Horror is, first and foremost, a genre defined by its agenda. Whether the impression of horror manifests as fear, dread, revulsion, or unease, the project has to do its job. More often than not, these duties are performed by the ever-evolving bouquet of blood and gore special effects. We see …
Read More »Cinepocalypse 2019: Tim Reis And James Sizemore’s ‘Budfoot’ – Short Film Review
“The events and characters portrayed in this motion picture are real. They’re all real. Your imagination is real and it is dangerous as fuck.” This warning scrolls past during the end credits for Bad Blood: The Movie’s Tim Reis and James Sizemore’s new mind-bending seventeen-minute short, Budfoot, and it distills …
Read More »Cinepocalypse 2019: ‘The Only Thing I Love More Than You Is Ranch Dressing’ (2018) Short Film Review
I’m a sucker for long film titles. It might be a cheap trick to get my eyeballs on a movie, but a long title like The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (2013) or Your Vice Is A Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972) just sucks me …
Read More »Netflix’s ‘The Perfection’ (2019) Movie Review
When I was a kid, I went to an exhibit at an art museum that celebrated Rube Goldberg machines. While my family wandered the museum and looked at everything else, I stayed in the basement to watch marbles knock over dominoes, light candles, and pour water for what felt like …
Read More »Miles Doleac’s ‘Hallowed Ground’ (2019) Movie Review
When it comes to horror films, we all have our subgenres and niche weaknesses. Anything that comes out that fits our little obsessions immediately becomes a must-watch, sight-unseen. My heart sings for two things: Deadly Games and Horror Westerns. Give me Saw (2004) or Union Furnace (2015 – read our review …
Read More »PopHorror’s Horror Anime Reviews: AniMay Week 4 – Corpse Party: Tortured Souls
This whole month, I’ve been trying to watch horror anime that demonstrates the range of the medium. We’ve had emotional stories, thrillers and impossibly weird non-linear storytelling, and all of it fits into one subgenre of horror or another. One thing we’ve been missing, though, is a mind-peeling, hair-whitening, balls-through-the-wall …
Read More »PopHorror’s Horror Anime Reviews: AniMay Week 3 – Puella Magi Madoka Magica
In our last AniMay review, we focused on Naoki Urasawa‘s Monster (you can read the article here) and anime’s potential to step outside of itself and tell a straightforward horror/thriller story. This week, we’re stepping back into anime’s wheelhouse with a story about one of the most persistent tropes in …
Read More »PopHorror’s Horror Anime Reviews: AniMay Week 2 – Monster
It’s week 2 of PopHorror’s month long horror anime deep dive. This means it’s time for something different. In last week’s article on When They Cry (read that one here), we discussed this quintessential horror anime, which is full of hyperbolized emotions, wonky pacing, reliance on Japanese folklore, and environmental …
Read More »PopHorror’s Horror Anime Reviews: AniMay Week 1 – Higurashi/When They Cry
There are very few horror movies that affect me like the ones that come out of Japan. Steeped in the myths and folklore of the region and dripping with a pantheon of fears I don’t understand but feel with every inch of my skin, Japanese horror movies like Takashi Miike’s …
Read More »Is Dead Really Better? A Review of Pet Sematary (2019)
First of all, I don’t want to spend too much time dwelling on the 1989 movie. That one was good, clean, and full of scares. Starry Eyes‘ (2014) Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s Pet Sematary doesn’t make any effort to reach out or dig up the past. The new movie …
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