The Scariest Things

If you aren’t familiar with our Speed Round discussions, here’s the deal. We’ll list a trope topic, and you provide your best example. We’re sharing the full list of our speed round questions so you can play along and compare your favorites with ours. Are you ready? GO!

Happy Halloween, everyone! Stay safe out there! Don’t eat too much candy. (Or any candy, if you are a diabetic like me.) Stay out of murder hotels!

Here’s Episode 218, where Liz, Eric, and Mike compare notes on our favorite Halloween tropes. It’s a Scariest Things original concept. If you like this format, check out our other Speed Round Episodes: Episode 195: The Horror Zodiac, Episode 171: The ABC’s of Horror, Episode 145: The Tropetown Showdown, and Episode 73: Our Horror Movie Profiles, The Speed Round.

Ithaqua was a gift for The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. Cosmic Horror movies are often small projects with big dreams, but threadbare budgets. Periodically, the festival receives a powerhouse cosmic horror movie with a mid-major studio budget and the means to deliver true spectacle. Hammer Studios rescued the film from the brink of shutting down, and Casey used the additional funds to round out his dream project. It was such a dream project of his that he sold his home to finance this film when things got tight.

The film stars Luke Hemsworth, Kevin Durand, Leenah Robinson, Craig Lauzon, Pamela Matthews, and Michael Pitt. It takes place in 1821 Ontario, during a brutally cold and desolate winter. (A historical truth: this era was a “mini-ice age”… just ask Napoleon.) Food is scarce, and the residents of Fort William face starvation. The local Indigenous Ojibwe recognize that this is the work of a wicked spirit: Ithaqua, a bringer of famine and frozen death. The Fort orders the trappers and soldiers out to recover anything they can from other local tribes, or whatever they can trade for, but death lies waiting in this frozen hellscape.

The story’s Lovecraftian roots come from August Derleth’s pulp fiction text, The Thing that Walked on the Wind, which was heavily influenced by Algernon Blackwood’s The Wendigo. It is a story with a significant chunk of cosmic horror lore. Wendigo stories have been done before, but this would be the first notable film introduction of Ithaqua.

Walker conveyed this by using a historical reenactment of a Thunder Bay, Canada, trading fort. His production team fabricated all of the period costumes and props. Pay particular attention to the doctor’s office, which oozes early 19th-century goods and equipment. Walker’s writing partner, Peter Vicaire, is half Ojibwe, and the indigenous cast could speak the native tongue.

Most notably, the movie was shot in sub-freezing conditions on the North side of Lake Superior in December. The breath you see from the actors is not visual effects; it is truly freezing, even inside the saloon. You don’t have to instruct the actors to act like it’s cold… It’s COLD. Oh, Canada!

Ithaqua is off to the prestigious Sitges International Film Festival in Spain. (Which is the launching pad for many great genre films.) The movie will be getting a wide and streaming release in February of 2027, so be patient, and catch it on a big screen near you! For a full Scariest Things review, check out Joseph Perry’s review of the film here.

Once again, my thanks to Gwen and Brian Callahan for giving me green room access to the filmmakers on short notice! Casey Walker spent lots of time with the other directors and filmmakers at the festival, and they traveled in a pack around Portland; it was a great Horror Community moment. My thanks to Casey for spending some time to talk about his movie with me.

Here is Casey’s press release statement about his film:

I have heard Ithaqua described as ‘The Witch meets The Revenant.’ I find that comparison deceptively cheerful. Both of those films are stories of faith. Ithaqua is a story about what faith cannot fix: the ordinary, structural greed of men who believe the world owes them its flesh. The Ithaqua — emaciated, cannibalistic, born from the moment a man’s appetite overrides every social sanction — is not a metaphor I invented. They are a description that was already here, waiting.

I grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, witnessing the unspoken atrocities that the Indigenous community around me still endures in this modern age. It made me ask a question I have spent fifteen years trying to answer: how is it possible that nothing has changed in 175 years? In every generation, men arrive at this land with the same appetite. They take the furs, the timber, the oil, the water. They take the women. They take the children. They call it commerce.

After fifteen years of making this film — watching the news, watching what happens to Indigenous communities in Canada in the present tense — I no longer believe history is a warning. It is a pattern. And as recent years have proven, it can still get worse.
I worked at Fort William Historical Park during film school summers. Almost a thousand miles from any city, ringed by boreal forest, frozen for half the year: the landscape in this film is not a backdrop. It is the primary moral force. The snow absorbs everything — sound, colour, blood — until what remains is exposed.

The visual language moves between fixed durational frames — refusing the cut at the moment of crisis — and handheld intimacy with faces that cannot process what they are seeing. The colour arc enacts the moral journey: ashen blue starvation in Act One; blood red as hunger is fed in Act Two; hellish firelight warmth in Act Three, where acceptance becomes indistinguishable from damnation. Every scene is lit by candle, lamp, or fire — chiaroscuro not as an aesthetic choice but as historical fact. Electricity did not exist at Fort William in 1821. The shadows are not chosen. They are what was there.
Violence in this film is quick, brutal, and awkward. There is no excessive sound design to instruct the audience’s emotion. No slow motion. The camera does not dwell. What accumulates is not spectacle — it is the weight carried by the people who remain.

This film is trilingual — English, French, and Ojibwe/Cree — because that is what Fort William was. To have made it otherwise would have been a lie of the same order as the lies the film indicts.
My writing and producing partner Peter Vicaire is Mi’kmaq — a prolific writer, historian, lawyer, and decorated US Marine who was on set every day to ensure the film’s authenticity. Craig Lauzon, who is Ojibwe and of the Bear Clan, plays Nicolette; it was his own decision to root the character in a Métis identity, because it was the honest choice. Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs was involved in the early development of Ahnung, and it was her suggestion that changed the grandmother’s role entirely — that Ahnung kill her own grandmother, because the ramifications of that act within the community would be more devastating than anything we could have scripted from the outside.

We had religious scholars sign off on the script and the use of the Wendigo myth. We received the blessing and support of the Fort William First Nation to film on their ancestral lands. The destroyed Indigenous village in the film was built in partnership with the Fort William First Nation, with members of that community involved in its construction. The people who built it understood what it meant to build a village that has been destroyed.

Ahnung and Nokomis are not victims of this plot. They are its most active moral agents. The missing and murdered Indigenous women and children of Canada are not named in this film. They are present in every scene in which a woman navigates a world that has decided her life is a resource. The audience will arrive there themselves, through what they witness.

The Ithaqua emerge from greed. The greed of colonization, of capitalism, of men who believe that taking is different from devouring. These are not historical themes. They are the themes of every morning’s news.
This is a cautionary tale with no heroes — only, occasionally, fleeting glimmers of heroism. I did not want to make a film that offers the audience an exit. I wanted to make a film that keeps them in the cold, with the knowledge that the cold has always been there, and that the people who understood it best were the ones whose warnings we did not hear.

The early eighties gave us a spate of slasher movies. The late eighties gave us their sequels, sometimes once a year. While many will bemoan the cookie-cutter nature of some sequels, a few surpassed or matched their source material. Aliens (1987), Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987), Day of the Dead (1985), and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) were triumphs as franchise offerings. Many will also say that Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) was the best of that franchise… though that may be a fairly low threshold to clear.

Beyond the sequelpalooza trend, studios also returned to some horror roots and gave us rebooted films, tapping into B-movies and improving them a lot. The Fly. The Blob. Little Shop of Horrors. All of those films understood the core value and elevated the material beyond its humble roots. The eighties continued to successfully tap into Stephen King’s catalog, with mixed results. The era starts with Cat’s Eye (1985), Silver Bullet (1985), Stand By Me (1986), Creepshow 2 (1987), and culminates with perhaps the strongest offering, Pet Sematary (1989).

What is largely missing from this era are iconic original content films. Prince of Darkness (1987) may be the closest thing we have to a well-executed original concept, but compared to today’s story-first, character-centric landscape, the late eighties leaned more into raw entertainment. For pure entertainment, it’s hard to beat The Lost Boys (1987) for a fun, sexy take on vampires and a rock-and-roll cool vibe. Apart from Sigourney Weaver’s Oscar nomination for Ripley in Aliens, and the snub that should have given Jeff Goldblum a nomination for The Fly, the horror offerings from this era weren’t exactly trying to garner Academy Awards. They chased the dollars and managed to turn a tidy profit.

Gone were the bleak and despairing themes of the seventies. The eighties delivered killing teenagers as a spectator sport. This time period aimed to give audiences a good time. Even the Romero movies of this time reveled in the spectacle. Gone were the apocalyptic endings. In a way, this was embracing the attitudes of fifties B-movie fare, but with sex and gore as a tantalizing coating. The offerings were pure popcorn fare. Do you want some blood on your popcorn? Sure you do!

There would be a price to pay, however. Eventually, people got tired of the cookie-cutter franchise mentality. Cheering for the villain became routine, and even someone as loathsome as Leatherface would become something of a comic book character. The stories struggled to evoke real fear or emotional connections, and the nineties struggled with reconciling the hangover from the franchise era. Wes Craven was acutely aware of the state of the horror union, so he gave us a meta reading of his own material with A New Nightmare and, eventually, Scream.

Gen-X horror fans still retain warm feelings for their favorites from this time. We enjoyed being scared. The scares were a roller coaster ride, not a lecture. Scattered throughout the eighties are some overlooked gems that defied the stereotype of the times, and The Scariest Things has endeavored to uncover some of these films for you in Episode 217: Horror History – The Late Eighties Franchise Era!

If you want to hear about the early eighties, check out Episode 215: The VHS Era.

… and that’s just scratching the surface!

Slow burn, or as Mike Campbell will suggest: No burn. Liminal horror takes its time and forces you to stare into the corners of the screen. If you watch long enough, maybe something will happen. Then again, maybe not. That’s the gamble of liminal horror. It also makes jump scares that much more rewarding when they do get sprung. This trope bathes in the uncanny valley. Unsettling. Unnerving. Something just a touch off, creating an atmosphere of unease.

This can be with the way people look, or the geometry of the room, or the color of the sky. In this way, liminal horror can be frustrating. And yet, fascinating. Many films that employ this style feel like dreams or nightmares. Characters question the reality of their situation, trapped in a personal hell.

“Liminal horror taps into the eerie feeling evoked by “in-between” spaces, unsettling environments that seem familiar yet uncomfortably off-kilter. Unlike traditional horror, which often relies on monsters, jump scares, or gore, liminal horror creates a more insidious type of fear, drawing on subtle, deeply psychological cues to unnerve and disorient. Rooted in the concept of liminality, this form of horror brings us to places where boundaries blur—between one time, space, or state of being and another—invoking a dread that is both existential and mysterious. “

As an architect, I appreciate how the built environment can confuse, shock, or unsettle someone’s experience. The works of MC Escher, Giovanni Piranesi, and Robert Eisenman all confronted viewers with challenging environments. These designers delighted in the visual stress these deliberately agitating fantastical places created.

Some of the greatest film auteurs have dabbled in liminal space. Stanley Kubrick. Roman Polanski. Robert Altman. David Lynch. And yet liminal horror has launched the careers of some very young visionary directors: Alex Ullom (It Ends), Kane Parsons (Backrooms), and Kyle Edward Ball (Skinamarink) have arrived out of seemingly nowhere (which is appropriate for the trope). This is an era of A.I. and fake news accusations. Who is to believe what their own eyes are telling them?

Don’t expect copious gore or big action sequences in these films. These films also tend to be light on dialogue. The characters often keep their distance from each other. Perhaps liminal horror was born out of the pandemic, when we were all kept apart from each other. Don’t get too close. Dangerous! What these films may lack in adrenaline and bravado is made up for in emotional intelligence. These movies are designed to spark conversations afterward over a cup of coffee.

Conceptually, liminal horror is new to the scene. It’s a buzzy topic, but when you do a bit of research, there are a number of films that fit into this trope, though the word liminal hasn’t been applied to these films until recently.

Liminal Horror isn’t solely a film style either. Liz Williams brings out two very interesting books to consider when thinking liminally. Check out The House of Leaves, a stunning composition that will force you out of your reading comfort zone.

The early eighties is for many, their favorite era in horror. It was a transition time where filmmakers felt they could still push the boundaries of censorship, but a backlash was coming. This is the golden age of slashers and werewolf films. And most importantly, R-rated movies were arriving at home. That didn't just scare audiences, it scared the morality police. The Scariest Things digs deep in this episode to mine for hidden horror gems in Episode 215.

It will be interesting to do an autopsy of 2026’s horror fare when we do our year end assessment. This year’s crop has been notably light on mid-major productions so far. The roaring successes we’ve seen thus far have been from the deep indie filmmakers. Backrooms, Undertone, Hokum, and Obsession. All original titles, and produced for less than $5 million. These are not the type of films you would typically predict would be box office hits. But, they outperformed any reasonable expectation, particularly startling for Backrooms and Obsession, which will have cinema economists trying to figure out the alchemy.

There were only a few major studio franchise sequels this year. All of them capable, but none of them superseding their source material. Scream 7 did very well at the box office, but it failed to make a big impression. Evil Dead Burn was a very violent, very intense outing that didn’t connect in the way its predecessors have. Scary Movie also did well on its $30 million budget, earning $210 million, its long layoff didn’t hurt its popularity, despite the derivative humor.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple was a hit with critics (including our own Liz Williams) but its turn from zombies may have hurt it in the box office, as it probably will not make its budget back. The notable big comeback was Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, which gives horror fans hope that Universal has gotten their monsterverse back on track, and remembered how to deliver a vicious movie with a good story.

Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to get out to as many film festivals this year as we would have liked, but we still managed to review a lot of great small indie horror films. Our traditional rotation of SXSW, Overlook, Portland Horror, and Popcorn Frights all provided very interesting films from emerging filmmakers. Even the bigger festival this year were heavy on small indie productions, and there were a lot of good offerings. We didn’t discuss all of them in our Podcast, but you can review a lot of the movies we saw with links on the images below.

There is an emerging trend of release schedules for many of the best independent horror films, relative to the festival circuit. Open at SXSW (Or sometimes Sundance), get some buzz, go to Overlook to validate the buzz, and then release in the early summer. It can be a big momentum builder. Last year it was The Ugly Stepsister (Oscar Nom), and Good Boy that were the big beneficiaries of that combination. This year it was Obsession, Hokum, and Leviticus. Sometimes Panic Fest will factor into the equation, depending on when it runs relative to Overlook.

Popcorn Frights still brought a massive catalogue for viewing, but this year was more reliant on reperatory films. Some of my favorite films this year were horror adjacent, and all of their streaming content was small indie productions. Our favorite local festival, The Portland Horror Film Festival had an unusually large amount of feature films, and the best part was that almost all of the directors participated in the festival. We were fortunate to get interviews with all of them. Check out our Podcasts for the interviews. It was a diverse group of films, and not a dud among them.

Probably the most intriguing film still due out is a new take on Resident Evil by Zach Cregger, the director of Barbarian and Weapons. This is a major tonal shift for Sony. No more Mia Jovovic or Paul W.S. Anderson. Video game translations are usually dubious, and the franchise squandered its potential. It became more superhero and less horror. However, Sony is gambling that with the right creator, it might revitalize the legacy, and Cregger may inject real scares into this franchise for the first time since the original. We shall see. The trailer looks great.

Other Mommy, which arrives on October 9, has some incredibly disturbing visuals. Jessica Chastain stars, and Rob Savage (Host) directs. This uncanny-valley movie came late to my radar and is intriguing. Later this August, the Insidious franchise is issuing Insidious: Out of the Further. Lin Shaye returns, Leigh Whannell writes this, and it has a banger trailer. This franchise has maintained some of the scariest PG-13 fare, but the sequels have been a gradual decline in quality. We’ll see how this goes.

Beware Boiúna might give us the Anaconda movie we wish we got earlier this year, and wipe the slate clean from the Jack Black/Paul Rudd disappointment. It’s R-rated, and features reliable scream queen Jessica Rothe, along with Logan Marshall-Green and Kiana Madeira in the Amazon. The trailer impressed me with the snake’s monstrousness. Another fascinating man-vs-nature survival tale is Whalefall, a terrifying concept in which a scuba diver is in jeopardy of being consumed by a sperm whale if the giant squid the whale has snagged doesn’t kill him first.

Clayface will attempt to bridge the superhero and horror genres, which is no easy feat. Will it have enough horror for horror fans, and will it have enough fealty to the Batman universe to appeal to the comic book fans? Mike Flanagan wrote it, and it promises real R-rated body horror, so it could be very interesting. Lastly, Robert Eggers’ period piece Werwulf is getting the full Eggers treatment, in monochrome and as moody as you could possibly want. Hopefully it will get the stink of the Wolf Man out of our popcorn. Just give me a great transformation scene, please.

Keep an eye out for It Ends, a festival darling from 2025 which is finally getting a limited release this year. It is a brilliant, if melancholy purgatory metaphor. If you enjoyed Backrooms, you should check this film out if you are lucky enough to have it showing in a theater near you. Of course, some smaller films will come out of the shadows and inevitably make our end-of-the-top-10 lists, but this is what we know so far.

Here are all the movies that we have ranked ★★★ or better, so far in 2026.

It took a while, but we are back to our chronology of horror movies. We have picked up the baton and are moving our movie history lessons forward. The seventies were a turbulent period in history. The Hayes Code, now dead and defeated, is no longer. The early seventies started playing around in the margins with movies that pushed the boundaries of what was possible. The advent of the massive summer blockbuster began to separate movies into big-budget and indie-budget films, and horror was part of that trend.

Jaws (1975) and The Exorcist (1972) proved that with the right director, scary movies could bring in big money and be legitimate critical darlings as well. The doors opened for studios to pour big money into movies that would become The Omen, Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Carrie, landmark movies all. Big-name actors with great pedigrees were coaxed into performing in big studio horror projects. Gregory Peck did The Omen. Faye Dunaway at the height of her career did The Eyes of Laura Mars. It wouldn’t be long before Jack Nicholson got cast in The Shining (1980), but we’ll get to that one later.

Having said all that, the studios weren’t quite all-in yet. There were a few pet projects out there. But the domain of the horror movie was still in the dilapidated old downtown movie houses and drive-in theaters. You couldn’t yet rent movies for home viewing. If you wanted to go see independent horror movies, you had to be willing to get down and dirty. The Cineplex wasn’t yet ready for showing off the gory delicacies that were being cooked up in the era when the boundaries between R and X hadn’t been settled yet.

Horror never forgot its roots. You could still make a low-budget movie, with no-name actors, scare some teenagers, and turn a profit. But a guy in a rubber suit wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Real explicit violence and raw visceral horror are now how to make a memorable mark. Following in the footsteps of Black Christmas (1972), Last House on the Left (1972), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), the slasher film was going to find the sweet spot of low budget and mass appeal. Enter Halloween (1978). Stabbing and spooking were now moving into the suburbs. On a budget of $325,000, Halloween would go on to earn $47,160,000. On a budget of $325,000, Halloween would go on to earn $47,160,000. Hollywood noticed.

The impact of Halloween would be felt primarily in the early eighties, but a few filmmakers picked up on the trend early. The slasher films influenced directly in the wake of Halloween include: Don’t Go Into the House (1979), Silent Scream (1979), Tourist Trap (1979), Driller Killer (1979), Prom Night (1980), Maniac (1980), Friday the 13th (1980), Don’t Go into the Woods (1981), Madman (1981), Happy Birthday to Me (1981), My Bloody Valentine (1981), The Burning (1981), The House on Sorority Row (1982), and The Slumber Party Massacre (1982). All of these films featured a masked killer (usually) and some sort of stabbing weapon (usually), and oblivious teen victims (usually), with sexual activity usually as part of the equation (usually)… and a final girl (usually). That’s the modern slasher template. It didn’t take long for filmmakers to figure out the formula.

Our great directors who would lead horror for the next twenty years were in place. John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, and Wes Craven had their knives out and were ready to dominate the field. This genre still felt fresh. The sequels had yet to take control of the industry, and the concept felt raw and scary. This trend would find its killer’s stride in the 80’s, but this is when the slasher movie came out of the shadows.

While the sixties still had a safety belt on, and the eighties went for the reliable thrills, the seventies was a period that allowed directors to stretch out their ideas. The early seventies also contributed a number of strange films, but it is hard to match the back half of the seventies with the likes of The Manitou (1976), Phantasm (1979), Hausu (1977), and Eraserhead (1977), which brought wildly original concepts to the table.

Religion was a big thing too. Conventionally, there were movies like The Omen and The Exorcist that were, while very scary, using traditional good-and-evil concepts. This era also had a more counter-cultural and artistic interpretation of holy horror. God Told Me To (1976) and The Visitor (1979) were gonzo strange concepts that never found an audience, but were challenging with their takes of what celestial beings might be. What is Jesus, really? For that matter, what is God? An alien? Perhaps.

Truly strange, blasphemous stuff. Perhaps it was all the hallucinogens that were popular of the era. Cosmic horror found truth in a far-out metaphysical moment. It wouldn’t take long for the politicians and the morality police to put an end to such wild concepts. But in truth, the conservative backlash was waiting in the next decade. In the seventies, the liberal notions of acceptable content had plenty of room. That would be coming to an end soon, especially when movies could come home on cable TV and VHS.

Friend of the Podcast Ian Parker joins Eric and Mike to talk about some deep cut movies from the late seventies. We have tried to avoid the obvious stuff and to notify our audience about some curious gems that you might have missed when shuffling through your streaming options:

In a world where gas prices soar past $4.00 per gallon and groceries routinely cost more than $150 per visit, just having a job might not cut it. A minimum wage job isn’t going to pay the bills. Hell, even a white collar professional job might not cover the costs. This is an environment where a paying second side hustle may be necessary. Maybe you need to use your car to be an Uber driver. Or, perhaps you need a side marketing hustle. Perhaps you just need to hang in there a little longer with your primary job in hopes of being promoted to something greater. These are the traps that Grind examines.

This anthology is the brainchild of Brea Grant and Ed Dougherty. Dougherty is a veteran music video director, and Grant is a star actress who has transitioned into a powerhouse indie horror director. (Torn Hearts, 12 Hour Shift, Lucky) Chelsea Stardust is an emerging young director who already has a cult classic feature to her credit. (Satanic Panic) Both Stardust and Grant are featured in my 32 Important Women Horror Directors You Should Know Deadlist. The trio have tapped into something timely and resonant. Horror in the workplace never felt so present.

Here in Portland, with skyrocketing housing prices, a wavering job market, and a general economic malaise, this movie seems to have been channelled for us. Appropriately, the Portland Horror Film Festival featured Grind as one of its featured presentations.

People all over the world are waking up.

The current state of things as we see it — the average American is suffering while billionaires line their pockets, driving income inequality to a level not seen since the 18th century. Workplace safety is declining, worker exploitation is rising, and wage theft is rampant.

Things are bad but people are realizing it. The public’s approval rate of unions is higher than ever — not just in our industry but industries around the country. From hotels to coffee shops to Waffle Houses, workers are fighting for their rights– often against harsh union busting reprisals. This is a historic moment of anger and fear, and these topics are what everyone’s talking about…

…And thus it’s the perfect theme for a horror film. We want to tackle this subject in a fun, scary way that will provide a cathartic release for audiences everywhere.

This is a film for anyone who’s ever hated their job, had a bad boss, or felt taken advantage of at work. In other words, it’s a film for all of us.

GRIND is a WIP. Sound is final. VFX and color are not (which you will definitely notice).

Directed by Chelsea Stardust
Starring: Mercedes Mason as Maria, James A. Janisse as Justin

Maria is a DRGN warehouse employee who is racing through the aisles to retrieve a ring light for an expedited delivery order. Time runs out on her search, and she gets transferred to “Special Gifts.” It’s neither a gift, nor special. This is the opening wraparound connective segment for the anthology. We follow the package to the next segment…

Directed by Brea Grant
Starring: Jessika Van as Sarah, Courtney Pauroso as Molly, Hunter Smith as The Axe Man, and Barbara Crampton as The Founder

Sarah has joined La La Leggings as a downline multi level marketing (MLM) agent in an attempt to earn some extra cash, selling cheap yoga pants online. She is a lackluster sales agent, and her performance reflects it. Her upline partner, Molly notifies her the dire consequences of failing to meet her quota. Notably, one of the contractual conditions of failure is that her husband’s penis will turn into a scrub jay. Yep. Just like it says. It’s hysterical and horrifying, and it’s true! The consequences only get worse from there, and pretty soon, Molly’s reputation is affected. So, Molly comes by to help her pitch stretchy pants. Even combined, the sales are so poor that it summons the immortl Axe Man. (Clad in La La Leggings). They should have sold more leggings!

After the battle with the axe man, a doorbell rings and food has arrived! We now transfer the story from Sarah to Benny.

Directed by Brea Grant
Starring Vinny Thomas as Bennie, Gigi Saul Guerrero as Camilla, and Thor Harris as the Frightening Man

After delivering to the La La Leggings house, Bennie continues his food delivery grind. It’s a thankless job, literally, at times, because he is working for tips. And Los Angeles residents are stingy tippers. Delivery after delivery and it becomes an effort in futility. He gets a mysterious Ghost Kitchen call, where his text message directions instruct him to retrieve a manky paper bag from a locked chest for a preposterously big tip. If it seems to be too good to be true, it is. Bennie is caught in a combination deadly escape room and a time loop, where he is requested to do increasingly risky tasks. If he fails, the delivery resets. As things get weirder and weirder, Bennie has no option but to comply with the bizarre and painful requests.

As is true for most time loops, in order to close the loop, he has to satisfy the requests. He guts through the torturous pain and comes face to face with a bizarre epiphany, whereafter he continues on as a food delivery driver for one last drop… to the DRGN headquarters.

Directed by Ed Dougherty
Starring: Christopher Rodriguez Marquette as Joel, James Urbaniak as Richard, and Rob Huebel as Andy

Joel is a teacher looking for a career change, and has arrived at the DRGN headquarters to apply for a plum job. Andy, a relationships manager at DRGN tells him of the wonderful opportunities at the company. A job that starts at $175,000 and with all the benefits that a high tech job has to offer. However, there is a probationary period, that requires potential new employees to work in The Pit. Joel is skeptical about the offer, but Andy assures him that all he has to do is content moderation for Hatchbook, DRGN’s social media site.

The catch is, the content that has to be watched is some of the most vile and disturbing content on the internet. Watch enough videos, and you can get that big paycheck with the cushy benefits. How many videos? Only a mere 6,750,000. This is a staggering and emotionally taxing amount of awful content to be viewed. Joel is determined to be the rare, and perhaps only person to emerge from the Pit to get the big job upstairs. Andy will do everything to make sure that doesn’t happen. The consequences are corrosive and psychologically devastating.

Directed by Ed Dougherty
Starring: Sharlene Cruz as Kayla, Ify Nwandiwe as Todd, James A. Janisse as Justin, Aubrey Shea as Mel, James Paxton as Crowe, Teri Gamble as Clara, Rob Heubel as Andy, and Vee Nixie as Neptulia

Power to the people! The employees of a Neptulia Coffee shop are forming a union, and going on strike! No more minimum wage, lousy benefits, high job turnover, and understaffed work loads. The crew is a mixed bag of oddballs. Kayla is the committed union leader. Todd is the burly, but geeky corporate supportive shift manager. Crowe is the dimwitted activist wannabe who glues himself to the cashier counter, but now has to pee badly. This strike is doomed for failure.

Meanwhile, DRGN corporate overlord Andy has been tracking the special gift delivery destined for the coffee shop. It’s the same package from the opening wraparound. The delivery is the size of a refrigerator, and weighs a ton. Why would they receive a package from HQ? DRGN is going to bust this strike, with a stealthy option. There’s a toothy monster mermaid in that “gift”, and woe be to the would-be labor organizers. Can the gang that can’t get their act together fight off the blasphemous namesake of their shop?

Directed by Chelsea Stardust
Starring: Barbara Crampton as the Founder and Rob Heubel as Andy

In the back half wraparound, we discover that Andy and the La La Leggins founder are a married power couple, basking in their wickedness and enjoying their domain. A package has arrived at the door, though. A black box. That could only mean one thing: DRGN Gift, which is as we know now, not a good thing. But, why would DRGN turn on two of their power brokers? What could it be? The slightly damaged box suggests it might not be what they think it is…

Grind may be the best anthology I’ve seen since Southbound. The narrative threads and thematic consistency show real intent. The hilarious MLM is the foundation of the movie, as it was generated as a short film that worked the festival circuit in 2025 and was a fan favorite. I saw it at both Overlook and Portland Horror FF last year, and each time it brought the house down. Brea and Ed were able to deftly find similar work-based horror themes that resonanate with the current economic cycle. The hand-offs and transitions from segment to segment really work, and it all comes through as a singular message.

Grind’s level of craft is evidence of the growth in the emerging talents of all three directors. The trio essentially is self-funding this project without the backing of a major studio, but you wouldn’t know it from the production values. Part of this is a testament to independent film making in the 2020’s, with the availability of better equipment, but this movie also had an impressive and huge cast.

Kudos to Jessika Van, Vinny Thomas, and Christopher Rodriguez Marquette for each holding down their segments. These are veteran character actors, and it is great to see them getting to showcase their talents in each of the stories. Thier struggles feel like our struggles. In each case, equal parts frustration and determination come to the fore. I also really enjoyed Ify Nwadiwe’s take as the straight man foil for the kooky activists in Union Meeting. Getting such a big cast on a tight budget is a testament to the filmmaker’s ability to get buy-in from their actors. I hope it bodes well for all of them.

A superior anthology requires balance and cohesiveness in concept, while avoiding so much similarity that it becomes redundant. The beauty of Grind is that it strikes an entertaining tone and maintains it throughout the run of all the segments. Surely a lot of this is because the same writers are involved with all the stories, but the fresh takes that each segment has keeps it surprising. There are some tonal shifts, with two of the segments having bleak endings and two of them ending with the protagonists on top. Ultimately, this satisfies.

For a truly independent film, financed by the directors themselves, this was quite an achievement. A testament to this is the huge cast that they were able to assemble. Aside from Barbara Crampton, there aren’t any big stars in this film. The cast answered the call to good filmmakers, and it pays off. One of the notable performances is that of Vee Nixie, a thin contortionist/costume acting specialist who is becoming the female version of Doug Jones. Her portrayal of Neptulia the mermaid, scrambling around the floor in a full fish suit was truly impressive. She’s a regular fixture at Monsterpalooza, the great horror makeup convention in Los Angeles, so go find her if you are an attendee.

When Grind showed at the Portland Horror Film Festival, it was well into its festival run. There are more festivals to come, and the producers are still trying to get into more. The solid reputations of these filmmakers, plus the positive reception that they’ve been getting so far in their run means that this might end up in a festival near you. It is definitely one to catch if you see it at a late summer festival screening. The content pushes just over the R rated boundary, particularly the multitude of grisly videos shown in the Content Moderation segment. But, this movie isn’t likely to trigger anyone, and the great humor and clever stories make it a good gateway horror property.

Here’s my interview from the green room at the Hollywood theater, directly after having seen Grind at the Portland Horror Film Festival:

Think of this as mid-summer air conditioning by way of podcast. Granted, we considered this episode much earlier in the year, but with so many PHFF interviews, it got pushed further into the summer months! So, let this discussion help cool you with shivers down your spine!

Themes of isolation, where the environment itself adds to the danger of just being outside, never mind the killer or monster waiting for you out there. It’s that extra addition that makes just getting around in a horror movie difficult. Almost every variant of horror is represented with the overlay of freezing temperatures. Serial Killer / Psychopath? Check. Vampires? Multiple times. Zombies? Uh huh. Aliens and monsters? Plenty of them. It’s freezing PLUS scary antagonist.

Frozen horror is often a melancholy affair. With the exception of perhaps Werewolves Within, these movies tend to be quite serious. The colors are desaturated and high contrast. The music is often spare, with hints of wind blowing in the background. The other partner of ice-cold horror is darkness. Many times the location will be in fringe or polar latitudes, limiting the amount of daylight. Characters subjected to freezing to death are different than those burning up in the desert. This is still a constitution check, though It’s less about exhaustion and more about willpower. That, and there might be a vampire waiting for you. They seem to be OK with freezing temperatures.

Also, if you are making this a theme within your movie, you will want to have plenty of the activity outside. There are films that use bad weather to limit the locations (Think Pontypool (2008) or Climax (2018)). For this episode, we want the characters to endure the cold. Get out there! Don’t be a sissy! Just keep moving. That’ll keep you warm.

For this episode, we avoided repeating ourselves with Holiday Horror, particularly Christmas-themed horror, as we have already done that in Episode 114: Ho Ho Horror. Another similar theme, if you like this stuff, is Episode 172: Canadian Horror.

Friday the 69th is a horror parody asking: What if a failing porn studio tried to make a conventional slasher movie? Charming and silly. Not as raunchy as you might expect. This is an interview with the director, Alex Montilla and star Rob Zoppo. Part of the Portland Horror Film Festival slate of films.