The 1980s was a period of some great Armageddon films—tales where much of society was destroyed by nuclear warfare or some kind of strange calamity. Think of the Mad Max sequels or “Night of the Comet,” or “Def-Con Four.“ One thing I’ve always noticed about these films: they make the apocalypse look like a hell…

There are movies that are basically two hours of plot to set up something that happens in the last ten seconds. “6 Souls” starring Julianne Moore is one of them. It’s not a bad thing to do, though one does feel a bit cheated at the conclusion. I was a bit surprised to see that…

I’m pleased as a vampire in a blood bank to announce I have a short story coming out in the new Books of Horror Anthology. It’s available for pre-order now and arrives shortly. There are lots of great talents here, some whom I’ve read, others whom I look forward to reading. In my tale, “The…

There are movies where you need the ending explained to you. Then there are movies where you need the whole damn thing explained to you. Then there are movies where you know there is no hope of finding an explanation (yet you fruitlessly search the internet anyway.) Roman Polanski’s “The Tenant” belongs in the third…

Director William Castle had a certain recipe for creating 1960s horror films that sold well but didn’t break the budget. It involved mixing… All this is on full display in “The Night Walker.” To point one, the FX are spare and the settings are drawn from the Universal back lot. To point two, he used…

I became aware of A.C. Hessenauer upon reading her gothic horror novel “Dread House” several months back.  “Manimal” is one or her more recent works. It swaps out the gothic vibe for something closer to the ambience of a Lovecraft tale (though without the ornamental Lovecraft prose—thank god). It’s Atlanta in the 1930s, in a…

“Synchronic” revolves around an interesting question. What if a drug that seems to warp reality actually warps reality? (I presume the idea was prompted by a Joe Rogan episode where the podcaster pontificated on the nature of psychedelic drugs like ayahuasca or DMT.) In the film, New Orleans EMTs Steve and Dennis observe an uptick…

There’s a trend in modern moviemaking that bugs me. This is the approach that a story doesn’t need to make literal sense if it is ultimately an allegory for something else: a theme, a human condition, an illness. For instance, there are various films I’ve seen where I say, “What exactly was that monster that…

No job defines the modern era more than that of the influencer, the nebulous vocation where individuals post pictures of themselves on social media while hawking products or engaging in other questionable means of monetization. We all hate them, so you might expect a movie where an influencer is tormented and punished to be satisfying.…

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…