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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

Directed by Eduardo Sánchez, 2006Written 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 crafty piece […]

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 seen […]

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 allowed […]

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 an […]

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 little drunk […]

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 […]

Directed by David Cronenberg, 1983

David Cronenberg knows what the hell is up. Pound for pound he is the greatest 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 […]