Movies
Father’s Day
“Father’s Day is gross and stupid, but that’s sort of the point. It’s filled with enough clever one-liners and ridiculous jokes that, despite its disgusting, nearly non-sensical plot and graphic depictions of male rape, you can’t help but laugh like an idiot throughout.”
Much like found footage, the Grindhouse aesthetic has become an easy way to break into the world of horror. When you combine this with Troma, you’re forced to abandon all hope of normalcy, and this is exemplified in the collaborative Father’s Day. Written and directed by film collective Astron-6 and produced by Troma and Lloyd Kaufman, this throwback to VHS-era, late night cinema is an inspired mess of low-budget Grindhouse action and disgusting B-movie magic.
In the 70s, a man by the name of Carl Fuchman went on a rampage, raping and killing fathers. Thus was born the urban legend of The Father’s Day Killer. Fast forward thirty years and it appears Fuchman is back. Twink, a hustler with a record, returns home to find his father brutally raped and murdered. Teaming up with a priest named John, and Ahab, a one-eyed hermit seeking revenge of his own, the three embark on a journey to find the Father’s Day Killer. Hot on their heels is Detective Stegel, determined to get to the bottom of the murder. Grindhouse-iness ensues.
Non-sequiturs, one-liners, and outright absurdity prevail as our intrepid heroes seek vengeance on a serial homosexual rapist. While early on much of the humor is incredibly forced, it quickly fades when Ahab, played by Astron-6 member Adam Brooks, appears as a grizzled hermit with a maple syrup obsession. Missing an eye as opposed to a leg, the search for his “white whale” – in this case an obese white man – consumes his every thought, met typically with the sort of wit and dialogue you’d expect from a sketch comedy group. Father’s Day and the loose connection of scenes that form a plot are nothing more than a vehicle for the three principle characters to showcase their brand of offbeat and irreverent humor. The jokes aren’t necessarily relevant to the action, but damn it all if they’re not funny as Hell.
Father’s Day is pure Grindhouse with an added mixture of sinister stop-motion animation and acid trip-like scenes for the sake of…well, insanity. The deeper you get into the film, the more insane it gets, as if Astron-6 wanted nothing more than to pay homage to every aspect of late night cinema they could muster up. Given the film’s incredibly low-budget (IMDb lists it at approximately $10,000), it’s amazing they were able to pull off what they did. This is especially true for the special effects, a mixture of CGI and practical effects that gets pushed to the brink as the plot goes from downright weird to batshit insane.
Father’s Day is gross and stupid, but that’s sort of the point. It’s filled with enough clever one-liners and ridiculous jokes that, despite its disgusting, nearly non-sensical plot and graphic depictions of male rape, you can’t help but laugh like an idiot throughout.
This week kicked off with the release of hippo horror movie Hungry at home, and four more horror movies have arrived for at-home viewing as we head into the final weekend of June.
Here are the new horror movies that released on Friday, June 26, 2026!
The Halloween season can no longer be contained to the months of September and October, with “Summerween” becoming a thing in recent years. Essentially, it allows for Halloween to bleed into the warmer Summer months, and the first ever Summerween movie has arrived.
The Asylum released Summerween onto Digital outlets today.
In the film from writer/director Ryan Ebert, “On Summerween, a former circus clown escapes a mental institution to return to his abandoned mansion and hunt the teens partying there.”
Cole Chapleski, Chase Breithoff, Logan Roe, Sophia Sabol, and Clint Morrison star.
Director Ryan Ebert is the man behind a string of recent indie horrors we’ve covered, including Shark Side of the Moon, The Jolly Monkey, Jurassic Reborn, and Predator: Wastelands.
A witchy coming-of-age story from Dark Sky Films, Camp is now playing in select theaters.
Check your local listings to find a theater near you.
Camp is from writer-director Avalon Fast (Honeycomb, The Serpent’s Skin).
“Emily is the root cause of two devastating tragedies very early in her life, and she feels the weight of these accidents as though cursed. At her father’s suggestion, she takes a position at a summer camp for troubled youth to ease her guilt. When Emily arrives, she is welcomed by the other counselors, who accept her as she is and surround her with peace and forgiveness.
“As Emily begins to believe in a new kind of life, she starts to hear a voice whispering from deep in the woods — one that urges her to go home, and one that may be impossible to ignore.”
The film stars Zola Grimmer in her screen debut alongside Alice Wordsworth, Cherry Moore, Lea Rose Sebastianis (Castration Movie Part 1 & 2, In A Violent Nature), Ella Reece, Austyn Van de Kamp (This Too Shall Pass), Sophie Bawks-Smith (Honeycomb), Izza Jarvis, and Aiden Laudersmith.
Producers Tyler Perry and Jason Blum have joined forces for Peacock Original Strung.
The film is now streaming only on Peacock.
“A talented violinist takes a prestigious job as a music tutor for the gifted daughter of an influential and enigmatic family. As she becomes entangled in their opulent world, unsettling secrets begin to surface, forcing her to question her safety, her dreams, and even her sanity.”
Malcolm D. Lee (Scary Movie 5, Space Jam: A New Legacy) directs from a script written by Alan B. McElroy (Wrong Turn, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers).
Chloe Bailey (“Swarm“), Lynn Whitfield (Jaws: The Revenge), Lucien Laviscount (“Scream Queens”), Anna Diop (Us), Coco Jones (Vampires vs. the Bronx), Langley Kirkwood (“Banshee”), and Romy Woods star in Peacock’s Strung.
Produced by Diablo Cody, director Meredith Alloway’s Forbidden Fruits brought a new coven of witches to the big screen earlier this year, and it’s now streaming on Shudder.
Lola Tung (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”), Victoria Pedretti (“The Haunting of Hill House”), Alexandra Shipp (Tragedy Girls), Gabrielle Union (Breaking In), and Emma Chamberlain star in Forbidden Fruits, released by IFC and Shudder.
Free Eden employee Apple secretly runs a witchy femme cult in the basement of the mall store after hours. But when new hire Pumpkin challenges the group’s ‘girl boss’ ways, the women are forced to face their own poisons or succumb to a bloody fate.
“Forbidden Fruits grabbed me by the neck the very first time I read it,” Diablo Cody said. “It’s one of the craziest, most creative, beautifully bonkers projects I’ve ever worked on.”
Meagan Navarro writes in her review for Bloody Disgusting, “Forbidden Fruits may not necessarily forge new terrain in the teen satire space, but Alloway brings so much style and energy to her well-cast single-location stage play adaptation for the Gen Z crowd.”
The film is an adaptation of playwright Lily Houghton’s stage play Of the Women Came the Beginning of Sin and Through Her We All Die. Alloway and Houghton co-adapted.
This week’s new release roundups are presented by HUNGRY.
All aboard the swamp tour from hell – this hippo isn’t playing games…
HUNGRY is now available on Digital. Watch it now!
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