In 1978, director John Carpenter made one of the most profitable and influential indie horror films in the history of American cinema, “Halloween.” Some critics argue that it jump-started the slasher genre, although “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) and “Ecologia del delitto” (1971) precede it, as well as plenty of Italian giallo flicks and earlier…
1974. Amityville, Long Island. The DeFeo family lives in a house called “High Hopes,” although their situation is looking pretty hopeless. Twenty-somethings “Butch” (John Robinson, “Transformers”) and Dawn (Chelsea Ricketts, “More Than Enough”) live under the shadow of an abusive patriarch, Ronnie (Paul Ben-Victor, “Get Hard”), who’s apparently embroiled with some Mafia types. As the…
B-movies are a dime a dozen nowadays, thanks to the increasingly strengthening stream of easier distribution paths and the prolificacy of cut-rate digital effects solutions, so it’s tough to sift through the rubble of bargain bin trash to find any gems anymore. The label simply isn’t what it used to be, now sullied by the…
Piercing has the singular, most chilling opening sequence I have ever seen in a movie. I don’t think it can get any more horrifying than an ice pick brandished in a newborn baby’s face. This immediately set me on edge, and this tension continued all through the exposition. It seems that Reed (an eerily unsettling…
Off the top of your head have you ever wondered when the next zombie Christmas musical would launch for your seasonal enjoyment? Well, one would have to look no further than the John McPhail (“Where Do We Go From Here?”) directed Anna and the Apocalypse, a festive zom-com spectacle with a sense of bloody cheekiness….
Writer-director Peter Strickland’s strange and stimulating retail horror/comedy/romance In Fabric takes on a whole new meaning to making a startling fashion statement. Brilliantly bizarre, sardonically twisted and eerily suggestive, Strickland’s off-kilter, creepy confection to skewering consumerism, misplaced affections, and fetish-induced impulses makes for an ambitious, seedy sales pitch of weird sorts. His sense of warped…
Awakened in the night, young Sophie (Mackenzie Imsand) clutches her teddy bear and peers into the darkness of her room. She hears scary sounds and slips out of bed to investigate. She tiptoes closer to her parents’ bedroom, hearing shrieks and sounds of a struggle. When she reaches for the door handle, her mother suddenly…
