How to know if a tattered contraption is the harbinger of horror? Sense the way it affects reel people on real people. Commendable then is the Chinese musical wish box at the center of veteran genre cinematographer John R. Leonetti’s latest film where, after each of the lead’s wish is realized, a swath of our…
It might not bode well when a film’s title is a text message initialism (compounded with a nonsensical exclamation rather than a question mark), but Peter Herro’s debut feature, WTF!, is a surprisingly enjoyable micro-budget slasher with an old-school sensibility. After a nifty credits sequence, which sees the camera prowl around a grisly crime scene,…
I know what you’re probably thinking. “BnB Hell — must be a terrific horror-thriller! I’m sold on the title alone!” Well, far be it from me to razz you for your terrible taste, but I insist on disabusing you of the notion that this is worth anyone’s time, let alone money. Let us delve into…
A found footage slasher which doesn’t add anything to a highly variable subgenre sounds eminently skippable, but Altar is at least short and sharp, reasonably gripping, and has good characterization. A slightly unconvincing and unnecessary prologue presents a married couple spending their wedding night in a remote hotel. For some reason they choose to go…
Delivering this week’s cautionary social media commentary (there’s more to life than Likes, kids!) with the subtlety of an internet meme, here’s a wholly unoriginal horror about unlikeable idiots being tortured by a cookie-cutter movie maniac. There’s a reason why jock douchebags don’t tend to get the horror limelight, and Don’t Hang Up is the…
For a film franchise that began in 1931 (with Boris Karloff in the original title role) and includes literally dozens of pictures, there are still some new things I learned from this latest edition (directed by Alex Kurtzman, “People Like Us”) of The Mummy. For instance, mummies and other otherworldly entities — even though buried…
As rendered in the gut-wrenching “Krisha,” director Trey Edward Shults’ debut film, those with blood ties are hornets that can sting more than their natural counterpart. The within-is-more-volatile notion is elevated in Shults’ second outing, It Comes at Night, that takes place in a world upturned by an unnamed disease. For a while now, 17-year-old…
