Years ago I read about the Rosenhan experiment, in which a professor had his students feign insanity to get placed in an asylum. As time passed, the institutionalized students behaved normally, because they were in fact sane. They were eventually released—but only with diagnoses like “schizophrenia in remission,” rather than being recognized as sane. Unfortunately,…

The concept of the Christmas horror film is an interesting one. At first look, the holiday and the horror genres would seem to have a little in common. But it’s precisely in moments of jubilation when the shock and violence of horror can most effectively be delivered. A sub-species of Christmas horror is Santa horror,…

Film noir movies were known for their snappy patter. Why talk plainly when you can punch things up with innuendo and clever metaphors? 1946’s “The Dark Corner” is the movie to beat for great patter. It’s endless verbal jousting as characters try to one-up each other with puns and zingers. Normally I’d summarize the plot…

For the first two-thirds of this film I was like, “Meh, this is okay, I guess.” Then it hit the last act and went absolutely effing bonkers, and now I think “Death Spa” is one of the greats of American cinema. So what happens in that last act? Let me put it this way: what…

Ever start playing with a dog and think it’s gonna be so much fun and after about five minutes you’re like, “This is kind of boring.” That’s the horror film “Good Boy” in a nutshell. I hate saying it. I loved the dog actor, Indy, (though there were a lot of supposedly terrifying moments where…

Years ago, I used to live in Sacramento, California, but spent part of my week working up in Incline Village, Nevada (near Reno). During the winter, this commute would occasionally involve driving through crazed snowstorms where my visibility was limited to ten feet. My car felt like a metal cocoon surrounded by malevolent and freezing…

This is a FANTASTIC novella. “Final Girl is Tired” is hooked around an obvious conceit, basically laid out in the title. Final girl Maxine Hart survived a Jason Voorhees-like killer decades ago. Now in her fifties, she gets lured into making an appearance at “The Camp Slaymore Experience,” a theme park that recreates the horrors…

Little-known fact about me: my favorite band is Devo. I’ve loved those mutant New Wave rockers ever since I first heard them when I stumbled into a record store in Honolulu (where I grew up) as a teenager in the 80s. And yet it was only in 2025 when I learned Devo had scored a…

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie where I genuinely thought parts were missing. Like scenes are referred to, and I’m rolling back the video to see if I accidentally jumped ahead. But that’s one of many things wrong with “Along Came the Devil.” It’s a straightforward possession flick (and y’all know I…

The more I think about it, the more I realize that 2005 “Stay” is a very interesting film. I think we’re also familiar with the notion that part of what the human mind does is “objectify“ its surroundings. So, for example, I see a brown cylindrical thing topped off with green, and I conclude that…

I’m a little perplexed with this one. It’s called “The Shadow Man“ and has a spooky looking shadow man on the cover, so I figured I was getting something pretty close to horror. But this is really more of a teenage soap opera with a certain amount of demon fighting. I’m not necessarily against teenage…

“Night Screams” starts with a film-within-a-film motif. A young woman is disrobing in a locker room and possibly being stalked by an intruder. But then—quelle surprise!—we find out that what’s actually happening is a married couple is watching this scene on the television. That couple is then stalked and killed within their home. Oh, the…

I came to watch this film via a roundabout process. Around twenty years ago, I lived in LA and went on a date with an attractive bartendress from a watering hole I frequented. She told me she’d acted in several horror films, including one of the “Creepshow” sequels, and a movie based on the H.P.…

Sometimes a movie tries too hard. Like everyone, I loved “Silence of the Lambs.” And I’m a fan of the follow-up, “Hannibal”, with its great “brain-eating scene.” (How could you not love a good (or even mediocre) brain-eating scene?) And, I appreciated the first time Hannibal Lector graced the screen, played by Brian Cox in…

“Deadly Manor”, made in 1990, is a horror film about a group of young people (including a hitchhiker who may be more than he seems), who enter a mysterious mansion in the middle of a forest. As you might predict, one by one they are killed off. Being that I would’ve been around the same…