In early to mid 70’s the face of Hollywood was changed forever by a new wave of horror directors. One of these directors was Steven Spielberg who would direct episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, films like Duel and Jaws. Other members of this motley band of friends included George Lucas with his tale of a [...]
Directed By: Elbert van Strien Written By: Elbert van Strien, Paulo van Vliet Run Time: 112 minutes Any fan of the horror genre will get a kick out of the Dutch film Two Eyes Staring (2010). Set principally in Belgium and secondarily in the Netherlands, Two Eyes Staring is the story of a family with [...]
Directed by David R. Ellis, 2011 Written by Will Hayes, Jesse Studenberg SHARK NIGHT 3D is a brilliant movie. I’m not being ironic and I’m not trolling you when I say that. SHARK NIGHT 3D is next level stuff; the most sentient horror movie since SCREAM. This is the STARSHIP TROOPERS of killer shark movies– and [...]
It’s a bittersweet day to review THE ART OF HAMMER. Right now, as I write this, Hammer’s COUNTESS DRACULA plays in the background, a reminder of the actress Ingrid Pitt, who passed away this November 23 at age 73. It’s one of my favorite Hammers, starring Pitt as an elderly Elizabeth Bathory-inspired murderess who keeps herself [...]
Written and Directed by Sean Byrne, 2009 I’ve been running Horror’s Not Dead for a little over four years now. If you’ve been reading the site for any decent length of time, you can probably trace how my tastes have cultivated over the years and how from time to time I’ll stumble upon an indie [...]
What can I add to roughly twenty-five years worth of unfettered praise and critical analysis of Alan Moore’s brilliant run on DC Comics’ Swamp Thing? This question has been haunting me for the past few weeks, as I’ve explored DC’s new hardcover reprint of the material previously collected in the Swamp Thing: Love and Death [...]
Directed by Barbara Brancaccio, Joshua Zeman, 2009 Written by Joshua Zeman Documentaries often deal with scary subject matter — JESUS CAMP is more terrifying than any work of fiction I saw in 2006 — but rarely do they intermingle with the typical horror movie narrative. Yet such is CROPSEY, a documentary that tackles a story [...]
Written and Directed by Steven Kastrissios, 2008 The revenge thriller is a tough nut to crack. The key to success is diving brain first into a unique angle on a time-tested formula. If you’re Pierre Morel with TAKEN you throw Liam Neeson on a plane to Paris and have him throat chop every scumbag that [...]
Directed by Chan-wook Park, 2009 Written by Seo-Gyeong Jeong, Chan-wook Park When I bought my wife’s engagement ring I was in over my head. I knew nothing about rings, I knew nothing about diamonds and I knew nothing about purchasing a ring with a diamond in it. She gave me a list of what to [...]
Directed by Bob Clark, 1979 Written by Roy Moore Welcome back to AYIF. Today’s film epitomizes why I started this project in the first place: to mine obscurity and strike paydirt! I love horror films and have since I was a kid. While I have grown to be picky, even a bit snobby, on the [...]
Bioshock Developed By: 2K Games Published By: 2K Games “Welcome to Rapture” Never before have I seen a tagline to anything emanate more truth than BIOSHOCK’s. Rapture, an underwater city of the genetically damned with a chilling sensation that never relents with every single crafted item enforces the sensation and I mean everything. BIOSHOCK may [...]
Published by Valve, 2008 I realize there has been dearth of horror movie reviews on this site of late. I could blame the onset of winter months, which are the weakest weeks of the year as far as horror is concerned, but that would be a scapegoat. I was out of the country for a [...]
Published and Developed by Capcom. 2005 I can remember when I first saw the E3 videos for RESIDENT EVIL 4. Leon Kennedy was walking in a mansion when a humanoid apparition appeared before him, chasing him out of the room. While the first videos had their freaky moments, I still sighed. The concept of ghosts [...]
Directed by Tomas Alfredson, 2008 Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist from his novel Knowing what is left to come and what has come before, I can’t imagine any film this year better equipped to touch quickened hearts, arrest lungs and widen minds than LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. There is a reason Tomas Alfredson’s film [...]
Written by Dan Simmons, 1991 There is an unexpected advantage to being my age. I’ve been around, sure, but there is still so much outside my footprint. I’ve got feelers out everywhere, normally yielding at least a geographical plotting of everything in the arena even if I never take he/she/it one on one, but from [...]
Written and Directed by Steven Kostanski, 2008 Einstein is back from the dead again(!) in LAZER GHOSTS 2: RETURN TO LASER COVER, a timeless 2008 sequel to Canadian auteur Steven Kostanski’s own groundvaporizing subversive classic. Our unsung hero of heroes Trance (Matthew Kennedy) is still shaken up over the death of his best friend Bennedict [...]
Written and Directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2007 It took three years for the world over to generate a peer to Edgar Wright’s unassailable masterpiece SHAUN OF THE DEAD. The time is finally upon us and it is with a wave of relief that I am honored to declare a heroic cohort in the horror comedy [...]
Written by Stephen King as Richard Bachman, 1979 Stephen King’s publishing pseudonym was created because, presumably, the public would not accept an author who published more than one novel per year. Thus Richard Bachman was created, an alter-ego that allowed King’s market output to keep pace with the author’s throughput. Bachman was also the mouthpiece [...]
Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007Written by Sergio G. Sánchez I lost a lot of money today. For me a hitherto unprecedented amount of money. Not quite, “I’ll put that in my mouth for $5 so I can eat tonight” kind of money, rather “Fuck Apple stock, shots all around!” kind of money. But you [...]
Directed and Adapted for the Screen by Frank Darabont from Stephen King’s Novella, 2007 I have a tendency to be hyperbolic in immediate praise of any movie that really does something for me. As a type of critic, this is a sure flaw, but please understand that I am making a conscious effort to tone [...]
Directed by Ryan Schifrin, 2006Written by Ryan Schifrin, Story by James Morrison Abominable is an unstoppable good time, the single most admirable straight-to-DVD film in years and flatly the best cryptozoological horror ever made. Supremely ambitious, never compromising personality for cheap satisfaction, Ryan Schifrin’s ripped open the cabin bound terror tale with the same fervor [...]
Written by Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000*This is a long review, I know. Read the book. The best way to describe the experience of putting eyes to the pages of House of Leaves is to spoil the ending of my favorite Clive Barker story; "In the Hills, The Cities". Barker’s great short concerns a couple who [...]
Directed by Eduardo Sánchez, 2006 Written by Jamie Nash, Eduardo Sánchez I don’t care what anyone says these days. I don’t care if they pull the, “I knew it was fake” or, “You never even saw anything, just some guy standing in the corner” – The Blair Witch Project was and still is a damned [...]
Written and Directed by Nacho Cerda, 1994 Aftermath is art so rare, so exacting and so human that it will penetrate all who view it to their deepest core. This is not theory, this is irrefutable fact. It is gravity. Nacho Cerda’s short film is a definition of gravity possessing such validity that had Newton [...]
Directed by Mary Harron, 2005 I remember seeing American Psycho theatrically. This may be embarrassing of my age, but I was 15 at the time and was dropped off at the movie theater with a group of friends in a minivan. Grant’s mom, the driver, had no desire to see the movie, but we weren’t [...]
Directed by Thom Eberhardt, 1984 I often dispel the idea that a golden age of horror where everything released was good has already come and gone (hence the name of this site). While I hold true to that belief, for me the ’80s into the very early ’90s were the genre’s glory years. There was [...]
Directed by Michele Soavi, 1994 As an opening sentence there’s little I can do to make this seem less hyperbolic, and for that I make no attempt to apologize, but I shit you negative when I say Michele Soavi’s work on Dellamorte Dellamore is some of the best direction the celluloid art has ever seen [...]
Directed by Matthew Leutwyler, 2004 It’s movies like this that remind me why I wade through so much crappy, straight-to-DVD, Indie horror. The ratio may be low, but for every ten or fifteen Satan’s Little Helpers or Gingerdead Mans, there is at least one Dead & Breakfast. In the interest of full disclosure, I was a [...]
Directed by Ken Russell, 1980 Altered States is one of the most unique ‘obsessed scientist’ horror films ever made. In fact, in that fun little subgenre it is second only to David Cronenberg’s flat-out masterpiece The Fly (which, for the record, I consider to be one of the top two horror films of all time). [...]
Directed by Fruit Chan, 2004 I’d been waiting months for the R1 release of Three.. Extremes – as opposed to ‘importing’ the bootleg – because I knew the second disc was going to be the feature length cut of Fruit Chan’s Dumplings, which is easily the high tide line of the trilogy of shorts. It [...]
Directed by Fred Dekker, 1987 In regards to childhood adventure flicks, The Monster Squad is second only to the Goonies. And, in some categories, The Monster Squad actually kicks The Goonies ass. Plus, if you don’t like either flick, you didn’t have a childhood. End of discussion. Why does the Monster Squad kick so much [...]
Directed by David Cronenberg, 1983 David Cronenberg knows what the hell is up. Pound for pound he is the greatest North American auteur working today. Several of his films are in my all time favorites and I’d even go so far as to list The Fly in my top 5 horror films of all time. [...]
Directed by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, Fabrice Canepa, 2003 Dead End is one of my favorite films of any genre of the last 5 years. I knew I wanted to write a review of something good for this site, for a change, so I knew Dead End had to be it. I wrote a review for it [...]
