Black Pumpkin (2018)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Felix Vasquez

I could definitely picture re-watching Ryan McGonagle’s “Black Pumpkin” down the line. If anything it’s so bathed in Halloween ephemera that it’s a decent bit of background sounds for the respective Halloween geek. What holds it back though is that there seems to be so much behind the narrative that we’re not informed on, thus there feels like a big chunk of the intend narrative is either cut out or missing. That’s due to the fact that “Black Pumpkin” is technically a sequel to the 2016 movie “Bloody Bobby,” later-released in 2021 as “The Legend of Fall Creek.”

So, it’s a sequel—kind of. But not really…?

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Pumpkins (2018)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Felix Vasquez

Director Maria Lee Metheringham’s “Pumpkins” is a film that would have worked so much better as a short form segment in an anthology horror film. As a feature length film, it falls painfully flat. Everything that needs to be resolved about the narrative is literally resolved in the first half hour. Everything else is merely filler that transforms what could have been an interesting revenge tale in to another slasher film.

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Natty Knocks (2023)

Posted on October 12, 2023 by Felix Vasquez

With these indie horror films set during the Autumn or Halloween, the filmmakers often tend to forget that Halloween should be a spice, not the main ingredient. Dwight Little who is mostly famed for delivering “Halloween 4” give us a movie that is in essence a Halloween movie. And it’s a Halloween movie with a pale faced villain. But it’s not a movie with a certain pale faced villain because, you know, copyright and all that. What could have been a great Halloween flavored horror movie is essentially just a chore to sit through.

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Barbarian (2022)

Posted on October 12, 2023 by Felix Vasquez

Director Zach Cregger’s horror dark comedy is one of the most unpredictable horror movies I’ve seen in years. After missing it in 2022 due to… circumstances, I’m glad I finally went in to it as blind as humanly possible. It’s a good thing to go in to “Barbarian” blind, because it takes the audience in to twists, turns, and spirals that they simply will not see coming. It begins as one kind of movie, turns in to another kind of movie, and then doesn’t stop shedding its skin to become a completely different kind of beast.

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Five Movies to Look Out for at The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2023

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Felix Vasquez

For the eighth straight year the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival comes to New York City to debut and celebrate a slew of horror films, from the independents to the masters. The Festival runs from October 12^th through October 19th with all screenings held at Nitehawk Cinema’s Williamsburg and Prospect Park locations. This year, the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival is placing an emphasis on J Horror with tributes to Hideo Nakata and what became a sub-genre.

Here are five films on the schedule I’m looking forward to.

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Dear David (2023)

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Felix Vasquez

In 2017, a weird ARG by the name of “Dear David” popped up online that became an instant viral sensation. It was the timeline of Buzzfeed cartoonist Adam Ellis who was documenting the supposed haunting of his apartment by a small disfigured boy. What began as a series of tweets and fuzzy pictures of unusual shapes hiding in the crevices of his one bedroom apartment slowly escalated in to horrifying taunts, and nightly visits as the apparent apparition became bolder and began to drive David to the brink of madness. “Dear David” is an okay adaptation of the original viral thread, and while it’s by no means a home run of a horror film, it works in rare instances as a tech based thriller.

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