Director: Mark Tonderai Starring: Omari Hardwick, Loretta Devine .USA. 1h 31m
18 years on from Ian Softleys powerful hoodoo thriller Skeleton Key (2005), the time and tested horror had graduated into Spell, which is a strange name for a rootworking movie but nonetheless no one will be surprised when the incantations, grimoire and ritual work is let loose. However this darkened story has closer ties with Misery (1990) and the Hills Have Eyes (1977/2005).
Director: Robert Eggers
Starring: Willem Dafoe, Robert Pattinson .USA/Canada. 1h 49m.
An uncategorizable and slightly experimental frolic through unfinished literature and art. Rober Eggers and his brother Max attempt to finish a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe with a gusty and challenging drama that borders on fantasy.
Two Wickies (Lighthouse Keepers) are stranded on their isolated island for an extended time due to a prolonged storm and they begin to trip down a psycho sexual rabbit hole during some intense alone time that draws in cabin fever.
Director:Kyle Edward Ball Starring: Lucas Paul, Dali Rose Tetreault, Ross Paul,Jaime Hill .Canada. 1h 40m
Every now and again a director comes from left field and reminds us that new things are still possible, which is what Kyle Edward Ball has done with his tour de force trippy horror which is causing major ripples in the horror community. To say it appeared from nowhere is far from the truth, it was by no means an accident, through several years of making short movies depicting people’s most vivid nightmare, eventually Ball was able to gather all of that experience and forge together Skinamarink, an almost indescribable horror movie that digs deep into the childhood memories of the audience and eliminates another darker aspect of the Liminal space genre.
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!
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