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 genre 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…