A medical courier named Bryan accepts one last job to deliver to Raccoon City hospital. on his way he is beset by many misadventures involving zombies and monsters. 

Zach Cregger was fingered to direct this after the wild success of Barbarian and Weapons. Here he enters the hollywood machine of rehashing tired IP, and in this instance comes out not just unscathed but triumphant. Resident Evil doesn’t have the complexity of his previous movies, but maintains his excellent timing and humor. He basically takes the junky character from weapons and gives him a job inside a video game and we watch the wacky high jinx. Bryan is a couple steps above simpleton and largely has single words as dialogue for the movie, but Austin Abrams gives a great performance as the everyman. I laughed out loud several times in the movie at the reactions of Brian as well as some of the absurd situations throughout. It also has some great jump scares that aren’t endlessly telegraphed like in most jump scares vehicles. The monsters and body horror are all well done and disturbing. It also is extremely well paced and comes in at a nearly extinct runtime of an hour and 30 minutes. Overall it’s a really fun movie and despite the nitpicks of Resident Evil fans it is objectively the best live action film in the franchise. 

9/10

Based on the Richard Bachman/Stephen King novel of the same name, Thinner tells the story of an overweight lawyer who is cursed by a Gypsy to lose weight at an alarming rate. 

It’s a simple premise that makes you wonder, huh what are they going to do with that! The answer is nothing. This is a big ol nothing burger of a movie. I remember seeing it when I was younger but I always assumed it was a made for tv movie, and now I understand why I thought that. The production quality and acting was so bad that it induced incredulity. The movie focuses so much on moving the plot forward that it fails to include a story with characters with clear motivations. It is so focused on getting to the next stage of thinness that it never takes a moment to really communicate what the characters think or feel about the situation. It ends up feeling as hollow as the protagonist’s former pants.

2/10

When young couple Brad and Janet become stranded in the rain, In search of a phone they run into a mysterious castle run by the alien sweet transvestite Dr. Frank-N-Furter. In the midst of an outlandish experiment the couple is given shelter and introduced to a variety of eccentric characters. Through the course of the night, they are put in situations that challenge their sense of self, sexuality, and their relationship. 

With the recent passing of Tim Curry I wanted to review a movie this week that truly captured his presence as a person and an actor.

 Every production he was in commanded attention and showcased something special that not all actors have, but I think no role of his is as unforgettable as Dr. Frank N Furter

The red lips, the corset …it’s giving 

Originating as a theatrical production the Rocky Horror Picture show has a rich history which is why it is still so huge in pop culture today

Taking inspiration from the 70’s sexual liberation movement, british glam rock and THE David Bowie, this film is the definition of campy and comes through with stunning over the top performances 

Tim Curry is simply magic and this is a true testament to his range as an actor 

The music if fun, and the visuals chaotic yet cohesive at the same time and you are truly brought into their world of sex and exploration with nods to horror classics

I have a deep appreciation for this film’s intent and execution although it’s not necessarily my cup of tea    

I think it transcends the need for a rating due to the cultural and historical impact, the safety it gave for the queer community at the time, the continued representation, and the balls to do something outlandish and fun. 

8/10

In this 2007 French film, a pregnant woman on Christmas Eve, the night before her induced labor is mourning the recent loss of her husband in a car crash when she is terrorized by a nameless woman in the dark. 

This movie is something else. it uses the equation of vulnerable person + unstoppable psychopath = dread to the maximum effect. It would be bad enough with just the pregnant woman as the protagonist, but we also the the In Utero POV showing the baby suffering from the trauma.

It’s very rare that a horror movie makes me actually feel something. I’m a jaded horror movie reviewer. I’ve seen it all. This film gave me a visceral reaction so deeply that I regressed to childhood and was watching parts of this movie through my fingers. This movie goes hard.

Even with the rather cheesy CGI of the early 2000s, you can’t help but still be disturbed by the ideas that said CGI is portraying.

While I can’t say I enjoyed this film, I can say it is a good film and achieves what it sets out to do.

10/10

Gemma is a mother and a dentist (the two hardest jobs of them all), living in her childhood home with her daughter Maya. When Gemma was a child she watched her mother battle with mental health and eventually kill herself by bashing her own head into the shower wall repeatedly. Why does Gemma continue to live in that house and use that shower? Cause the plot needs her to. After experiencing some insidious events, Gemma must protect her daughter as she tries to reconnect with her past. What happens next will shock you, but spoilers…it’s insidious.

Insidious is a franchise that has been near and dear to my heart. It was one of the first horror movies I really got into as a teenager, probably because it was rated PG-13 and I was too young to buy my own rated R tickets. The first two are gems, the third is okay, and the fourth is so terrible I don’t even want to consider it a part of the franchise. Some studios would have let it die. But not Blumhouse. Blumhouse will NEVER let this franchise die. Insidious 5: The Red Door came out a few years ago, and you know what? I didn’t hate it. But now we get a 6th addition to the story, which is mostly disconnected from the story in the other films and follows its own path. The story is about as good as I expected from a 6th Insidious installment, and it was able to make some lore additions that I found fresh and interesting. If you are looking for a great movie, maybe go rewatch Obsession, Hokum, or the Backrooms. This movie is pretty alright, and I think that is all we can ask of another insidious movie.

From a young age, Maren (played by Taylor Russell) has carried the innate urge to consume human flesh—a hunger that has shaped nearly every aspect of her life. Shortly after turning 18 and finding herself on her own, she sets out across the country in search of her estranged mother. Along the way, Maren encounters a colorful cast of outsiders and drifters, including Lee (played by Timothée Chalamet), with whom she develops a budding romance. Through this coming-of-age story, Luca Guadagnino explores themes of queerness, identity, loneliness, and life on the fringes of society. 

Bones and all is a great romance movie for horror lovers 

It’s artsy and at times weird for the sake of being weird but through the use of cannibalism we get a representation of the intense otherness that some feel  

The approach to queerness is very interesting as how characters are shown in a more dynamic way where it’s a part of the character than their whole identity. (for example unlike stereotypes) 

On the horror front the gore is very well done and visually striking every time

The characters are weird, and interesting to watch with great performances from all the actors involved 

It makes you want a bigger look of what this world make look like in different situations

This is a great adaptation of Camille DeAngelis’s book by the same name in that it keeps the source material close to home but makes enough changes to make it artistically distinct. 

The only criticism I really have is that the film lingers a little too long on the bliss of romance and falling in love on the road without really diving into what makes them love each other besides both being outsiders. 

I also  would have loved the film to get even darker and perhaps show more horror-esque scenes. 

9/10 

Fire In The Sky tells the based on a true story of Travis Walton, a logger in Arizona traveling home with his crew getting abducted by an alien UFO. Now I know what you’re thinking they can’t possibly stretch out a single abduction story into a full feature length horror film. Well do I have news for you. You’re right. But! You can stretch it out to about 3/4 of a drama and 1/4 of a horror movie.

This movie came out just months before the pilot of The X-files that all featured an alien abduction. Alien abduction was in the air in the early 90s and this movie came out at the prime time with a wide release and failed at the box office.

I saw it in theaters when I was just 11, so I definitely have thick nostalgia glasses on. It is not a prefect movie. In fact narratively it is a real oddity. It spend most of the movie exploring the fallout and doubt around Travis’ friends story of his disappearance. In the last 1/4 of the movie we are treated with some of the most intense sci-fi body horror put on film, and I think that 20 mins still holds up. Instead of the cold sterile and clinical scenes with grey aliens that are described by most alien abductions, this film shows a terrifying matrix like goo cocoons with menacing and indifferent wrinkle monsters conducting horribly invasive surgeries. The terror of Travis is palpable and visceral.

After the reenactment of the abduction the movie just kind of stops.

7/10

Beginning her first year of Vet school, Justine is a vegetarian who has never had meat. Luckily her older sister goes to the same school and is there to show her the ropes. During an initiation ritual she is pressured into eating a raw rabbit kidney, and soon learns that, “hey, I really like meat!”. After the initiation her body starts to go through withdrawals, and she is desperately craving more. But breaking her lifelong commitment to abstain from meat leaves her insatiable, and animal meat just isn’t doing the job anymore. She needs something more real. Something more human.

Raw, or in french Grave (yes its a foreign film) is a 2016 horror movie directed by Julia Ducournau who also directed the movie Titane. The movie focuses on the coming of age story of Justine played by Garance Marillier. The acting is great, and each character has life and nuance, making them fun to watch and interact with each other. The score of the film uses music so perfectly that I got chills in some scenes when the sound and the character’s facial expressions express the emotions of the characters so well. There are parts of this movie that give me a full body cringe because of how nasty it is, and that is really impressive to do, considering the body horror isn’t even that extreme. The true horror comes from the lengths the characters are willing to go to in order to satiate their unnatural desires. 

In this horror comedy, we’re introduced to three sorority sisters looking for a fun, boys-free getaway at a riverside cabin. Of course, the boys show up anyway, bringing plenty of relationship drama along with them. But the real trouble begins when toxic waste creates a colony of bloodthirsty zombie beavers that just won’t stay dead. What started as a carefree getaway quickly becomes a frantic fight for survival 

Zombeavers is one of those movies that has a huge following, and is incredibly hard for me to review objectively because it is so not for me. I understand the type of movie it is and it’s intent but I feel like things still could have been improved to make it more watchable: better dialogue, characters, pacing. I honestly like the idea of zombie beavers, but it has to be done a little better than this. 

The movie is very self aware in that it really is parodying horror tropes in general which makes you feel in on the joke but when the majority of the characters are hard to connect with in anyway you lose the attention of your audience.

Around half way through I was waiting for something more to happen, develop the characters or don’t this fell somewhere in limbo. When the action starts it’s pretty consistent. Goofy special effects are actually something I liked about this but something can be goofy and silly but have decent dialogue. I know there are die hard lovers of this movie but the whole time I was just wishing I was doing something else.

The movie definitely doesn’t take itself too seriously so you shouldn’t either but that being said it’s still a two out of ten movie for me.

2/10

The late Sam Neill plays John Trent, an insurance investigator tracking down the whereabouts of Sutter Cane a famous horror novelist who has gone missing right before the release of his new novel. Trent suspects that the whole thing is a publicity stunt for the novel’s release, but as he searches for Kane, he finds the line between Kane’s fictional world and reality start to fray and overlap in disturbing ways.

John Carpenter goes full Lovecraftian, melding his trademark independent film sensibilities and impressive practical effects with cosmic horror. If you look at his Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB ratings, you will also see that this is his last major film with significant critical and audience praise. It marks the end of an era where scrappy 80s gore and body horror was supplanted by slicker high budget meta narratives. This movie ushered in the new era with the likes of Candyman, The New Nightmare, and Scream.

standing between two eras, this definitely has more of an esthetic aligned with the scrappy indy vibe of Romero and Carpenters previous work. The idea takes center stage and isn’t handled preciously. It presents itself as a cool thing and lets the audience take a little ride without delving deep into the psychological or taking itself too seriously. Kind of like a Stephen King novel actually.

I picked this one because of the passing of Sam Neill and he does a great job here being the everyman descending into, you guessed it, madness. We also get Happy Gilmore’s grandma being freaky af, Vigo the Carpathian, and a very young Hayden Christiansen.

Like I said before, it’s a fun ride that doesn’t take itself too seriously. My only criticism is that it does rely on some repetitive cinematic moves such as jump scares and arbitrary time loops. But it’s all to service the films uneasy vibe and give impact to the singular moments of cosmic horror.

7/10