JULY 14, 2024 GENRE: SERIAL KILLER SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING) If you were to scroll down a few posts, you'd see that this was actually my second viewing of Longlegs, but my first review of it. That's because last time I saw it just a few hours after hearing a friend had died suddenly, and what I hoped would be a distraction turned out to... not work like that. So it was interesting watching it "again" tonight, with scenes that I had watched only six weeks ago feel totally new to me, to the point that I even forgot what was going to happen next a few times. It sucks that I was never ..read more

JULY 4, 2024 GENRE: MONSTER SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING) One of the things that worked best about Quiet Place Part II is that it didn't try to repeat a lot of the same tricks as the first one. It was a little "louder" thanks to the soundproof tank and the opening flashback, came up with some new ideas for suspense (the villains tying noisy bottles to a hero in order to keep them from moving was pretty brilliant), etc. - despite the limited concept, it was (in my opinion) just as good as the original. But for Michael Sarnoski, writer/director of A Quiet Place: Day One, he was somewhat ..read more

JUNE 24, 2024 GENRE: THRILLER SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING) Both Pearl and X were profitable if not exactly box office smashes, but that hasn’t stopped A24 from positing Maxxxine, the 3rd film in this unique trilogy, as a potential major hit. The big July release date (the other films were released in early Spring and Fall), the marketing campaign, the bigger budget (which means some bigger stars)… it’s likely the film’s opening weekend take is more than either of the other films mustered in their entire runs. I point that out because that means it’s very likely that some folks will ..read more

JULY 1, 2024 GENRE: POSSESSION, RELIGIOUS SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING) By my count, Joshua John Miller has written two films about growing up with a parent who is famous for a horror movie. One is The Final Girls, which is sweet and fun and taps into nostalgia for the era of slasher films, and the other is The Exorcism, which is... well, none of those things. Miller is the son of Jason Miller, star of The Exorcist, so one could kind of see Final Girls as the writer dipping his toes into autobiographical waters before diving in without a lifevest in the deep end this time around, as h ..read more

JUNE 10, 2024 GENRE: MONSTER SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING) The 2010 film Devil (which I quite liked) was supposed to be the first of a series of films produced by M. Night Shyamalan but written and directed by others, which seemed like a good idea to me. Unfortunately those other films never materialized, and it’s only now, 14 years later, that we are finally getting another movie where the polarizing but never boring filmmaker is only hand as a producer. But he didn’t go far to find a filmmaker for his long-awaited sophomore effort as an exec, as The Watchers is directed and written ..read more

JUNE 7, 2024 GENRE: PREDATOR SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX) Much like The Exorcist with possession movies, it's impossible to watch a killer shark movie without thinking about Jaws, which also happens to be one of the few undeniably perfect movies ever made (due to its themes and measured pace, I can understand why someone may dislike The Exorcist, but there's literally no excuse for Jaws. You either love it or you're objectively wrong). And it's spawned an entire subgenre of its own; I may put them in with the killer bear, dog, etc. movies here (the "Predator" sub-genre) but if I were to put all ..read more

MAY 31, 2024 GENRE: CRAP SOURCE: A VERY UPSETTING PHONE CALL As a legit Nicolas Cage fan (meaning: I love his work and daringness as an actor, not his ability to generate memes) I was quite curious how I'd feel about Longlegs, because while it gave him a meaty role as a serial killer, it's also a film from Osgood Perkins. And so far, while I haven't DISLIKED Perkins' films (of the two I've seen, Gretel & Hansel and Blackcoat's Daughter) I also felt a disconnect from them; any one shot (particularly Gretel) looked terrific, the actors did fine work, etc., but I couldn't quite invest myself ..read more

MAY 20, 2024 GENRE: SURVIVAL, THRILLER SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING) Sometimes, a movie tells you almost instantly that you shouldn’t expect too much out of it, acting almost as a warning to discerning audiences that they might as well cut their losses and leave now. The Strangers: Chapter One is one such example; after a cold open where a guy is chased through the woods and then killed by the title characters, we are shown one of those overhead landscape shots along with an on-screen title saying “Somewhere In Oregon.” But in that same shot we see an exit sign for the town of Lime, O ..read more

MAY 16, 2024 GENRE: KILLER KID SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION) I recently was a guest on the Screen Drafts podcast where myself and screenwriter Penny Cox had to draft the top 7 horror movies of 2009, which was a surprisingly glutted year for the genre. I could have picked seven films just myself and not included everything that's a "must-see", and I only got three of the seven picks (the way the show works is, since there's only seven slots, you can either have four picks OR only get three but one of them is the #1, so it kind of evens out). Well as you can perhaps guess by now, my #1 pick w ..read more

MAY 5, 2024 GENRE: SUPERNATURAL, TEEN SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING) With precious little on-screen to engage me, I spent a little time during Tarot almost impressed that something so witless and uninspired could make it to theaters in the year 2024, because it felt like a movie we might have seen in maybe 2006 and said "Why didn't this go direct to DVD?" The movie was so bland that I also considered if the bigger studios decided to combat streamers by making their OWN forgettable pap that is best watched with your hands alternating between your laundry and your iPhone (and Sony would ..read more