Director: Jane Schoenbrun Starring: Anna Cobb; Michael J Rogers .USA. 1h 26m
In reasponse to a slew of online challenges, either real or unreal, our children have been exposed to the horrors of Slenderman and Momo, and challenged to chuck ice water over themselves to spread awareness or apparently the comitt suicide in the blue whale challnge or wishing for death in Randomnautica, and this is only the tip of the iceberg of this cyber phenomenan. We’ve already seen what an entity from the web can do to a young woman in Daniel Goldhaber’s Cam (2017), but this is something of a step in the “weird” direction..
Director: Scott Derrickson Starring: Ethan Hawk, Miguel Cazarez, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies USA. 1h m
Black phone does all it can to NOT be the typical horror movie, and what it achieves is something not only beautifully crafted but it will keep fans puzzling over the finer details for decades.
Initially kicking off with the troubled life of 13 year old Finney Blake (Thames) , he’s shy and spends his days avoiding bullies and amusing his adorable little sister Gwen (McGraw), their father is constantly at his wits end and often beats the kids more from anger than from being a tough parent but the family get along in their own troubled way, Finney’s best friend is the toughest kid in school, Robin a kid who’s got a mean right hand but needs Finney’s help with his math homework so they look after each other.
Director: Michael Pataki Starring: Richard Basehart, Gloria Grahame, Trish Stewart, Lance Henriksen, Al Ferrara, Jojo D’Amore .USA. 1h 29m
Pataki was a much loved, versatile actor but during his fullfilling career he also directed 3 movies including a risque Cinderella involved a black gay “fairy” godmother who helps Cindereally meet prince charming at a blindfolded orgy, and this crazy gory mad scientst thriller.
For the most part the film rolls out as a reverse Eyes Without a Face, instead of having to replace a face, this crazed doctor is attempting to replace a girl’s eyes. Burdened with guilt the renowned LA Ophthalmologist Dr Leonard Chaney (Basehart) becomes obsessed with restoring the sight of his only daughter, who had barely survived a near fatal crash. Unable to find the willing donors or the raw materials, the Doctor’s dark basement is a gresome reminder of his now blind human experiments.
Director: Mikael Håfström Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Ciaran Hinds, Alice Braga, Toby Jones, Ruther Hauer, Colin o’Donoghue. USA. 1h 54m
Loosely based on a book that centres around a real life priest Father Grey Thomas, this choppy and sentimental possession movie attempted to enlighten viewers with real possibilities of demonic possession and gives a more relaxed approach to exorcism process, sometimes it takes times to battle a demon but in the ending showdown the movie reverts back to the classic trope of a priest vs demon verbal slagging match.
Director: Kathleen Behun Starring: Max Hambleton, Whitney Rose Pynn, Mickey River, Eduardo Roman .USA. 1h 29m
The haunted house trope will be one that will live with us forever. There’s just nothing more terrifying than having something unnatural and creepy happening in the place where you lay your head. Things are a bit different in Katheleen Behun’s Found Footage frolic. News of a house so haunted that no one can live in it for 21 days reaches a group of young kids with some wanderlust, belieivng that the tales are total bullshit they barricade themselves in for the long run.
Mad God (2021)
Director: Phil Tippett
Starring: Alex Cox, Niketa Roman, Satish Ratakonda, Harper Taylor .UK. 1h 23m
It’s beautiful when an artist manages to present their life works, their magnum opus, their artistic love child piece, and finally after 30 years of on and off graft Phil Tippett was able to, with the help of Shudder , unleash Mad God onto the world and it hit the scene gaining nothing by admiration and rightly so.
This yeah I’ve picked 13 sub genres of horror and I’ll write a review for each one during October 2022.. Wish me luck, I never finish these lists on time!
In Fabric (2018)
Director: Peter Strickland
Starring: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Fatma Mohamed, Hayley Squires, Leo Bill, Julian Barratt, Steve Oram, Ricahrd Bremmer .UK. 1h 58m
As much as totally fangirl for Strickland and was so eager to watch this movie dedicated to the tales of a haunted or cursed dress, I knew it wasn’t going to be the typical hollywood horror, I knew it was going to be bizarre and strange and hauntingly beautiful but I wasn’t quite expecting it to be just so chilling and yet wrapped up in the mundane… and yet it remains terrifying and mesmerizing.
Prey (2022)
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Starring: Amber Midthunder, Dane DiLiegro, Dakota Beavers, Michelle Thrush, Julian Black Antelope, Stormee Kipp .USA. 1h 39m
Generally I never get sucked in by the hype for new movies, after all the hype train is designed to get bums on seats and money in pockets, you’ll be 10 seconds into the movie and realize you’ve been tricked again! touch! I think a lot of hype is blown up by kids who either haven’t seen the “original ” or previous movies who find everything all shiny and new, but these old eyes have seen this all before.. But despite this I went into Prey with an open mind and was ultimately pleasantly surprised but there was a mess to trawl through first.
I have a deep belief that the goal for this movie was to make it as generic as possible, maybe as some kind of experiment, maybe if a film is so no specific the audience might believe that it’s a masterpiece in disguise. Either way the blessing is that it’s only 43 minutes so it’s not an endurance test either.
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