horror movie

There’s something different about the ethos which drives director/co-writer Scott Derrickson’s adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story, The Black Phone. It’s not here for gratuitous displays of gore, nor is its purpose to be content with merely scaring its audience (although there are some fairly good jump scares hidden throughout). Instead, The Black Phone rides […]

Behind You is a curiously odd low budget experiment. This isn’t to say it’s a bad movie, so don’t take that the wrong way. On the contrary, writers/directors Andrew Mecham and Matthew Whedon have made an admirable and frightening sibling of James Wan’s The Conjuring, confining a family to a sprawling house and filling the movie […]

(PLEASE NOTE: A significant plot detail is discussed in this review as a means of showing how this film differentiates itself from both the novel and its 1989 adaptation. Spoiler notices at the beginning and end of the paragraphs are included.) We each owe a death, there are no exceptions. — Stephen King, “The Green […]

12 hours have passed since my viewing of Johnny Martin’s Delirium, and I’m still unsettled by it. The film – a low-budget but super-slick mix of found footage and traditional narrative camerawork – spooks and jolts in all the right spots, yet has the temperance to be more shaded and subtle with its frights and […]

Wish Upon brings to mind “The Monkey’s Paw,” a short story by W. W. Jacobs. In it, an older couple comes into receivership of a mummified monkey paw capable of granting three wishes; however, each wish is accompanied by shocking consequences. You might also remember Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button,” adapted for an episode […]

2017’s Rings is to 2002’s The Ring as a Smashburger is to a steak from Peter Luger’s in New York City. The absolute horror of the tightly-wound, dread-filled 2002 US remake of a 1998 Japanese horror film has been squeezed out of it, presenting only a crude imitation of the original with zero flavor or […]