Don’t Knock Twice is an interesting film that is lifted up by its exceptional performances and cinematography and by the way it taps into what I think is an intriguing new trend in horror film: the horror of motherhood. Directed by talented Welsh filmmaker Caradog W. James (best known for the 2013 sci-fi film The […]
Newly published through This Is Horror, A House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Malerman is both incredibly simple and complex at the same time: its basic premise is exactly what the title says. On their first date, seventeen-year-old Amelia and James go canoeing on James’s uncle’s lake, which is connected to another lake… […]
The Rezort advertises itself as Jurassic World meets The Walking Dead and, while it has little in common with AMC’s blockbuster series, it is a lot like Jurassic World (and perhaps even more like Jurassic Park). The film is set ten years after a virus has killed billions of the earth’s inhabitants and transformed them […]
Bird Box (UK: Harper Voyager/ US: Ecco Press, 2014) When characters in horror films hear a strange noise, the first thing they do is investigate, despite the audience shouting at them to run the other way. More provoking than going to see what caused the noise, however, is not being able to do so. In […]
The Bye Bye Man is a decent horror film. I can’t say it’s terribly innovative but it was enjoyable enough—and interesting enough—for me to recommend it. In some ways, The Bye Bye Man feels like something of a throwback to the 1990s and early 2000s. It evoked Candyman (1992), Final Destination (2000), and The Ring […]
Train to Busan marks the live-action debut of animator Yeon Sang-ho—and it is a stunning debut. It tells the story of a workaholic fund manager, Seok Woo (Gong Yoo) whose marriage appears to have been a casualty both of his ambition and of what his daughter, Su-an (Kim Su-an), describes as his ingrained propensity to […]
The Monster is written and directed by the extremely talented Bryan Bertino, who also directed and wrote the 2008 home invasion film, The Strangers—a film that would certainly make my list of the best films of the 2000s. The Monster shares some of the things that make The Strangers a great film: its plot is […]
I have recently been exploring a sub-genre of horror that used to terrify me—the home invasion film. I created a list of some of my favorites so far (most of them on the milder side as far as violence and sadism goes), and I heard from a lot of people about other films I should watch. […]
October 2016 | Mike Flanagan | PG-13 | 99 min | (USA) Review: “Ouija: Origin of Evil delivers a trifecta…story, substance, and scares.” Synopsis: A widowed mother of two young girls tries to keep her family afloat by conducting elaborate (and staged) séances. Little does the family know that their humble abode is home to […]