If you’ve ever wondered what happens when Scooby-Doo meets Night of the Living Dead and then gets locked in Charles Band’s garage with a Ouija board, congratulations: you’ve already experienced Prison of the Dead without having to sit through 90 minutes of it. Directed by David DeCoteau (masquerading under the name “Victoria Sloane,” because who … Read More “Prison of the Dead (2000): When Your Villain Is a Guy Named “Scythe”” »
You know a horror movie is doomed when the scariest thing about it is the fact that Meg Ryan co-produced it. Lost Soulswas pitched as an apocalyptic thriller about the Antichrist rising at the dawn of the new millennium. What audiences actually got was Winona Ryder whispering in dimly lit hallways, Ben Chaplin looking perpetually … Read More “Lost Souls (2000): When Satan Meets Sudoku” »
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you give Malcolm McDowell a bad script, a Canadian film budget, and a swarm of CGI flies that look like they were rendered on a 1995 Dell desktop, look no further than Island of the Dead. It’s a horror film so uninspired it makes Mosquito (1995) look like … Read More “Island of the Dead (2000): Buzz Off, Please” »
Canada, man. Cold place. Ice, beer, hockey sticks, syrup thick enough to drown in. And then they go and make a goddamn movie about teenage girls sprouting hair and fangs like it’s some kind of joke gone bad at the school Halloween dance. Ginger Snaps. That’s the name. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’ll bite … Read More “Ginger Snaps (2000): Puberty With Extra Hair and a Body Count” »
Some horror films keep you awake at night. Christina’s House keeps you awake only because you’re wondering who thought this script was ready to shoot. Directed by Gavin Wilding and executive produced by the screenwriters of Poltergeist—a fact that should have been their walk-off home run—this Canadian indie horror-thriller instead lands like a bunt that … Read More “Christina’s House (2000): The Attic Ate My Brain” »
George A. Romero gave us Night of the Living Dead. He gave us zombies that still shuffle through pop culture today. And then, in 2000, he gave us Bruiser—proof that even horror legends can get stuck making a film that feels like it was brainstormed during a hangover and filmed with leftover Canadian tax credits. … Read More “Bruiser (2000): The Masked Midlife Crisis Nobody Asked For” »
If the late ’90s and early 2000s were the golden age of supernatural thrillers, Bless the Child was the rusty nail sticking out of the pew. Directed by Chuck Russell (The Blob, The Mask), this unholy mess stars Kim Basinger, Rufus Sewell, Jimmy Smits, and Christina Ricci—names that deserve better, but apparently couldn’t read the … Read More “Bless the Child (2000): Jesus Wept, and So Did the Audience” »
Opening Credits: Lower Your Expectations Let’s get this out of the way: if you ever wanted to watch The Exorcist but thought, “You know what would make this scarier? Cutting the budget, moving it to Showtime, and replacing pea soup with Timothy Dalton’s brooding eyebrows,” then congratulations — Possessed is for you. For the rest … Read More “Possessed (2000) – Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate Exorcism TV Movies” »
Opening Shots of Pain There are movies that haunt your dreams, and then there are movies that make you wish you could get a medically induced coma just to escape them. Nightmare (Gawi for the purists, “Scissors” if you’re a fan of blunt metaphors) falls firmly into the latter. It’s a South Korean horror film … Read More “Nightmare (2000) – The Real Horror Is Sitting Through It” »
Opening Credits: The Truth Hurts If the title sounds like a bad History Channel documentary, that’s because it kind of is — only with Karl Urban running around New Zealand alleyways while people in thrift-store robes yell about Satan. The Irrefutable Truth About Demonswants to be a paranoid cult horror masterpiece. What it actually is: … Read More “The Irrefutable Truth About Demons (2000) – Karl Urban vs. the Budget Bin Satanists” »
