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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Supernatural and backwoods slasher time

Posted on July 8, 2026 by Daniel

This was one underwhelming trio of films for me, but at least one of them had gay guys and hot bods, which lands it on the does the gay guy die? page. Let’s get right into them.

DARK DISTORTION (2026)



It was nice to feel like I was catapulted back to the early 2000s, direct-to-DVD, supernatural slasher era watching this one, but aside from plenty of eye candy for the gay male’s gaze, as well as a gay couple, this simply isn’t a very cohesive movie.

There’s this group of models/actors that makes money by meeting up with creepy online fans and then robbing them.

There’s also the ghost of some woman’s dead son inside a camera. And there’s a sexy sleazy dude who films pretty people having sex in order to summon the ghost inside the camera to come out and kill them. This sexy sleazy dude is this like this ghost dude’s bitch.

The plot is all over the place, there are no likable characters to connect with, the kills are underwhelming, and we never actually see the killer ghost. I repeat—we never see the damn ghost. Basically, every opportunity to make this a halfway decent flick was missed.

THE DAMNED LANDS (2024)

Take the hillbillies in animal masks backwoods horror concept and suck all the unsettling suspense out of it, and you’ve got this movie.

It opens with a redneck and his female “escort” checking out some property he bought in the middle of the woods…in the middle of the night. What better time to see your purchase, right? Anyway, the baddies kill them, so we at least know right away that the death scenes are kind of violent.

Then we meet our main group of young friends. They’re heading to that exact location to camp despite warnings they receive from locals along the way.

Soon after, we are presented with the masked baddies…talking to each other! The fear factor gone in an instant.

What follows is pretty typical stuff—a few random kills, the friends setting up camp, sitting by a fire, doing a lot of talking, etc. The only things missing are some good old fashioned, gratuitous nudity and sex.

That would have at least kept us entertained until the group is finally targeted…53 minutes into the movie! Even then, it’s just not very exciting, and when the baddies finally abduct someone, they immediately remove their masks and have a chat with their prisoner about why they are killing people.

A letdown from start to finish.

TRUCKER (2024)

We all love a psycho driver terrifying people on the road movie. Well, that isn’t this, despite the title. This is basically a backwoods, trailer home revenge slasher movie. The hillbilly banjo music used at various times throughout definitely sets the corny tone, so it’s hard to find anything frightful about this one.

We begin with a fresh take on I Know What You Did Last Summer. Dirtbags driving a car at night run a truck off the road. Some old hillbilly dude with only one good eye shows up on the scene of the crash and knocks out one of the dirtbags, and his friends all run for it. They also decide never to admit they were with the friend they left behind that night.

A year later, this dude is still missing, so the friends decide to go back to the vicinity of the accident to find him. This place is like a junkyard/trailer park. The old dude lives there, and so does the trucker they made crash. He hangs out in his trailer skinning animals to cook. Not people. Just animals. Primitive but not…you know…cannibalistic as you might expect from this type of setup.

The kids start poking around the trailer park junkyard, and the trucker, who wears an ominous mask but still fails to frighten, eventually comes out to play. And by eventually, I mean about 20 minutes before the film ends.

There is approximately one good, violent and bloody kill, but there are no suspenseful chase scenes, there are no likable characters, the old dude with one good eye is goofy, and there’s that annoying banjo music. This just isn’t much of a slasher at all.

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Trying to board a train to Busan territory

Posted on June 28, 2026 by Daniel

It feels like Asian filmmakers that delve into the zombie genre these days are often attempting to capture the familial, emotional depth of Train to Busan, as is the case with these two flicks. Did either of them pull it off? Let’s find out.

THE ELIXIR (2025)



This Indonesian film introduces us to a family that owns and runs an herbal business, but they’re all at odds with each other over whether to keep the business or sell it. On top of that, the interpersonal dysfunction runs deep among them.

Then the dad discovers a concoction that works wonders in turning back the hands of time like a fountain of youth…until the family discovers the really bad side effects in the midst of a big shouting match.

Once dad goes viral, so does everyone else, quite quickly. The zombies are gnarly looking, fast runners, have creaking joints, and make heinous sounds. As soon as the infection spreads thanks to some bloody flesh-eating, the family scatters.

The movie becomes about each separate group trying to fight their way back to each other. Luckily, they all have phones to stay in touch and cars with which they can cream zombies, yet they still get their asses kicked.

The action is high energy, but there’s not much in the way of scares, and it’s hard to care about the family for most of the movie since they didn’t even seem to like each other that much.

However, the final act is pretty devastating as they all begin to succumb to the outbreak, and there’s an absolutely intense scene in which police in gear with shields decide to attempt passing through a zombie horde, only to be swarmed instead. Eek!

ZIAM (2025)



This Thai film leans heavily into a zombies vs. action hero angle.

After reports of famine, greenhouse emissions, and climate change devastation, we learn that the apocalypse is already here.

An infected victim is brought to a hospital, and the outbreak kicks in soon after. These fast-running zombies have huge, freaky mouths and do plenty of gut munching.

Our cute main guy is a seasoned fighter, so he takes it upon himself to try to reach his girlfriend, who is a doctor in the hospital. Along the way, he runs into a young boy who decides to tag along. This kid reminded me of all the annoying, badly dubbed kids from 80s euro horror, so naturally, I loved him.

The goal becomes for our leading man to fight his way through hordes of zombies in an effort to rescue the girlfriend and get the hell out, so he taps into his martial arts skills to wipe the hospital floor with them. He also has to contend with a police force that has been ordered to kill everyone in hopes of stopping the infection from spreading.

The action is fun enough, and the zombie makeup rocks, but again, we don’t get a scary experience, and the attempts to tug at our heartstrings don’t quite succeed. Not to mention, pretty much everything about this film is cliché, and the final moments are about as close as you can get to the conclusion of pretty much every Resident Evil game without actually making a movie adaptation of a Resident Evil video game.

Despite the lack of scares and the underwhelming emotional storylines in both of these films, this makes a damn good double feature of high speed zombie fun.

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Indies from the 80s, 90s, and 00s

Posted on June 25, 2026 by Daniel

I recently scored most of these movies on Blu-ray and just tossed Mirror of Death in as a bonus in this post because it’s from the same director as Bloodspell. it was on Tubi, and I need to see and own every horror movie I somehow missed in the 1980s before I die. Ironically, I think it’s the one I had the most fun with, but it’s currently only available on out-of-print DVD and selling for ridiculous prices on the used market.

BLOODSPELL (aka: The Boy from Hell) (1988)

This is like a male version of Carrie…at an orphanage…filled with 20-something orphans It’s as bad as direct-to-video horror of the 80s gets.

The adult kids at the orphanage are pretty much a bunch of assholes (not the assholes you’d see in the kind of 80s film the two guys above look like they’d be in…), so maybe I misunderstood and it’s actually a home for troubled kids. Their housemother is wacky, and the main kid they constantly harass has anger issues.

Then a woman drops her son off there to keep him safe from his evil father. That doesn’t work out. The psycho father shows up at the orphanage and possesses his son. I totally don’t understand this movie.


No, it’s not that. It’s just a thumb.

Anyway, the possessed son starts to do awful things to the other kids (who deserve it)—like setting one on fire and luring another into a wood chipper. The main kid realizes something is up with the newcomer, but no one will listen to him.

Silliness ensues until the kids can finally draw the dad out of his son to battle him face to face, and he looks like a corpse for some reason. I think maybe the dad died during an incident that occurs earlier in the movie, and so he’s basically a ghost, but I’m not sure.

MIRROR OF DEATH (aka: Dead of Night) (1988)



I watched this on Tubi right after killing some time watching an episode of Freddy’s Nightmares from the same era, and I can definitely say this silly low budget 80s flick feels just like an episode of that show. It’s blurry, nonsensical, late 80s nostalgia, and for that reason, I kind of liked it.

It also helps that it is so ridiculous that it could only come from the direct-to-VHS era. Our main girl escapes her abusive boyfriend the same night her sister is given a book of Haitian rituals at a party. The main girl stays with the sister and her husband, finds the book, and begins doing the rituals with candles in front of a mirror.

She appears to become possessed by a seductress, so she goes out to bars and seduces, naturally. She lures guys to her sister’s place then kills them, but the kills are rather bland.

Eventually, her sister catches her burying a body in the yard, and she decides to admit she killed a bunch of men. This is where things get ridiculous. Despite the possessed main girl bashing her sister over the head with the shovel when discovered burying bodies, the sister and her husband decide they need to keep the dead bodies a secret and call in a goofy dude who is supposed to be an exorcist. They draw the demon, who appears as a doppelgänger of the main girl, out of her body to conquer it. Like, it’s literally a physical manifestation that can simply be shot. Ah. The 80s.

BLOOD SYMBOL (1992)



This one is co-directed by the director of End of the Line, a favorite movie of mine. Shooting for this one began in 1984 and was completed in 1991, the main actress left during production and was replaced by a double, which required far shots, and the audio wasn’t recorded during filming, so they had to create an audio track by guessing what the actors were saying. However, there actually isn’t that much dialogue when all is said and done.

This is definitely a low budget production with rough film quality, but it does capture the very basic vibe of 80s movies that featured a high school kid being stalked by some sort of supernatural entity. They are actually the highlight here. While it’s definitely overkill, the many stalking sequences feature tight editing and camerawork that makes it seem like this is just one long demo reel showing what the director could do if given enough money to make a better movie.

Very briefly, the story is about our main girl being stalked mostly through the halls of her school and at home by a dude who looks like a flasher with a bad complexion. This shit is like Charlie Brown, because there are virtually no adults in sight.

The main girl does some reading and learns about a cult from centuries ago that needs blood from “the chosen ones” in order to become immortal. Safe to assume she is one of the chosen ones.

There’s not much more to it than that. She interacts with a few friends and a boyfriend, there’s a totally 80s sighting of a Trapper Keeper (awesome), there’s a bit of blood, and eventually the main girl has to fight the evil low budget style. It might not hold up today, but I definitely appreciate it for the director’s potential, and I don’t think I would have been totally disappointed watching this one back in the day.

BASEMENT JACK (2009)



There’s nothing more classic than beginning a slasher with sex in a car during a rainstorm. This scene really sets up the visual aesthetic of this film, which I think is one of the highlights.

The story is about an escaped killer who murders families in their house during rainstorms. We meet plenty of side players in a town he is now targeting, plus we get a rookie cop and a young woman he sort of teams up with because her family was killed by this dude, and she wants to find him. In fact, he’s trying to find her, too.

For me, that is the part that ends up getting in the way of the fun. Despite his brooding appearance, with long, disheveled hair and psychotic eyes, the killer is just background noise to the main girl and all the trouble she’s getting in for hindering police business.

Other than that, the kill scenes are bloody and macabre, Lynn Lowry play the abusive mother of the killer in flashbacks, Tiffany Shepis has a minor role as a cop, and veteran actor Joel Brooks, who used to guest star on tons of sitcoms and played Mrs. Garrett’s son on The Facts Of Life, has a small role. One of the best parts of the film is most definitely a massacre Basement Jack pulls off at the police station.

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