Possessed individuals and their exorcisms resurface every now and then in the horror genre. For many reasons, nothing tops The Exorcist for me. It was so expertly done — even for its time — that it tapped into the primal fear of evil and added simple special effects for a chilling experience that has not been matched […]
A vampire, disillusioned by the monotony of an endless existence, finds solace in the arms of his estranged partner in Only Lovers Left Alive. To live forever. It’s a universal dream of nearly every human to have walked the Earth. Vampires, by virtue of their undead immortality, no longer need to concern themselves with such […]
An alien from unknown origins uses an attractive human form to lure prey to their death in Under the Skin. There seems little doubt, at least in Hollywood, that if aliens ever did inhabit our planet, their ulterior motives would be anything but pleasant for the human race. Scarlett Johansson stars as an unnamed alien […]
Two siblings, scarred by strange circumstances that resulted in the death of their parents years earlier, return to the scene of the crime in Oculus. A decade ago, Kaylie Russell (Karen Gillan) and Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) endured the wrath of their increasingly unstable and dangerous parents (Katee Sackhoff and Rory Cochrane). One fateful evening, both […]
If you keep an eye out for viral videos, you probably saw the “devil baby” video that made the rounds this past week. It was a clever and hilarious promotional prank for the new film Devil’s Due. They put an animatronic baby that looks possessed or demonic in a remote-controlled carriage and rolled it around […]
The only thing worse than a found-footage movie is a sequel to a found-footage movie that strays from the formula that defined the others. It didn’t work with Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, and it certainly fails with Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. For better or worse, the previous four films in this series […]
Remakes of classic films are usually not worth the price of admission. I am constantly annoyed about how rampant unoriginality is in Hollywood. Why create something new and exciting when there are decades of movies to remake or reinterpret? That attitude has produced a litany of bad remakes. Carrie does not quite qualify as that […]
A shy teen struggles with callous classmates and an overprotective mother until she taps into a unique — but dangerous — ability in Carrie. This is a remake of the classic 1976 horror film based on Stephen King‘s best-selling book of the same name. The story centers on social misfit Carrie White (Chloë Grace Moretz), who […]
About halfway through watching Insidious: Chapter 2, I realized exactly how to think about this subgenre of horror movies. This sequel, the original Insidious, the recent The Conjuring and so many others are really the film equivalent of a walkthrough haunted house that you might visit around Halloween in sites across the country, including transformed amusement […]
A family reunion in a remote wooded home goes totally wrong when the group falls prey to a trio of masked intruders intent on killing them all in the horror film You’re Next. Out in the deep woods, a couple are brutally murdered in their upscale vacation home, and no one is around to notice. […]
I’m a huge horror fan, and I’ve seen it all — from the excruciating drill sequence in The Gates of Hell to the comedic stylings of Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street. It takes a lot to impress me in the horror genre, so when flicks like Scream or The Cabin in the Woods […]
Great horror films are rare these days, and ghost stories are even rarer. The most memorable ghost story in recent years is The Orphanage by director J.A. Bayona and writer Sergio G. Sánchez, who were also the director and writer of last year’s The Impossible. It’s hard to get chills just right in a movie, […]