Tag Archives: Slasher

Murdercise (2023)

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“All those girls out there are perverts, strippers and communists!”

It’s amazing that Kansas Bowling isn’t a bigger star. She’s become one of the most recurring faces in indie and horror film, only really appearing every so often to deliver some of the most hilarious characters put to screen. Working with Paul Ragsdale again, Bowling delivers a fun take on a character that’s not so much a villain and not so much a hero, but is just someone dealing with their own insanity. Director Ragsdale delivers a silly nonsensical horror comedy that’s centered on the Reagan-era aesthetic to where even Bowling’s main character is an uptight Reagan fan.

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Child’s Play (2019): Collector’s Edition [4K UHD/Blu-Ray]

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Now Available from Scream Factory.

I will die on the hill that “Child’s Play” from Lars Klevberg isn’t just a good remake, but it’s also a great one. Sure, it’s a last ditch effort from the studio to keep the “Child’s Play” license, but it’s also a damn good re-imagining of the concept that fixes the entire premise in to more modern times. And while the original film did address complex ideas about mental illness and Andy’s inherent loneliness from being what used to be described as a “latch key kid,” Klevberg’s remake is all about genetics, and whether our violent natures can be by nature or nurture.

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Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

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Director Zelda Williams and Diablo Cody’s “Lisa Frankenstein” doesn’t just wear its influences on its sleeves, it bedazzles those influences and flashes its sleeves around proudly. “Lisa Frankenstein” watches as if Diablo Cody pitched: “Remember “Edward Scissorhands”? What if “Edward Scissorhands” but in the 80’s?” All the cards are set up from minute one, from the Gothic animated opening sequence, and the pastel photography, while Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse do their very best Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp impersonations.

Mix in “Heathers,” “My Boyfriend’s Back,” and “Warm Bodies” and we’re given what is essentially a ton of talent with no place to go.

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Departing Seniors (2024)

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In Select Theaters & VOD/Digital on February 2nd.

Director Clare Cooney’s “Departing Seniors” is an ode to the classic giallo pictures of the seventies where someone is having psychic visions of a lurking masked killer. This masked killer though is lurking inside and around a high school, while the protagonist is a young man who is grappling with his own trauma involving his sexuality. While I give big respect to Joe Nateras for writing a movie that evokes the giallo pictures of the seventies, “Departing Seniors” misses on every other front. It’s a horror comedy that completely fails to keep its eye on the ball, centering so much more around teen drama and forgetting that it’s also supposed to be a horror movie.

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POV (2023)

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Currently Screening in Various Festivals.

I believe it was Veruca Salt who said, and I paraphrase: I want a feature film version of “POV.” I want one, I don’t care how, but I want it now. “POV” is probably one of the very first horror based vigilante movies I’ve ever seen and it’s teeming with so much potential to build on this world and expand it in to something dark, twisted, and just downright bad ass. From director Brian K. Rosenthal (of “Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness”), “POV” is such a great film that has a pretty excellent concept behind it.

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Thanksgiving (2023)

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Back in 2007 after the collaborative efforts of Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez known as “Grindhouse” flopped, one of the popular elements of the double feature that lingered on was the mock trailers during intermission. After delivering a very popular faux trailer with “Thanksgiving,” director Eli Roth finally gives us what we’ve been begging for almost twenty years later. Thankfully while the whole faux grindhouse aesthetic has fallen out of favor with mainstream cinema, “Thanksgiving” ends as a pretty great slasher film with its own merits to offer the horror genre.

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