My Animal really wants to be Ginger Snaps by way of A24: aching queer romance, icy mood, neon-soaked loneliness, plus a dash of lycanthropy as metaphor for desire, shame, and the horror of being different. What it mostly ends up being is a 90-minute perfume commercial about feelings, occasionally interrupted by the reminder that, technically, … Read More “My Animal (2023)” »
Storms do funny things to people. They make decent folks jittery, sinners reflective, and criminals stupid. In Little Bone Lodge, the Scottish Highlands cough up a howler of a night and two bleeding, desperate brothers—Jack (Neil Linpow) and Matty (Harry Cadby)—limp into a remote farmhouse like wolf pups who’ve mistaken a bear cave for a … Read More “Little Bone Lodge (2023)” »
If Killer Book Club were assigned reading, it’d be the kind of paperback you skim on the bus and then pray the quiz is multiple choice. It’s a Netflix-bright, algorithm-approved slasher that worships at the altar of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Semester (not a real movie, but somehow still more original), … Read More “Killer Book Club (2023) : A study group trades footnotes for throat cuts when a killer clown starts grading on a curve—everyone’s average plummets to “bloodbath.”” »
If you’ve ever looked at a shoe box and thought, “What’s the worst that could happen?”, Infested (aka Vermines) cheerfully answers: civilization. Sébastien Vaniček’s feature debut is a jittery, funny, and ferociously crowd-pleasing arachnopocalypse that treats spiders like tiny agents of chaos and social allegory—eight-legged metaphors scuttling through the cracks of a concrete high-rise and … Read More “Infested (aka Vermines)” »
If you’ve ever stared at a locked door and thought, “I bet that’s where all my bad decisions live,” Hostile Dimensions politely opens it for you and shoves you through. Graham Hughes’ found-footage sci-fi horror is the rare multiverse movie that doesn’t feel like homework; it’s nimble, nasty, and wickedly funny in that “laugh so … Read More “Hostile Dimensions” »
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if a Zillow listing, a true-crime podcast, and a cursed funhouse had a baby, Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor is your answer—and that baby arrives swaddled in Super 8 film and spite. Stephen Cognetti returns to his haunted sandbox with a prequel/sequel hybrid that is equal … Read More “Welcome Back to Abaddon-Adjacent” »
Bishal Dutta’s It Lives Inside is the kind of debut that tiptoes into the room with a jar and then smashes it on your expectations. It’s a supernatural chiller that feasts on two cuisines at once—immigrant-family drama and teen horror—then wipes its mouth on your letterman jacket. The result is lean, moody, and deliciously specific, … Read More “It Lives Inside (2023) — a hungry Pishach crashes an Indian-American coming-of-age story, proving that the only thing scarier than high school is your mother being right about literally everything.” »
Also features art school, a frat party, and a demon who’s been red for so long he’s basically a stop sign with hooves. Patrick Wilson steps behind the camera for his directorial debut and, bless him, he points it squarely at the franchise’s most persistent ghost: franchise fatigue. Insidious: The Red Door is a film … Read More “Insidious: The Red Door (2023) — Family therapy, but make it paranormal and somehow less effective than actual therapy.” »
Zarrar Kahn’s debut is the rare supernatural chiller that manages to be tender, thorny, political, and genuinely eerie without ever losing its grip on human stakes. Set in modern-day Karachi, In Flames plays like a séance conducted over a stack of inheritance forms: grief on one side, bureaucracy on the other, and a restless spirit … Read More “In Flames (2023) — a ghost story where the most terrifying specter is patriarchy in a crisp white shalwar kameez, and the jump scare is someone knocking on your door with paperwork.” »
Steven Pierce’s Herd is the rare horror film that manages to juggle zombies, queer relationship drama, and small-town militia paranoia without tripping over its own shotgun. It’s sweaty, claustrophobic, sometimes bleakly funny, and surprisingly heartfelt. Imagine The Walking Dead crossed with Blue Valentine and a dash of Duck Dynasty, then add a pinch of emotional … Read More “Herd (2023) – A zombie movie that asks the timeless question: what’s scarier—viral infection, toxic masculinity, or a canoe trip with your ex? Spoiler: it’s a three-way tie, and all of them bite.” »