A Haunted House with Mommy Issues If Indonesian horror films are known for their mix of supernatural chills and tear-jerking melodrama, Kakak takes that formula, polishes it with sincerity, and sprinkles it liberally with ghostly jealousy. Directed and co-written by Ivander Tedjasukmana, Kakak (Sister) isn’t your usual parade of cheap jump scares. It’s an emotional … Read More “Kakak (2015): When Ghosts Become Family and Jealousy Becomes a Horror Genre” »
Holy Land, Holy Crap (In a Good Way) If you’ve ever thought, “What if The Blair Witch Project had Wi-Fi and a theology degree?”, then JeruZalem is the cinematic miracle you didn’t know you needed. Written and directed by the Paz brothers (Doron and Yoav), this 2015 Israeli found-footage horror flick takes every biblical apocalypse … Read More “JeruZalem (2015): When Found Footage Found Religion and Decided to Party in Hell” »
Home Is Where the Plot Holes Are There are haunted house movies that make you afraid to turn off the lights, and then there’s The Intruders — a movie that makes you afraid you’ll never get your time back. Directed by Adam Massey and written by Jason Juravic, this 2015 Canadian horror flick somehow manages … Read More “The Intruders (2015): The Real Horror Is the Screenplay” »
The Deep Ones Are Women Now — and They’re Fabulous If H.P. Lovecraft could see Izzy Lee’s Innsmouth, he’d probably need to be exhumed and reburied for rolling in his grave so violently. This 2015 short horror film doesn’t just reimagine The Shadow Over Innsmouth — it gleefully drowns it in feminist retribution, indie grit, … Read More “Innsmouth (2015): When Lovecraft Meets Feminism and Tentacle Eggs” »
Therapy by Chainsaw There are self-help books, and then there’s I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance Is Mine, a film that replaces healing crystals with claw hammers and group therapy with homicide. Directed by Richard Schenkman (credited as R.D. Braunstein, possibly to protect his real name from future background checks), this third entry in … Read More “I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance Is Mine (2015): Feminist Fury Meets Grindhouse Therapy” »
Welcome Home (Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here) If Hope Lost was the cinematic equivalent of being beaten with a wet newspaper, The House on Pine Street is a ghost story told by someone who’s actually been haunted—by their own mother, their regrets, and maybe the property taxes in Kansas. Written by Aaron Keeling, … Read More “The House on Pine Street (2015): Motherhood, Madness, and the Mortgage from Hell” »
The Unhopeful Beginning There are bad movies, and then there’s Hope Lost — a title so prophetic it could double as a trigger warning. Directed by David Petrucci (whose filmography could double as a police report for crimes against cinema), this 2015 Italian-made, English-language “thriller” manages to make the subject of sex trafficking—already the bleakest … Read More “Hope Lost (2015): A Movie So Miserable It Might Be Self-Aware” »
There are bad movies. There are so-bad-they’re-good movies. And then there’s Killer Rack (2015), a film that confidently barrels past both categories into the unknown territory of so-bad-you-lose-faith-in-humanity-but-can’t-look-away. Directed by Greg Lamberson and written by Paul McGinnis, it’s a musical horror comedy about sentient, murderous breasts created by a Lovecraftian plastic surgeon. Yes, that’s the … Read More “Killer Rack: A Boob Job Straight from the Depths of Hell” »
By 2015, the Ju-On series had been haunting audiences for over a decade — long enough that even Kayako’s ghost probably needed a vacation. Promoted as the final film in the legendary Japanese horror franchise, Ju-On: The Final Cursepromised to close the book on the long, tangled saga of croaky ghost moms and their meowing … Read More “Ju-On: The Final Curse — The Franchise That Refused to Die (and Then Made Us Wish We Were Dead Instead)” »
If you’ve ever fantasized about locking an obnoxious houseguest in your basement and letting karma do the rest, Intruders (2015) is your new therapy session. Directed by Adam Schindler and made for the kind of budget that wouldn’t cover one episode of Criminal Minds, this compact horror-thriller turns a routine “home invasion” premise into a … Read More “Intruders: Home Is Where the Horror Lives (and Sometimes Wins)” »