Beware the women!

Posted on November 10, 2026 by Daniel

A killer nurse, a zombie classic remade (again) with two female protagonists, and girls getting revenge. It’s a total buffet of subgenres, and I didn’t dislike any of them. They each kept me entertained enough, so let’s find out why.

THE SLASHER NURSE (2025)



This basic slasher with a traditional plot has one issue—it should not have been 105 minute long. There’s absolutely no excuse for it.

It opens with a prank being pulled on two girls. Something tragic happens, and one of the girls ends up in an asylum…

20 years later, our patient breaks out of the asylum, kills a nurse, and takes her clothes, delivering an old school dead body with big tits.

But forget the tits (I did). The highlight of this movie is the vicious kills. The large, ominous nurse in a creepy mask mutilates plenty of victims. She lights them on fire, rips off a jaw, saws off limbs, snaps someone’s head in a bear trap, runs someone over with a lawnmower, and uses a chainsaw in an inventive way. The gore is created with classic practical effects.

The plot has the kids (now adults) from the beginning of the movie going to stay at a house in the woods and then being killed off by the nurse. That’s it. That’s the plot, and it’s all we need.

The biggest disappointment for me is one of the dude’s is a cute bear, and he seems fun at first, but ends up being a total straight douchebag. Yawn.

My favorite parts include a wild massacre at a bar…and a brilliantly clever and humorous moment involving a duck.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (aka: NIGHT OF THE RISING DEAD) (2026)



Night of the Living Dead gets yet another remake. This one has an early 2000s direct-to-DVD vibe, so it was a comforting nostalgic ride for me. And I want it to get a disc release because I simply have to own every version of the film ever made.

While it sticks closely to the original plot, a few minor changes add some interest. For starters, we have 2 main girls. There’s the Barbara character, and the actress’s wardrobe and hairstyle are a total homage to Judith O’Dea from the original. The other main girl is Vivica A. Fox, who steps in to replace the Ben character from the original. Awesome.

The zombie outbreak begins with Vivica at a diner when the undead creep in from the kitchen. The zombie makeup is good, they shuffle slowly yet are vicious when they attack, and there’s some satisfying gore. Plus, Dee Wallace has a small role as a waitress and gets to play a zombie! Awesome.

Meanwhile, the Barbara character runs onto the scene and comes to hide in the empty house. She just appears out of nowhere. There’s no cemetery scene, and there’s no classic “coming for you” quote. Vivica soon shows up, and together the two women have to fight off hordes of zombies.

There’s a subplot of news reporters and locals hunting zombies, but they don’t add much to the story. As always, the douche is in the basement with his wife and sick daughter, but their side story plays out a bit differently, and the guy is more of a sympathetic character than in previous versions.

The story pretty much follows the original, with the group eventually trying to fill the pickup truck with gas, but the finale is quite different and feels anticlimactic—it simply doesn’t attempt to give us any new twist on the original ending.

HOLLYWOOD HELLS (2026)



The director of the horror comedy Ghost Team One gives us a polished, updated take on the rape/revenge plot made famous by I Spit on Your Grave.

Discouraged after losing an acting job because the producer sexually harassed her, a young woman goes to a Hollywood party in hopes of making connections to land new work.

Turns out the man who owns the house is Brian Austin Green. He wants her in his new film. His goal is to fight cancel culture by bringing sex, nudity, violence, and gore back into horror. But it’s more than that. Brian wants to make real horror, and our main girl unintentionally gives him what he wants when she is sexually assaulted again!

This turns into a revenge flick in which the main girl and a bunch of women trapped in cages escape and go after all the men in the mansion. We’re talking dick chomping revenge. To quote Grease, “Bite the weenie. With relish.”

A commentary on modern times through a horror lens, Hollywood Hells focuses on men demanding we bring back misogyny in horror. Themes include the idea of women giving into men, being controlled by men, and resigning themselves to motherhood. We even get problematic women who totally sell out their gender to make men happy. However, the female heroes flip that script before all is said and done.

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My favorite choose-your-own-adventure horror video game so far

Posted on November 3, 2026 by Daniel

A nice break from the typical survival horror formula, this gaming style, which I first encountered with Until Dawn, continues to engross me. The Quarry was a blast for several reasons, making it perhaps my favorite cinematic horror game so far. For starters, the cast of voice actors and their likenesses is great. We get horror icons like Lin Shaye, Lance Henriksen, David Arquette, Ted Raimi, and newer, younger familiar faces, including Ariel Winter of Modern Family and Justice Smith of I Saw the TV Glow.

And speaking of, Justice’s character helps bring queer characters and content to the game, as does Miles Robbins of Daniel Isn’t Real. However, it depends on how you choose the character interaction options presented to you. The moment you can make these two queer guys become flirty love interests is during a game of Truth or Dare around a campfire. However, as much as I made sure to keep their interactions romantically interested, near the end of the game it feels like that is taken away a bit, and the bisexuality of Justice’s character seems to come out and redirect to a female character.

Compared to the previous games like this one that I’ve played, some of which were a challenge due to poor play mechanics, the designers for this one really seem to have listened to gamer complaints and beautifully streamlined the experience. Controller response is way better, and the rare instances of having to shoot a gun are much easier to control. This may have to do in part with the way you can adjust the settings, most notably in the “accessibility” section. In fact, it’s possible to change the settings to the point where you’re practically not playing and just watching the game as a movie. You can literally change challenge options to “always succeed”. Just like that. No panicking and button-mashing. Just sit back and watch. Interesting addition to the play options.

I didn’t play that way, but there are definitely some settings I made easier, like maximizing the time allotted for quick time events. I fucking hate quick time events.

The game is divided into a prologue, 10 chapters, and an epilogue. Just be warned that there is not much horror action in the first four chapters, which are basically focused on character building. You are given opportunities to make choices that develop each character and their relationships with each other. It’s a highly effective way to make you feel connected to them and get a better sense of how each one should react to particular situations. And naturally, any decision you make affects the outcome of the game, including getting a character killed. As always, one of the goals is to keep as many characters alive as possible.

The game begins with a couple almost hitting something on the road at night. When they get out to check, things go bad fast in a very suspenseful sequence that has you exploring the woods. Eek!

Then we meet a group of camp counselors in chapter 1. They are closing up shop at the end of the summer, but their van won’t start, so they end up stuck at the camp. You get to decide how they kill the time. Just as in a real horror movie, I and the friend I had by my side making decisions with me, threw caution to the wind and had the group go outside to party instead of staying in the lodge. Big mistake…but fully intentional. I mean, if characters didn’t make stupid decisions in horror movies, we wouldn’t have any story.

It didn’t take long at all to figure out what type of horror plot we’re dealing with here, and despite this being about camp counselors, it’s not a slasher. However, it is a goodie, with great creature designs and excellent suspense and atmosphere. And…plenty of pixel pecs.

The horror really picks up at about chapter 5, which is around the time the characters all split up. Doh!

While jumping between branching character stories, you must try to stay alive, uncover clues as to what is going on, and attempt to figure out a way to escape. While my friend and I were lucky if we kept two characters alive in previous games of this sort, I’m proud to say that in this one, we kept all but one alive for a majority of the game. Thank you, accessibility settings.

Paying attention to details and clues really helps make the safest decisions. In between chapters, you meet with a fortune teller, and she reads tarot cards you bring her. Here’s the trick. You have to find those tarot cards while exploring, and that doesn’t always happen. You can collect anywhere from 1 to 4 tarot cards per chapter by searching everywhere. If you come across one, the camera angle changes briefly, and you must quickly press the X button to claim the card, otherwise you lose your chance. Once you turn the cards you found over to the fortune teller, she explains what they mean, and then gives you the option to choose one card that lets you see a vision of the future. You then view a very quick clip of something that is going to occur in the next chapter, which you need to decipher to figure out what the best decision is to make when the action of that clip comes true. It’s sort of like a spoiler, but still cryptic enough to keep you guessing what the best move is to make when the moment arrives.

Aside from paying close attention in order to make smart decisions, I think another reason we did so well for a majority of this game is because we avoided using guns as much as possible. I absolutely suck at aiming guns in high pressure moments, so in previous games I absolutely screwed up shooting segments. In this game, you often get the option to hand the gun-toting off to other characters, which is exactly what I did. Awesome.
Except…when it wasn’t awesome. And this was at the very end. But there’s a reason. My friend and I began playing this game about 4 months ago. We got all the way to the final chapter when the weekend was coming to a close (she visits from out of state), so we decided we’d just finish the 10th chapter when she returned for Halloween weekend.

We jumped back into the game the day after Halloween with another friend present to give some decision input, and it turns out we only had about 30 minutes of game time left to play…and had only gotten one character killed up to that point! However, I warned my friends, “I totally forgot how to play this game already, and I’m going to end up getting everyone killed.”

All our characters had gotten separated throughout the course of the game, and we still had the gay guy alive (yay!), so we agreed that the goal was to make sure he remained alive if no one else. We almost immediately made a bad decision and got the girl he was with killed. Minutes later, another bad decision, and we got a guy who was all by himself killed.

Finally, we had three characters encounter the creature in the woods, we made a decision, then I thought the game was immediately giving me yet another decision as the timer bar started to shrink. I was waiting for my friends to hash out which decision we should make, but they were quiet. Suddenly I realized I wasn’t supposed to be making a decision. The screen prompts were telling me to aim and then shoot. I frantically aimed and pressed the shoot button…half a second after the timer ran out. We watched as the creature went down the line and smacked the heads right off the bodies of three characters we’d managed to keep alive through the entire game. As I’d predicted not 30 minutes before, I almost literally got every character killed. However, we did save the gay guy, so I would argue that we kicked ass.

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HALLOWEEN ROUND-UP 2026

Posted on October 30, 2026 by Daniel

It was a slow year for new Halloween-themed horror flicks, but I did find 3 to add to the holiday horror page. Do they deliver on the Halloween atmosphere? Let’s find out.

RL STINE’S PUMPKINHEAD 2 (2026)



What a total letdown after the perfectly spooky Halloween vibes of the first movie. This is a total case of the “let’s just give them a lot more of the monster” sequel tactic. What it gives us a lot less of is Halloween. In fact, the holiday is virtually non-existent for a majority of the movie. I still haven’t forgiven the classic Pumpkinhead from 1988 for not being about Halloween, so there’s no reason I would give this film with the same name a pass.

After a scary dream opener, we get a recap of the first movie. The main kid is now trying to find the book that will destroy the curse that made everyone forget who he is except a couple of people (plot of the first movie).

Cassandra Peterson is the new librarian in school, and it’s clear she’s going to play a pivotal role in the plot. In the meantime, a new kid finds the book and conjures a little horde of the pumpkin head monster from the first movie. They’re definitely still creepy, but it’s just overkill as they start running around turning victims into comatose vine people. The eerie moments lack the suspense of the first film. No Halloween. No suspense. I feel empty inside.

73 minutes into this 96 movie, the main characters learn what needs to be done to stop the monsters, and it needs to be done on Halloween (eureka!), which is the next day, despite there not being a sign or mention of the holiday up to this point.

We get plenty of creature chases in the final 20 minutes, but the conclusion is loaded with redemption story arcs and gets a bit sappy, which is a huge disappointment considering the dark end of the first film. This sequel is definitely not making my list of annual Halloween watches like the first movie.

THE BARN PART III (2026)



It’s out with the old and in with the new for the third film in The Barn franchise. The film gets a complete cast overhaul and new characters, including horror veterans Kelli Maroney, Courtney Gains, William Ragsdale, and Felissa Rose.

As always with this series, the Halloween vibe is fantastic, as is the 80s throwback vibe. While past characters and events are mentioned, this is another sequel that can stand on its own, making it an easy watch even if you haven’t seen the previous films.

Once again, there’s the tale of conjuring monsters at “the barn”. Some high school kids who are tormented by bullies at school do the ritual in front of the barn door and unleash the monsters. They think the monsters are just going to protect them.

Naturally, things don’t turn out as expected. This is a straight-up hack-n-slash horror flick, loaded with practical special effects. The basic premise—kids unleash the monsters then have to conquer them—is all you need for a Halloween party flick like this.

The film takes place at a town Halloween festival, where a horror film is being screened. We see a few clips of this fake movie, which is where Felissa Rose appears. It is a monster flick that feels like a tease for an actual movie perhaps?

The monsters in this movie go on a killing rampage, and we get female nudity (and just some hot tongue action from a guy), oodles of gore, a rock soundtrack of songs being performed live at the festival, and a final scene that leaves the barn door open for another sequel.

HALLOWARRIOR (2026)



I did not expect a movie about a girl alone in a post-apocalyptic world on Halloween to totally deliver on the Halloween, but damn does this movie do it. Th opening credits alone feel like they are inspired by the beloved opening of Halloween 4.

The story is actually sad. A sickness has wiped out humans, and the girl who lost her head in Hereditary is living alone in the house she grew up in with her family.

She loves Halloween, so she watches old home movies of the family on the holiday and totally decorates the house as a haunted attraction. She then sends a radio message that she’s there if anyone is still alive and wants to come celebrate the season with her.

A trio of adults shows up, including horror king AJ Bowen. Right away, it feels like something is off. When the older woman in the trio heads off to bring more of their “friends” to celebrate, the horror begins.

This becomes a post-apocalyptic Halloween home invasion flick. Say what? It totally works.

It’s gory, the friends that show up are freaky, there’s loads of atmosphere and action, there are some macabre surprises, and it cleverly plays into the point of wearing masks on Halloween.

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When a doll, puppets, and an AI robot come to life.

Posted on October 19, 2026 by Daniel

It’s a trio of flicks about non-human objects with murderous minds. I found only one of them fun, but which one and why? Let’s find out.

DOLLFACE: THE MOTION PICTURE (2026)


With a monumental title ending in “The Motion Picture”, either this movie didn’t know what it wanted to be or I didn’t understand what it was trying to be. IMDb lists it as a comedy/ horror. If it’s supposed to be funny, the humor is so subtle that it just feels awkwardly serious. If it’s trying to lean into the campiness of an off-screen crew member manipulating a “killer” doll and actors pretending to grapple with the doll when it attacks, it misses the mark there, too. Those scenes aren’t over-the-top enough, and again, the vibe around the scenes feels serious. It’s like no one is in on the joke.

The movie is mostly bland and meandering with dull characters and no energy. In the opener, it’s established that a dude’s fiancée has this doll that creeps him out. Then the intro credits roll, it’s 3 months later, and the fiancée is dead. Say what now? This movie clearly isn’t about what happened to her, it’s about the dude being out of sorts since she’s gone.

A straight couple the dude is friends with tries to break him out of his funk. They go to a witchy woman at a bookstore and do a ritual.

The doll comes to life. A few people die with no blood or gore.

The dude and friends hide a dead body from nosy characters. They eventually seek more help from the witch and get chased around the house by the doll as they try to vanquish her.

The most interesting part of this movie is in the last minute, when an unexpected guest shows up at the door. The end credits roll, and we’re left imagining what happens next.

THE FUZZIES (2025)



This movie felt like it was going to be such a bust, but by the end I was totally feeling the simplicity of it, mostly because it had a dark vibe and classic stop-motion special effects that modern horror audiences will most likely hate. In fact, it often felt like nods to sequences from the original Evil Dead, and that’s my horror hot spot.

A children’s entertainer dies and in her will she leaves her cabin and possessions to three childhood friends. The catch? They have to come to the cabin and find her missing puppet.

The trio of friends, a guy and two girls, enters a house that looks like a box of Crayola puked all over it. There’s a party montage. They sit around and talk. They recall a mean-spirited situation involving their dead friend when they were kids. Uh-oh.

The weirdness begins when the guy snorts coke in the bathroom. This kicks off trippy stop-motion sequences, and these puppets are as scary as they are silly.

Once it begins, the acid trip this turns into never ends. There’s a hallway of glass cases displaying puppets, there’s a nightmare sequence, there’s a bizarre scene of a tortured puppet in the woods, the puppets escape the glass cases, and there’s a fantastic, freaky under the stairs scene.

There’s also a lesson to be learned for horror amateurs; if you see the puppet you’ve been looking for sitting in a room on a chair with its back to you, stop looking for the puppet.

LOVELY A.I. – L.A.I. (2026)



The audio levels are all over the place on this indie, which really does it a disservice, as does some of the odd, choppy editing choices that seem to be attempting to create a sense of tension and cheap scares but fail to do either.

This is generally a take on the M3GAN concept with an all-Black cast. After an opening montage of various women being terrorized by a young girl calling them mommy, we meet the main family—husband, wife, son, daughter. There’s some backstory to why they are moving into a new house, but it doesn’t add much to the plot.

The dad works for an AI company, and his enthusiasm for the way it has been implemented throughout their new house is charming. His bod could charm the pants off me as well.

Soon, the daughter finds the AI girl, who is just an actual girl with no type of makeup to give her the appearance of being man-made, in her closet. The AI girl becomes the daughter’s friend.

It’s no surprise that the doll begins to turn on people. What is a little surprising is that there are no intense kills, no gore, and no suspense. The family is eventually trapped in the house with the AI doll and the pacing plummets even more. The AI doll does get a fairly interesting backstory of her own, but, overall, this just isn’t a compelling killer technology movie.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: 80s Euro horror and a gay possession flick

Posted on October 2, 2026 by Daniel

This was a triple feature of blind buys for me, so let’s find out if I should have opened my eyes before handing over my money.

THE MURDER SECRET (1988)



This Italian horror flick is a hybrid of supernatural horror, mystery, and slasher, and it reminded me of Lamberto Bava’s Macabre, just that the twisted part is withheld until the end. It is also filled with that awful, cheesy type of music that plagued Euro horror in the 80s and totally clashed with the horror vibe.

A man brings his wife and kids to visit his aunt, but when they arrive at her house, she’s not there. The caretaker says she’ll be arriving soon. So, the family settles in, and we sit around waiting for something to happen beyond some mysterious phone calls and the teen daughter hearing voices.

42 minutes in, someone is finally murdered.

We get some flashbacks to the father’s past when he was a child, including his mother’s tragic death, but the mystery here is just not very compelling.

56 minutes in we finally get some major slashing, beginning with a Psycho-esque shower scene. Soon after, heads start flying as people are decapitated. The deaths come one after another with no suspense or atmosphere. However, they deliver on the blood.

Finally, the truth of what’s going on comes out. It involves a rotting corpse, a fist fight that goes on forever, and a sudden twist that feels really out of place but would become a horror trope a few decades later.

BLOODY PSYCHO (1989)



This Italian supernatural slasher is about a corpse ghost in a wheelchair killing a bunch of sexually charged weirdos in a castle. So European.

Do the details even matter? Is it worth trying to decipher the bizarre plot twists? Of course not. It’s 80s Euro horror. You just go with it for the gore and sleazy sex.

A hands-on healer dude who also has psychic powers comes to a castle to help a woman in a wheelchair. This bitch treats her maid like a slave…who also happens to be her lover.

The woman also has a journalist friend who helps the healer investigate the castle’s haunted past, which he knows about thanks mostly to his psychic visions. He sees some pretty crazy shit, including a walking doll and a corpse in a wheelchair.

He begins poking into the past of the family that lived in the castle. He talks to a priest, a lawyer, a drunk…fun times. Especially when everyone who spills family secrets begins getting killed by the wheelchair corpse.

Macabre scenes, creepy castle atmosphere, and grisly gore aside, this is the usual hokey Euro horror trash, with a bad, jazzy 80s score, bizarre filler, like making us sit through watching a woman ride horseback before agreeing to meet with the healer, and silly edits, like the same moment of the wheelchair corpse crashing through a window presented three times in a row at different angles. In my opinion, it’s a perfect edition to my extensive collection of 80s horror.

LEVITICUS (2026)

The title tells you what you’re in for with this one that lands on the homo horror movies page—a gay horror flick based on religious abuse. In this case, despite it being gay trauma porn to some extent, I really liked the general premise. However, since the main character is experiencing a serious sense of isolation in a small town he’s just moved to, he’s pretty much the only target of the very It Follows entity that has possessed his love interest.

So, this town is very religious, to the level of cultish. The main kid becomes intimately entangled with another boy (no sex scenes though) and then witnesses that boy being exorcised of his lustful demons in church. It’s a total metaphor for conversion therapy obviously, but what’s clever is that only after the love interest is cleansed of his homosexual tendencies does he seem possessed.

Actually, it’s like a doppelgänger of the kid, and it begins to terrorize the main boy. He never really knows when it’s the real boy or the demon chasing him.

There are some creepy and suspenseful scenes of the main guy encountering the demon, but since it’s just him against the world, he has no one to drag into his problems. The movie really feels underdeveloped in that sense, or perhaps just too long due to the limitations of the story it is telling.

The finale definitely intensifies, and surprisingly, there’s a nice, neat, anticlimactic conclusion. Gays usually don’t get those types of endings, so that’s refreshing.

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I had a foursome with Bigfoot, Yeti, and a snow demon

Posted on September 22, 2026 by Daniel

It’s a movie marathon featuring hairy beasts, so let’s get right to them.

THE YETI (2026)

 

This one starts strong. It’s the mid-1900s, there’s a family in a cabin in the wintery woods, and a dude gets yanked up through the ceiling in a bloody splash. Awesome.

You’ll have to cling to that feeling, because this is a slooooow movie with a bland plot, only a few juicy kills, and not much in the way of seeing the actual Yeti.

After 2 men disappear in Alaska, a crew, including family members, goes out into the wintery wilderness to search for them.

There’s some offscreen screaming and killing, not much in the way of interesting characters, and eventually those gory kills, which are the highlight of the film.

We also get a backstory that leads to some of the characters being used as bait, but it’s just so cliché that it’s not very compelling. And as for the Yeti, we get one good look at his face closer to the end of the movie.

THE BIGFOOT EXPERIMENT (2026)



Just to get this out of the way, Bigfoot in this movie is presented in a combination of what looks like an AI King Kong design and a dude in a really bad gorilla suit.

The plot is about a bunch of content creators going to explore an abandoned facility where experiments once took place.

We get an early attack of a dude in the woods at night after his bicycle breaks down…like 20 feet from a home with its lights on. Meanwhile, he’s panicking because he can’t get good service on his phone to call for help. Either movies are reflecting how no one has any social skills anymore and don’t have the sense to just go ask someone for help…or the fact that people realize these days that if you walk up to a stranger’s house and ring the doorbell, they are likely to shoot you.

Anyway, not much happens for a good chunk of the movie. We eventually learn the guide witnessed some sort of attack on a previous tour, and finally 41 minutes in, they actually enter the facility. I’m not even kidding.

The attacks begin 47 minutes into this 83-minute movie, and along with the gorilla costume, there are plastic body parts. It’s basically something you would have watched on SyFy like 20 years ago, so if that’s the nostalgia trip you want to go on, check it out.

SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN (2026)



This disappointing movie is really not an actual Bigfoot movie, yet it has a totally satisfying conclusion that lasts for about five seconds.

A gay and two girls go to a cabin in the woods for a Bigfoot sighting tour run by two crazy brothers, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

There’s a partying dance montage with the cute gay guy getting shirtless, but he’s a gay guy of color, so inevitably…

The trio is taken on a tour of the woods by one of the brothers, and the main girl takes lots of photos during the hike. And then…this turns into a movie about the two crazy brothers trying to destroy some evidence of wrongdoing that they didn’t want caught on camera.

Any deaths all happen at the hands of the brothers, including the targeting of police that show up. I know seeing dead bodies and panicking can alter a person’s perception in the heat of the moment, but at one point I found it hard to believe that a character couldn’t tell that Bigfoot was just a guy in a costume.

However, when the main girl comes face-to-face with one of the brothers in the woods and they begin basically growling at each other, the movie concludes with a scene that could have come earlier in the story and triggered a bunch of actual Bigfoot attacks.

THE SNOW DEMON (2026)



This is a basic but fun creature feature with practical effects and some sleek and sharp visuals that give the monster moments a fantastical feel. As for the “snow demon”, it’s basically a werewolf and looks like one of those cool werewolf costumes from 80s horror.

The disconnect for me is the odd opener, which has a man sitting in a study introducing the movie like he’s reading from a storybook. It doesn’t really fit the tone of the rest of the movie.

Next, we see a girl get attacked by the snow demon in the woods. The monster generally claws at victims like a cat going at its scratcher, then bites their throats. Awesome.

Next, we meet the dead girl’s friends. Her body was never recovered, so they come to a cabin in the woods to honor her. Also in the woods is a folklorist interested in the legend that he believes got to her.

It also gets to him…first.

After that, the movie does a pretty good job of keeping up the pace, with plenty of attacks. While they are generally all the same, there are two gruesome ones, including the monster slowly tearing its claws down a victim’s back and another victim’s head being bashed against a counter edge repeatedly.

And the final girl doesn’t fuck around. She goes after this big monster with a knife! Awesome.

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The horrors of Oz and Hansel and Gretel

Posted on September 18, 2026 by Daniel

Two more children’s stories get the horror treatment, and they’ve both been done before…more than once. So, did these latest adaptations deliver? Let’s find out.

WICKED OF OZ (2026)



This take on The Wizard of Oz is campy and cheesy yet also dark and gory. It might not be for everyone due to its low-budget vibe, but for me, it’s what a wacky rewrite should be. Not to mention, if you’ve ever read the original novel, it’s pretty frightening at times.

This one takes its cue from the classic 1939 movie. Dorothy, a white girl, lives with her Aunt Gale. White Dorothy’s best friend is Toto…a Black girl. Um…yeah. Her dog is now represented by a Black girl.

The twister comes, and Dorothy and Toto are dropped into what appears to be a field or forest that could easily be in her own backyard. Just go with it. They see the glass slippers on the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East, then they meet Glinda, who is one crazy bitch.

And because Toto is not a dog but a Black person…well, you can guess what Toto’s fate is in a horror movie.

This next bit of news is a disappointment. There’s no Wicked Witch of the West! I was hoping she’d at least show up as a final boss, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, the Wizard is the one who wants Dorothy dead. And he’s this frustrated incel. His “munchkins” are just men in robes and metal masks. I guess it was hard to find a load of little people to play munchkin monsters in an indie production.

Here’s the cool part. Dorothy’s traditional storyline friends deliver the actual horror here—Scarecrow, Tinman, and the Cowardly Lion. Awesome.

To me, this is by far the best aspect of the film. They are all vicious and bloodthirsty. Not to mention, the lion is a shirtless hunk wearing a simple masquerade ball mask.

My only complaint is that this trio should have been the focus, terrorizing Dorothy for the whole film as she tries to make her way home. Instead, the final act focuses on Dorothy and Glinda working together to take down Oz and his minions. It becomes a bit too goofy at this point, especially after all the hopes I had for some serious horror upon meeting Dorothy’s “friends”.

WIZARD OF DEATH: TINMAN’S RISE (2026)



I’m back in Oz. Sort of. This one is more like Wrong Turn with the Tinman…and without the gory, suspenseful awesomeness that is Wrong Turn.

This one simply goes nowhere, and the presence of any elements of Oz are just confusing…including the Tinman. Although, by the end of the film, he does seem to have some connection to Dorothy. Yes, it’s a movie with heart.

After an unrelated opening kill scene with two victims, we meet Dorothy and her family. They go to a cabin in the woods. We then see another two random people killed.

Then it’s back to Dorothy and crew. They go hiking. They see a “yellow brick road” that’s just some random yellow bricks strewn throughout the forest. It leads them to the Tinman’s lair.

They get stuck in there for a good portion of the movie and spend most of the time trying to figure out how to distract the Tinman to escape. They finally do…and then spend a good portion of the movie trying to figure out how to distract the Tinman so they can get out of the forest. Sigh.

There just wasn’t much here to scratch my chronic horror itch.

HANSEL & GRETEL’S HALLOWEEN (2026)



This begins as a fun Halloween spin on the classic story, which makes perfect sense based on the themes of the source material, landing it on the holiday horror page. It begins with the witch being burned in her cottage and cursing the kids as they escape.

In modern times, we meet another Hansel and Gretel sibling duo (like anyone would give their kids those names these days). The siblings live in a town plagued by disappearances of kids under 16 on Halloween, so there’s a rule—only those over 16 can trick or treat. That’s the exact older, costume-free age range that crabby old folk in real life refuse to give candy to.

Anyway, H&G and their friends decide to sneak out and trick or treat, and they don’t even try to score some fake ID first. It sure does feel like Halloween is a load of fun without little kids running around. The Halloween vibe is off the charts, so I had high hopes.

Even when they unknowingly reach the witch’s house, it’s all pimped out for the holiday. Awesome.

The witch appears to be a younger woman, so the kids are lured into her house pretty easily. And then…

The movie loses its charm. It becomes a very generic, repetitive witch movie. The kids can’t find their way out of the maze-like house, they get separated, and then the witch begins tempting them with treats. But first, she spends much of the movie appearing to them, saying “you’re not ready”, and then leaving them alone. WTF? Way to pad a movie.

When she finally does reveal what it is she wants from them, it’s pretty awesome. She feeds them treats and then they turn into chocolate and melt so she can then digest them and gain youth. Although, we never really get to see her as a hideous old hag. She does cackle like a classic witch, so that’s fun.

Despite the cool concept of the chocolate mutations, the movie simply isn’t very thrilling. The pace is slow, the witch isn’t very menacing, and the final fight is anticlimactic. However, the final scene feels like a live action version of something out of Monster House, and it’s fricking awesome.

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Kicking off the 2026 holiday season

Posted on September 4, 2026 by Daniel

It’s a trio of films that takes us from Halloween to Christmas and ends with New Year’s Eve, and all three score spots on the holiday horror page. Let’s see if they capture the spirit of each season.

CURSE OF CROM 2 (2026)



I’m a big fan of the first movie, so I was stoked to come back for more. While this sequel also takes place at Halloween time, it doesn’t quite deliver on the holiday vibe. I was disappointed that the October festivities are mostly an afterthought.

Also, while much of the same cast returns to fight Crom once again, the film attempts to avoid being a cookie cutter version of the first film, but in doing so, it becomes a little messy and goes on for too long, running an hour and 42 minutes long.

The original main girl returns home from college, and before long, she gets pulled into her bedroom closet like Carol Anne in Poltergeist.

Her stepdad calls in her friends to help him go rescue her. But how did Crom even come back? Turns out there are other portals through which he can pass. There are also new critters that look like something out of an 80s movie.

And the portal the main group needs to seal? It’s in Ireland! Say what? That’s definitely where this one loses the smalltown charm that the first film delivered while also leaving its Halloween roots behind to head overseas. Bummer. At least there’s a part where they use a jack-o’-lantern to repel the monsters.

It is great to see the cast back, there’s humor, and there are some fun encounters with Crom, but he’s lost the mystique and creepiness he had in the first film.

In the end, the movie leaves room for third film.

THE GREEN MONSTER (2026)



I think this is supposed to be another horror take on the Grinch, but you’re much better off sticking with The Mean One, which does a great job of giving constant sly nods to the source material without being able to reference it directly due to rights issues.

Other than having plenty of Christmas spirit, a creature in an old school monster suit, and gory kills, The Green Monster feels cheap and low budget, and the plot is a mess.

A year after a man is killed by the monster in a house in the woods, we learn more about the monster legend, first from two true crime podcasters. They die first. Then we mostly get a series of random people entering the woods and being killed.

The movie finally settles into the house the guy at the beginning was killed in, which is now being turned into an inn by his daughter. She welcomes in some guests that need a place to stay even though she isn’t officially open yet.

We learn more about her father and the monster, which shows up to start killing off everyone at the inn, integrating Christmas staples into his arsenal.

There’s no suspense or scares, the monster is goofy, not frightening, and the surprises at the end lead to a bland climax.

Y2K (2024)



In the tradition of movies like Maximum Overdrive and Chopping Mall, it’s the Y2K paranoia re-imagined as a New Year’s Eve sci-fi horror flick, and it’s loaded with late 90s nostalgia (Tae Bo, a video store, IMs, a CD drive), plus a soundtrack that includes Fatboy Slim, Chumbawamba, Edwin McCain, Sisqo, Harvey Danger, Mandy Moore, ATB, Korn, Freak Nasty, Brian McKnight, Semisonic, and Aaliyah.

The cast includes a cameo by Alicia Silverstone, Rachel Zegler as the main girl, an appearance by The Kid Laroi, and Mason Gooding in a minor role.

The opener makes you sad that technology advanced so quickly in the years following 1999, so we didn’t get to relish any of it for long before it went extinct.

Our main guy and his buddy go to a New Year’s Eve party at a house that’s still decorated for Christmas, as houses should be in New Year’s Eve movies. When midnight strikes, all hell breaks loose and electronics start killing everyone. A toy car sets a dude on fire, an electric razor attacks a dude, there’s death by a Varsity Blues video tape, there’s a dick in a blender, planes crash, the whole town is turned to smoldering ashes quickly…

And then the vibe of the film changes. The group of friends leaves the party and tries to figure out how they’re going to survive. They are also chased by a robot with a computer monitor as a head, which feels quite silly, although it does make for a funny fight scene. Yes, this film has plenty of humor.

It’s also anticlimactic. The friends encounter Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit playing himself, they end up at another Y2K party, Fred performs “Faith”, and the main kids pretty easily conquer the computer program that plans to destroy the world. The final act of this movie simply doesn’t live up to what the first act promises.

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A trio of movies with creepy supernatural creatures

Posted on August 31, 2026 by Daniel

While the movies from my latest marathon may have issues, the creatures in all three were quite satisfying. Let’s find out where the films fell short.

THE DAEMON (2024)



I watched this one simply because the title intrigued me. The movie itself tries to be intriguing as well, but despite very few characters having plenty of time to develop, it just felt like something was missing during all the time that nothing was happening.

It does begin with a bloody opener that signals the death of a main character’s father.

The father apparently committed suicide, but his body hasn’t been found. Huh? Anyway, the main guy skips town to go to the cottage where his father was dabbling in something sinister and committed a disappearing suicide act.

The main guy’s wife decides to go after him and gets her brother and sister-in-law to come along for the ride.

The main guy isn’t thrilled to see them when they arrive, but he’s also a bit preoccupied by visions of people he loves being dragged out to sea while a cosmic creature hovers in the sky above the water. Quite eerie and totally Lovecraftian.

The others begin having have some delusions and nightmares, including a weird side story for the wife that feels like it comes out of nowhere—as does the character involved in her side story.

The horror really takes off 59 minutes in, and it includes freaky faces, salivary dripping, a cocooning substance, and characters being mind-fucked by their own fears, guilt, and shame…I think. There are definitely plot inconsistencies here, but the final act really delivers some fantastic cosmic horror visuals.

DO NOT ENTER (2026)



This movie should have been called Do Not Understand, because I’m really not sure what I was watching.

We meet a bunch of content creators, and to drive the point home, we are subjected to a pointless and bland sequence of them exploring underground tunnels in the subway system with cameras rolling.

With content like that, I can see why they’ve been struggling for views. In hopes of getting noticed, they decide to check out an abandoned hotel where a ton of money is supposed to be hidden. With cameras and night vision on, they crawl through tunnels to get inside, encounter a stream of the cleanest looking rats I’ve ever seen, and then explore the hotel.

There are a few more harrowing situations, there’s a perfectly convenient newspaper lying around that gives us backstory as to what happened at the hotel, and then a dude steps in a bear trap…in a hotel. Huh?

Eventually they encounter rival content creators who are so serious about taking out the competition that they abduct them at gunpoint. This could have been the time to turn this shit off, but soon after, at 54 minutes in, we finally get a humanoid creature attack that brought me back on board.

As absurd as the twists get, the creature suspense and gore definitely satisfy. I got back to rolling my eyes when the monster was about to get married (I’m not kidding), but I did like the scene in which the guy who plays the hero (and should absolutely be dead considering something that happens earlier) takes out the creature. Cool scene.

IT FEEDS (2025)



This is a very formulaic movie about a dark entity that uses the living as a host, so it’s kind of a possession movie, but not the girl-tied-to-a-bed-screwing-a-crucifix type of possession. It has a very PG-13 feel, as if it’s meant to make tweens squeal and giggle at a sleepover, from generic jump scares to lots of shadowy, dark atmosphere at times when frightened characters could just, you know, turn on a fucking light.

The plot is kind of original. A therapist uses her powers of clairvoyance to help patients work through their trauma. Awesome.

When a girl comes asking for help because she’s being terrorize by an evil entity, her father, played by cutie Shawn Ashmore, tries to put a stop to it because he believes there’s no help to be had.

The psychic’s daughter thinks otherwise. She’s sure her mother can help, so she pursues the girl. This totally backfires, and the entity ends up attaching itself to her. Unfortunately, Shawn is determined to kill this entity, so now he’s after the psychic’s daughter.

The freakiest part of the film for me is when the psychic’s daughter is buried alive in a casket…with the entity inside. Eek!

Things go off the rails when the film pulls an Insidious, with the psychic and her daughter battling the entity on a different plane of existence. If you’re a big fan of movies similar to that franchise, you should definitely check this one out.

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Popeye’s Revenge continues with 3 sequels

Posted on August 21, 2026 by Daniel

Yep, the slasher Popeye’s Revenge, which already sounds like the title of a sequel but isn’t, gets three sequels in one year, and what they lack in story, they make up for in death scenes.

POPEYE RETURNS (2026)

The first sequel takes place at a summer camp, and I guess the victims are all camp counselors before the place opens, for there are no children at all.

After an opening kill, we get a montage of all the kills from the first movie.

Then we learn Popeye has escaped a military facility and needs to be recaptured so he can be further studied, along with the serum that messed with him. Classic names from the cartoon are worked into the dialogue: Bluto, Olive (no Oyl), Sea Hag…

This turns into Friday the 13th with Popeye. We meet the camp counselors, a weird old dude tries to warn them away, and then they spend good chunks of the movie roaming around the woods with flashlights before getting hacked up. There’s also a character from the first movie (played by a different actor) seeking revenge on Popeye for what he did the first time around.

The practical effects are the highlight, because there’s not much of a plot. In the end, the men from the military lab recapture Popeye, leaving the movie “to be continued”.


I get it. Pop eye.

After writing this, I went back and read my post about Popeye’s Revenge to refresh my memory, and I seriously wrote so many of the same things about that film that I did about this one.

POPEYE 3: REQUIEM (2026)

The third film picks up right where the second one left off. Popeye, the team working for the military lab, the surviving camp counselors, and the dude seeking revenge all end up at the lab.

Would you believe Popeye breaks free and now they all have to try to escape the lab before he kills them?

That’s it. That’s the plot. There’s more carnage as Popeye hunts down the cast and they try to stop him. They end up in the woods again as more mist rolls in.

Popeye’s sister Olive (so much for her being his girlfriend) is mentioned as having been a mutant as well, so I’m hoping maybe there’s a killer Olive Oyl in the next movie. I guess I’m about to find out.

POPEYE 4: RESURRECTION (2026)

I found out. The movie begins with a girl getting slashed in the woods by a figure in silhouette that looks like Olive Oyl. Turns out it is her, although she’s only referred to as Olive.

The main girl from the last two movies is also back. She’s caring for a dude whose brother died in the previous movie. She has several nightmare sequences deliver some bogus slasher scenes since Popeye isn’t available to do the slashing himself.

You see, Olive is the leader of a cult that needs the main girl to resurrect Popeye. There’s gore, but there aren’t as many kills, and there’s a lot less Popeye.

This movie mostly isn’t about Popeye…except in those nightmare sequences. And in the last 15 minutes. Popeye is successfully resurrected and gets his chance to do some slashing then, but it’s the main girl who really gets her revenge this time around.

This franchise definitely doesn’t need another sequel, but that’s never stopped any franchise before.

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