- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on February 1, 2026

Dooba Dooba – creepy found footage horror

Dawn Keetley

Dooba Dooba is written and directed by Ehrland Hollingsworth and is shot almost entirely on surveillance cameras with intercut analog scenes. It follows a babysitter, Amna (Amna Vegha), who is plunged into the strange and awkward from the moment she arrives at the home of Wilson (Winston Haynes), Taylor (Erin O’Meara) and their sixteen-year old daughter, Monroe (Betsy Sligh) – and things only get more weird from there, eventually becoming downright offensive and violent. Wilson, for instance, seems incapable of managing Amna’s name; “It’s these ethnic names . . . .” he offers in explanation, following that up with an attempt to give Amna money for what he calls “retributions” (presumably reparations). It very soon becomes clear that Amna is way too nice for her own good, constantly reassuring everyone else (and, we suspect, herself), that “It’s okay.” She should instead be asserting that, actually, it isn’t okay and she’s leaving. She doesn’t.

Posted on December 3, 2025

A Must-Watch for the Holiday Season: Kier-La Janisse’s The Occupant of the Room

Dawn Keetley

It’s the holiday season – and Severin Films has released a new episode of The Haunted Season entitled The Occupant of the Room (an adaptation of Algernon Blackwood’s 1909 story of the same name), now streaming on Shudder.[1] It’s a wonderful film, a perfect eerie ghost story – better, to be honest, than most of the recent fare in BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas series. My review, below, includes a brief interview with director and writer, Kier-La Janisse.

Algernon Blackwood’s “The Occupant of the Room” is about a school teacher who arrives late at night at an inn in the Alps, the “Dent de Midi,” only to find there are no rooms available.[2] He is eventually offered a room that is not quite unoccupied – that is to say, it is possibly occupied. The porter tells the teacher that “the real occupant of the room” is an English woman who had insisted on venturing out alone into the Alps two days ago. She hadn’t returned (yet), but may do so at any moment. She may be the “real” occupant of the room, but she’s not the actual occupant of the room – hence its uncertain status as part occupied, part unoccupied. That the room is a liminal space defines the story, which takes place only within its confines, as one occupant, the school teacher, deals with the lingering presence of the other, his possible predecessor but also possibly successor. As Blackwood writes, in a crucial sentence, “One moment the atmosphere seemed subtly charged with a ‘just left’ feeling – the next it was a queer awareness of ‘still here’ that made him turn cold and look hurriedly behind him.”

Posted on November 29, 2025

M3GAN 2.0: One of the Most Interesting Horror Films of 2025

Dawn Keetley

Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN 2.0 (2025) has mostly not been identified as a horror film. On IMDb, it’s labeled “thriller,” “action” and “sci-fi.” On Wikipedia, it’s “science fiction action.” This is after the first film in the franchise, Johnstone’s M3GAN (2022), was widely dubbed a “science fiction horror” film. Stephen Parthimos’s review on Everything Movie Reviews seems representative of the reaction to M3GAN 2.0 when he writes that there is “not a single second of horror in sight” and that watching the film, and “gradually realising they’ve abandoned any and all sense of horror is utterly baffling.” Ahead of the film’s release, Johnstone promised fans that his sequel would include horror: “Even though we are in action-comedy territory, the horror DNA is absolutely still there.” Upon release, however, it became clear that most viewers didn’t see it, though debate ensued on Reddit.

Posted on August 8, 2025

Yes, Zach Creggers’ Weapons is (almost) that good

Dawn Keetley

Weapons is Zach Cregger’s much-anticipated follow-up to his 2022 hit, Barbarian. Preceded by a series of brilliant and enigmatic teasers and trailers, it tells the story of the strange disappearance of seventeen children from the small town of Mayfield, Pennsylvania: at exactly 2:17, they all simply run out of their front doors. All of the children are in the third-grade class of Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) – and she walks into her classroom the morning after to find only one student at his desk, Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher). Needless to say, Mayfield erupts in grief, anger, and suspicion, much of it directed at the only person left whom it seems possible to blame – the teacher who taught all of the missing students. Unable to go out without being accosted, and driving around in her car on which a furious father has spray-painted ‘Witch’, Justine decides she has to try to get answers herself as the police are getting nowhere. Justine’s search serves as a through-line for the film.

Posted on June 7, 2025

The Severed Sun – The Blood on Satan’s Claw for Our Time

Dawn Keetley

The Severed Sun (2024) is the first feature film of writer and director Dean Puckett, who has previously directed several documentaries and short films – notably, The Sermon (2017) and Satan’s Bite (2017), both of which explore themes similar to The Severed Sun. Filmed on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, The Severed Sun follows an isolated community led by a religious leader, The Pastor (played brilliantly by Toby Stephens). The group’s way of living and dress at first suggest that this film is set in the past, but there are modern buildings, slag heaps, industrial ruins – and so perhaps this community is surviving in a near and potentially post-apocalyptic moment (something Puckett has confirmed in interviews). It quickly becomes clear that the community is strictly, even violently, hierarchical, with the uncompromising Pastor as unchallenged leader of the community and the men in the community as rulers in the family. The trajectory of the film is driven by the film’s rebellious protagonist (who also happens to be the Pastor’s daughter), Magpie (Emma Appleton, also brilliantly played). For her resistance – and the film begins with her killing her abusive husband – Magpie is ostracized by her community, labeled a witch. She refuses to be a victim, however, fighting back against the familial and group structures that oppress her and others in the community.