his career in the stunt world. It is fitting, then, that the staging and execution of this opening sequence is exciting. Some of the other set pieces are exciting, too, albeit more mildly so. Whether intentional or not, the death scenes are also Continue reading Final Destination 2 (2003) Movie Review →

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

Final Destination (2000) Movie Review

With Final Destination: Bloodlines coming out this summer, I have decided to take a trip down memory lane and re-watch the entire franchise of you-can’t-cheat-Death-because-he-will-come-for-you-but-also-play-with-his-food-by-making-your-death-an-elaborate-Rube-Goldberg-device-of-death horror flicks. It is an odd franchise. The films were always mildly profitable and regularly found airplay on cable. But they also consistently got middling reviews, and the franchise holds something of a lesser status in the horror genre pantheon.

Final Destination and Final Destination 3 were directed by James Wong, and they were written and produced by Wong and his creative partner Glen Morgan. Wong and Morgan were regular writers on The X-Files and wrote some memorable episodes (“Squeeze,” “E.B.E.,” “Home”). Wong directed a good episode of the show titled “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man.” He also directed the heinous Dragonball: Evolution, but for the purposes of this review we won’t hold it against him.

The opening portion of Final Destination feels reminiscent of an episode of The X-Files (it was originally written as one by Jeffrey Reddick), and it has a sense of irony that looks like The Twilight Zone if you squint a little. A high school kid named Alex (Devon Sawa) has an irrational and superstitious fear of flying. He wants to keep the tag on his bag from the last flight he was on, because he knows that that plane landed safely. When he gets to the airport, he can’t help but notice Continue reading Final Destination (2000) Movie Review →

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

M3GAN (2023) Movie Review

Nothing says kicking off a new year at the movies quite like an AI-driven robot toy singing a haunting lullaby rendition of a Sia song a few hours after said robot violently attacks a mopey child bully.

Before the pandemic caused the movie industry to throw out the playbook on theatrical releases, January was a month notorious for its low-quality new releases. Traditionally, January fare includes Continue reading M3GAN (2023) Movie Review →