The First Omen (2024)

It’s been a very long time since we’ve seen a return to Richard Donner’s original supernatural series. The original “The Omen,” which was a response to the fame of “The Exorcist” has managed to live on as a horror gem in the ilk of “The Exorcist.” It’s ripe with storytelling potential and shockingly, “The First Omen” takes us back in to this world with near perfect success. If you had told me that “The First Omen” would be a weird, creepy, and memorable horror prequel a year ago, I’d have been as skeptical as ever. I doubted that “The Omen” really had anywhere left, especially after the painfully underrated “The Awakening” in 1991.

But Arkasha Stevenson’s debut is a brutally suspenseful unfolding of the origins of not just Damien, but the plot to conceive of the antichrist.

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Bloodshot (2020)

Dave Wilson’s movie feels like one of those comic book movies made in 2003 when studios made comic book movies but were embarrassed to admit it. So they’d make their movies without giving us what the fans wanted hence a “Punisher” movie without his signature skull shirt. With “Bloodshot” what we’re getting a movie based on the somewhat obscure nineties comic, but a lot of the changes are obviously made from Sony and Vin Diesel to side step the fact he’s in a comic book movie. He looks very little like Bloodshot, doesn’t often don his signature red chest spot, and isn’t even referred to as Bloodshot.

But he’s Bloodshot! Don’t worry, all five people that loved the Valiant comics universe*!

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Festival of the Living Dead (2024)

Now Streaming Exclusively on Tubi.

The Soska Sisters hit absolute rock bottom with what is possibly one of the dumbest zombie movies released in the last few years. It’s dumb, and when you think it can’t, it finds new ways to get dumber and dumber. The Soska sisters are usually a very talented pair of directors, but with “Festival of the Living Dead,” everything wreaks of pure amateurism, but exploiting “Night of the Living Dead” for fan appeal, to the painfully stupid script, and just downright terrible acting. To make things worse, the premise and concept takes such leaps and bounds to connect to the universe of “Night of the Living Dead.”

And it’s only “Night of the Living Dead” since that’s the only movie in the series in the public domain.

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Exposure (2023)


At the moment I’m not too sure if Kris Cummins’s “Exposure” is an ARG, the start of a series, or a proof of concept, but what it is is one hell of a scary horror film. A lot of the best horror is rooted in reality and “Exposure” is one of the most realistic modern horror tales ever conceived. The idea that someone is using a digital baby monitor to terrorize or torment kids is something that happens far too often and director Cummins takes full advantage of that.

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Sting (2024)

Opens Wide in North American Theaters on April 12th.

 I’m glad that monster movies seem to be making more and more of a comeback in the last few years, and among them are director Kiah Roache-Turner’s “Sting.” Roache-Turner is an individual that’s delivered on very gritty, grindhouse flavored zombie films over the years (Any other “Wyrmwood” fans in the house?), and “Sting” is a big departure from what he typically offers the horror crowd. That’s a great thing because he proves that he can do more simplistic, stripped down and classic movie fare. “Sting” has a different aesthetic, one that’s darker, and more human based and relies a lot on the human characters to deliver on spooks and gruesome gore.

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Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

It’s pretty much confirmed with “King of the Monsters” that the producers are going for a monster universe fitted for the more general audience. Director Michael Dougherty is back in this sequel to 2014’s bold “Godzilla” that pretty much establishes the kaiju movie universe for this era. Established as “Titans” the movie monsters from the classic Godzilla movie series all make appearances in some form or another, and boy are they terrifying. While the original monsters were all pretty scary, the way that director Dougherty visualizes them is just downright mind blowing. The monsters are all specters and reapers of the apocalypse, all unmatched in their power that are back to basically reclaim the planet for themselves.

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You Have to See This! The War of the Gargantuas (1966)

Currently Streaming on: MAX, Pluto TV, and Amazon Prime Video

Something of a pseudo-sequel to the Kaiju monster movie “Frankenstein Conquers the World,” Ishirō Honda’s follow up is a movie that’s begging to be remade. It’s a great film all on its own, but there are so many scenes here that would look incredible on a modern screen, including one moment when a fisherman looks in to the deep water only to look down at the massive monster Gaira who is lurking at the very bottom. That said, “The War of the Gargantuas” is a movie that thankfully doesn’t require too much foot work from the original film to understand what’s happening. Even though the monsters Gaira and Sonda are referred to as “Frankensteins,” they’re two sides of the same coin.

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