The Funeral Home, “La Funeraria” in its native tongue, is a gloomy and moody Argentinian haunted house tale. Written and directed by Mauro Iván Ojeda, the film pervades both its atmosphere and characters with gloom and moodiness. The titular domicile is the home and business of undertaker Bernardo (Luis Machín, “The Moneychanger”), a man crushed…
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…
Ah, the simple joys of the family vacation. The great outdoors. The open road. The company of loved ones. The mobile home haunted by the superpowered spirit of a homicidal madman. Charles (Greg Violand, “Carol”) is the owner of the “Toybox” — a ramshackle RV — and he’s joined by his son Steve (Jeff Denton,…
As audiences screamed and jumped in the mostly silent screenings of “A Quiet Place” over the weekend, I found myself facing a pregnancy-related horror film of a different type. Leena Pendharkar’s 20 Weeks follows a young couple as they deal with an unplanned pregnancy and then subsequently with the baby having a physical disability and…
It’s a crime how rarely cinema objectively explores religion. While there remains plenty of lighthearted, faith-based fare tailored to specific churchgoing demographics, very rarely are audiences exposed to the challenging theological perspectives that lie buried underneath Lifetime-flavored fluff and grim, pessimistic horror clichés. Thankfully, in lieu of a fictionalized analysis, we have Deliver Us (Libera…
Imagine a world where demons share human cities. We never see them, but they see us, surround us, interact with us and depend upon us, while all the time hating us and viewing us with contempt. Such is the premise of Fire City: End of Days, the feature debut from Tom Woodruff Jr. It is…
Judas Ghost, an indie British horror/fantasy inspired by Simon R. Green’s “Ghost Finders” series, feels more like a sequel than a standalone piece. This is to say, while watching it, one feels like what they are seeing would make far more sense — and have far higher stakes — if significantly more background information had…
