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 layering, you’ll love it. Our story begins with young Meredith (Patricia Pearcy), a home nurse who gets a gig caring…

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 or slasher-themed movies are. (Looking at you “Conjuring“ films.) Yeah, sci-fi horror has a lot of standouts. “Death Machine,” however,…

There’s a particular kind of horror that is excessively bleak. “Last House on the Left” comes to mind, as do “Deliverance” and many of the Texas Chainsaw films. The horror in these films is man-made; they argue we don’t need to fear demons or witches, but our fellow humans. When I was younger, I enjoyed…

A little known fact about me is that I did some work for a film production company in the 2000s, mostly trying and failing to get horror films made. I did get the chance to meet big directors like John Carpenter and Stuart Gordon. At one point, the company was in conversation with famed Director…

I’d never heard of “The Black Room” until I saw it on a list of Amazon recommendations. I figured, “Why the hell not?” and gave it a try. The film starts with an attractive couple having sex. They get killed, then the scene switches to another attractive couple having sex. I thought, “OK, it’s gonna…

I never finished the screenwriting advice book “Save the Cat,“ but what I did read contained a useful insight. The author advised that all great stories contain an element of irony. For instance, the Bruce Willis film “Die Hard“ could be thought of with the following question: what if a man cop dreading a meeting…

I have a love-hate thing with the work of Wes Craven. I think “Nightmare on Elm Street” is the greatest horror film ever made, and I came around on the “Scream” series after disliking it at first, but he’s made some stinkers. It might seem weird that I would dig deep enough into his ouvre…

I’ve mentioned “apartment horror” recently, the sub-genre where a protagonist tackles the strange modern isolation that comes with living in what are basically cells stacked upon each other. Usually, a mystery connected to the building appears, and the protagonist asserts their autonomy and individuality by getting to the bottom of it. Examples would include Roman…

I loved the 2021 horror film “Malignant” so much that I noted the name of the screenwriter who’d written such a terrific and twisty script. Thus, when I found out Akela Cooper had written the 2022 killer doll movie “M3GAN” I eagerly anticipated it. However, I was disappointed. Compared to “Malignant”, it was relatively bloodless…

Well, this is a little weird. I recently watched the film “House of Darkness“ which I’d berated for being an hour of people talking about modern sexual mores, followed by a big reveal and then violence. Then, the next day, I watched “Bone Lake” (I’ve got a cold, so I’m watching a lot of movies)…

Sometimes it seems the main beneficiaries of #metoo in Hollywood were white male actors. Why? Because the villain is always the best role, and since 2015 or so, there have been numerous films that flip the script of the previous 100 years. Instead of presenting a good lucking, charming white dude as the hero, he’s…

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 surprised to see that the film…

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…