A while back, I went through a phase of reading a lot of contemporary British thrillers. They tended to share several qualities: there was usually a sympathetic young woman who found herself in a moral…

There was a certain over-the-topness to horror films made in the 90s-2000s. They reveled in disgusting images, like fingernails being peeled back from fingers, verminous rats, or bodies completely shorn of skin.  This was the…

When I learned the concept of “Pretty Lethal”, in which a group of ballerinas face off against gun-wielding thugs, I had to admit it was ingenious. Ballet is a physically intensive practice, and why wouldn’t…

Years ago, as a teenager, I saw what I think is one of the great horror films, “The Stepfather.” (I’m talking about the original, though the sequels and remake aren’t bad.) I definitely crushed out…

This novel starts off with a sentence you will not easily get out of your brain. (Whether you want to says a lot about who you are as a person. I was happy to let…

I’m the first to admit that horror movies pre-1960 lack something compared to the modern era. You want teenage virgins being slowly bisected by a power saw? (Of course you do!) Or gore-dripping skeletons climbing…

I know what you’re thinking: didn’t you just review this movie, Wil Forbis? Incorrect, mein Freund. I recently reviewed “Initiation,” a 2020 slasher with heavy themes. This is “The Initiation,” a 1984 slasher featuring Vera…

This was a strange one, but in a good way. The film starts at a frequent event in slasher films: the college fraternity party. Beautiful, barely clothed young people are acting stupid, getting wasted, and…

I have a difficult relationship with the work of Sigmund Freud. On the one hand, I think he offered a lot of insight into the working of the human mind, particularly popularizing the somewhat ethereal…

I watched 2001’s “The Pledge“ starring Jack Nicholson and directed by Sean Penn a few years after it came out. At the time, I proclaimed the neo-noir the greatest film ever made. (The world, committed…

Evil kid movies have a long history going back to “The Bad Seed,” first shown on screens in 1956. That lineage runs straight through 1976’s “The Omen,” where the trope goes biblical. I fondly recall…

You might be familiar with director Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 film “Straw Dogs“ in which a nebbish character played by Dustin Hoffman faces off with thugs in rural England who want to invade his house and…

About 20 minutes into 2025’s “Bring Her Back“ I was worried it was one of these modern movies where nothing is ever explained, and the mystery just kind of festers until the end. And I…

1981’s “Delusion” (also known as “The House Where Death Lives” and boy does it ever) is an absolute gem of a movie. If you’re a fan of slow-burn psychological horror with sexual tension and psychological…

I should watch more sci-fi horror. The genre has so many great films: “Forbidden Planet”, the “Aliens” franchise, “Blade Runner”, “Event Horizon”, “Strange Days”. And the genre isn’t overdone the way a lot of supernatural…