Welcome to the Worst Airbnb in Ireland There are haunted houses, and then there’s The Lodgers—a movie where the plumbing cries, the wallpaper breathes, and the ghosts enforce bedtime. Directed by Brian O’Malley and written by David Turpin, this Irish gothic horror gem takes the classic haunted-mansion formula and drapes it in silk, seaweed, and … Read More “The Lodgers (2017) or: When your family curse is real estate, and the ghosts are better tenants than you are.” »
The Haunting of the Low Expectations There are bad horror movies, and then there’s Lechmi — a Malayalam “comedy horror” film that’s so confused about what it wants to be, you start to suspect the ghost isn’t haunting the apartment so much as the script. Directed by B.N. Shajeer Sha, Lechmi is that rare cinematic … Read More “Lechmi (2017) or: When the Ghost Isn’t the Only Thing That’s Dead Inside” »
Welcome to the World’s Dumbest Livestream Sean Carter’s Keep Watching opens with a promise: a home invasion horror movie for the age of surveillance, livestreaming, and audiences who can’t look away from their own doom. What it actually delivers is 89 minutes of Bella Thorne squinting at cameras, people making every possible bad decision in … Read More “Keep Watching (2017) or: “I tried, but the movie told me not to.”” »
The Apocalypse Is Here, and It’s Boring Trey Edward Shults’ It Comes at Night wants to be a psychological horror masterpiece about fear, paranoia, and the decay of humanity. What it is, unfortunately, is 91 minutes of watching people argue in a dark cabin about whether or not they’re going to catch a cold. The … Read More “It Comes at Night (2017) or: It Comes at Night, But Mostly Nothing Comes at All” »
The Horror of the Heart, Icelandic Edition I Remember You (Ég man þig), directed by Óskar Thór Axelsson and adapted from Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s novel, is what happens when a ghost story grows up, reads Kierkegaard, and moves into an abandoned Icelandic fishing village to think about its feelings. It’s a horror movie for people who … Read More “I Remember You (2017) or: Iceland’s answer to “Can grief be haunted?” — A frozen ghost story with a warm corpse of a heart.” »
A Locust Moon and a Brain Fog Chad Archibald’s The Heretics opens with promise—an occult suicide pact under a “locust moon,” a screaming girl, creepy masks that look like they were made from papier-mâché and regret. For a brief, flickering moment, it feels like we’re about to witness a hidden gem of Canadian horror—a pagan … Read More “The Heretics (2017) or: How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Demon with Too Much Drama and Not Enough Hellfire” »
A Fever Dream of Rot and Faith Lukas Feigelfeld’s Hagazussa doesn’t so much tell a story as it infects you with one. It’s a film that seeps into your bloodstream like a slow toxin—cold, pastoral, and quietly insane. The mountains hum. The goats watch. The snow falls thick as judgment. If The Witch was about … Read More “Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse (2017)” »
Welcome to Pleasantville—Population: One Serial Killer Ah, the American heartland. White picket fences, Boy Scout meetings, Bible verses, and the faint smell of moral rot wafting from your father’s tool shed. Duncan Skiles’ The Clovehitch Killer is a slow-burning, suburban nightmare that asks the all-important question: what if Leave It to Beaver was actually about … Read More “The Clovehitch Killer (2018): A Small-Town Horror Wrapped in Dad Jeans and Denial” »
The Vlog Will Be Televised—Then Monetized If you’ve ever scrolled through your feed, seen a “prank gone wrong,” and thought, “Humanity might deserve extinction,”then Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein’s Clickbait is your movie. It’s a deliriously dark satire that asks the terrifying question: what if the only thing worse than losing your followers… is … Read More “Clickbait (2018): The Sweet, Sickly, Radioactive Glow of Internet Fame” »
Smile for the Camera—It’s Probably Cursed Every once in a while, a found footage movie comes along that doesn’t just recycle the formula—it dismantles the camera, reassembles it backwards, and asks the audience, “Still sure you want to watch this?” Butterfly Kisses (2018) is that film. It’s part horror, part mockumentary, and part meta-critique of … Read More “Butterfly Kisses (2018): A Found Footage Film That Flutters Between Genius and Madness” »