Even Quieter Sequel ‘A QUIET PLACE PART II’ Goes Places

May 18, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged A Quiet Place Part II, Cillian Murphy, Horror, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Out in Theaters, Reviews 1 Comment

John Krasinski’s Lee Abbott may have bit the dust in the actor-turned-filmmaker’s directorial debut but that doesn’t stop him from returning in the opening moments of A Quiet Place Part II. The scene is set as Marco Beltrami’s foreboding soundtrack creeps into our senses as a ‘Day 1’ title card slips into frame. The end is nigh but no one knows anything about the devastation barreling their way. In fact, it’s just another beautiful summer day in Small Town America. The Abbot family and their tight-knit community gather in blissful ignorance at a little league game. Marcus (Noah Jupe) is up to bat when the sky erupts in flaming streaks. Something is coming. Families break off into nuclear clusters, rushing to their vehicles, heading home to regroup. Before anyone has any sense of what’s happening, monsters reign down, killing anything that makes a sound. A quiet place is born, in flame and in blood. Read More

‘THE DJINN’ a Threadbare Supernatural Home Invasion Snooze

May 11, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged David Charbonier, Ezra Dewey, Horror, Julián Estrada, Justin Powell, Matthew James, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Rob Brownstein, The Djinn 2 Comments

Little more than a collection of audio-visual horror movie clichès stitched atop a daddy’s-gone-for-the-night campfire tale, David Charbonier and Justin Powell’s The Djinn feels like a short film puffed out to feature length without the content sufficient to support said feature status. The film follows Dylan (Ezra Dewey), mute son to a late-night DJ and single father (Rob Brownstein) who decides to mess around with a haunted book and ends up summoning a djinn, which for the purposes of this film is basically an evil genie. Read More

Geriatric Horror ’HONEYDEW’ Serves Hospitality With a Heaping Side of Hostility

April 5, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Barbara Kingsley, Devereux Milburn, Honeydew, Horror, Lena Dunham, Malin Barr, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sawyer Spielberg 1 Comment

In Devereux Milburn’s Honeydew, the window-dressings of dustbowl farmland hospitality flakes off to reveal a disturbing underbelly; one crusted with human sacrifice, religious devotion, and, more likely than not, a good-sized serving of man-meat. The flame has been long extinguished between Sam (Steven Spielberg’s son Sawyer Spielberg ) and Rylie (Malin Barr), a waiter/aspiring actor and botanist graduate student respectively, but the two head to rural Massachusetts with plans to camp out and do some research for Rylie’s thesis on a medieval wheat-based neurodegenerative disease. When they’re forced off the property of a grumpy old timer named Eulis in the middle of the night only to discover that their car will not start, they seek assistance at a nearby farmstead. You can probably guess where this goes next. Read More

SXSW 2021: ‘SOUND OF VIOLENCE’ Is the Ultra-Campy ASMR Slasher You Didn’t Know You Needed

March 18, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Alex Noyer, Horror, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Lili Simmons, Reviews, Sonya Munro, Sound of Violence, SXSW, SXSW 2021 Leave a comment

There is a scene early on in the absolutely bonkers horror camp-fest Sound of Violence where murderess-musician-mistress Alexis (Jasmin Savoy Brown) kidnaps a homeless man and rigs him up like an electric drum set. Part-hardware, part-flesh, done up as if Kevin Mcalester and Jigsaw were there to help perfect the evil mastermind mechanics. A meat tenderizer dangles above his skull, a mallet aimed at his kneecaps, scalpels bisecting his wrists like cello bows. Alexis nervously puts on her earphones and gets to work. Read More

SXSW 2021: ‘WITCH HUNT’ Explores a World Where Witches Are Real and Illegal

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Abigail Cowen, Echo Campbell, Elizabeth Mitchell, Elle Calahan, Gideon Adlon, Horror, SXSW, SXSW 2021, Witch Hunt 1 Comment

America never got past its Salem period in Elle Calahan’s allegorical social horror movie Witch Hunt. The only difference is, in Calahan’s world, witches actually do exist. The United States is a perilous place for those magical few; the practice of witchcraft has been banned and is punishable by death; families of convicted witches are forced into deep-cover and permanent hiding; their only hopes being smuggled south to the Mexican border where freedom from institutionalized prejudice looms. Read More

SXSW 2021: Floral Horror ‘GAIA’ a Nightmarish Reckoning with Nature

March 17, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Alex van Dyk, Carel Nel, Gaia, Horror, Jaco Bouwer, Monique Rockman, Reviews, SXSW, SXSW 2021 1 Comment

Eco-horror is having a resurgence of late, as are psilocybin mushrooms as a visual language in film. Jaco Bouwer’s formidable woodland creeper Gaia fits snugly into a recent wave of psychedelic folk horror, a subgenre that binds Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Alex Garland’s Annihilation, Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth (a recent Sundance release that would make a pitch perfect double feature with Bouwer’s entry) and even Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Sparked by an increasing awareness of humanity’s abusive relationship with nature, eco-horror pits the survival of man and earth against one another and in the light of a global pandemic, those themes have never been as prescient. Read More

Nightmares ‘COME TRUE’ in Genuinely Scary Sleepwalk Through the Subconscious

March 10, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Anthony Scott Burns, Come True, Daniel Weissenberger, Horror, Julia Sarah Stone, Landon Liboiron, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tedra Rogers Leave a comment

A few nights into a mysterious university sleep study, Sarah finds herself perusing a bookshop, pulled towards the Phillip K. Dick entries on the shelf. Jeremy, her primary researcher and maybe-stalker, suggests she give Dick a read, referring to his work as “hauntingly sad”. This description – hauntingly sad – accurately captures the weirdly affecting (and low-key terrifying) tonality of Come True, a descent into sleep paralysis and ancestral nightmares coming to life. Vividly tragic, but always in a darkly unspeakable way, Come True captures that in-between realm separating sleep and dreams and twists it into a malevolent manifesto about the collective terror that lingers in the mysterious netherworld of slumber. Read More

‘WRONG TURN’ Director Mike P. Nelson Talks ‘Temple of Doom’ Nods and Cuts to Avoid an NC-17 Rating

February 22, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Interviews Tagged Horror, Interviews, Mike P. Nelson, Talking With..., Wrong Turn 1 Comment

It’s sometimes in the strangest places that the sweetest things lurk. Or such is the case with Mike P. Nelson’s 2021 sequel/reboot of the Wrong Turn franchise, a film series which began in 2003 and went on to spawn five sequels. Despite a dedicated fan base, the backwoods inbred cannibal horror franchise never managed any notable critical or commercial success but in flipping the script and starting basically from scratch, Nelson and writing partner Alan B. Elroy have breathed new life into a series that now shows no sign of running out of gas and a whole new highway of ideas to explore. Read More

Sundance 2021: ‘IN THE EARTH’ Combines Axe Slashers and Lovecraftian Horror With Hallucinogenic Style

January 29, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Clint Mansell, Ellora Torchia, Hayley Squires, Horror, In the Earth, Joel Fry, Reece Shearsmith, Sundance, Sundance 2021 2 Comments

Creating horror has been and will always be a sociopolitical act and with In The Earth, British auteur Ben Wheatley reflects the reality of the pandemic back at us in startling, disorienting fashion. The result has notes of all kinds of horror, but most distinctly a tent-in-the-woods slasher crossed with Lovecraftian cosmic horror, all set to the backdrop of some airborne viral infection that’s driven the population into quarantine and starved them for a cure. Read More

Brutal ‘WRONG TURN’ A Hugely Enjoyable Franchise Detour into Wild Backwoods Schlock

January 25, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Adian Bradley, Alan B. McElroy, Bill Sage, Charlotte Vega, Dylan McTee, Horror, Matthew Modine, Mike P. Nelson, Movies, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Wrong Turn 2 Comments

A spin-off in name only, Wrong Turn (2021), from relative newcomer director Mike P. Nelson, takes the cult inbred-cannibal horror franchise in a totally new direction, pivoting away from the signature cornerstones of the slasher series towards something just as unflinching, addictive, and brutal but one that’s meant to be taken more seriously. And with no apparent cannibalism. Read More