Category Archives: Movie Reviews

The Witch in the Window (2018) [Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival 2018]

Posted on by

A divorced father takes his son to a house he’s bought to renovate and reconnect. As they work on the house, something there is showing itself, adding a few layers of fear and oddity to what is already going on.

Writer/director Andy Mitton takes themes of connection, family, letting go, and even grief and mixes them with his own personal take on the haunted house tropes. As the viewer follows along, the film takes these tropes and makes them their own while also not fully committing to being a haunted house film. The film feels more like a psychological film than a straight up scary one.

Continue reading →

Bad Apples (2018)

Posted on by

Truthfully, “Bad Apples” isn’t a terrible movie even when you consider it’s a shameless rip off of “The Strangers.” It just obviously has a paper thin premise and not much else to do but pad the time. The movie is ninety minutes long and for twenty of those minutes it feels like a relationship drama set on Halloween starring Brea Grant and Graham Skipper as married couple Ella and Robert. She’s trying to adjust to her new house, he’s working his new job, and she’s trying to teach at a school run by an overly religious principal, oh the hilarity. Then it decides to dip in to the horror–eventually.

Continue reading →

ATM (2012)

Posted on by

There are two kinds of survival thrillers I place in separate categories. There’s the “They’re completely fucked” films like “Open Water” and “Alive” where their situation is hopeless. Then there’s the “Calm Down and You Might Survive” category with titles like “Frozen” and “47 Meters Down” where if people just relaxed and displayed some kind of common sense, they could make it. “ATM” is in the latter category where if these three moronic characters would just stop and think for a moment, they could have actually made it through the poor man’s Jigsaw without many battle wounds.

Continue reading →

Dead of Night (1977)

Posted on by

Once upon a time TV movies were an event. They meant something. They were used sporadically during the year for various networks as a means of attracting big ratings. Once upon a time TV used TV movies as a means of competing with theaters, and ever since that’s become something of a lost medium. Even when I was a kid, the nineties were filled with TV movies both of the Stephen King multi-night variety, and occasional biblical epics, and or science fiction epics like “Taken,” or “Noah.” It was an interesting time. “Dead of Night” is one of the various TV movies that’s gone from TV movie to well acclaimed horror movie, and that might be because of Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson.

Continue reading →

The Darkness (2016)

Posted on by

I’ve yet to be impressed by anything that Greg McLean has done in cinema and he meets my expectations with “The Darkness.” Though it’s defined as a horror movie, I’d be hesitant to call it that since the horror genre’s veneer is so thin. “The Darkness” is really more of a painfully awkward drama about a dysfunctional family who put up with one another more than loves each other. In the prologue they seem to like one another just fine, but when we see them in their own surroundings, we’re introduced to petulant, obnoxious, rude, and self destructive people with no clear reason for being so dysfunctional beyond it being a good pit stop before the weak scares.

Continue reading →

The Man in the Iron Mask (1998): 20th Anniversary Edition [Blu-Ray]

Posted on by

Alexandre Dumas’ “The Man in the Iron Mask” is based around one of the most interesting mysteries of all time. The man in the iron mask is an enduring mystery to this day left to whispers and heavy speculation, but the movie from Randall Wallace never actually broaches much of that mystery. In fact, “The Man in the Iron Mask” treads lightly among the 1851 novel’s themes and narrative, in place of what is a mediocre, unfocused movie that is much too long in the tooth.

Continue reading →

Tales From The Crypt/Vault Of Horror: Double Feature [Blu-ray]

Posted on by

It makes sense that Shout Factory would package “Tales from the Crypt” with “Vault of Horror” since both horror films are essentially a part of the same universe, and are adapted from the genius EC Comics brand. In “Vault of Horror” you can even see one of the characters sit beside a stack of EC Comics while turning to continue reading a “Tales from the Crypt” novel. It’s a good thing too since both films are stellar horror anthologies, practicing the tradition of EC Comics’ storytelling formula that involves revenge, irony, plot twists, and turning the tables on characters at every turn. If you can spare the time, these films deserve to be viewed as a double bill, because it’s a master class of storytelling and creeps.

Continue reading →