Possession, but Make It Personal If you’ve ever watched a standard Hollywood exorcism movie and thought, “This could really use more goat’s milk, Nahua ritual, and heroin withdrawal,” The Old Ways heard you. Christopher Alender’s folk horror tale takes one of the most overworked subgenres—the possession/exorcism movie—and drags it into the jungle outside Veracruz, scrubs … Read More “The Old Ways (2020) Demon detox with cultural flair” »
Horror Tourism with Frequent-Flyer Mileage The Missing is what happens when someone binges a bunch of Japanese horror classics, remembers roughly five things—“trauma, long hair, old house, Japan, blue filter”—and decides, Yes, I, too, shall create cinema. On paper, it sounds promising: a Philippine horror film shot in Saga, Japan, about an architect with PTSD, … Read More “The Missing (2020) J-horror cosplay, Pinoy soap opera” »
Raising Kids in the Age of “Oh God” There are helicopter parents, there are free-range parents, and then there is Abbey Bell, who skips right past all known parenting styles and invents “counterterrorism mom.” M.O.M. Mothers of Monsters takes one of the most terrifying modern nightmares—a potential school shooter in your own house—and turns it … Read More “M.O.M. Mothers of Monsters (2020) Parenting, but make it apocalyptic” »
A Sleepover Prank from the Abyss If you’ve ever been the quiet kid at a sleepover watching the “fun” slowly turn into something cruel, Let’s Scare Julie is like that—except shot in real time, in one night, with a supernatural hit of karma waiting across the street. Jud Cremata’s low-budget, experimental horror doesn’t come loaded … Read More “Let’s Scare Julie (2020) Mean girls, real time, bad karma” »
A Love Letter Written in Crayon The Last Matinee really wants to be a love letter to Italian giallo and ’80s slashers. Instead, it feels like a sticky note you’d find on the floor of a second-run theater: smudged, half-legible, and vaguely smelling of stale popcorn and regret. Set in 1993 in a dying Montevideo … Read More “The Last Matinee (2020) Eye-gouging, but not eye-opening” »
A Grief Cartoon from the Inside Out Most animated films want your inner child. Kill It and Leave This Town wants your inner corpse. Mariusz Wilczyński’s painstaking, 14-years-in-the-making feature is an autobiographical, adult animated plunge into memory, mourning, and the kind of existential exhaustion you usually only get from reading Eastern European literature in winter. … Read More “Kill It and Leave This Town (2020) Hand-drawn grief in cigarette smoke” »
Bookstore, Backwater, and Bad Life Choices There are a lot of ways to get bitten by life: bad jobs, bad relationships, bad loans. I Am Lisa adds “bad small-town law enforcement feeding you to wolves” to that list. Patrick Rea’s 2020 horror revenge flick is a scrappy, blood-smeared gem—a low-budget, character-driven werewolf story that decides, … Read More “I Am Lisa (2020) Small-town bullies, big-time werewolf” »
The Seance That Launched a Thousand Heart Attacks If you ever sat on a Zoom call in 2020 and thought, “This meeting would be better if everyone just died,” Host is here to lovingly grant that wish. Rob Savage’s 56-minute scream of a movie is a lockdown horror distilled to its purest form: six friends, … Read More “Host (2020) Zoom call from literal hell” »
Love in the Time of Total Collapse Some horror movies want to make you jump. Her Name Was Christa wants to make you deeply, cosmically uncomfortable—and then, somehow, make you care. Written, directed by, and starring indie horror stalwart James L. Edwards, this is a morbid love story for people who think Valentine’s Day should … Read More “Her Name Was Christa (2020) Romance for the emotionally unwell” »
A Blood-Soaked Postcard from the Backroads There are prestige horror films that beg for awards, think pieces, and four-part YouTube essays. Hacksaw is not one of those movies—and that’s part of its greasy charm. Anthony Leone’s found-footage slasher is the cinematic equivalent of a gas station restroom with a surprisingly good metal playlist: you’re not … Read More “Hacksaw (2020) Roadside attraction for gorehounds” »