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.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

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.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Leave a comment

2 found footage flicks and a true crime mockumentary

Posted on August 18, 2026 by Daniel

For me, this was a case of two out of three weren’t bad, but which two? Let’s find out.

THE STICKMAN’S HOLLOW (2024)

This refreshing take on found footage films is broken into four separate tales based around the same mysterious force in the woods and the presence of a stick figure in each case. I found parts of it quite creepy.

Part 1

A father, mother, and their son are out camping when they encounter an evil being. We don’t see the physical form of the attacker, but there’s a very effective scene in their tent.

Part 2

A priest and his assistant arrive at a house where a child is believed to be possessed. It’s not what happens in the house that’s eerie. Imagine encountering Regan from The Exorcist on a rural road. Eek!

Part 3

This is an extremely short segment about a woman and man rowing a boat to an island that was an ancient place of worship and finding fresh, disturbing signs of occult rituals.

Part 4

This final tale runs longer than the rest, and it’s a slow build to a strong and freaky finale. A woman heads into the woods where she lost her family after reports of a feral child running around…a child she believes could be one of her relatives. Exploration of the forest leads to a crawling being in tight tunnels, and it is definitely the most effective sequence in the movie for me.

STRANGE HARVEST (2024)

This movie is structured like a true crime docudrama, and it’s damn convincing. However, it is in no way an action or scare-filled horror flick, so it might bore those who aren’t satisfied with just unsettling tone and atmosphere.

It does, however, deliver on some really gruesome crime scene imagery.

The movie is comprised entirely of interviews with detectives, witnesses, and survivors, and features some found footage style clips of detectives examining the scenes of the super disturbing murders.

Like, truly disturbing, and often described in great detail by the experts being interviewed.

Along the way, suspects are questioned, there’s an investigation into the meaning behind a symbol found at every murder scene, and eventually the killer is identified and hunted down.

There’s almost something disappointing about the movie delivering a definitive conclusion after it builds such a sinister and mysterious serial killer story.

STRAWSTALKER (2026)



This found footage flick fails to be scary, right up until the end.

A straight influencer couple films the experience of moving into a new home. The guy is cute, likes to get naked for the camera, and seems a little gay.

I especially enjoyed his appreciation of his own nipples.

We occasionally see a figure passing by the couple’s windows, they find a scarecrow in the bushes by their pool (and just leave it there on a lounge chair), and then the guy begins noticing some strange things occurring around the house.

Eventually, they have a party, and the scarecrow comes out to play, but this isn’t a found footage scarecrow slasher. It veers off into cult territory, and it is an absolutely lackluster experience. There was potential for something eerie to unfold, but unfortunately, the entire plot feels totally underdeveloped, and a found footage film with a cult conclusion is very cliché.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Kicking off the holidays early

Posted on August 13, 2026 by Daniel

What better way to begin getting ready for Halloween early than with a couple of Halloween horror flicks to put me in the mood? And if Hallmark can do Christmas in July, I can do Christmas horror in August, so let’s get into these three seasonal horror flicks from my latest movie marathon.

4 HALLOWEEN (2023)



This little 68-minute indie is loaded with Halloween style and grisly gore, but it lacks a cohesive narrative. Hell, I don’t even know if there was a script. The IMDb blurb describing it as four characters crossing paths with different stories on Halloween night doesn’t clear things up. It felt to me like there might be more than four “stories” here, but I could be wrong. This is what I could make of it.

After a cozy opener filled with Halloween décor and what looks like a camera panning over someone’s horror collection (like I do when I film my videos in my Dan cave), the tone immediately changes. Drastically.

It’s gruesome but intriguing. Some dude starts dissecting a young, shirtless pretty boy…while wearing just a mask and an apron. WTF?

I wish his story was more developed, because all we get is him mutilating a few people and removing his mask to reveal that he’s deformed.

Next, a dude gets invited to a Halloween party, and for some reason, both his voice and that of the person on the other line sound like they were synthesized by AI. He then goes to a costume shop and befriends an old lady who reveals she’s a real witch in a cheap witch costume.

The longest story is hard to follow, but I think demonic pizza parlor workers are delivering killer pizzas to customers. Pizzas that look like they were made with Play-Doh.

Next, we get a rip-off of Trick ‘r Treat, with a woman being terrorized by a Sam clone.

Finally, we get a guy on the street at night being terrorized by a clown and then encountering a spaceship.

Like I said, I didn’t understand any of it, but I can see a lot of effort and creativity was put into producing it and capturing the holiday vibe.

THE BOY FROM BELOW (2026)



Summing this one up, I’d describe it like this: A masked killer targets a lesbian video store employee on Halloween. Unfortunately, my summary is more clear-cut and compelling than the actual movie.

The film is deeply linked in various ways to The Wicked One, another Halloween slasher by the same director, yet even though this one has a bigger budget and familiar horror faces, I actually prefer the low-budget grit of his earlier Halloween slasher.

The film begins on Halloween 1973. A young man kills his family. All but one of them. Just a little clarification before you watch this film—I initially thought the killer and the survivor were both girls of members of Hanson, but they’re both just boys with long hair.

Anyway, years later, the movie moves into nostalgia territory. Dee Wallace and her granddaughter, the main girl, run a video store. They chat about Halloween and horror movies, and in a meta movie moment, Dee references a few horror movies she’s actually starred in.


When you lend a hand in your own murder…

The main girl and her friends go to a “grave rave” where Felissa Rose is bartending and everyone is celebrating a b-movie scream queen murdered in town years before (yes, in the opening scene).

The kid who did the killing at the beginning of the movie is back. He’s mostly a basic, mean-looking redneck type, but he does wear a scarecrow-like mask to kill.

He digs up the dead scream queen, and despite her being decomposed, the wooden box in which she’s buried is in great shape. Not to mention, she looks pretty good for an almost 30-year-old corpse. Weird. And that’s the last we see of her body.

The killer goes on a killing spree, and there are some nice and bloody practical effects. But the plot doesn’t take place at the grave rave. The main characters instead leave the party and rent a bunch of horror movies, after which things just kind of meander aimlessly.

Dee gets a scene reminiscent of her encounter with Michael Myers in Rob Zombie’s Halloween, and it’s perhaps one of the best scenes in this movie.

There’s also a lesbian love scene, and the lesbians become the final girls, which is refreshing. However, overall, the plot is all over the place, and despite some good kills and good atmosphere, it falls flat in terms of the Halloween vibe, scares, and suspense.

KRAMPUS IN SPACE (2026)



If this 78-minute movie has one thing going for it, it doesn’t look as cheap as the title would have you think it’s going to be. It’s even rather atmospheric for a movie that takes place on just a few minimalistic sets. The real problem is that it’s just not all that interesting or exciting.

The cheesiest effects feature a spaceship approaching a floating structure in a scene that looks like something out of the original Battlestar Galactica TV show.

Those on the spaceship board the structure, find a big box, and decide to take it with them.

Turns out Krampus is in that box. One of the crew members, a woman who puts up a little Christmas tree and seems like the only one that cares about the holiday, believes that they have actually brought a demon onto their ship that was sent into space by the Three Wisemen. That and Krampus wearing a red coat are about as festive as this visually drab film gets.

The plot mostly consists of each crew member having nightmares or delusions of encounters with Krampus, who just stands still and makes them feel guilty about past sins. That’s pretty much the whole plot. Krampus just doesn’t seem to have the energy in this one to deliver any real horror or satisfying kills.

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Kicking off the holidays early

Home invasion revenge, an urban horror comeback, and a Suspiria homage

Posted on August 7, 2026 by Daniel

There simply wasn’t a satisfying horror experience to be had in my latest trio of selections from my streaming watchlists. Let’s find out why.

PRANK NIGHT (2026)



I watched this one because horror queen Katharine Isabelle is in it, but there are two problems: A) it’s more a home invasion thriller than a horror film, and B) Isabelle doesn’t appear in the movie much.

So, our main girl comes home to stay with her dad and stepmom (Isabelle). The casting is weird here, because the main girl looks like she could be Isabelle’s biological daughter. Not to mention, her best friend looks like she’s cosplaying as Isabelle in Ginger Snaps.

So while the main girl goes out with her friend, home invaders break into the house and shoot her parents.

Our main girl decides to take justice into her own hands. Conveniently, she is able to track the baddies down and begins preparing with a cute trainer to go after them. Sigh.

Before she gets home invasion revenge, we get some character development. The main girl fights with her friend, and the leader of the baddies demonstrates that he is an abusive asshole. Shocker, I know.

There’s nothing scary about the main girl sneaking into the house of the baddies, and the final act isn’t very suspenseful, but there are some bloody kills. However, the final scene of the leader of the baddies coming back for more like he’s some unstoppable killer made me laugh.

PUZZLED LITERATURE (2026)



This film is about as low budget as it gets, and it seems determined to bring back the “urban horror” label while failing to deliver even one standup Black character. I wasn’t going to bother watching the whole thing, but I did, and now I will totally spoil it.

For starters, they have had no way to adjust the volume of the dialogue in post-production, because you can’t hear anything anyone is saying, so you have to either turn the volume way up or turn on the subtitles.

There are two positive aspects to the film that I’ll mention immediately. First, we at least get a shirtless guy in the opener. And second, the killer’s mask is freaky.

The story is about a dude who was just released from prison. His girl gives him a surprise birthday party. We get at least 3 hip hop partying montages in which they talk about booze, drugs, and hoes, and throw the N word around, and then the girlfriend gives the main guy a total ho dance…in front of all his friends. Doesn’t every girl do that for all her boyfriend’s friends on his birthday?

Then they go on a weekend getaway trip. They literally call it a weekend getaway trip. Does anyone actually call it that in real life? I thought it was just used in horror movie blurbs.

Anyway, there’s another hip hop montage at the house in the woods, a long game of truth or dare, and then the main guy has a meltdown, so it comes as no surprise who’s behind the mask when the kills begin 35 minutes in, with the weapon of choice predominantly being an arsenal of guns. Yawn. The killer also leaves poorly written poetry as a calling card, so at least the writing doesn’t try to outshine the script.

After killing a few people, the killer eventually ties up all his friends and we are bombarded by flashbacks and a monologue that reveal why he targeted these awful people. After that, the movie ends on a cliffhanger and a promise of “to be continued”. If it is continued, I won’t be watching.

SATURNALIA (2025)

This movie is basically a love letter to Suspiria, but that’s all it has going for it. It includes plenty of echoes of that film and its style, but it simply fails to grab you by the throat or deliver the icy cold sequences that made the Dario Argento film a classic.

The opener is so promising. A teen girl tries to sneak out of her boarding school at night. The setting looks just like Argento, and once she makes it outside, a masked figure wearing a white mask hangs her with a wire, which seems like a nod to Argento’s Trauma.

Next, our main girl is dropped off at school by a creepy taxi driver who offers her a cryptic warning. She then meets all the mean girls at the school and the evil head mistress, as well as a teen boy who is there because, well, I don’t know why. I must have missed a line of dialogue that explains it.

Anyway, the main girl has trippy nightmares, is tormented by the mean girls, and is terrorized by the head mistress. So much of this movie takes place around the dinner table and lingers on the idea of eating and body size.

The main girl also plays Nancy Drew, to unfold a mystery about her parents that simply isn’t all that compelling.

It’s 51 minutes before the first victim is murdered, and once again, the film doesn’t live up to the kind of horror Argento delivers. The few kills we get are very basic and disappointing.

The reveal at the end is not much of a surprise, and it makes this feel like it’s just a simple rehash of Suspiria. If you’re going to pay homage to the Italian horror master, you simply have to give it your own spin in the process and not make a film that pales in comparison to the movie you want to celebrate.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Home invasion revenge, an urban horror comeback, and a Suspiria homage

More demented Disney

Posted on August 4, 2026 by Daniel

The gore is great, but are these dark adaptations any good? Let’s find out.

BAMBI: THE RECKONING (2025)



This is how you do a horror retelling of a classic—an animated, narrated, storybook intro in which we get the tragic history of Bambi losing his mother…before humans come and dump toxic waste in the woods. Return of the Living Bambi’s Mother? No. Unfortunately, the container of toxic waste doesn’t reanimate her, which would have been an even cooler twist. But we do get a mutated version of Bambi, who is out for revenge.

This movie is all about the CGI toxic Bambi. Forget the attempts at any character development, especially since there are not really any characters worth developing.

Stuck on the road at night, a mother and son hitch a ride, and within minutes, Bambi attacks the car and kills the driver.

Meanwhile, we meet a family that seems to live in the middle of nowhere, which is just great for the grandmother suffering dementia, who gets to go on endless nature walks.

So, what’s the story? Toxic Bambi goes on a rampage, busting into the house, chasing the family in their RV as they try to escape, and tearing apart anyone that dares to venture into the woods.

It’s gory, it’s silly CGI fun, Thumper makes an appearance (with all his toxic bunny buddies), and the mom and son eventually have to save the day.

WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY 2 (2024)



The Pooh is back, and he’s brought more freaky friends, more brutality and blood…and a different actor as Christopher Robin.

The animated intro reminds us of the backstory—Pooh and pals were jilted when CR went away, and they got their revenge in the first movie.

Turns out CR almost took the fall for their massacre. He’s in therapy now as a result, but Pooh and pals want to make him even more miserable by targeting his family. Along with Piglet, Pooh is joined by Owl, who is absolutely ominous and feels more like the ringleader, and Tigger, who makes only a brief appearance.

Along with a good sequence when they break into CR’s home, they also target hunters, cops, a rave…this movie gets increasingly vicious and gruesome. The body count is large, and the death scenes are so satisfying.

Is there a story? Yep. CR discovers how his animal friends turned into these humanesque-killers, and just when he gets his own revenge and absolutely mutilates all of them, we discover that even when totally ripped to shreds, these killers can regenerate for another sequel…. if it’s as vicious as this sequel is, I’m totally here for it.

PETER PAN’S NEVERLAND NIGHTMARE (2025)



Of all the horror-fied versions of Disney classics and fairytale favorites I’ve seen, this one is the absolute biggest disappointment to me.

The animate backstory opener about Neverland, where boys never have to grow up, features Peter Pan as we know and love him, in his little green outfit.

That’s not what we get in reality. Peter Pan starts off looking like a mime, hijacks Pennywise’s shtick when he pops up from a trapdoor and tries to lure a boy to come with him (he even has a red balloon at one point), and eventually wears a mask, at which point he comes across like nothing more than the usual slasher movie killer. The whole time, he’s no boy. He’s a grown man, which makes his interactions with young boys quite icky.

We also get Tinker Bell. Does she have wings? No. Is she a fairy? No. She looks like a poverty-stricken older woman who could be Peter Pan’s mother or a woman suffering from dementia in one of those trauma porn horror flicks that are all the rage these days.

The plot has Wendy Darling’s brother being kidnapped by Peter and Tinker, and it’s up to her to hunt them down and save him. There are some okay kills along the way, but this is mostly a very generic film. The horror highlights include Peter Pan turning against Tinker Bell with gory results, and the brutal battle between Wendy and Peter Pan.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on More demented Disney

Found footage ghosts, possession, and a Valentine’s stalker

Posted on July 29, 2026 by Daniel

If found footage is your comfort horror, you might like a couple of these, but they are all very derivative, so if you’re looking for found footage that brings something new to the table, you’ll be let down. However, this trio does deliver one flick for the does the gay guy die? page and one for the holiday horror page.

RABISU (2026)



it’s just another found footage flick about ghost hunters trapped in a haunted building. This time it’s a warehouse, and the ghost hunters are in search of an urn rumored to hold the soul of a djinn.

They get to their destination, they explore, the gay guy on the team plays Bang, Marry, Kill with one of the girls.

Not surprisingly, The Rock lookalike from Curse of Crom scores the coveted bang option each time…

And then 30 minutes in, he gets possessed and does some head-bashing with a hammer. The film goes into Evil Dead mode, minus gnarly Deadites. The most we get is some black eyes and occasional demonic voices.

The group runs through dark rooms, the camera bounces around, more cast members become possessed, the body count rises (with some minor gore), and in the end, one girl finally gets to meet the actual demon very briefly.

Unfortunately, that final reveal isn’t enough to make the grand finale grand. It’s very underwhelming.

DREAM EATER (2025)



This is a possession movie, but the way the found footage is presented, it feels mostly like a Paranormal Activity movie, with a majority of the tension focusing on things that go bump in the night.

A straight couple heads to a cabin in the woods because the man is a chronic sleepwalker. Sleepwalking is creepy enough in your own house in the suburbs, so why not go to a totally isolated cabin where you’re all alone?

Better yet, why not film every moment of your partner’s sleepwalking…in the dark with night vision light? Like, seriously, sleepwalking can be dangerous, especially in an unfamiliar place, so these dumb asses turn off every light when they go to bed and then she chases him around in the dark with a camera each night. Sigh.

Thanks to modern technology, they video chat with a therapist, she video chats with an expert who thinks her man is possessed, and she manages to do a deep dive into the disturbing past of her man’s birth parents (he was adopted).

They argue a lot, they go out in the snow during the day, he manages to sneak off and sleepwalk without her knowing, which is when he becomes possessed, and then he begins acting feral.

The visuals and the atmosphere are eerie enough–it’s always dark, so why wouldn’t they be?—but this is as basic as a found footage film gets, right down to her eventually finding him standing in a dark, shadowy corner with his back to her. At least this time the found footage trope gets an upgrade; he’s naked. Yay!

The highlights include a brief glimpse at the demon, the tragic way the woman has to put an end to the madness, and the cheesy final frame scare.

BE MY VALENTINE (2026)



This 64-minute movie is about an obsessed woman who stalks a dude she encountered at a coffee shop and makes a video diary about the romantic relationship that they don’t actually have as she counts down the days until Valentine’s Day.

The main actress plays a great psycho, but despite its short runtime, the movie just doesn’t go anywhere. There are two instances when her jealousy or protective instincts lead her to kill people, but don’t expect to see much in the way of murders…or even bodies. It’s mostly implied kills.

That doesn’t leave us with a lot to work with in terms of horror. She does abduct the guy she’s stalking in the final act on Valentine’s Day, and there is some stabbing, but it’s nothing major and there’s no suspense or tension involved.

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Comments Off on Found footage ghosts, possession, and a Valentine’s stalker

Zombie overload!

Posted on July 23, 2026 by Daniel

I thought of splitting these six into two separate posts, but I decided I’d get them all out of the way in one shot since they are the only zombie flicks in my watchlists. Now I can take a zombreak and move on to other subgenres. So, were there any winners in this zombatch, or was it the same old same old?

THIS IS NOT A TEST (2025)

It’s not a test, and it’s also almost not a zombie movie. Despite an intense opener, this film focuses more on human trauma rather than hungry zombies for a majority of its runtime.

Note that there are signs of it being Christmastime, but the holiday is never mentioned and has no bearing on the plot.

We quickly learn that our main girl has an abusive father. In the midst of him being a dick to her, they hear a ruckus outside. Zombies! Really fast zombies.

The main girl escapes and joins several other teens at the local high school, where they barricade themselves in. We then get flashbacks showing the kind of home life the main girl had. Her older sister escaped their abusive father and promised to come back for her.

ZomBreakfast Club moment

Eventually, the kids find a teacher, played by cutie Luke Macfarlane, hiding in the school. This is the key to the infection getting inside. But don’t expect zombie hordes. There’s barely even one. Sigh.

Any tragic plot points involving the characters are totally cliché, as is what the main girl discovers when she manages to make her way back to her older sister. It’s predictable. It’s slow. There are very few zombies. Choose wisely.

WE BURY THE DEAD (2024)



I really can’t even comprehend how zombie movie fans are supposed to process this bland film.

We immediately learn of a tragedy in Tasmania that caused mass deaths. Rey from the third Star Wars trilogy joins some sort of aid group that heads there to clean up bodies in hopes of finding her missing husband alive.

This is where things get weird. Some of the dead have come back to life, apparently it’s a known fact, and they just sort of stand around like mindless, well, zombies.

After encountering one in broad daylight, which is creepy even though the zombie doesn’t move, Rey becomes convinced they still have perception and that maybe her husband is one and can be saved.

She travels through Tasmania, occasionally encountering an immobile zombie, including one who looks like she’s applied makeup for an 80s dance party—or an 80s zombie movie.

A hot military guy shows up at some point, and Rey joins forces with him, but it soon becomes clear he has lost his mind. It’s a bizarre sequence, but perhaps one of the most exciting parts of this virtually zombie-free zombie movie.

But don’t despair. Some zombies do finally come alive, and the best scene involves a top-down view of a zombie chasing Rey being through a bus. Eek!

It just gets stranger from there. Things don’t go as Rey hoped with her husband (shocker), and the film ends with a scene that I think involves a zombie that gave birth to a baby out on the street. I wasn’t paying enough attention by that point to fully understand what I was watching.

SILENT ZONE (2025)

A hunky leading man, a muscular alpha zombie, some fast-paced battle scenes, and “borrowing” of the iconic 28 Weeks Later score aren’t enough to mask the fact this this 2-hour movie runs way too long and is riddled with every trope that has been overused in zombie films ever since the popularity of The Walking Dead.

The movie begins with news reports of the pandemic, complete with a guy saying “fake news”…while wearing a mask. Talk about historical inaccuracy.

The opener of a mother trying to escape the outbreak with her young children rocks, especially when her little son gets eaten, as does she. Her young daughter is rescued by our leading man…and then we flash forward to them surviving the aftermath several years later in the middle of nowhere.

The teen and hunk begin encountering various survivors and engage in some major battles with zombies. They finally join forces with a straight couple that is headed for some sort of safe zone. The wife is pregnant, adding to their challenges.

The plot points are predictable, including someone being bitten but keeping it secret, a mad scientist with evil plans for them, and our main characters unintentionally leading zombies right to a community of survivors.

The movie is too slow in between the exciting parts, and the ominous leading muscle zombie is underutilized, if you ask me, because he has a great onscreen presence, and, well, great muscles. And finally, I don’t quite understand the title, because it’s never established that silence has any bearing on this outbreak.

AIR SHIFT (2026)

Finally, an indie zombie movie in this batch that doesn’t attempt to have some elevated plot elements. Not to mention, it’s like Pontypool if Pontypool were actually an entertaining movie with actual zombies.

Our main girl is a DJ at an alternative radio station that is about to close down for good. Turns out there’s a uranium bed underneath the building. It also turns out that guys in hazmat suits are coming to clean up the hazardous waste on one of the last nights the DJ is working.

There also happens to be a serial killer on the loose. He shows up at her little station and takes her hostage. Imagine his confusion when zombies begin surrounding the building.


In the 80s, the struggle was real.

The main girl and serial killer have to work together to survive the mini zombie outbreak. Seems these zombies are totally into alternative music, because they never leave the radio station. Awesome. The two leads have an oddly charming chemistry and engage in light banter in between the zombie fighting, which ensures this one doesn’t become ensnared in its heavy concept. I mean, this woman is trapped with a dude who kills women and then dumps their bodies in the woods!

Naturally, a few more characters come around to provide the zombies and the killer with victims. There’s nothing in the way of gore, there are no scares, and the zombie makeup is pretty basic, but I was totally feeling the throwback vibes to early 2000s SyFy and direct-to-DVD low budget flicks.

OUTBREAK (2024)

I was concerned when I kept seeing this one labeled as a “psychological thriller” online. After watching it, I can see why some might feel the need to label it as such, but looking at the broader picture, the psychological aspect is basically a minor element. Sure, it may be the catalyst for the entire plot, but it doesn’t get in the way of the fact that there are some great, fast-paced zombie sequences that kept me highly entertained.

It takes place in a desert town, where some sort of outbreak has been affecting wildlife. Supposedly, all the locals have been vaccinated against it, but after a park ranger and local law enforcement are attacked by a “rabid” dog, the park ranger encounters a freaky, fast and strong zombie.

He gathers up his wife, who is in a horrible emotional state because their teenage son disappeared a few months ago, and he must protect her as he tries to make it safely to a friend’s house.

There are screeching, running zombies with gnarly faces, a zombie that spider crawls up a pole, and a lot of creepy, disjointed, contorting movements complete with cracking, snapping sounds. Eek!

The action is all familiar and doesn’t cover any new territory, so I assume the twist at the end is intended to make up for all the tropes. Personally, I sensed something was up all along, so I wasn’t totally surprised by the conclusion, but I sure as hell did enjoy all the zombie clichés.

BLOOD THIRSTY (2026)

Minus the 15 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage during the closing credits, this little indie clocks in at pretty much an hour long. And it doesn’t waste a moment of that time.

The opening zombie attack delivers a delicious line of dialogue when a woman calls 9-1-1 for help.

Then we meet our beefy main guy. It’s his and his girlfriend’s anniversary, but she gets called into work. While they’re chatting during a video call, someone looms at the window behind him. Creepy!

Things move fast after that. Our main guy discovers there are zombies roaming around his apartment complex. He has to fend some off, and we also get some quick flesh-eating gore. Nice.

Inevitably, the main guy has to go rescue his girlfriend at her place of employment, where there are even more zombies with mouths dripping with blood.

It’s short and simple, but it really has a great vibe. The basic settings at night actually add to the real feel of the zombies’ presence, and the acting, from both humans and zombies, doesn’t falter. This doesn’t feel like an amateur indie, and it’s the perfect little quick zombie fix flick. It also sets us up for a sequel with a new hero.

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Zombie overload!

Gays vs. aliens, gays at a cabin in the woods, and gays in a sexy Saw setting

Posted on July 21, 2026 by Daniel

It’s not every day that I find three horror flicks for a gay horror movie marathon, but here are three more to add to the homo horror movies page, so let’s get right into them.

TOUCH ME (2025)

If you’re looking for cosmic erotic alien comedy horror that’s totally modern but also irresistibly infused with a retro 80s vibe, this bizarre flick is a must-see. It’s like trauma porn on sleazy, sexualized speed. Awesome.

Our main girl and her gay bestie have to move out of their place when sewage backs up into their shower. Luckily, she reconnects with an alien dude she had sex with once, and he lets them come stay with him.

The alien holds therapy sessions around a big crystal he brought from his planet, so we learn all about the main pair’s troubled pasts. They both end up having sex with the alien while drenched in neon light, and the alien shows his true tentacled form during intercourse.

Then the film gets all mean girls…and gays. The friends become jealous of each other and turn on each other. The alien believes he can’t trust either of them and reveals his more sinister side as well—the side that eats people. Eek!

The trippy final act has plenty of gore, more neon lighting, a better look at the freaky alien form, psychosexual elements, and more humor as the friends join forces to survive. And just one thing to keep in mind—if you’re prudish about explicit sexual conversations and content, you’re missing out on so many sleazy good horror movies, television shows, and books.

SHADOWS OF WILLOW CABIN (2025)



Ugh. It’s so sad that just when we were moving towards a renaissance of gay horror that was simply horror that just happened to be about gay characters, we’ve started to backtrack into this realm of gay trauma dump movies about the “horrors” of living a gay existence.

This 111-minute movie is about an older dude who invites a younger dude to his family’s cabin in the woods. They both seem to be a bit messed in the head right from the start. Each of them has hallucinations and nightmares that deliver bogus jump scares to give us a break from the endless talk that’s determined to overdevelop the characters. No. Really. We get it. You could have cut 30 minutes out of this movie, and we still would have understood who they are, what their issues are, and how well they’re bonding.

What we learn during the heavy conversations is that the older dude is closeted and living a straight life, his family has a scandalous past riddled with queer unhappiness, and he seems to be haunted by the cabin’s history.

75 minutes in, it actually feels like there will be genuine scares, but this ends up coming across as a metaphor for a lonely closet case leaning on a stranger to escape his gay guilt through assisted suicide.

RED LIGHT (2025)



I really don’t understand how there’s a swath of gay horror fans who can both demand trigger warnings on every horror film and then praise horror films as speaking to them by tackling the kind of psychological, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse they endured for being gay growing up, yet here we are with another film doing just that.

It begins immediately with a young dude being raped by a man his partner brings home. So…trigger warning, I guess?

Then the young guy and an older man wake up in their undies in what looks like a sexy sleazy 80s backroom lit with neon lights and candles. How romantic. In true Saw fashion, neither man remembers how he got there at first.

As they get to know each other, discuss their past trauma and conversion abuse, and have sex, they are summoned one at a time to be tortured by someone in a mask. The older man keeps volunteering to be the one to go get abused to protect the younger man from it…but the younger man is forced to watch his torment on a video monitor.

There are also flashbacks of younger guys being tortured during sex conversion. Yep. Another gay trauma dump flick…with a great butt.

And in the end, this film does exactly what you’d expect it to do when it’s time for the big twist, especially considering it’s structured like a Saw film.

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Gays vs. aliens, gays at a cabin in the woods, and gays in a sexy Saw setting

A backwoods cannibal musical, mall witches, and a killer thong

Posted on July 12, 2026 by Daniel

They all sound like they should be awesome, but do they live up to their concepts? Let’s find out.

CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING (2024)

This is an Estonian language film, and I’m not going to lie; I suck at American geography, so I’ve never heard of Estonia, which I’ve now learned is a country in Northern Europe. Horror; it’s educational.

As a backwoods musical, Chainsaws Were Singing kind of feels like two different movies in tone, and it’s way too long. Trimming it down from 120 minutes would have helped the pacing, and it deserved that, because it’s actually quite entertaining, and the songs are much better than those in most low-budget horror musicals.

Having said that, the problem is that the songs don’t feel like they fit the film—at least the first half. The first hour has a fairly nasty backwoods slasher vibe, with loads of gore and a grindhouse look and feel, so the characters breaking into song feels out of place, and the musical compositions just don’t match the vibe.

The story is basic. There’s a killer with a chainsaw living in the woods with his domineering mother and several other weird family members. This includes a gay couple with dating my doppelganger syndrome, landing this not only on the screamin’ & singin’ page of horror musicals, but also on the does the gay guy die? page.

Our leads, a guy and girl, meet in the woods and fall in love…and then she gets kidnapped by the family. The rest of the movie moves between her being terrorized in the cannibalistic home and him and his friend trying to find her.

The gore is outrageous and over the top, with plenty of tasteless kills, like anal penetration with a chainsaw, a tailpipe deep throat kill that leads to an exhaust fumes fart, and a chainsaw to the penis.

All that fun comes in the second half of the film, which is when the shift in tone hits, and the campy, slapstick humor finally complements the insertion of songs. However, there are no extravagant song and dance numbers here at all.

There is, however, a gross little highlight number involving a cult of men in the woods who worship bukkake. Awesome.

Finally, there’s a full cast song near the end in which they literally sing about how all their singing is slowing down the movie and keeping them from getting to the big climax.

I liked it for what it is. I just wish there had been less of it.

FORBIDDEN FRUITS (2026)

Is it The Craft meets Mean Girls? Well, it could have been, but those two movies rule. This one…doesn’t.

I had high hopes when it opened with a girl coaxing a guy in a car parked next to hers to jerk off for her before tossing a hot drink in his lap. I assumed the movie would keep up that sort of prey on predators vibe.

Instead, it’s a movie about a group of trendy girls working at a clothes store in a mall. They’re also witches. They invite the new girl who works at the food court into their little coven.

There’s plenty of bad girl attitude, there just isn’t any bitchy camp to go along with it. This one is just bland. We get typical girl night hangouts, and a few of the girls score some sex in the changing rooms with cute guys who work in the mall—yay for man butt.

Unfortunately, there’s also not much in the way of witchcraft, but inevitably, the girls begin turning on each other when spellcasting delves into dark territory.

The best parts come at the end. All of a sudden there’s a lesbian kiss, a nasty escalator scene, a gory head split—this shit helped at the last second, but it feels like it comes from a totally different movie!

Things come to a close with a big twist, a less than positive conclusion, and a surprising appearance from Gabrielle Union all of a sudden.

KILLER THONG (2025)

With a title like this, you’d expect totally campy, sleazy fun. But no. Buried somewhere in this tedious film is a story about a girl who comes out of the closet after realizing that men in thongs gross her out.

I wasn’t grossed out, which means…thong slideshow time!

These two slices of beefcake dance at a party for a bunch of girls, after which this movie turns into Skinamarink. If you thought Skinamarink was brilliant, I’d highly advise that you watch this one, which subjects us to endless still shots of the house the story is set in, accompanied by a ticking clock and a blowing wind sound. We are talking endless filler scenes that barely propel any story forward.

So, what is the story? The main girl passes out at the party and dreams that a killer thong comes for her and her friends. Yes, a majority of this film is a dream. And no, the thong does not have teeth as it does in the poster art. But we do get killer thong POV.

Instead, it shoots electrical bolts and chokes her friends to death (in the dream) by deep throating them. The most exciting part of her trying to conquer the thong (in her dream) is when her dead friends come back momentarily as zombies.

Even the blow-up doll rendition of Munch’s The Scream seems out of place, since the movie simply is not campy enough.

75 minutes in, it does, however, jump back to the party where she fell asleep and began dreaming, so at least we get more stripper action for a climax. This one definitely earns a spot on the stud stalking page.

Posted in Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, Scared Silly - Horror Comedy, Sound Check - The Songs Stuck in My Head | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on A backwoods cannibal musical, mall witches, and a killer thong