Thankfully, some filmmakers are occasionally gifted with a rare opportunity to revisit their old projects and rework them into something more akin to what had originally been planned. The rise of popular Director’s and Extended Cuts has actually rescued plenty of genre movies from cultural obscurity, with notable examples being Exorcist III: Legion and even Nightbreed. With that in mind, it makes sense that fans were ecstatic when it was announced that Chris Carter was finally going back to his divisive 2008 film The X-Files: I Want to Believe in order to deliver a new cut of the movie that didn’t have to appease concerned shareholders who insisted on neutering the original release.

Now called The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn, Carter’s reworking of the movie restores several deleted scenes and moments of additional gore/terror that were originally cut in order to guarantee a more profitable PG-13 rating. In Carter’s words, this makes Vrach Frankenshteyn the definitive version of the picture he always wanted to make, and, based on the trailer, fans have been hoping that this new cut might finally redeem a movie that had originally been regarded as a major disappointment.

The truth, however, is a lot more nuanced than the marketing would have you believe. While Vrach Frankenshteyn is an undeniable improvement over the original cut of the film, feeling more appropriately terrifying in its speculative influences and even adding never-before-seen practical effects work into some of the freakier moments, this new version of the movie likely won’t be converting folks who weren’t already fans of the 2008 release.

In the film, we once again follow former Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) as they’re recruited by the FBI in order to investigate the bizarre disappearance of a fellow operative. Aided by a disgraced priest with alleged psychic abilities (Billy Connolly), the duo soon find themselves falling down a rabbit hole of monstrous science and corrupted faith.

Despite the flick’s unfortunate reputation, I’ve always been of the opinion that much of the negative reaction to the picture had more to do with fan expectations regarding unresolved plot points from the show (mainly the convoluted web of alien conspiracies) than the overall quality of the movie itself. To put it bluntly, folks wanted another bombastic blockbuster like 1998’s Fight the Future, but what they got was decidedly less grandiose.

Even at its worst, I Want to Believe has always been at least “serviceable,” functioning like a spookier-than-usual FBI procedural drenched in a cool, snowy atmosphere. At its best, however, the movie reminds us that Carter has always been a skilled storyteller, with even his monster-of-the-week yarns simultaneously working as character studies testing the limits of Mulder and Scully’s personal beliefs – not to mention their iconic relationship.

All of that remains true in Vrach Frankenshteyn, with the film still feeling like a more polished version of a satisfying standalone episode of the show, but with the added material hinting at a greater madness lurking behind the antagonist’s plans. Things get especially interesting whenever the story is allowed to delve into the disturbing implications behind this otherwise grounded mystery, as well as the real-world experiments that inspired the titular Frankenshteyn.

Unfortunately, there simply isn’t enough new material to shine a light on what is by far the most interesting part of the movie. The added snippets of the antagonist’s animal testing and the overall body horror of his attempted transplants are appreciated, but it’s clear that, studio meddling or not, Carter never intended for this to be an all-out horror flick despite the villain’s Mary Shelley-inspired M.O.

There are also a handful of seemingly arbitrary changes that don’t really make the experience better or worse. While I appreciate the more fast-paced editing during some sequences, especially towards the beginning, the removal of gags like the hilarious nod to George Bush, which I always understood to be a reference to  9/11, actually makes the movie feel a bit too self-serious for its own good.

Thankfully, the experience is still carried by a trio of iconic performances, and I am definitely including Connolly’s highly controversial priest among them. There’s no point in praising Duchovny and Anderson for their onscreen chemistry, as the continued existence of this long-running franchise is itself a testament to their combined talents, but I’ve always thought that the fan vitriol towards Father Joe was absurdly overblown. Carter is obviously using the character to dissect the very idea of redemption and black-and-white morality in a world warped by continued cycles of violence, and Connolly’s portrayal of a regretful monster remains a bold and undeniably interesting move nearly two decades later.

At the end of the day, The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn likely won’t change your mind if you already disliked the original version of the film. However, existing fans of the movie finally have a definitive version of the experience that feels more in line with the show that gave us horrific episodes like season 4’s Home.

Just don’t go into this one expecting a brand-new mystery – though we can always hope that, if enough people watch it, we may yet see that long-awaited third movie…

The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn begins streaming on Hulu & Disney+ on August 14, 2026.

The post ‘The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn’ Review: The Same Monster With a Fresh Coat of Paint appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The Platt family is already falling apart before the arrival of dinosaurs. Divorce is very much on the table for Greg (Ewan McGregor) and Denise Platt (Anne Hathaway), whose constant fighting has placed an unspoken strain on children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). Greg’s conflict-avoidant personality and precarious employment breed friction for the pragmatic Denise, whose writing dreams feel suffocated as a result. The neighbor’s beef with the family dog Starbuck isn’t helping either. The parents are so deep in their marital strife that they don’t notice their kids have issues of their own.

Enter a bizarre anomaly that forces this borderline dysfunctional family to address their problems head-on when they’re abruptly and unwittingly whisked back to an age where humans are at the very bottom of the food chain.

Mitchell, who dedicates this heartwarming and sometimes grim family adventure to his late father, proves an excellent study of ’80s Amblin films. That’s not just reflected in its more accurate period recreation, but in the distinct tonal blend that sees Denise pausing to giggle at mating herbivores one scene and nearly succumbing to catatonic shock at a brutal demise in another. That is to say that the Flowervale neighborhood quickly gets eviserated and ripped apart, often scattering the Platt family across blocks as they evade a constant barrage of attacks, but never explicitly so. Mitchell delivers just enough brutal imagery to leave a nasty mark before cutting away; this is still ultimately a family film (older kids only) after all. Cat lovers beware, though; Oak Street designates these family pets for easy dino snacks.

As for the dinosaurs themselves, Industrial Light & Magic brings an impressive variety to life in stunning detail, adhering to more historically accurate depictions. That means feathered raptors, monstrous titanoboas, and hairy sauropods, to name just a few. Mitchell ensures these predators are terrifying and vicious, but never strays too far from appreciating the novelty of dinosaurs invading the suburbs.

Working against them is the Platt family itself. It’s here where Mitchell frequently tosses logic out the window to force this family further along their journey. While each individual arc holds strong, together the Platts are prone to making plenty of blunders solely meant to place them directly in harm’s way for the impending adrenaline rush. Oak Street, in true Amblin fashion, also injects a far too tidy conclusion that undermines some of the film’s bolder choices. Starbuck, while a very good boy, is nothing more than a plot device that rarely factors into the chaos.

The End of Oak Street is classic summer blockbuster fare with big action and style, but one that doesn’t rise above its Amblin influences or break from convention. Its massive tonal swings from silly romp to dark adventure film with actual death can be as jarring as its logic inconsistencies, but Oak Street compensates with a compelling cast led by an effective Hathaway, no shortage of breathless set pieces, and terrifying dino encounters. Mitchell may struggle at points to fully channel Steven Spielberg, but his dino flick still delivers plenty of summer fun.

The End of Oak Street releases in theaters on August 14.

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I bring this up because I’ve never been a fan of visual novels. The format has always confounded me, and even the ones that I like, such as the Danganronpa games, still feel to me like they would have been better if presented in another format. That’s why I was initially hesitant to try out Grimtaste Studio’s RUNT, a post-apocalyptic horror story presented as a refreshingly bizarre visual novel. However, the title’s grim aesthetics eventually convinced me to swallow my pride and give this new release a try.

You know what? I’m glad that I did! RUNT may not be a perfect interactive horror experience – it even suffers from many of the same common pitfalls that have previously turned me away from the genre – but there’s so much passion behind this dark and strange loop of small-town scares that I don’t think could be expressed better in any other medium.

In the game, players take on the role of the titular Runt, the youngest member of the fundamentalist Strayer family. Led by the unstable brute Hunter, this deeply troubled group of orphaned brothers has become the de facto protectors of the town of Skipclaw after the fall of civilization. Taking place in a world shrouded in perpetual darkness where everyone has to wear a mask in order to ward off eldritch abominations, the game, or rather, Hunter, forces you to investigate a message that was left on the family’s property, with the makeshift collection of rotting animal parts spelling out that the Strayers have “5 days” left before something catastrophic happens.

In gameplay terms, this means living out five in-game days as the family’s favorite whipping boy and going about daily chores (which sometimes involve quirky mini-games). Meanwhile, you’ll also speak to locals and gather clues about who might be messing with the Strayers and what exactly will happen once the five days are up. Like most visual novels, the interactive bits of the experience are light on mechanical complexity, with esoteric puzzles and timed hidden object challenges making up the bulk of the non-narrative challenge here.

There are actually many elements in RUNT that feel like they were lifted straight from the minimalist Flash Games of yesteryear. From the town map and accompanying time management that reminds me a lot of Con Artist Games’ original The Last Stand trilogy to the brief point-and-click shootouts that harken back to free-to-play horror classics from Newgrounds, you can tell that Grimtaste built the foundation of this interactive experience on casual mechanics that could seamlessly blend into the traditionally passive thrills of a standard visual novel.

Not only that, but the title’s meticulously crafted presentation manages to elevate all of these elements into a highly atmospheric ordeal that transcends the limits of a text-heavy format. Hand-crafted backdrops with diegetic menu designs, like how you literally open your bag in order to check your inventory and how the journal is all scribbled over with realistic notes, make you feel like you’re really stepping into Runt’s ill-fated shoes – especially when certain actions allow you to alter his personality in strange and often unexpected ways. There’s also an eerie degree of uncanny-ness to the designs here, as the environments feel believable while still benefiting from a distinct dream-like quality due to the unnatural lighting and digital cut-out assets.

That being said, it’s the deeply compelling story that really elevates the experience into something you probably haven’t seen before in this type of game. Nearly every single character here is written to have a rich inner life, with even the traumatized main cast benefiting from grounded psychology despite existing in such a hellish world. I found myself frequently recoiling in terror whenever Hunter entered one of his aggressive moods, and don’t even get me started on how much I wanted Carver to be the culprit just so someone could beat the shit out of the least likable brother of the bunch.

Looking back on it now, the most disturbing moments of RUNT had more to do with the brothers’ horrific childhood at the hands of their radicalist cult leader father than any of the supernatural terror. Although, even then, the writers make a point of showing that even the most monstrous people still have a tragic degree of humanity underneath all that darkness.

You’ll almost inevitably end up feeling guilty no matter who you accuse as your main suspect once the five days are up, with the title’s multiple endings providing only just enough closure to make it feel like your investigation was worthwhile even if you didn’t get all the answers.

This actually leads to my main criticism of the game, as it’s unlikely that you’ll uncover the real secret going on behind the scenes in Skipclaw during your first playthrough. You see, the title is actually built to facilitate multiple runs as you redistribute time differently and attempt to get different answers out of the townsfolk in order to achieve a new conclusion.

While I’m all for adding replay value to the game, I would have preferred it if a single run could still offer a more robust finale, especially since I’m pretty sure that the game locked me out of certain options just because I spoke to different characters in an order that the developers weren’t anticipating. That being said, the rest of the game is so solid that I don’t really mind repeating certain sections in order to get new results. The added framing of having Runt remember all this from rereading his journal in the future also helps to make the looping narrative a natural part of the experience.

That’s why I’d recommend RUNT to fans of psychological horror and post-apocalyptic fiction everywhere, as the title’s excellent writing and memorable worldbuilding make it stand apart from its visual novel peers. The repetition required to get a “true” ending may bother some folks, but I still think it’s worth engaging with this unique horror yarn even if you don’t plan on uncovering every single secret that haunts the Strayer family.

Review code provided by publisher. RUNT launches August 10 on PC via Steam.

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While you’ll play as several characters throughout the two-and-a-half-hour runtime of The Skin Stapler, the main character is Dick Slater, a jaded detective on the case of the increasingly violent titular serial killer. Saddled with a rookie partner he resents, he follows a trail of bodies to his inevitable confrontation with the sadistic murderer, who seems to be oddly obsessed with him. It’s a pretty basic setup, but there’s plenty of personality with its over-the-top detective flick tone riddled with sexual humor.

The game plays out over a series of fourteen short chapters that are either part of the investigation or depicting The Skin Stapler’s killing spree. Both styles of chapter are pretty light on gameplay, mostly asking you to walk around a small area and do a series of tasks, but they definitely each have their own feel to them in ways that provide a bit of narrative variety, even if mechanics are a touch repetitive.

My favorite parts of the game were playing as the eventual victims of the killer, acting out their final moments before The Skin Stapler springs his trap and viciously murders them. These sequences do a great job of painting the setting of 1984 Carrion City, a rotten town populated by absolute weirdos. Everyone you play as has just enough personality in both their character design and performance, mining various tropes for all they’re worth.

After the opening sequence of playing a victim killed in her apartment, which is probably the most outright tense chapter in the game, the game casts you as characters going about their daily jobs, interacting with the dregs of the city that visit them.

Everyone’s a Victim

What makes this cool is that each job has its own little task you perform while working there as the shift gets more and more sinister. You’ll be making hot dogs at the convenience store, filling donuts at the donut shop, or rewinding tapes at the video rental store. Each of them has a multistep process that needs to be figured out and performed correctly, oftentimes involving a quick time event that’s required to progress.

It’s never super mechanically complex, but I’ve written before about how I like process games that require you to follow directions, and this evokes that just enough. It does feel like each of them lasts one customer too long, wearing out their welcome due to their relative simplicity, so I wish there was a bit of escalation or variation to make it more fun throughout.

The job sections of the game highlight one of the game’s biggest features, its sense of humor, which will probably be a deciding factor in how you feel about this game. Pretty much every customer that comes by will say something that’s absolutely drenched in crude innuendo, and the game has no shame about its crassness. The humor is definitely full of low-hanging fruit, everything from jokes about wanting wieners or needing to get their hands on your hot cream filling.

Despite knowing what type of game this was going to be, I was still rolling my eyes at many of the jokes, but by the end I came around to it, finding it funny how direct they were with the sex puns. There were still plenty of jokes that didn’t land for me, but I found myself charmed instead of annoyed, and your tastes may vary on this drastically.

Following the Killer’s Trail

I don’t think any of these sequences build tension as well as the opening scene, but they do a good job of setting up the web of characters in this part of the city. Usually the character you’re playing will have a friend come in to talk to them during their shift, and then you play as that character or meet them again later down the line, efficiently creating the sense of a larger world. If nothing else, the scenes where you play as the victims have some sort of jump scare or creepy speech, effectively showcasing the over-the-top methods of The Skin Stapler.

After someone gets brutally murdered, you’ll come in as the detective to investigate the crime scene. Each time, the killer leaves a strange message for you that’s locked in some way, and you need to pick up objects around the scene and search for evidence hidden on them to unlock it. This usually involves just interacting with the item and rotating it around a bit to check if it’s hiding a photo slide or a tarot card or whatever themed clues he’s hiding, so once again it’s not mechanically complex, but it does do a good job of forcing you to fully investigate the scene and take in the brutal handiwork of the killer.

It’s great to see the same spaces after they are turned into a slaughterhouse, with large pieces of skin stapled to the walls near a body displayed in all its gruesome glory. A few of these scenes feature some very light puzzle solving, but they are mostly just used to push forward the game’s narrative.

Straight-to-VHS Presentation

To my surprise, the game was fully voice acted, and everyone involved understood the assignment. It’s clear they were trying to evoke the cheesy voice acting of bad late-night horror movies, but fortunately that’s something I find charming rather than offputting. I was also shocked to see that several of the cutscenes were actually well-directed, with interesting angles that made them feel more manic and off-kilter in the exact way the best B-movies do. It’s not perfect; some of the performances work better than others, and there was a weird issue with the subtitles disappearing before the characters were finished speaking, but sometimes it even felt like the flaws were feeding into the so-bad-it’s-good tone.

I wish the narrative had a bit more to it, but it doesn’t really seem like they were going for anything particularly deep. The Skin Stapler himself was a pretty standard “crazy killer” type, even if he had a couple good lines here and there. Overall, the story is definitely just a vehicle to get you from one location to the next and then splattering gore all over. Feels like something you’d tune into late night while surfing cable and initially scoff at, but end up sitting down and watching the whole thing anyway.

Its charm is in large part due to the presentation, which perfectly utilizes that low-poly aesthetic to make every area look awful in the best possible way. The gnarly gore never feels too graphic, thanks to the indistinct look of the PSX-style visuals, making it feel more playful than mean-spirited. There’s also a great John Carpenter-esque soundtrack throughout with some great squishy sound effects that punctuate both the violence and the gross tasks in equal measure.

To add one final cherry on top, there are some great VHS-style FMV sequences peppered throughout, which is something that always works for me.

I think you’ll know if The Skin Stapler’s brand of late-night grindhouse humor is going to work for you just from watching the trailer. While it could use more mechanical or narrative depth, its full dedication to the bit is undeniably charming. It’s a gruesome good time that fans of games like Sniper Killer or Rewind or Die will enjoy, but it’s an acquired taste that might not be for everyone. Depending on how you feel about jokes like “you’re looking a little stiff, Dick,” you could probably raise or lower this rating by one skull.

Review code provided by publisher. The Skin Stapler is available now on PC via Steam and GOG.

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That’s legendary writer/director Abel Ferrara, in one of the new interviews shot for Vinegar Syndrome’s 4K release of his cult classic Body Snatchers, the third major cinematic iteration of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

It’s a rare studio movie outing for Ferrara, and as we learn through the disc’s many special features, it was often an adjustment for the exploitation icon to learn where the guardrails were with Warner Bros. Pictures. The result is a film with a sometimes confused tone, but as this new 4K restoration reveals, Body Snatchers is also so much more: a Gen-X ode to nonconformity wrapped in a gritty sci-fi horror skin. It’s essential Ferrara, and it’s finally getting the boutique 4K treatment it deserves. 

As Ferrara outlines in his interview, he didn’t necessarily want to set the film on a military base, but previous drafts of the script from writers like Larry Cohen and Stuart Gordon meant that he and writer Nicholas St. John had to stick with it, shooting at an Alabama military base with help from the real armed forces (because Warner Bros. has that kinda pull). The original story is set in an everybody-knows-everybody kind of small town, while Philip Kaufman’s incredible remake is set within a scientific community in San Francisco.

Ferrara, lacking that kind of intimacy between characters, instead makes his film a story about a family already fraying at the edges, and what happens when an all-consuming alien force starts trying to pull them apart even more. 

The military base setting, which allows Ferrara to play with long takes and anamorphic lenses to great effect amid the fencing and identical barracks, creates a sense of deep loneliness for the protagonist, teenager Marti (Gabrielle Anwar), who’s dragged reluctantly along with her Dad (Terry Kinney), stepmom (Meg Tilly), and stepbrother (Reilly Murphy). Marti’s Dad Steve works with the EPA, and he’s taking samples in all the places where the government stored its many chemicals and other weapons, checking to see how much might have leached into the soil, the air, or the water. Meanwhile, Marti starts to bond with the base commander’s (R. Lee Ermey) daughter, Jenn (Christine Elise), the base’s resident nonconformist.

On the surface, Ferrara is playing with some very basic, familiar elements to anyone who’s seen things like The X-Files, which debuted the same year, or other conspiracy thrillers of the ’80s and ’90s. The government’s hiding something, the soldiers are suspicious, there’s no fun to be had, and the stress of constantly moving is really getting to Marti, who’d rather be on her own than stuck with the woman who “replaced” her mom. Ferrara starts the movie, wisely, with a strange, violent encounter with what seems like a deluded soldier in a gas station bathroom, adding to the grit and the grime of the production. It creates an immediate jolt, and Ferrara keeps you on edge throughout the rest of the film before finally dialing the bombast up to 11 in a finale that showcases Warner Bros.’ budget for the film. 

It doesn’t always work. I personally think the ending is a bit scattered and a bit too concerned with one-upping itself several times to produce a satisfying emotional conclusion, but Body Snatchers works because Ferrara knows exactly how to scare, how to titillate, and how to keep us on edge, something showcased brilliantly with this restoration. The grit of his production, the feeling of being stranded on a crumbling military base with nothing but a local bar to provide distraction, is baked into every frame, beautifully preserved and highlighted by the restorers.

The light also looks wonderful, particularly toward the end, when Ferrara uses searchlights and spotlights – the harsh light of military surveillance – to shoot through blinds like bright blades. It looks gorgeous, and given how hard this film was to find for so long, it’s about time we got to see it like this. 

The special features, including a wonderful deep dive into the film’s production in a commentary track by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, all add to the feeling, outlined by Ferrara himself, that he was basically getting away with something when he made this picture. There are moments that have a pure, low-budget exploitation soul, all dissolving corpses and tangled root-like tentacles, and that feels like vintage Ferrara, something the interviews underline.

My only real gripe is that we don’t get more of these cast and crew stories, particularly with Ferrara himself. I could listen to him tell war stories from movie sets, punctuated by the occasional “Ya dig?,” for hours. 

Vinegar Syndrome as a label is at its best when it’s shining a fresh spotlight not just on films that were nearly lost or underseen, but films that feel like a true feat of moviemaking which went largely unnoticed and unappreciated for years after its release. Body Snatchers is one of those movies, not a perfect film but a wonderful blend of studio thriller and Ferrara’s gnarly, relentless artist’s soul.

Now, we get to see it the way it was meant to be seen, and as is so often the case with pod person stories and their timeless studies of paranoia and assimilation, it’s as relevant now as it was 33 years ago. 

Body Snatchers is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome. 

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A famous opening quote from Arthur C. Clarke that precedes the introduction to Jason Delgado (Wagner Moura), fishing off a Seattle pier, is the only hint at what’s in store for the Delgado family for much of the film.

That’s because soon after Jason returns home, we meet his wife Riley (Greta Lee), son Graham (Noah Alexander Sosnowski), and younger daughter Ruth (Riley Chung). Their mundane dynamics are barely set, on an ordinary morning just ahead of Christmas no less, when a seemingly never-ending rainstorm blows through that somehow traps the entire block inside (or out) of their homes with unmovable force.

From here, The Last House quickly settles into a grim routine as hours become days, then weeks. Survival takes priority, leaving the outside threats on the back burner as the Delgados try to maintain their sanity and health in the face of dwindling supplies. Namely food. The script by Matthew Robinson (Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die; Love and Monsters) injects some handy conveniences; Jason happens to be an unemployed engineer, a significant asset in a post-apocalyptic or extreme unnatural setting. Their shambling home also deteriorates just enough to provide strokes of luck when they need it most, giving the family an advantage above the rest of the block. As for hope, well, that’s a constant battle among the foursome over the passage of time. 

When The Last House finally begins showing its hand, Robinson and Leterrier dangle a much more interesting film that never fully comes to pass, one that swaps in an alien threat for something much more exciting and underexplored. That yields a few thrilling action sequences and set pieces, especially as the overlong runtime finally paves the way for its final confrontation, but Robinson’s script never really detours far from the Delgados’ bid to survive intact. As such, stakes are dramatically lowered and emotional beats are constantly rushed. Not helping is that Leterrier handles the few bursts of intense sci-fi action with incomprehensible camerawork.

The most glaring issue, though, is that it’s all so happenstance and superficial. It operates on fuzzy logic, hoping that the reliably compelling Moura and Lee can retain audience investment and compensate for a lack of characterization. While both are experienced and talented enough to inject pathos despite paper-thin characters, the children have no real sense of identity whatsoever, outside of empathetic moments from Ruth with the sole purpose of foreshadowing a rather silly conclusion. 

The Last House brushes against so many interesting ideas, from climate change to lockdown isolation. It touches on community and family, of course, and, most fascinatingly, injects some Lovecraftian concepts into the mix. All teasing a much more complex and smarter feature. Leterrier and Robinson do nail their primary goal, though; the family is the only real glue holding this clumsy but somewhat serviceable lockdown thriller together.

The Louse House is now streaming on Netflix.

The post ‘The Last House’ Review: Netflix’s High-Concept Lockdown Thriller Is Trapped by Its Own Potential appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

I Saw the TV Glow filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun gives Clover’s theory their own inspired spin with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, but not quite in the way you’d expect. Schoenbrun’s meta slasher isn’t commenting on the genre itself but rather the personal, applying Clover’s theory to a joyously blood-soaked vision of letting go and discovering the pleasures of sex. Through their protagonist’s descent into slasher mania, Schoenbrun explores their own fears through the loving lens of horror.

That’s certainly reflected in Kris (Hannah Einbinder), a director tasked with rebooting the 14-film Camp Miasma franchise. Determined to make her mark and shake things up, Kris fixates on the performance by the original film’s star and final girl, Billy (Gillian Anderson), and sets out to convince the reclusive actress to sign onto the reboot. That means venturing out to where Billy lives: the original location where Camp Miasma was filmed. Billy believes that the series’ killer, Little Death (Jack Haven), is real and still lurking around the campgrounds.

As her week with Billy wears on, deeply immersed in all things Camp Miasma, the more Kris suspects Billy may be right.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma trades the somber existential terror of Schoenbrun’s previous films in favor of light-hearted humor and, well, camp. That’s evident from the outset, which introduces the fictional film within this film and its eye-catching killer, complete with cheeky decapitations that yield geysers of blood. The killer’s name, Little Death – a poetic euphemism for an orgasm – is the first tipoff to Schoenbrun’s humorous and heartfelt intention, one that only grows sharper and more pronounced the further into delirium and self-discovery that Kris falls.

Schoenbrun salutes the greats, namely Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp, with reverence. That’s not just reflected in the deep lore of the fictional 14-film franchise, but in the retro-styled Camp Miasma sequences. This meta slasher heavily embraces humor, but takes its craft seriously. A stunning montage sequence midfilm unleashes Little Death for exquisite carnage upon a slew of unlucky camp counselors, with Haven making nimble work of tricky blocking and dizzying single-take camerwork while wielding a monstrously phallic weapon. All set to Counting Crows’ “A Long December.”

It’s a film that uses matte painting backdrops, practical effects, and a heavy emphasis on junk food to blur the lines between reality and film. All in service to the film’s playful tone, too. There is an argument to be made that Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is more stoner comedy than pure horror.

Above all, it’s a mesmerizing two-hander. Anderson turns in a career best performance as Billy, channeling Sunset Boulevard‘s Norma Desmond as Kris’ eccentric and challenging guide into the deep depths of Camp Miasma. Billy is the calm, aloof one of the two, often quick to light up a joint in answer to Kris’ anxious probing. It’s the pas de deux between this seemingly unlikely pair that brings much of this film’s infectious magic. The sizzling chemistry between the pair also helps.

Of course, it’s Kris who undergoes the bigger journey, beginning the film trapped in a polyamorous relationship with Mari (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Mari’s boyfriend Thor (Aren Buchholz) before getting plunged into the deep end to confront her sexual hangups. Einbinder captures Kris’ immobilizing fears, loneliness, and vulnerability with warmth, making the eventual embrace of her own sexuality all the more rewarding. 

Once the climax arrives, though, Schoenbrun seems unsure how to finish (pun intended?), tacking on a muddled saccharine ending that veers a little too off the rails. It’s also overlong and prone to a few lulls in pacing for a film that’s fairly straightforward with a simple concept. But it is Schoenbrun’s most accessible feature yet, while sacrificing none of the artistry. Fantasy and reality blur in breathtaking, whimsical, and jubilant ways in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, using film theory as the launchpad for a dazzling sexual awakening allegory.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma releases in theaters on August 7.

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In his book The Official Guide to the King of the Monsters, he argues that the so-called “Monster Cinematic Universe” was well ahead of the curve as both a kind of proto-MCU and a mixed-media empire that successfully evolved to suit multiple formats. Yes, it may have got its start in the movies, but it wasn’t long before the scaly characters were popping up in everything from Saturday morning cartoons to theme park attractions, edutainment programming, anime, video games, and even erotica. Don’t ask!

One side-hustle that the franchise absolutely excelled at was infiltrating the comic book market. About this, Skipper writes: “The Japanese began adapting Godzilla into black-and-white manga almost from day one.”

In the early stages of this diversification, any comics that were printed tended to be straightforward novelisations of Toho’s films, changing only minor details in the translation from screen to page. While not especially creative, these faithful retellings did still serve a useful purpose. They let fans experience Big G’s exploits from the comfort of their own living rooms.

No longer would they have to wait for a theatrical re-release in order to get their fill of Godzilla duking it out with Mothra or the Xiliens. Instead, they could vicariously experience all those thrills again while sitting on the John! 

Of course, once home video became more ubiquitous, people didn’t need to turn to manga as a substitute for the real deal anymore. Which, in turn, freed up the writers to get a little bolder and to finally start telling their own stories.

Flash forward to the modern era and Godzilla comics are just fucking weird! No concept seems to be too outlandish. No crossover too absurd. No retcon too sacrilegious.

Indeed, if you’ve picked up a book from IDW lately (the custodians of the brand as far as print is concerned), you’ll have been exposed to some of the wackiest takes on the King of the Monsters imaginable. He’s been sent to hell (both Norse and Catholic), corrupted by the Venom symbiote, fought 16th-century pirates, and been the subject of a geopolitical conspiracy that triggered the respective assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Bugsy Siegel and Abraham Lincoln. Some of those things all happened in the same batshit story!

2026 alone has been sheer lunacy for the titan, as the Monsterpiece Theatre one-shots had him gatecrashing numerous works of classic literature. You might have seen him getting caught up in a tussle between the feuding clans of Montague and Capulet, for example, or disrupting Odysseus’ long voyage back to Ithaca (in a way that curiously didn’t provoke outcry from those who are all of a sudden very invested in the authorial intentions of Homer).   

For better or worse, then, these comics have become “anything goes” territory. Some of them are delightfully silly. Some of them are just plain silly. But they’re all generally silly in one way or another.

Which brings us to The Horror of Godzilla, a new four-issue miniseries that aims to strip away all that gimmickry and go right back to basics. Taking place in 1954, it transports us to a time before kaiju were an accepted part of everyday life for the citizens of Japan and attempts to capture the shock and awe people felt when they first laid eyes on an extinction-level threat towering 250 feet above them.  

As the evocative title suggests, this is being pitched as a scarier interpretation of the material that has far more in common with Ishirō Honda’s original film than it does, say, Godzilla vs Fantastic Four. Here, the titular beastie is depicted as a dreadful force of nature that tramples all over our cities with chilling indifference — its soulless white eyes betraying a complete lack of regard, empathy, or even scorn for the meagre ants scurrying around its feet. To this version of Godzilla, we’re nothing but insignificant specks whose futile efforts to avoid being squished by elemental colossi don’t register on any level.   

The story being told around this more primal, existentially terrifying depiction of the creature is similarly intense. It’s framed by a Chernobyl-esque inquiry that has government officials trying to agree on who will be the patsy they hang out to dry when the public starts looking for someone to blame after a recent catastrophe left Tokyo in ruin.

The best candidate to be this fall guy (or, more accurately, fall gal) is Dr. Olivia Morrison, a scientist who was commissioned by an unnamed think tank to discover new renewable energy sources for the benefit of humanity. Or perhaps for the benefit of corporate interests. That much is not yet clear.

When this search led Olivia to the abyssal depths of the ocean, her team’s blundering operations inadvertently roused the slumbering Godzilla and let loose a biblical disaster upon the island nation of Japan. So, she’s as good a scapegoat as any!

With the context outlined, we then flit back and forth between the courtroom drama side of things and the guilt-ridden doctor’s account of that fateful day when man first met monster. What follows is a powerful tale about the devastating impact of tragedy, about mankind’s self-destructive race towards Armageddon, and about what it means to take accountability for one’s role in shaping seismic, history-changing events. Kind of like Oppenheimer, only this time the nuclear genie that’s been let out of the bottle comes with a set of razor-sharp teeth.    

Scribes Ethan S. Parker and Griffin Sheridan deserve a good deal of the credit for how effective Horror of Godzilla’s debut chapter has turned out, as they take their uncompromising vision seriously and resist the impulse to soften any of the nastier edges. This is, after all, a story where countless innocent civilians are wiped from existence in the blink of an eye, where our protagonist’s hands are stained with the blood of thousands, and where neither pregnant women nor children are afforded plot armour. The tantalising cliffhanger it ends on is especially dark and tees up a future instalment that promises to lean further still into pure horror.  

Backing up this pitch-black tone, there’s an adult quality to the writing that’s greatly appreciated. Treating the reader with respect, the issue starts in medias res and asks you to keep up with who’s who and what their various motivations are. And it does so without ever giving way to inelegant exposition dumps.

Parker and Sheridan likewise refuse to dumb down their weightier themes and make sure there’s ample time for the more introspective moments to breathe, at least as far as they can within the confines of a 30-page comic. Not that it’s a guarantee of maturity by any means, but there are even a couple of f-bombs organically woven into the dialogue that feel natural, as opposed to edgy for edgy’s sake. 

Godzilla comics have a propensity to over-narrate and spell out what their kaiju are doing at any given moment, and, again, the writers have nicely sidestepped that clunky trope of the genre too. Instead, if there’s no reason for any of the characters to be supplying a running commentary, they simply let the pictures do the talking.

And what pictures they are! Artist Tristan Jones’ panels are all beautifully textured, and he creates some indelible, albeit frightening, images here. He truly nails Godzilla’s sense of scale, which is so often lost in print, and pays close attention to little environmental details that make his movements feel visceral and the damage left in his wake all the more tactical. Without going into spoilers, he also does a masterful job with those harrowing final pages that are bound to sear themselves into your brain.

Jones’ work is perfectly complemented by that of colorist Josh Burcham as well. In an inspired stylistic choice (and yet another connection with Oppenheimer), the latter uses his hues to delineate between the flashforward and flashback sequences of Horror of Godzilla. The parts of the comic that take place in the hearing are all vividly tinged, while the flashbacks are depicted in stark monochrome — save for the eerie green of Godzilla’s atomic breath, which here scorches the sky and casts an apocalyptic glow on proceedings.

Letterer Tom Napolitano then completes this end-of-the-world vibe with onomatopoeic sound effects that cleverly integrate with the action and form tangible shapes that give you a deeper impression of what’s happening. Raindrops land with delicate, imperceptible “plips”, while cars roar past with elongated “vrooms” and thunderous footsteps resonate with a literal “DOOM” that spans multiple panels.

All in all, the whole project is a textbook case of a creative team being utterly in sync and aligned on what they want to achieve. This is Toho’s franchise at its most visceral, nightmarish and sensory, which is an impressive feat for a piece that is in an entirely visual medium.

Godzilla’s history in print may stretch back decades, but, if this auspicious first issue is anything to go by, then we might be on the cusp of getting his best outing to date. Bring on issue #2 and the follow-up to that excruciating cliffhanger!

Published by IDW, The Horror of Godzilla #1 is available now.

The post ‘The Horror of Godzilla’ #1 Review: IDW Returns the King of the Monsters to His Terrifying Roots appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Which is why it’s so disappointing that Sager’s latest, The Unknown, doesn’t quite work for me. Like some of his best works (The Only One Left comes to mind), it’s a parallel journey of past and present, set in a compelling locale and featuring a cast of distinct characters. It’s also got a Hollywood horror hook that feels exactly like my cup of tea, but the more I read, the more frustrated I became. This is one of those thrillers that’s so laden with exposition and twists that, by the end, it’s a gnarled knot of information rather than a story, even if it does retain Sager’s inherent attention to craft and narrative propulsion. 

Marin is a struggling actress, waiting tables between auditions for commercials and obscure plays, so it’s a big surprise for her when she gets a face-to-face audition with Ronan Peters, the hottest of Hollywood’s hotshot young directors. Even more surprising, Marin gets the part! She’s going to be a major character in a new horror film by Ronan Peters, co-starring one of her idols, the legendary Violet Wright. 

Because the film is based on a real set of mysterious disappearances on an island in Vermont, Ronan aims for immersiveness and decides that his cast should spend a week on the island itself, New Avalon, where an arms manufacturer once built an estate now said to be haunted by the women who vanished there. With no electricity, no phones, and no modern clothes, Marin and her co-stars will live, rehearse, and immerse themselves in the world of New Avalon in 1926, essentially becoming the vanished women they’re set to play onscreen. 

This is perhaps my favorite setup in any of Sager’s books, a meta-story about actors living out their own American Picnic at Hanging Rock for the sake of cinematic authenticity, and of course you can see where this is going. One by one, the cast starts disappearing, a medical emergency strands the whole crew on the island, and Marin, equipped with no context but a diary written by one of the vanished 1926 women, is forced to dig deep into the island’s secrets in a search for answers.

There are seances, and storms, and dark pasts, and all the wonderful, simmering substance we’ve come to expect from Riley Sager. The first half of this book is a banger, driven by Sager’s trademark lightning pace, and even when it started to go off the rails, I found myself reading late into the night, unable to put the book down until I figured out where Sager was going. 

It’s tricky, of course, to explain why the back half of a book doesn’t work without delving into spoilers, but I’ll do my best. Because of the mystery surrounding the original 1926 disappearances, and the immersive environment Ronan hopes to create for his cast on the island, The Unknown spends much of its narrative questioning how much of what’s happening is real, and how much is part of the immersive experience. Characters bicker over whether or not a planchette is actually moving during a seance; they trade secrets about dead loved ones; they debate the merits of seeking help versus waiting things out.

At the center of it all is Marin, with a past of her own that motivates her in particular to seek out answers, and while that part works, the answers she eventually finds simply don’t. The novel, driven by Sager’s crystal-clear prose and always-dynamic pacing, builds up a very solid head of steam as Marin narrates, laying out the central questions in a setup for the third act, when Sager will unspool what’s really going on. It’s a trick he’s used many times before, and it usually works. 

So, why doesn’t it work this time? Because reading this particular book, as opposed to Sager’s other successes, I felt like the answers and the emotional impact they have on the characters were secondary to the basic need for the story to have twists that catch the reader off-guard. Riley Sager novels don’t necessarily have just one twist; they have several, nested together to create an added tension over what’s real and what’s invention. That should be extra potent in a novel about filmmakers, and yet by the end, The Unknown is much more driven by the need to swerve the readers than the need to serve the characters and their emotional journeys.

It was less exciting than it was tiring. I just wanted to see the impact of all of these secrets and decisions and hidden details, and instead the book devolves into a state of near-constant expository dialogue, laying out layer after layer of secrets. Are the questions answered? Yes. Are the answers satisfactory? Depends on your response. Do they feel like part of a story with genuine heft? By the end, they don’t. 

Again, Riley Sager’s one of our finest thriller writers, but even the best have missteps, and this was one of his for me. Maybe the old narrative tricks are wearing thin, maybe this book is over-ambitious, or maybe I just didn’t respond to it. Whatever the case, despite solid prose and pacing and a great start, this one went off the rails somewhere for me, and never got back on track. 

The Unknown is available now wherever books are sold.

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That being said, it’s only fitting to have Ryan Murphy return to high school, the very place where his television career began, for his latest ode to excess and emptiness. In fact, The Shards operates as a bizarro counterpoint to Murphy’s first series, Popular. The stark differences – and similarities – between these two programs highlight how much Murphy has and hasn’t evolved as a storyteller and filmmaker.

The Shards is certainly having a lot of fun with its detached take on 1980s Los Angeles, but it plays like a sarcastic sizzle reel of Murphy’s past triumphs. 

Murphy’s adaptations of other people’s works can be hit or miss and are never a guarantee that he’ll rein in his signature sensationalist impulses. However, Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis working together is a pairing that makes too much sense. It’s like the peanut butter and jelly of superficial societal satire. Murphy’s opulent extremism radicalizes Easton Ellis’ minimalist and detached storytelling. The Shards is an enthusiastic fetishization of not just the pop culture and fashion of the ‘80s, but also how it was a golden era for serial killers and new societal terrors. It’s the perfect marriage of Murphy’s past extremes as shallow prep school woes like parties and dances are juxtaposed against curfews, ritualistic sacrifices, and serial killer attacks. 

The series adapts Bret Easton Ellis’ autofiction of the same name, which chronicles a fictionalized version of Ellis (Igby Rigney) in 1981 Los Angeles as he juggles his prep school duties with a growing obsession over a local serial killer, The Trawler. The arrival of a mysterious new student, Robert Mallory (Homer Gere), coincides with this string of killings. A darkness descends over Los Angeles, and Bret is left to wonder if Robert Mallory and these massacres are actually connected or just a symptom of his own toxic thought process.

This all amounts to harmless entertainment if it’s not taken too seriously. It still lacks the juice of something like Euphoria or even Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin. Murphy finds himself increasingly out of touch in this world of teens. It’s enormously heightened, because of course it is, but it doesn’t feel as special in this oversaturated genre that’s naturally become so exaggerated on its own. Murphy’s trademark hyper-maximalism barely leaves an impression in a world where Riverdale and Gossip Girl are the baseline for heightened high school dramas.

Bret is at the center of a group of vapid characters who just want to survive senior year, graduate high school, and get out of Los Angeles, which makes the prospect of a serial killer a real drag. The Shards argues that kidnappings, killings, and ritualistic cults are the greatest dangers faced by children as they head into adulthood. It’s like Ryan Murphy’s own twisted version of Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide, only it’s covering serial killers, cults, and stalkers. A lot of tangential clout-chasing frivolity is covered as the hypnotic pull between Bret and Robert acts as the nucleus to it all. 

The Shards is consumed with the death of the ‘70s and how this marks the start of a ruthless and vicious new generation of disturbing detachment. It’s drenched in tropes, cliches, endless ‘80s needle drops, and hard bodies. It is exactly what you’d expect from a joint collaboration between Murphy and Easton Ellis. At the same time, it’s also not trying to be anything deeper. Its superficial slayings and takedowns of society are all exceedingly surface level, but it’s sure sleek and pretty. Murphy wants the audience to get lost in the hollow hyper-sexuality. That’s the point. It just doesn’t touch on anything that hasn’t been done many times before, and better, including in Murphy’s own productions. There’s even a hamfisted riff on Shakespeare – specifically Hamlet – that argues that ultra-trashy camp is the new classic lit and theater.

The serial killer sequences with the Trawler, while genuinely disturbing, are similarly sapped of life. You know something is amiss in a Ryan Murphy production when gratuitous murder setpieces aren’t even properly crossing lines and generating enthusiasm. In the end, it’s The Shards’ moody score by Troye Sivan and Leland, alongside unhinged performances by Evan Rachel Wood, Jordan Roth, and Wes Bentley, that stand out as highlights. Bentley in particular chews – and snorts – the scenery. 

The Shards is content to languish among its flashy hedonism, the likes of which don’t even have the decency to provide its audience with closure or answers. These episodes feel like a piece of a greater whole that will inevitably become even more pointless if The Shards gets canceled or prematurely ends. This has increasingly become Murphy’s style with his latest horror programs. It doesn’t do The Shards any favors and only highlights the season’s narrative problems and how little gets accomplished across these nine episodes. A flashy finish that’s full of answers, but also sets up new terrors, would help The Shards feel more essential and complete. As it stands, it struggles to even reach the middling heights of Grotesquerie and The Beauty, and certainly has much less to say. 

The Shards is set in an empty world where adaptations have greater value than stories. It bombards the audience with fabricated boogeymen like The Trawler and the Riders of the Afterlife cult. It’s a series that’s full of derivative imitations of better and more iconic ideas. In a way, that’s exactly what The Shards is like. It’s a slap-dash amalgamation of what’s worked for Ryan Murphy in the past, without bringing anything new to the table. 

Self-aware meta commentary on ambivalence and diminishing returns aside, this doesn’t change the fact that The Shards is still guilty of the same things that it pokes fun at. It’s a fading Xerox of a once-interesting idea that struggles to stand out. There are fleeting moments of brilliance, like in most Murphy programs, but there’s not enough to cling to here once the shock factor and eye candy wear out their welcome. 

The Shards premiere on FX and Hulu on August 5 at 6 p.m. PT.

The post ‘The Shards’ Review: A Shallow Mix Of Sex, Sensationalism & Serial Killers appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

This year’s fest delivered no shortage of surprises either, from intense new spins on vampirism with No Rest for the Wicked to inventive DIY horror comedies like The Peril at Pincer Point. It also delivered on gory sequels like The Last Temptation of Becky and the latest from Alice Maio Mackay, Our Effed Up World.

A final batch of reviews adds a horror-comedy starring a real-life sketch comedy group to the mix, along with a new take on werewolves, and a worksploitation splatstick comedy.

Big Break

Much like its title implies, horror-comedy Big Break follows a group of friends all pursuing dreams of making it big in Hollywood. Only in this instance, art comically imitates life as real-life New York comedy group Simple Town takes center stage in director Ian Faria‘s feature debut. As that implies, Big Break may drop its erstwhile Hollywood dreamers into a familiar slasher setting, but this horror-comedy only has eyes for laughs.

Big Break reunites friends and former collaborators Will (Will Niedmann), Caroline (Caro Yost), and Felipe (Felipe Di Poi Tamargo) years after their comedy troop has disbanded. They gather for a weekend visit with estranged former colleague Sam (Sam Lanier), the only one who’s achieved success post-disbandment, at his remote country cabin, hoping to work their way into his hit sequel “The Gummy Bears Movie”. Instead, old grudges are exposed and dark secrets uncovered, and the four frenemies discover how far they’re willing to go to get their big break.

Some might even be willing to kill for it.

It’s a clever setup for incisive Hollywood satire, and it’s here where Big Break is at its strongest. Big Break bides its time acclimating to this friend group, exposing their flaws and volatile relationships well before the body count begins. As such, Simple Town injects energetic improv and sketch comedy humor, lending an “anything goes” atmosphere. Moreover, their real-life history translates well on screen, making quick work of establishing character dynamics that are dialed up to satirical excess. Their larger-than-life personas make an easy foothold into this world, but they also overshadow some of Faria’s more clever musings on the industry and horror tropes.

Much of the film is dedicated to Will, Caroline, and Felipe taking turns trying to win a job on Sam’s upcoming sequel, one-upping each other or getting in each other’s way. They’re so fixated on their dreams of making it big that they don’t notice the glaring red flags signalling imminent danger. Sam isn’t exactly subtle either; Lanier leans heavily into Hollywood yuppie sleaze with sociopathic, murderous tendencies. Messy personal lives and a constant erosion of morality also get thrown into the pressure cooker scenario, and tensions rise.

Though that tension never quite translates to the audience. Big Break is a smart satire, but one far more content to use horror tropes to skewer the industry rather than embrace them. Faria never loses sight of his characters or their comedic strengths, leaving the horror part of the equation pretty underserved. It all fizzles out by the climax. There are a few good kills, but it’s all without any real stakes or suspense. The slasher is purely allegory in a comedy that’s more of a hang-out with messy friends in way over their heads. That’s not necessarily a problem with calibrated expectations, but mileage does vary on the sketch comedy chaos.

Sleep No More

Body horror takes shape as metaphor once more in Sleep No More, a gory, surreal slice of Indonesian worksploitation. Director Edwin injects a somber subject with splatstick humor, offering a raucous but occasionally sleepy shift from hell.

A bleak Jakarta wig factory serves as center stage to this horror-comedy that introduces sisters Putri (Rachel Amanda) and Ida (Lutesha), who visit the facility to investigate their mother’s abrupt death. Instead of answers, though, they’re immediately forced into labor by the ruthless owner, Mrs. Maryati (Didik Nini Thowok), who demands they pay off their mother’s debts. Not even a reunion with their younger brother (Iqbaal Ramadhan) can distract from the bleak conditions. Every employee is overworked and exhausted beyond their means, leading to an increase in unsettling accidents. It’s up to the sisters to discover whether it’s a severe case of bad management or demonic possession.

Edwin, along with co-writers Eka Kurniawan and Daishi Matsunaga, takes a grounded approach to the working conditions and labor allegory, but a delightful absurdist approach to the horror. As if to prove it, the film’s original Indonesian title, Monster Pabrik Rambut, translates to “Monster of the Hair Factory.” The film’s overarching question posed is whether that monster is ruthless boss Mrs. Maryati or whatever ancient evil seems to be maiming and slaughtering laborers. For some, the ability to regenerate allows for further abuse. 

It sounds dour, but Edwin relays workplace oppression critiques with pitch-black humor and practical effects. Sleep deprivation leads to literal extremes here, as Sleep No More dials up the gory antics for a wild finale that folds in folkloric evils to visual success. It makes for an entertaining creature feature of sorts, with inventive uses of carnage and body horror anchored by a relatable premise. But it is prone to pacing sags in its quieter depictions of overworked employees, an aspect that often clashes with the over-the-top horror elements. It doesn’t help that Sleep No More plays it almost too straightforward; there are no real surprises or horror exploration here beyond supernatural body mutations, and answers aren’t the most satisfying.

Still, there’s enough scrappy, gory splatstick charm for those who’ve ever felt exploited by terrible jobs and worse bosses…which is pretty much all of us.

When You Open the Door

Eriko Katagiri’s When You Open the Door brings Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves to mind, only in that both deliver dream-like visions of a repressed young woman who finds a means to rebel through lycanthropy. In execution, though, the films couldn’t be further apart. Katagiri takes a quieter, more methodical approach to externalizing the quiet, timid interiority of her heroine as she slowly transforms.

When You Open the Door even begins with a dream, setting the stage for the hazy voyage ahead. When we meet 27-year-old Miki (Serena Motola), she’s closed off and isolated in her own little bubble. She’s often overlooked at work, and the few interactions with co-workers expose Miki’s social awkwardness. Her husband loves her dearly, despite not seeming to really know her. Instead, Miki looks to her pet bird and various ephemera for companionship, until she’s bitten by a wolf in broad daylight.

While no one believes her – wolves went extinct in Japan long ago, after all – it marks the start of a peculiar transformation in Miki.

Katagiri, who co-writes with Shinozuka Tomoko, takes a subtle approach here. Telltale signs of werewolf infection are there, like the lengthening of nails and hair or sudden animalistic urges, but they’re handled with surrealism and restraint. The concept of a werewolf is infused with Japanese lore, giving a unique spin on the classic monster. Yet, When You Open the Door is only interested in using the werewolf as a means of exploring the isolating loneliness of the modern world. 

It instead languishes in the mundanity of Miki’s life, and her quiet surrender to it. The arrival of Itako, spiritual mediums, sheds light on Miki’s strange circumstances and livens up both the film and the protagonist, but not even the final gasp of gore can awaken this sleepy pic. Cinematographer Akiko Ashizawa captures Miki’s loose sense of reality like a cozy dream, filled with montages, motifs, and shadows that are tough to decipher. 

It’s a stunning vision of loneliness that makes smart use of the werewolf as metaphor, but it’s so internalized and introspective that it can be isolating for the viewer, too.

The post Fantasia 2026 Roundup Reviews: ‘Big Break’, ‘Sleep No More’ and ‘When You Open the Door’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The rest of the film, written by Katie Boland and directed by Annie Bradley, follows adult Elizabeth (now played by Sara Paxton) on the anniversary of her mother’s death. Liz is in a stable relationship with lawyer Dan (Hamza Haq), manages her own book store/consignment shop/bar (the details are confusing), and is expecting her first child. But when she encounters an old clown at the annual fair and is subsequently accosted by Maddie (Hannah Forest Briand), a belligerent true crime podcaster, on her front lawn, Liz almost immediately miscarries.

In the aftermath of the dual traumas, Liz embarks on an investigation to uncover the details of her mother’s unsolved murder. In the process, she digs up new information that makes her question the nature of her father Reed’s (David Cubitt) relationship with stepmother Ana (Mary Krohnert), butts heads with unhelpful Sheriff Vernon (James Burke), and reaches out to her schizophrenic aunt Helen (Fiona Highet), whom she’s never met.

Killer Clown could have easily been called Who’s Gaslighting Liz? because it’s evident early on that people have been lying to Liz her whole life. She’s repeatedly made to question her own sanity, and even Dan – whose support initially seems unwavering – at one point asks her to give up her search in order to protect their relationship.

Part of his concern is that Liz has begun seeing the same clown that attacked her mother when she was five. It lures her out of her house with a bouquet of balloons that explode fake blood on her face; it stalks Liz in the parking garage of her doctor’s office; and it even attacks Aunt Helen in her house. Tellingly, though, the clown never appears when other people, especially men, are around, which makes Liz (and, by extension, the audience) question whether her mind is playing tricks on her.

It’s telling how often the men in Liz’s life question whether the trauma of the miscarriage and the anniversary are playing with her mind. At one point, Liz’s father even suggests that there’s a history of mental illness on the female side of the family. This is well worn territory for female-led thrillers and horror films, and for good reason: women continue to be disbelieved and told they’re hysterical when they try to speak out. It’s a trope of the genre not only because it makes for good conflict, but because the problem persists in real life.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of the film, though, is how often Liz pushes back against the gaslighting. When asked how she is, Liz frequently exclaims a variation of “not great!” and even when Dan, Reed, or Ana suggests she take it easy, Liz refuses to let her investigation go. As heroines go, Paxton mostly plays Liz as somewhat passive, but her doggedness is endearing, particularly in the back half of the film when it’s clear that folks aren’t being entirely truthful with her.

Of course, the other interesting element about Killer Clown is its connection to true crime. WARNING: Spoilers Ahead! The film is based loosely on reality, with ties to the murder of Marlene Warren in May 1996.

According to People.com: “Warren opened the door of her home…to what appeared to be a delivery person dressed as a clown with balloons and a basket of flowers. Moments later, the assailant shot Marlene in the mouth and calmly walked to the LeBaron parked in the driveway and drove off.

“For years, authorities suspected Sheila Keen, then 26, who was having an affair with Marlene’s husband, Michael Warren, but said they didn’t have enough evidence at the time to convict her.”

Sheila would eventually marry Michael, but 27 years later, DNA evidence implicated her in Marlene’s murder, and she was sent to jail (she has since been released).

It’s worth noting that in real life, Marlene’s son Joseph was home and witnessed his mother’s death, just like Liz does in Killer Clown. And while the killer’s identity in the film doesn’t map onto the real-life details of the case 1-for-1, the motivation and details behind the crime aren’t too far off. It’s an intriguing adaptation choice for a film that otherwise takes a lot of liberties.

Considering its title, Killer Clown isn’t as campy or salacious as Lifetime audiences may have hoped for. The reality is that the film is more rooted in Liz’s trauma and her inability to move past the thirty-year grief that has defined her life. As a drama with elevated stakes, it’s solid, and Paxton’s understated performance helps to ground the narrative with a real sense of emotion.

As for horror beats: there are a few unsettling clown-related moments, and Bradley makes good use of the fair-set scenes, including a climax that heavily features both a hedge maze and a purple-lit funhouse full of mirrors.

Killer Clown premiered on Lifetime on August 1.

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Between Children of the Corn, Village of the Damned, Them, and most recently, Weapons, there’s a great deal of variety when it comes to creepy children fare. It’s a fun, frightening premise when it’s done properly and in the right hands, which is why Eli Roth is the right fit for this sort of exploitation horror. Roth has the proper background and genre passion to make this type of adolescent evil extravaganza excel, while also breathing fresh life into it at the same time. Ice Cream Man is a killer kid horror film that helps the subgenre mature into something more layered. 

The setup is incredibly simple: a mysterious ice cream man’s signature product turns the youth of Bayleen Bay into murderous minions. However, Ice Cream Man also provides a deeper look into the perversion of safety and what happens when Capra-esque institutions of purity become the very things that taint innocence. It’s a blood-soaked epic with zero filter that still manages to reflect upon coming-of-age catharsis, the destruction of the American family, and youth’s destiny to swallow their previous generation whole. It’s also, without question, the most gruesome film of Eli Roth’s career and easily the summer’s most brutal horror movie. Forget lactose intolerant. Ice Cream Man is elegance and sophistication intolerant.

Ice Cream Man, right from the start, preaches this gloomy idea of what happens when innocence and old-fashioned values are horrifically perverted once a toxic force of nature infects everything. It begins with an Amblin outlook on life and is knee-deep in splattercore by the time the end credits roll. There’s a wry tone that’s often dropping in disdain for zoomers and today’s current youth, which helps give the ensuing chaos a little extra bite.

Regarding said chaos, it takes Ice Cream Man a little too long to get moving. The first 15 minutes are a bit of a slog and had me worried. However, once Ice Cream Man goes wild, it’s off to the races and the rest of the movie is a propulsive burst of non-stop carnage.

In many ways, Roth turns Ice Cream Man into a macabre, modern reimagining of the Pied Piper parable. There’s even an alluring sing-song quality to Ice Cream Man’s murderous manipulation that’s very Silver Shamrock-coded from Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Ice Cream Man features a threadbare plot, but honestly, story is largely irrelevant in a film like this, and it’s really just a conduit to kickstart the kills. What follows is basically a more gratuitous grindhouse version of Weapons, only the kids are turned into murderous monsters through tainted ice cream instead of some cryptic witch magic. The ice cream truck’s innocent jingle works as the trigger that awakens these sleeper agents and sets them loose.

Amidst this mayhem, a handful of unaffected kids come together, like a middle school Breakfast Club, as they attempt to survive — and solve — these troubling events. Some of Ice Cream Man’s child actors initially leave a little to be desired. They quickly find a rhythm and fall into naturalistic performances that ring true. None of this cast may emerge as one of horror’s next rising stars, but they get the job done and keep the film moving along. Ice Cream Man taps into the same heightened, B-movie energy that’s explored in Thanksgiving, which helps make these generic performances feel a little less awkward.

Ice Cream Man’s kids become much more compelling once they’re “activated” and go mad, rather than the restrained work they’re doing earlier. Ari Millen provides a distinctly creepy performance as the titular Ice Cream Man without saying a single word. The film makes the simple but inspired decision to have its children still be capable of conversations and seemingly act normal so that they can trick their parents into a false sense of security before they strike. They’re not always in murder mode, which is a much more interesting angle than these kids just being uncontrollable “rage zombies.”

Credit where it’s due, Ice Cream Man is a triumph in terms of its gore and practical effects. Those who are just looking for explicit and exaggerated kills in the same vein as Terrifier won’t be disappointed. There’s a lot to appreciate here even if many of the more muted moments fall flat. These exaggerated executions are more than enough to make Ice Cream Man a worthy standout in Roth’s filmography and one of the summer’s more satisfying horror films.

Eli Roth has described Ice Cream Man as his most insane and goriest film to date, and the film actually follows through on this promise and manages to top the vicious heights of The Green Inferno and Hostel II. There are 100 murderous, blood-soaked kids who are on the loose here and some exceptionally gory setpieces, including kids playing jump rope and Cat’s Cradle with intestines, plus a litany of incredibly creative kills that utilize school-based items in thoroughly deranged ways. 

Ice Cream Man just moves from one darkly hilarious and vicious setpiece to the next, with each one better than the last. This also isn’t a situation where it’s just kids that attack and wreak havoc on the adults. There’s plenty of child murder going on here. Ice Cream Man doesn’t hold back when it comes to a hefty body count of young boys and girls. There’s a simple but effective backstory for the ice cream man and his corresponding chaos that turns him into a bit of a Freddy Krueger-esque totem of vengeance. To this point, Ice Cream Man builds to a surprising and ambitious final act that seems tailor-made for a sequel and extends this gruesome gonzo massacre into a full-on franchise. 

Ice Cream Man is one of the summer’s bloodiest surprises. What it lacks in story, it more than delivers in gore, and Eli Roth fans won’t be let down. It’s a love letter to the ultra-violent B-movies of the past that delivers blood, guts, and grief with a cherry on top.

Ice Cream Man is in theaters on August 7.

The post ‘Ice Cream Man’ Review: Eli Roth Serves Up Non-Stop Kidpocalypse of Carnage appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Centuries from now, the world is in shambles. A plague called the Blight has wiped out much of humanity, leading nature to reclaim the world. People have largely transferred their consciousness into robots called golems, but even those are starting to decay after so long.

You play Emma, one of the remaining humans, who is notable because of her ability to absorb the Blight rather than be killed by it. While many people treat her like a pariah for being different, her ability allows her to defeat Nushi, large corrupted animals that roam the lands, to slowly take the world back from the curse of the Blight.

This is part of a larger quest to make her way to the capital and fight the titular Beast of Reincarnation, which she appears to be destined to kill.

Killing Monsters Remains Fun

There’s simultaneously a lot going on and not that much happening in the game’s narrative, at least early on. Emma meets several NPCs, some of which travel with her in her “cleanse walker” and some that she runs into while exploring. Her big hook as a character is that she doesn’t feel emotions, which is an interesting premise that’s ripe for an arc, but mostly invites repetitive conversations with her companions trying to explain to her what feelings are. Her main bond is with her large Blighted dog, Koo, who fights alongside her. There’s a lot that seems to go on around her as you’re shown conversations between other characters, but her path through the story is mostly just “look for the big monster and kill it.”

Fortunately, killing monsters, at its most basic level, is pretty fun. Heavily influenced by Sekiro, though not quite as demanding, Beast of Reincarnation features parry-heavy melee combat with an emphasis on combos and status effects. You have your standard slash attack on your right shoulder button, and a specialized attack button on a face button (square on PlayStation 5). Various combinations of these two buttons will yield different attacks, and new attacks continue to unlock throughout the game. Enemies have both a health bar and a stamina bar, and breaking their stamina through a combination of attacks and parries allows you to do an execution, which comes with a slick and violent animation.

While this is nice in theory, I had issues making the combo system really work for me. The focus on parrying means that enemies are going to be attacking a lot, so I found that I could not get in longer combos without stopping frequently to deflect incoming attacks. The audio-visual feedback on the parry is definitely satisfying, but fights with normal enemies, which are either robot golems or blight-mutated animals called Malefacts, either feel too easy or slightly punishing, depending on which type of enemy you run into. The gap between the challenge that enemy types present feels pretty wide, making for oddly balanced encounters.

You are presented with stealth options, but they feel largely underbaked. While I enjoyed dropping down on enemies from above for a quick kill, it almost struck me as funny when I ran into an enemy encounter that the game clearly wanted me to deal with via stealth, lining them up all looking away from Emma, making the sequence of kills immediately obvious in a way that took away the satisfaction of figuring it out for yourself. The perception settings also feel pretty tuned in your favor, as I occasionally stealth killed one robot without alerting the one standing meters from him in a way that broke the immersion of the fantasy the game was presenting.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by this based on the foundations of Pokémon, but there was a big focus on elemental attacks in the game, which added an interesting layer of strategy, if nothing revelatory. With various weapons and attacks, you do build up different status effects, such as burn or poison, and when they fill, the enemy will take damage over time for a specific period. New weapons you find throughout the game will be associated with different elements, allowing you to craft builds that focus on one over the other. Some enemies will have specific weaknesses that can be exploited, so paying attention to elements will help you get through some of the game’s trickier encounters.

You have a pair of ranged weapons, a crossbow and a bow and arrow, that run on limited ammunition, which I mostly used to help build up status effects. Much like the pistols in Bloodborne, they don’t do a ton of damage on their own, but they are good in a pinch when you’re trying to finish off an enemy from a distance or do some chip damage against them.

Koo is the Game’s Best Feature

Aside from the parrying, the big hook of the combat is Koo’s inclusion, which provides both mechanical and thematic texture to the fights. Not only will he fight alongside you, attacking enemies on his own, but you can also bring up an attack menu to select specific moves for him to do, each with a little QTE to complete for greater effect. This system runs on fluorescence points, which are recharged by parrying, giving you an interesting rhythm as you do big attacks, parry to recharge, then repeat the cycle.

As someone who loves turn-based RPGs, it feels like a good nod to that in the same way it did for the Final Fantasy VII remakes, if not as complex. Most of these attacks are just various amounts of damage with some elemental or healing properties mixed in, with little to differentiate them. Each of them has its own attack animation, but they rarely feel unique in the way that I had hoped for. You can’t pick the same attack twice in a row, which meant instead of using my full suite of abilities, I often just fell into a rhythm of swapping back and forth between my two go-to attacks and calling it a day. Maybe this is a problem with how I played, but I didn’t feel like the game was incentivizing me to explore in meaningful ways.

As I mentioned before, you unlock more abilities as you go, but they rarely drastically changed the way I played in a way that felt like progression. Both Emma and Koo have skill trees that can be filled out, giving you various buffs to abilities that definitely make you deadlier as you continue to do the same combat loop. I did feel that, while it was cool that you were getting more powerful by adding benefits to existing skills, the fights ended up a bit busy, with popups appearing all over to tell you about buffs that were happening. It wasn’t really affecting my moment to moment, but the JRPG levels of easy-to-confuse statuses being shown on screen were distracting instead of making me feel empowered.

Even with my quibbles, the combat mechanics are generally fun, but I wish the encounter design could rise to meet it. With very few exceptions, I didn’t feel like I was approaching different enemies using different strategies, meaning encounters just felt kinda flat. While there were two types of enemies, beasts and robots, I didn’t feel like there were enough enemy types overall to give the encounters enough variety. The heavy focus on parrying means that memorizing tells and attack patterns is key to success, and the lack of variety means you won’t be having to do it as much as you should. It feels like you have them almost all down by halfway through the game, making it feel like rote execution instead of satisfying mastery.

Boss Fights Are the Highlight

Where the combat shines the most is the boss fights with the Nushi. So much of the narrative focus is on hunting these beasts down in each zone, and they generally don’t disappoint. These are massive versions of animals, but with Annihilation-style plant growth coming out of them, warping them into something that’s equal parts beautiful and horrifying. Aside from being great presentation-wise, they also play well, providing a clever mix of melee and ranged attacks that move them all around the arena to keep you on your toes. These felt like true climactic encounters, combining spectacle and challenge in a satisfying manner.

But they aren’t without their hangups as well. While I found myself having the most fun during these fights, I definitely think they went on for too long. Generally, the pattern of the game has you running into the boss, chasing it off, then tracking it down and fighting it a final time. This final encounter almost always has a second phase, but that second phase mostly changes the creature visually without adding too much new behavior-wise.

This means that for many of the bosses, you’re fighting them three times with nearly identical encounters each time. When you’re doing two phases in a row, boss fights feel like they get near ten minutes in length, making it feel more like a test of endurance than skill. On top of the repetitive phases, occasionally you’ll fight the same boss again in a later zone, which feels pretty disappointing when you’re looking to them as the highlight of the game.

Between these boss fights, you’re generally exploring areas that are littered with various enemies, using Emma’s traversal abilities. Given that she’s absorbed so much blight, she has the power to summon vines in various ways to get around the environment. This includes a grappling hook-like skill, the ability to build temporary bridges, and a vine boost that pushes her up in the air like an advanced double jump. That final skill is the most fun, providing a neat visual twist on a classic skill that feels good to use.

Exploration Feels Too Guided

Unfortunately, I don’t find the space you’re going through all that engaging. The environments are pretty standard overgrown post-apocalyptic fare, with a mix of green natural areas and rusted old industrial spaces, and all of them run together by the end of it. On top of that, I didn’t find exploration all that rewarding. As you walk around, Koo will point out items in the environment, which in some ways deflates the joy of finding them. Occasionally, one will be marked by him, and it will be a little bit of a puzzle to figure out how to get to it, but most of the time it’s pretty easy to track down items when they are on your HUD. I like the fictional nature of him helping you out, but it felt kinda deflating to just be shown where the secrets were.

The levels act as small open worlds, with each zone being small in size and fairly linear. There’s room to explore, but the game has so many methods in place to keep you on the golden path. There’s a big blue line that appears in the air, a representation of Koo’s sense of smell, that will always guide you in the correct direction, as well as little glowing butterflies that highlight specific places you need to go. At some points, there are even big graffiti arrows on the walls and ground that make sure you know that this is the way. While it’s nice that I never really felt lost while playing, that came at the cost of the magic of exploration, which is something I value in games.

Your cleanse walker acts as a mobile base of operations that moves you between these zones, and you’ll need to go back there every once in a while. When I started playing the game, it was not clear to me why I needed to go back, but then I looked at the game’s tutorials and realized there was a whole hunger system that I wasn’t really engaging with, where staying away from your home base can have adverse effects (though it appears those were minor enough as to go unnoticed). At the cleanse walker, you can interact with your crew, who have both narrative and mechanical purposes on board.

Kagura, a girl you saved at the start of your journey, cooks you meals with ingredients that you collect and grow, while also trying to bond with you emotionally. Brad, the grizzled pilot, acts as a merchant while also guiding you through your quest to kill the Nushi. You also have Violet, who doesn’t have a mechanical purpose, but is a weird ghost that only you can see, driving much of the game’s mystery.

Both Koo and Kagura have an affinity meter that allows you to bond with them through interacting, but it felt rudimentary at best. Because it’s always fun to have a dog in a game, it works best with Koo, who you can pet and clean to raise your relationship with, but it was never really clear to me what the benefits were. Even weirder, I hit the maximum bond level with Koo after about 10 hours into the 25-hour campaign, which felt strangely early. While I enjoyed having a place where narrative could be delivered, I didn’t really get a lot out of the systems aboard the cleanse walker, mainly because it seemed unclear what it was doing outside of some minor stat boosts from the meals I was getting.

Pacing and Storytelling Hiccups

Narratively, the pacing of the game feels a bit off as well. After the flashback-heavy opening, the story dies down for quite some time, focused heavily on the act of moving from one zone to another to hunt down Nushi, which don’t really have much story significance aside from acting as boss fights. The recurring NPCs that you come across are largely mysterious and unexplained until the game decides to dump all the narrative on you in the final act. The story feels so backloaded with its exposition, making the beginning feel a bit aimless, and the final stretch feel overwhelming, rather than being satisfying throughout.

The delivery of the narrative was also a bit lacking for me. Aside from the exciting cutscenes that punctuate most of the boss fights, a lot of the narrative sequences feel stiff, with the characters standing fairly motionless as they talk. A decent portion of the story is delivered in conversations where other characters talk to each other without Emma being there, making it feel like the story is happening around her rather than to her. After boss fights, there are strings of cutscenes that just keep coming, and it felt like it was at least ten minutes or so before you were able to get back to the action. For me to sit through cutscenes that long, I need them to be a lot more dynamic than what Beast of Reincarnation was giving me.

Even when all was revealed by the end, I didn’t really feel like there was that much new that the game was bringing to the table with its story and world. It felt too reminiscent of Nier: Automata, with a hint of Death Stranding in there for good measure, but without the oddball charm that those titles have. Perhaps that’s the challenge of having a protagonist that canonically is emotionless, but I just felt like I wanted a little more personality aside from the novelty of having a big, cute dog.

Also hurting my enjoyment was a weird lack of polish overall that, while never gamebreaking, irked me in little ways. The camera would twitch when hitting a wall, sound effects felt out of sync with animations, and bad collision caused me to climb up the environment weirdly or get caught in corners. Attack animations generally looked sharp in play, but occasionally I would catch people clipping through the environment during cutscenes. These are all types of things that could be fixed in a post-launch patch, but given the high fidelity of the visuals, little issues like this felt distracting.

One of the biggest things that bothered me was the language option menu. By default, the game starts with Japanese voice acting with English subtitles, which are pretty small and don’t have a backing on them. Because there was frequent dialogue during the action, I was having trouble keeping up with the subtitles in the middle of fights, so I paused the game and went into the language options to see what I could do. The menu had no way to change the spoken language, and there were no options to adjust the subtitles for visibility. I powered through, dealing with the subtitles the whole game, and when I hit the credits, I saw an English voice cast listed.

Turns out that you could switch the voice acting to English, but it was only available at the main menu version of the settings, not in the pause menu settings. Even if there may be some technical reason preventing them from changing the voice settings while the game is running, they probably at least should have had a little note in the pause menu saying it could be changed from the main menu. While this may be slightly my fault for not checking all menus thoroughly, it speaks to some of the design decisions of the game that didn’t feel fully formed or well thought out.

Final Verdict

It’s hard to review a game like this because there’s something here; I’m just not sure if it’s the game itself or the games it’s reminding me of. Shades of Sekiro and Nier: Automata need to be a starting point rather than the most notable feature, and Beast of Reincarnation never really got out of the shadow of either. The dog companion is a solid hook for the game, but it doesn’t bring enough personality to either the narrative or the combat to make it truly shine.

It’s clear that this is the biggest project that Game Freak has worked on, because a lack of polish both in concepts and execution keeps this from being as memorable as it should. If you love third-person action games, you could do a lot worse than the combat mechanics presented here.

The issue is that it’s very easy for you to do a lot better, as well.

Code provided by publisher. Beast of Reincarnation is available for PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series.

The post ‘Beast of Reincarnation’ Review: A Soulslike That Never Escapes Its Influences appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

But there’s more at work here than simply trying to ape Corman’s from-the-hip style. It’s more of an ethos than a visual or narrative blueprint, the sense that you can always make something special with very little, if you’ve got the determination and the creativity, and Pincer Point has that in spades. Though Corman is its spiritual father, this is a film that puts its own singular stamp on the landscape of independent genre filmmaking now, a beautiful, dreamy, earnest blend of horror, comedy, and good old-fashioned British weird that’s one of the best things I’ve seen all year. 

Jim (Jack Redmayne) is a sound recordist working in the early 2000s British cinema scene whose work has seen better days. He’s coasting on past successes, cutting corners with his work, and his bosses have started to notice. Fortunately for Jim, he catches a break when a tyrannical director decides he needs an intrepid recordist to head back out to a location to capture a specific woman’s voice. The location? Pincer Point, a secluded island where technology hasn’t advanced past payphone boxes, the locals have their own way of doing things, and the woman Jim’s looking for is…well, hard to find. 

Fearful that he’ll lose his entire career if he admits defeat and simply goes home without finding his subject, Jim sticks around, recording old fishermen’s tales of a legendary ghostly ship that marks its victims through crab bites and then transforms them into ageless crustaceans. The more he explores the island, though, the more Jim starts to wonder if the old stories have a ring of truth, particularly when he hears what sounds like the voices of old sailors on the wind, warning him to turn back. 

Much of the Corman influence in the film lies in its independent spirit and ingenuity, but there are also, of course, visual similarities as well, particularly in Corman’s early black-and-white efforts like Attack of the Crab Monsters and, of course, the offbeat humor of The Little Shop of Horrors. But while the influences might begin there, it’s certainly not where they end. The grainy, black-and-white, Academy ratio visuals conjured by Stratton-Twine, Kuhn, and cinematographer Murray Zev Cohen evoke everything from the dreamscapes of Powell and Pressburger to the haunting shades of Carl Theodor Dreyer to more recent successes like Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse.

Armed with miniatures, CGI, and seaside compositions that look like living paintings, the filmmakers deliver everything from an island where every rock seems shaped like a crustacean’s claw to a glowing, mysterious woman who washes up in the surf. It’s like stepping into another world adjacent to our own. 

And that otherworldly sensibility is helped along by a glorious sound design job masterminded by Joseph Eccles and Nick Smyth. Sound is crucial to the film, of course, since it’s the story of a recordist and sound designer, and it matters not just in an aural sense but in a thematic one. What begins as a desperate attempt to keep his job and get his career back on track soon becomes a journey of obsession for Jim.

Phantom sounds harry him, some of them funny and others quite creepy, until he gets lost in the recurring patterns of them, the sense that themes are building, that he’s trapped in a musical composition in which he is but one voice. The film further emphasizes the importance of sound by rarely moving the camera, focusing instead on the ways in which movement in the frame (something that’s both an old-school Western cinema tradition and one turned into high art by Japanese directors like Ozu and Kurosawa) and the wash of sound over an image can generate emotion. 

It falls to Redmayne to carry much of that emotion, and he gives a performance that feels both intensely natural and just absurd enough to fit into this otherworldly seascape. There’s an improvisational feel – and indeed, the credits nod to the cast for improvising beyond the script – to the dialogue in The Peril at Pincer Point, another nod to Corman and his need to just get on with takes and keep shooting, that reflects the independent spirit of the movie, but also gives us insight into the way the characters work.

Jim, for all of his experience and the industry clout he uses as a crutch, has no idea what he’s doing. He’s wandered, in every way that matters, off the creative map and into uncharted territory. He’s fumbling in the dark for something with a meaningful shape, and the dialogue and performances capture that feeling. I wouldn’t call this movie particularly frightening in a visceral way, but it is wonderfully unsettling, and a big part of that comes from the way Redmayne’s able to play Jim as a guy whose true purpose is slowly dawning on him. 

The Peril at Pincer Point begins by styling itself as a meta-monster movie, and while it keeps that tone throughout, its greater achievement, beyond the visual dazzle and the evocative soundscape, is in the way it depicts creativity as an act of intense, obsessive faith. Like Corman, these filmmakers had to believe in what they were doing long enough to see it through, scraping and clawing (crab pun absolutely intended) their way to something with real meaning. The horror elements of the film suggest that sometimes this meaning we find is more than we can handle, but the overall vision is one which tells us that the search, however arduous, is always worth it.

Every once in a while you need a movie that gets you excited not just about movies, but about the pure organic joy of creativity all over again. The Peril at Pincer Point is one of those movies, an indie gem with a handmade heart, a folk-horror mind, and a Cormanesque soul. 

The Peril of Pincher Point screened at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.

The post ‘The Peril at Pincer Point’ Review: Gorgeous, Handmade Horror-Comedy [Fantasia 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Koji Shiraishi’s masterful descent into WTF-ery employs the faux-doc style of found footage, in this case a documentary that was left incomplete, and it pulls together various sources that all unite in horror by its conclusion. Even better, its driving force is a procedural investigation (of sorts) desperate to find an increasingly weird truth but doomed to the nightmare of a Lovecraftian revelation.

He’s made dozens of found footage horror films in the two decades since (along with several more “normal” movies), but his latest feature feels like a callback to his masterpiece while still finding life and power of its own. Kinki, or About a Place in the Kinki Region, as the onscreen title calls it, is in conversation with that earlier film even as it creates its own story captured in a hybrid format of both found footage and traditional filmmaking. Numerous threads intertwine themselves into a narrative noose here that tightens in the form of a genuinely creepy slowburn delight.

Ultra Mystery Magazine caters to readers intrigued and entertained by stories of the supernatural, and its top editor has gone missing. Sayama (Atom Shukugawa) has been researching and writing a big cover story, but all that’s left in his absence is a mountain of materials including newspapers, notes, videotapes, and more. The magazine is on a deadline, and a junior editor named Ozawa (Eiji Akaso) is tasked with wrangling it all into publishable form. It’s a daunting job, so he brings in a trusted freelancer named Chihiro (Miho Kanno), but as the pair dig into the trove of scary and unsettling objects, they fall deeper and deeper into the same nightmare that claimed Sayama.

If you’ve seen any of Shiraishi’s films, you know that he’s not a filmmaker in a hurry. His films are never dull, either, given both the subject matter and his appealing lean towards low-fi visuals. Grainy figures caught on camera, slow-moving hands reaching out from behind objects, slightly blurry CG beings, flickering lights, the sound of something nearby. Those old school effects are still evident in Kinki despite it having a noticeable budget bump from most of his films, but they’re just one part of a nightmarish melange of images, sounds, and atmospheric touches that grab hold of your attention through to the final disturbing image.

The film’s first act sees our protagonists working their way through Sayama’s stash, and it feels almost like an anthology of found footage horrors. Ozawa and Chihiro, both as part of the traditionally shot narrative, pop in videotapes, play CD-Rs, plug in thumb drives, and click on links, and it’s an interesting nod to nearly three decades of escalating found footage film media. Each one is its own little scare, seemingly disconnected from the rest, and each could easily be the source of its own standalone film.

Here they form a bigger story of collected unease and cultish conspiracy – a missing child, strange sounds emanating from the woods at night, a YouTuber livestream that ends in a room full of nooses, increasingly creepy posts on Twitter until the user simply disappears – that coalesces into pure nightmare fuel. Shiraishi is well-versed in the found footage tropes, and he’s equally attuned to other highlights in the Japanese horror boom of the 1990s and 2000s. He even made a fun crossover film in 2016 called Sadako vs Kayako that should appeal to fans of Ring and Ju-on.

One of the more frightening updates he makes to the expected horrors and curses is in the seeming lack of upfront consent that can lead to your demise. Past films have required a buy-in, of sorts, from characters who find themselves targeted by the other side. They read a creepy book’s passages aloud, they say the monster’s name five times in the mirror, they press play on a videotape that will reportedly kill them. Kinki, though, acknowledges the times we live in by burying a curse in the auto-play videos we all scroll through on a daily basis on social media. It’s newfangled technology, but its origin, as Ozawa and Chihiro soon discover, is far older.

The film becomes an investigative procedural as our characters comb through newspapers, interview witnesses, and connect threads between seemingly disparate events, and Shiraishi crafts it so that we feel like we’re working the investigation alongside them. It adds an additional layer of tension as we race towards the conclusion, but it also offers the opportunity for scares outside of the found footage elements.

The decision to blend together the found footage element with a regular narrative is a good one as it manages character and themes better than the former format can typically deliver on its own. Both leads do good work, but Kanno makes the strongest impression as a woman whose past loss weighs on her approach to these present horrors. Kinki marks a return to the horror genre for her after starring in a handful of films in the 1990s, including as the title character in 1998’s Tomie.

It would be wrong to call Kinki a return to form for Shiraishi, as his output since Noroi has frequently been within the range of good to great, but it is a fantastic companion piece to that earlier classic. As a side note, fans who also enjoy reading should seek out the source novel – About a Place in the Kinki Region by Sesuji, which received an English translation earlier this year – as it finds a similar vibe with its anthology-like collection of news stories, interview transcripts, and more. Whatever you do, though, be sure to go turn off autoplay in your social media settings first.

Kinki made its North American premiere at the 25th New York Asian Film Festival. Release info TBD.

The post ‘Kinki’ Review: The Director of ‘Noroi’ Returns With Another Found Footage Triumph [NYAFF 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Inspired by classic survival horror and taking place in a single interconnected location modeled after a real transatlantic vessel, the South Korean-produced SENARA initially appears to be the perfect game for thalassophobes wanting to test their limits. Unfortunately, the experience begins to fall apart at the seams once you look past the shiny surface.

In the game, players take on the role of a survivor who wakes up inside an ocean liner that has been overrun by homicidal cultists. After meeting up with the wounded captain of the derelict vessel, you soon realize that an emergency helicopter is your only chance at escaping from the horrors that the cultists plan to inflict on the ship as part of an eldritch ritual. From there, players will have to explore meticulously recreated environments while solving classic survival horror puzzles and facing terrifying pursuers – some of which are less than human!

First impressions here were remarkably solid, with the graphics and presentation looking far beyond what you typically see among low-budget genre fare. The setting itself is appropriately massive and believable, with the locked doors and eerily lit hallways making it feel like you’re really trapped aboard a modern-day ship with no hope of rescue. And while the realistic nature of the architecture/level design means that traversal can get rather repetitive, there’s an inherent claustrophobia to the exploration here that you don’t really get in the more fantastical settings of games like Resident Evil.

It was only when the larger story and enemy encounters came into play that I began to question the polish behind this initially captivating experience. For starters, the very idea that you need to pay for a rescue helicopter in advance (with hidden treasure, no less) in order to escape the ship alongside the captain is ridiculous even for a genre known for its B-movie influences. I also find it hard to believe that the cult could have secretly organized such a large-scale coup before the ship hauled anchor, but I could easily have overlooked these narrative issues if the gameplay was as well-crafted as the overall atmosphere.

Unfortunately, my very first enemy encounter was already bugged as the ship’s chef came rushing at me with a butcher’s knife like a homicidal Sonic on steroids. No amount of sneaking around could get past his obviously over-accelerated reaction times, and the horror of the experience was soon replaced by frustration as I was forced to rewatch the same death animation over and over again. While I could chalk up a single buggy encounter as bad luck, the experience left enough of a sour taste in my mouth that I began to notice other blemishes lurking behind SENARA’s glossy façade, with the combat/stealth sections being only a small part of what really bothers me about the experience.

From what I can tell, most -if not all- of the in-game artwork was produced through generative AI (some of which was even scaled to the wrong resolution). Not only that, but many of the visual elements that aren’t related to the admittedly impressive simulation of the ship appear to be stock assets that never quite gel into a cohesive art style. That’s not even mentioning minor hiccups like the game’s seemingly arbitrary decisions about which moments deserve voice-acting and which don’t, or the fact that you more or less understand what’s going on in the story after a mere half-hour of rummaging through epistolary notes.

I won’t go so far as to accuse the writing team of using generative AI to pen the title’s narrative -especially since Influsion Inc. touches on legitimately interesting ideas like comparing modern-day religious fanaticism to Lovecraftian horror- but it feels like a wasted opportunity when the developers relegate the story and world-building to generic notes like what you’ve seen in every other horror title.

Thankfully, things pick up quite a bit once you’re armed and have collected enough ammo to properly deal with the game’s small collection of enemies, provided that their AI has finally decided to work. There’s nothing spectacular about the shooting here, and one might argue that the satisfying first-person action sabotages any horrific intent, but putting down cultists and Lovecraftian abominations is surprisingly fun after spending so much time going through bags and drawers.

At the end of the day, if you can excuse the blatant use of AI, there’s nothing catastrophically wrong with SENARA: The Sacrament. I’d even argue that most of the technical issues will likely be patched out in the coming days, and no amount of nitpicking can undo the title’s genuinely effective atmosphere. The problem is that the game doesn’t really offer anything new. Behind the high-def visuals and serviceable gameplay is a hodgepodge of ideas we’ve seen executed better before.

That’s why I’d only recommend purchasing this one if you’re tired of replaying the same old watery horror classics – though the deja-vu might be a little jarring.

Review code provided by publisher. SENARA: The Sacrament is available now on PC via Steam.

The post ‘SENARA: The Sacrament’ Review: A Survival Horror Voyage That Springs Too Many Leaks appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Bergholm’s debut, the skin-crawlingly gnarly and bitingly funny Hatching, puts its thematic concerns directly in the audience’s face, hammering home the point it was making about female puberty and the staggering expectations that come with growing up, but brushes in much more subtly along the way as it explores the complex tangle of emotions that come with those expectations. In that way, it becomes a film of surprising depth while also stirring up all those wonderful ghoulish body horror moments. 

Bergholm’s follow-up, the Fantasia Award-winning Nightborn, functions in much the same way, with an added maturity befitting its subject matter. A dark tale of motherhood, folk horror, and body horror about the various monstrosities that come with motherhood, it’s evidence of Bergholm’s growth as an artist from film to film, and one of this year’s must-see features. 

Saga (Seidi Haarla) and her new husband Jon (Rupert Grint) have just moved to rural Finland, hoping to fix up Saga’s grandmother’s old house, move in, and raise a family on the edge of a forest so magical they even conceive their first child there, nestled among the gnarled trees and the thick, verdant moss. It’s idyllic, the perfect way to start their new lives together, at least until the baby is born. 

A rough birth soon gives way to a newborn with odd features, from strangely sharp teeth and nails — though, to be fair, all babies have razor-sharp nails, so look out — to a body covered in dark, wolfish hair. Saga’s taken aback, but doctors assure the couple the baby is perfectly healthy, just a little, well, different. As the baby grows, and all the usual concerns of motherhood come up, Jon does his best to be the supportive partner and father, and wave away every fear Saga has about their child. But the more time Saga spends with her son, a child she insists on calling “it,” the more she wonders if the forest held more than trees and moss. 

As with her previous feature, the surface-level metaphors in Bergholm’s film, which she co-wrote with Hatching collaborator Ilja Rautsi, are both quite clear and quite heavy. The body horror of postpartum life is dialed up early and all the way to 11, from the way the baby chews at Saga’s nipples to the way her clothes don’t seem to fit anymore to the constant, insistent wailing from the creature in the crib. Any parent or anyone who’s simply never wanted kids of their own for exactly these reasons and more can relate to these moments, the sense of being unmoored from the shared reality of the rest of the world (even, for added horror, your spouse), and the feeling that the living being you’re tasked with caring for simply does not care about you in the least.

Those early months of parenting are often thankless and maddening, and Bergholm depicts that with vibrant shades of body horror and encroaching madness, helped along by a production design which seems to suggest that, despite the couple’s best efforts, the house is receding back into the forest. 

Which brings us to the no-less-subtle but arguably more vibrant folk horror shades in the film. Despite Jon’s best efforts to modernize their country home – complete with an electric car charging station and a robot lawnmower which serves as the film’s best recurring joke – the forest seems to keep reaching back to take over, its roots and saplings sprouting with impossible speed as Saga and Jon’s child takes a greater interest in things beyond breast milk and simple toys. It’s all beautifully done, right down to the green wallpaper that seems to swallow the house like a mossy curtain, and it builds to the subtler shades Bergholm’s managed to layer into her sophomore effort. 

It would be easy for Nightborn to go the simplest route and become a simple changeling story. After all, there’s a reason those legends have persisted for centuries; sometimes your kid just feels like a monster, and the more they assert their personality, the more they can feel less like a part of you and more like an invader in your home. In real life, these moments are temporary, even fleeting, but the anxiety remains, and here Bergholm runs that anxiety like a white-hot wire through the whole film, forcing Saga to confront her own bestial nature and her child’s increasingly unorthodox needs until the whole picture is thick with dread. 

But even with the potency of its darkness, Nightborn also showcases Bergholm’s talent for oddball, dark comedy, something very well-served by the casting of both Haarla and Grint. Just as he did with Servant, Grint plays a phenomenal horror straight man, but this time with an added softness. He’s a supportive husband, a good guy, who just wants to build a family with the woman he loves, and yet everything around him is increasingly bonkers and feral. It’s a highwire act, and he pulls it off.

Even with Grint’s supporting brilliance in mind, though, Haarla is the clear star. As her baby grows and changes, so too does Saga, and Haarla’s ability to pivot from gentle and curious to wild-eyed and furious is the linchpin on which the whole film turns. She’s incredible. 

There’s a richness to Nightborn that, for me at least, Hatching never quite achieved. Bergholm hasn’t lost her knack for wielding metaphor and thematic arcs with blunt-yet-artful force, but there’s an added depth here too, a sense of exploration and nuance that shows a filmmaker who’s still growing, still mastering her craft and dreaming up new horrors for a hungry audience. It’s a chilling artistic breakthrough, and an announcement that Hanna Bergholm is not just here to stay, but getting better all the time.

Nightborn premieres July 31 on Shudder.

The post ‘Nightborn’ Review: Hanna Bergholm’s Haunting Tale of Monstrous Motherhood appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

I was reminded of this while watching I Hate Found Footage, the latest horror comedy by Michael Rock, director of the Tahoe Joe trilogy and founding member of Horror Dadz Productions. This cheekily titled parody has just been released on Found TV as one of the budding streamer’s first exclusive productions, and while I commend the folks at FTV for enlisting a found footage veteran to help popularize their fan-funded platform, the ensuing product might just be a little too accurate for its own good.

Taking inspiration from classic Muppets spoofs as well as a lifetime of experience with some of the best and worst that found footage movies have to offer, I Hate Found Footage may not be the very first comedy to poke fun at the FF genre, but it’s certainly the first one to feature colorful puppets as the protagonists.

In this decidedly meta experience, we follow Eddie Blake and Michael Rock himself as Ollie and Filbert – a duo of talkative hand puppets who embark on a quest to shoot a no-budget found footage movie in the middle of the Nevada wilderness. Unfortunately for the budding filmmakers, their cameras end up picking up much more than they bargained for when their impromptu monster movie accidentally puts them in the path of a masked gang of ritualistic murderers.

What follows is a self-conscious comedy of errors poking fun at all of the most hated and some of the most beloved tropes that the found footage genre has to offer. Ollie and Filbert frequently interrupt their terrifying POV misadventure with jabs at common faux pas like their own inability to stop filming even under risk of death, as well as multiple instances of puppet-based physical humor.

In general, this is far from a bad premise. The kid-friendly puppetry might be a bit jarring during the first few minutes as you get used to seeing this playful duo interact with the gritty real world, but there’s an undeniable charm to the way that these unorthodox characters record ironic versions of the familiar exposition dumps and ominous testimonials that we’re so used to seeing in “serious” found footage flicks.

Unfortunately, Rock is so dedicated to recreating an authentically terrible found footage production that the finished film often feels more like a failed attempt at an earnest project than an enjoyable parody. Sure, the copious amount of jokes and the fact that our leads are played by fluffy masses of felt should indicate that the film isn’t meant to be taken seriously, but pointing out how amateur found footage productions suffer from long stretches of dead air and unnecessary build-up is only funny until the movie becomes the very thing it’s supposed to be criticizing.

I get that having Ollie and Filbert’s ill-advised cinematic endeavor be a laughably bad movie is itself part of the joke, but unlike similar genre parodies in the vein of Ed Wood or even stuff like Sharknado and Velocipastor, which benefit from the fun parts of traditionally “bad” horror filmmaking, I Hate Found Footage has to contend with the fact that poorly-made found footage tends to be more boring than ridiculous.

That’s not to say that there’s no enjoyment to be found here, as I especially appreciate absurdist jokes like when the characters encounter the murdered “corpse” of another hand-puppet, and his full skeleton only consists of a bloodied arm. Or even the ridiculous scene where the duo attempts to simulate a jump scare for their monster movie using embarrassing levels of puppet-on-puppet effects work. But it’s a shame that these elements are shackled to excruciatingly long, though admittedly beautiful, shots of the Nevada setting.

That being said, regardless of certain stilted/unfunny line deliveries and the painfully slow build-up that doesn’t really lead to a horrific finale, Rock is still a skilled enough filmmaker to know that this kind of comedic experience works best in short bursts. That’s why the hour-long runtime comes as a blessing even if it also serves as an example of why the flick would probably have been better off as a short film. As it stands, however, I’d argue that it’s still worth suffering through some of the flick’s cringy moments in order to get to the good stuff.

Ironically enough, I Hate Found Footage will probably only entertain veterans who are already more inclined to forgive the genre’s common pitfalls and recurring tropes. After all, the production was clearly helmed by a team with a deep knowledge of how these movies work and what fans expect to see when they press play on a low-budget POV adventure. While I still think there’s only enough humor and story here to sustain a half-hour-long short, I’d still recommend this feature to die-hard fans who enjoy a healthy dose of silliness alongside their POV scares.

I Hate Found Footage is now streaming on Found TV.

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Evans, who co-writes with Lily Cowles, opens Corpus with a discomforting attention grabber that sees a young woman, Wren (Yellowjackets‘ Nuha Jes Izman), put in an increasingly awkward, then disturbing position at a professional photo shoot. The scene abruptly cuts right at the cusp of sexual violence, setting in motion the overarching mystery that protagonist Sayo (Jeff Wahlberg) slowly discovers he’s been pulled into.

Corpus introduces Sayo as an aspiring photographer with an eye for composition, but one who scrapes by in New York City dealing drugs at nightclubs. His quiet routine gets upended with the return of Vince Marlowe (Brodie Townsend), a star on the rise and Sayo’s longtime crush. Vince convinces Sayo and their mutual pal Ross (Michael Vlamis) to accompany him to an exclusive party hosted by his affluent photographer friend Billie (Lily Cowles). Instead of a bustling gathering filled with prominent guests, though, Sayo is surprised to arrive at an isolated estate deep in the woods, with only Billie, Billie’s strange friend Cata (Ching Valdes-Aran), and Wren to greet them.

It’s the type of bait-and-switch that should set off warnings within Sayo, but his unresolved feelings for Vince override his sense of survival as the strange behaviors grow more sinister over the weekend.

Sayo’s loneliness becomes the epicenter for Evans’ sensual examination of modern relationships, intimacy, and gender norms. As such, Corpus favors slow simmering, sensual unease as Evans dials into the push and pull among its central relationships. More acutely, Sayo’s deep confusion takes center stage as he tries to navigate his perplexing dynamic with the object of his desire. Vince runs hot and cold. Flirtations and advances are sometimes encouraged, sometimes rejected. Not helping is the bizarre dynamic between Billie and her mysterious “friend” Cata. Or Wren’s new feral persona, a far cry from her timid opener.

Fixating so thoroughly on the intricacies of Sayo and Vince’s will-they-won’t-they adds meaty thematic depth, a haunting depiction of loneliness leaving someone vulnerable to different forms of manipulation. It’s here where Evans slowly, ever so slowly, layers in hints of horror. Sensuality and relationship drama take center stage, and while Evans’ strong grasp of form makes for a compelling watch that holds you firmly in its grip, its middle section is prone to pacing lulls. 

So much so that by the time Corpus is ready to reveal its sinister horror surprise, it feels almost too little too late. The disorienting nature of desire and intimacy gives way to a full-throttle home invasion that lays all intentions bare and finally unmasks its horror, but it comes in a frenzied rush that can’t wait to conclude Sayo’s erstwhile romantic pursuits. 

The restrained horror does frustrate in the wake of the film’s potent cold open, raising the expectation for a more energetic journey that never fully arrives, but what it lacks in supernatural scares it makes up for in style and atmosphere. Wahlberg makes for a complicated, sympathetic lead as the vulnerable romantic struggling to find his place in the world, let alone whether he’s destined for love or the friendship zone. The ’90s setting doesn’t just remove the pesky problem of smartphones when trouble arises; it lets Evans play with form and incorporate photography techniques that raise visual interest. Even the music adds rich texture. It all makes for a stylish debut with a strong voice at the helm, but it never pushes far enough into erotic thriller or horror territory to fully unsettle. 

Corpus made its premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.

The post ‘Corpus’ Review: A Seductive Slow-Burn Erotic Thriller With a Supernatural Twist [Fantasia 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere. 

So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).

Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner. 

I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve. 

But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.

It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.

Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.

In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking. 

That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.

Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.

The post ‘Night School’ 4K UHD Review: An Essential Slasher with Giallo Soul appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Batman: Caped Crusader’s first season was an artistic masterstroke, albeit one that left some general audiences wanting more. Season two is a satisfying extension of its predecessor that also fills in some of its gaps and does even more with the series’ mission statement. It’s a soothing blend of Saturday Morning Cartoon nostalgia and hard-hitting supernatural detective noir that feels very much in line with Matt Reeves’ recent take on Gotham and Batman.

This season fully embraces the overall theme of duality and how not to let one side overpower the other. This may seem a little on-the-nose for a superhero series, let alone a take on Batman, but it fits well with the retro 1940s alternate Gotham City that’s been meticulously cultivated. Additionally, this season repeatedly explores codependency and the ability to put trust in others, whether it’s Nygma’s bond with Thorne, Bullock’s partnership with Flass, Renee’s ties with Barbara, or Bruce Wayne’s camaraderie with Alfred or even Carrie Kelley.

There’s also a lot to unpack on the subject of belief and faith, which informs this season’s storytelling in creative ways that also chip away at Batman – and Gotham’s – image. It’s one big sprawling crime saga in a hyper-stylized noir world where nobody is beyond betrayal or corruption if the price is right. This feeds into the season’s grander storyline where Rupert Thorne’s trial provides a strong introduction to this universe’s Eddie Nygma (Ronan Raftery). Thorne and Nygma are the season’s central antagonists as the latter takes advantage of the massive power vacuum that’s opened up after Thorne’s incarceration.

Batman: Caped Crusader has plenty to say about its heightened, masquerading criminals, but at the core of all this is Gotham’s internal corruption, and if it’s reached a point in which it’s too far gone to be saved, who is responsible for its desolation, and the people who want to take advantage of this vulnerability and own the city. Gotham, and its festering nature, becomes the true main character of Batman: Caped Crusader. Its ability for redemption or the possibility that it sinks deeper into the abyss are integral to each of these ten episodes.

This season adopts a propaganda angle that’s critical of the GCPD and Batman that feels particularly appropriate and timely. There’s a vilification of Batman and a compulsion to turn him into a dangerous vigilante who is feared, rather than the antidote to Gotham’s crime. It’s a take that’s been presented plenty of times before, but in this case there’s a sliver of truth to this budding Batman’s early crime-fighting efforts that helps it hit harder and connect. This also leads to one of the season’s strongest and most disturbing episodes in which Mad Monk (Blythe Melin) leads a team of Batman impostor acolytes who are determined to further tarnish the Dark Knight’s name.

These episodes are also having so much fun with the obscure corners of Batman history that it’s pulling from. There’s a great Matches Malone undercover episode where Bruce Wayne has to infiltrate a prison as an inmate in order to get intel. After the first season provided creative takes on many of Batman’s more noteworthy rogues, season two has the freedom to dig into considerably more fringe figures, such as Barbatos the Bat-God and Roxanne “Roxy Rockey” Sutton, a Bruce Timm and Paul Dini deep cut from 1994’s The Batman Adventures comics and The New Batman Adventures.

This season uniquely tackles Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze, and Calendar Man. There’s also an extremely chilling version of the Joker whose presence heavily looms over the season’s events. Matthew Needham gives such an unusual interpretation of the Clown Prince of Crime that’s borderline Shakespearean. It’s a really effective restrained subversion rather than some of the Joker’s broader and more jovially unhinged renditions. It feels more like Moriarty’s dynamic with Sherlock Holmes, if anything.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but Batman: Caped Crusader absolutely excels with its animation, art design – the lighting and shadows in particular – and the 1940s Art Deco aesthetic that permeates through every frame. Each episode features sublime action sequences, many of which showcase a shocking degree of vicious brutality and a hefty body count. This includes one of the most gruesome Christmas fatalities this side of Batman Returns.

Batman: Caped Crusader features some incredibly moving, thought-provoking storytelling that’s on par with some of the most memorable episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. In some ways, Batman: Caped Crusader is even better than its ‘90s counterpart because it’s been allowed to ground itself in time and grow up. Batman is one of DC’s most popular and reimagined characters, with even more iterations on the way.

Batman: Caped Crusader still makes a strong impression and shines brightly – like the Bat Signal on a dark night – to give fans hope and let them know that they’re in safe hands. This hopefully isn’t the end of Batman: Caped Crusader, but if it is, then it can rest easy knowing that it’s created such a special, passionate love letter to this iconic character.

Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2 premieres on Prime Video on July 31.

The post ‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ Review: Season Two Daringly Deconstructs the Dark Knight & Gotham appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

A group of friends is enjoying a fun vacation in Mexico when the screw-up of the bunch, Kyle (Diego Llinas), brings them an offer they can’t refuse. They’re being treated to an exclusive cage diving trip on a big, beautiful, luxury power catamaran with a guarantee of seeing some sharks up close. Kyle’s sister, Tatiana (Laura Marano), is hesitant, but she’s overruled by her boyfriend TJ (Donncha Tynan), and their couple friends, Kayle (Christina Ochoa) and Danny (Ryan Bertroche).

Should be fun, why not, what could go wrong, and so on, but then a pair of quiet heavies (Louis Mandylor, Jess Liaudin) with matching Louis Vuitton bags join the passenger list. And then another boat joins them at sea, and three armed men (including a terrifically entertaining Antonio Banderas) climb aboard. And then those hungry sharks aren’t hungry for long.

Like the recent Dangerous Animals and The Bay, Johnson’s Above & Below takes the wise tact of casting its sharks as an underlying threat instead of the main obstacle. They’re both dangerous and deadly when encountered, but the film blends its genre conventions to zero in on mad, greedy, and murderous humans as the true antagonists. It’s a good thing, too, as the actors bringing those villains to life give the film’s best, most engaging performances.

Writer Anthony Steven Giordano doesn’t give this group of friends much to work with – Kyle is a troublemaker, and Tatiana is planning to break up with TJ, but there’s otherwise very little at play between them in regard to drama or depth. The performances, while mostly competent, match that level of detail, and it’s instead the bad guys who find the most to play with as both characters and performers.

Mandylor carries the familiar but fun bulldog persona he’s mastered through a few earlier films with Johnson (including The Debt Collector and its sequel), and his Martin is the villainous loose cannon equivalent of Kyle’s less harmful but more obnoxious pain in the ass. It’s Kyle’s mistake that lands his friends on this boat, but it’s Martin’s error in judgment that signs nearly everyone’s death warrant. Liaudin has the less showier role of the pair as Garrison, but there’s a charismatic gentility about him running in interesting contrast to his muscular frame and cauliflower ears.

It’s Banderas’ Carlos, though, who steals the show in Above & Below and makes it clear why it’s often worth bringing a name talent into the mix for these direct-to-video genre pictures. (That said, they probably should have bumped his paycheck a little bit higher so they didn’t have to use painfully obvious stand-ins when his character is filmed from behind.) He plays the film’s big bad with a joyous sense of life that he can turn on a dime into abject cruelty. It’s fun to watch, and it adds an entertaining bit of craziness into some otherwise serious and occasionally meandering beats.

Less successful, and the film’s biggest issue on the performance front, is Marano’s efforts, particularly when Tatiana’s talking underwater. The SCUBA helmets are wired so divers can talk to each other, and while the scenes are actually shot underwater (and look good as a result), the dialogue performances were clearly recorded later. Nothing wrong with that in theory, but Marano’s recording booth performance never matches or even approaches the intensity of the underwater scenes she’s voicing – bodies are falling around her, sharks are taking bites, and she sounds like she’s lounging in the bathtub on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It doesn’t get much more convincing once she’s back topside, but the script is equally to blame on that count.

Still, flat performance aside, Johnson knows how to craft thrills and suspense infused with character and even the smallest of action beats. Part of the film sees criminal threats on board the boat and shark dangers below, and he cuts between them while rarely losing their sense of tension. The script also succeeds at keeping viewers guessing as to who will survive the excursion, and that’s no small feat for these kinds of films.

While stunts and squibs keep things somewhat lively above the water, Johnson and friends find some solid set pieces below the surface too. The sharks are CG creations, but they look pretty good – it’s really only the CG blood that screams “fake!” every time it appears – and deliver minor thrills as they glide out of the shadows to take a bite or do a quick drive-by. Characters are in a shark cage that’s been dropped to the ocean floor, and as their air tanks run low, they’re forced to exit the cage and retrieve air from the dead, leading to some fun interactions with chewed-upon dummy corpses. One encounter involving Tatiana, Martin, and a Great White shark is a real high point of creativity and execution.

The film is set in Mexico but filmed in Bulgaria and the Canary Islands. Land sequences are limited enough that you probably won’t even notice, and the bulk of the film is convincing with its offshore setting. Similarly, the underwater filming – presumably in a tank – adds an additional layer to the illusion so that you feel the dangerous isolation of it all.

At the end of the day, it’s Johnson’s direction and the performances by Banderas, Mandylor, and Liaudin that might make Above & Below worth your time. The script teases a recurrent theme about the dangerous outcome of keeping secrets, but as with the characters and anything resembling logic, it ultimately does nothing with it. Johnson and his bad guys fight to keep it all afloat, but a better script could have given them even more to work with. Of course, no one comes to these movies for the script anyway, but you’ll still wish there was far more meat on its bones.

Above & Below swims into select theaters today, July 29.

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That alone might not necessarily sound like high praise given that the rest of the aforementioned movies are pretty bad to merely okay, so allow me to drive the claim home even further. The Devil’s Mouth is a good, fun, and frequently thrilling killer shark film.

I know. I’m as surprised as you are.

Five friends are enjoying a vacation in Thailand as one last hurrah before deciding what to do with their lives. They’re all in their twenties and really should have some inkling of that by now, but whatevs. Carpe diem, yolo, and all that jazz. A boating excursion goes slightly sideways, leaving Sara (Kathryn Newton) temporarily marked up by jellyfish stings, but it’s not enough to make her rethink plans for a freshwater cave swim the next day.

There’s a guide (Tayme Thapthimthong), the freshwater means there won’t be any dangerous ocean animals, and her coupled-up friends – Max (Lana Condor), James (Nico Hiraga), Adrienne (Tommi Rose), and Greg (Gavin Casalegno) – are all really excited for the adventure. For Sara, it’s also a chance to visit one of her recently deceased father’s favorite vacation spots.

It’s not long, though, before they realize something is amiss. Recent storm surges have pushed ocean creatures into the caves, and while most have died from the fresh water, one animal is trapped and thriving. An ornery bull shark is biting its way to the top of the food chain, and the survivors are forced to swim their way through an increasingly claustrophobic and crumbling cave system if they ever want to make it back to dry land.

The usual killer shark movie ingredients are present here, from the attractive ensemble and exotic location to the CG creature and increasing body count, but The Devil’s Mouth executes each of them a bit better than fans of the subgenre are used to seeing in recent years. Set pieces are well crafted with both suspense and thrills, and the whole works well to entertain and hold your attention through to the final shot.

The Devil’s Mouth teases the natural, sunlit beauty of Thailand before heading into the caves, but that shift doesn’t diminish the film’s visual engagement. The water-filled caves instead deliver eye-catching extremes from jagged rocks to bioluminescent water trails, and from giant, bat-filled caverns to tight, breathtaking passages. The environment calls to mind previous and equally entertaining animal attack films like 47 Meters Down: Uncaged and Black Water: Abyss, and the blend of real locations, practically (and impressively) built sets, and some probable CG extensions is perfectly convincing.

The shark finds life in both CG effects and prosthetics, and both deliver as the beast cuts through the water and attacks its prey. Some exaggerated third-act action sees the digital effects take a noticeable hit, but the bulk of the film captures the creature with respectable effectiveness. While too many of the CG shark movies deliver quick kills with the effects at the forefront, there’s a more harrowing approach here. Tasty human morsels are grabbed by the shark’s teeth and thrashed about – it’s something Jaws does so well but that most CG shark movies neglect – and plowed through the water. It looks fantastic and terrifying, and the victim’s screams only add to the horror as they’re bashed into the cave walls and dragged to their doom.

The cast does competent enough work even as some of them fall into their roles as “ugly Americans” who ignore their guide’s warnings in favor of boisterous, disrespectful antics that you know will lead to their deaths. Condor takes on a difficult balancing act as Sara’s best friend who’s also something of a bossy bitch – you believe her compassion and love for Sara, but you also want someone to slap her, gently, and say “No!” Hiraga plays her loyal boyfriend, and he reveals some genuine humanity beneath the otherwise straightforward character while delivering the film’s most emotional beat. (Arguably its only real emotional beat, but eh.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s Newton who stands apart from the bunch. She’s as fun and charismatic as ever, playing someone who’s clearly the most level-headed of the group even as she’s unpacking her emotional baggage. Her dad’s death pushed her into a hole, but Max forced her back out, leaving her indebted to a friend who she subsequently let drive her life. Newton’s patented semi-smirk is evident through much of the film, but it feels rightfully fueled by different things at different times.

Given the two lead character threads here, the film is, in some ways, a story about redemption. Sara is learning to trust herself again after loss and the willing surrender of control, and Max acknowledges her own deadly mistakes while making a case for a second chance. It’s fitting, then, that The Devil’s Mouth is also a redemption, of sorts, for its director, Jeff Wadlow.

If the name doesn’t quite ring any bells, perhaps a brief rundown of his previous horror efforts might jog those memories that you probably buried for a reason. Wadlow directed Truth or Dare, Imaginary, Fantasy Island, and Cry_Wolf, and it turns out his fifth stab into the darkness was the charm, as The Devil’s Mouth is not only the year’s best killer shark film, but it’s also the best film in Wadlow’s entire nine-movie filmography.

For one thing, the movie looks good. From the lighting and effects to the production design and cinematography, it’s a vast improvement over his previous efforts. A cave setting risks becoming visually dull or redundant, but Wadlow captures it all with a sharp eye and a sense of geography that never grows confusing. The inevitable kills come with varying degrees of suspense and visual thrills – one shot of the shark lunging out of the water towards Sara surprises, an underwater chase between air pockets and holes in the rocks finds real excitement – and what seems relatively grounded early on transitions away from reality, feeling more fun than stupid.

The Devil’s Mouth is a good time for genre fans who simply want to enjoy the ride of well-crafted survival horror. Does it grow increasingly silly? Sure, but it never stops being entertaining and compelling enough to keep watching as it delivers a cool shark, gripping kills, and a memorably claustrophobic setting.

If nothing else, this is the last killer shark movie being released in 2026. There definitely won’t be any more this year. Nope. Not a single one until the cycle starts again next spring. Right? Right?!

The Devil’s Mouth debuts globally on Prime Video today, July 29.

The post ‘The Devil’s Mouth’ Review: Kathryn Newton Leads the Summer’s Best Shark Movie appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Shannon Morgan‘s latest novel, A Penance for Crows, gets that right from the opening pages. Set on a secluded Irish island and told from the perspective of an outsider who’s learned to coexist with a theocratic community, it’s immediately immersive, which helps make it one of those books fans of folk and occult horror absolutely shouldn’t miss.

Grizela is a painter, living in relative seclusion in a cottage on the island of Beanna Dubh. She moved here from Scotland long ago, sells her paintings under pseudonyms, and in general kind of likes that the rest of the islanders see her as an oddball at best and a bad influence at worst. She spends her days painting, reading, and mentoring local girls Nessa, Una, Enya, and Maeve, hoping that they’ll one day find freedom beyond the island.

Beanna Dubh, you see, is tightly controlled by the Catholic Church, particularly the aging Father Murphy, who runs the local parish and keeps a tight grip on the reins of the community.

So when one of Father Murphy’s underlings turns up dead on Beanna Dubh’s shores, it sends ripples of terror through the community. Grizela, as the person who finds the body, is the subject of particular suspicion, and the local superstitions about the flocks of crows who live on the island and supposedly warn of impending doom flare up all over again. A mystery is afoot, one marked by ancient sigils and strange happenings, and if Grizela doesn’t solve it, it just might consume her.

What jumped out at me first about this book is how good Morgan is at balancing initial jolts of exposition with atmospheric worldbuilding and, of course, sound character work. Grizela is inherently fascinating, an outsider who nevertheless has spent enough time on the island to know it in and out. She’s up on all the gossip, knows where the chief tension lies, and sees paths to deeper connections through fellow misfits and expats. Or at least…she thinks she does.

Morgan does not waste a moment in diving straight into the plot, knocking Grizela back on her heels and leaving her scrambling for answers as the town moves closer and closer to something like a full-blown Satanic panic. This leaves her looking for footholds, whether they lay in the past or the present, and sets up very clear avenues of antagonism for characters like Father Murphy. It’s all beautifully arranged, and the ways of the island people – from their own peculiar way of greeting each other to the significance of local landmarks – stand out with a vividness that recalls folk horror classics like The Wicker Man.

This careful arrangement of story elements emerges so Morgan can spend the back half of the book not just upsetting the balance of life on Beanna Dubh, but blurring it, giving it depth and shade like a painter might blend colors. Grizela’s present starts to echo her past, sending her into corners of her mind she’d rather not go.

The line between what seems like accidental deaths and superstitions of diabolical influence practically disappears, as it no longer seems to matter whether the Devil is afoot or it just feels like he is. The church, the town’s protective and guiding influence, takes on more shades of malevolence, and even though they feel predictable, they fit right in to the larger tapestry.

The result is a book that delivers folk horror in the classic sense, calling to mind the novels of Dennis Wheatley and Thomas Tryon as well as films like Blood on Satan’s Claw and Witchfinder General, with an added sense of timelessness that really sings. If I have any major complaint, it’s that the pieces of evidence building to a solution start to get a little too convenient at times, losing some of the book’s well-earned ambiguity on its course toward explaining everything that’s happened.

That’s more personal preference than a question of good craft, however. If you love folk horror, occult horror, or just atmospheric, Gothic chills mixed with old, dark magic, you will love A Penance for Crows.

A Penance for Crows is out now wherever books are sold.

The post ‘A Penance for Crows’ Review: Atmospheric Irish Folk Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

As fans of Shimizu’s work know, it’s never quite so straightforward. The Japanese director, best known for the Ju-on films, delights in non-linear narratives and haunting specters. In this capacity, The Mouths more or less adheres to formula.

The screenplay was written by Masahiro Yamaura and adapts Sesuji’s novella A Questionnaire About the Mouth. The source material provides a framing device that opens the film before it is swiftly forgotten, only to return in the film’s closing moments in highly amusing fashion.

In between, the film tells the story of four friends who investigate an urban legend of a cursed tree, including soft-spoken Shota (Rihito Itagaki), sensitive Mirei (Momona Kasahara), outgoing Ann (Ai Yoshikawa), and her boastful boyfriend Tatsuya (Keito Tsuna).

Initially, the action seems straightforward: the four teens drive to the cemetery, discussing what Shota heard about the tree with a brief pause at a convenience store in between. Throughout all of these early scenes, the interaction among the teens hints at a complicated dynamic, including a minor spat between Ann and Tatsuya, and Shota’s brief but meaningful glance at Ann in the rearview mirror. These sequences are regularly interrupted by direct address police interviews as present-day Shota, Tatsuya, and Mirei make ominous declarations about the events of that evening.

The first act works because The Mouths is slowly building tension around what happened. It’s obvious from their statements that things will go awry, but Yamaura’s script teases things out. Even when they arrive at the cemetery, rather than proceed directly to the cursed object, the action pauses so Shota can propose a specific course of action: they will proceed to the tree, individually, in a specific order. The wait for the action to kick in is both tantalizing and agonizing.

First up: Shota, followed by Tatsuya, then Ann. Mirei, meanwhile, becomes increasingly reticent, which alarms the others who have already noted her sensitivity to otherworldly phenomena.

When Ann disappears, the film moves into a new act as the remaining members of the group search for her while seemingly being haunted by both her and the tree. This is where Shimizu’s penchant for ghostly figures lurking in the background and peeking around corners comes to the forefront, including one stand-out moment that leans into the curse’s origin: the visual of a hanged woman with a grotesquely stretched neck.

The middle stretch feels a little too familiar to the director’s work, however, so it’s exciting when the last act upends much of what we thought we knew. There is a reason that the film is called The Mouths: not only are most of these people revealed to be unreliable narrators, but it is revealed that several interactions throughout the film were manipulated by characters with malicious intent. These people are not quite what they seemed.

This revisionist filter on the events of the movie’s first half is provocative and enticing, though the creative team struggles to execute it without devolving into messy confusion. There’s at least one plot beat that should be a massive revelation, but both the visuals and the dialogue render it quite confusing, which robs the moment of some of its power. This is a shame, because the last act is what makes the film stand out from other curse/ghost movies.

The performances of the main four teens are solid, with Itagaki getting to show the most range. Many of the supporting characters, including a pair of frenemies who also become involved in the curse, as well as the detective investigating the case, feel a bit superfluous; the film would have benefitted from cutting back some of these scenes or, alternately, beefing up a few of these roles to justify their inclusion.

The Mouths’ other big element is its sound design. The area around the tree is surrounded by wet mud that slurps and sucks at shoes, while the cursed bark is covered in cicadas, whose distinctive buzz and crunchy shells provide evocative foley.

Overall, The Mouths is a solid but slightly inessential addition to Shimizu’s filmography. For the auteur’s fans, there’s plenty to appreciate, particularly the way the Japanese master sets up scares and pays them off, including good moments in a library and later when the detective is driving. On the other hand, the film’s big reveal is handled so clumsily that its potency is disappointingly muted.

The Mouths is a decent time, but it’s hard to overlook some of its weaknesses.

The Mouths made its North American premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.

The post ‘The Mouths’ Review: Takashi Shimizu’s Cursed Tree Horror Stumbles at the Finish [Fantasia 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Found footage progresses with technology to often startling effect, so that’s a great hook.

Unfortunately, the hooks are basically all we get from this one. Though there’s an earnestness and eagerness to the film that’s endearing, and the production design definitely provides a solid foundation, this is a stiff, rough, half-formed horror film that wants all of the trappings of found footage without any real sense of immediacy.

Arkar Soe Oo is Aung Khant, a tech-obsessed young man who’s just bought his 4K recording glasses and is eager to try them out. Fortunately, the perfect occasion has just arrived. His friend Thu Ya (Charlie Nyein) has inherited an old rubber plantation in the middle of an isolated forest, and since their friend group of half a dozen or so young people likes to take annual trips together, it seems like the perfect adventure. So the group piles into a bus and heads out to the woods, only to run into Thu Ya’s uncle (Kyaw Kyaw Bo), who warns them that supernatural interference might await them, and insists on tagging along.

Now, if the title didn’t give it away, the film opens with a Blair Witch-style declaration that what we’re about to see is the only evidence remaining of these friends and their trip. They went out into the woods, disappeared, and the footage is all that’s left. We know these young people are barreling toward their doom, and we’re left wondering not if it will happen, but how. That the film also opens with an increasingly disturbing montage of footage from other people’s 4K glasses only adds to the menace.

So we have a strong start, and despite a little meandering (we really don’t need to watch these people ride a bus for as long as we do), a promising story takes shape. Friends Mya (Lain Maw Tee) and Wa Na (Thiha Tin Aung Soe) are always whispering about rituals they found on the dark web that they may or may not have already done, while their friend Linn (Li Li Kyaw Khaing) had to bring her little brother (Phyo Khant) along for the ride, only to quickly lose him when they arrive in the woods.

Then there’s the witch (Mo Khum) who shows up in the woods, mumbling about a monster buried deep beneath the Earth while doing some very shady things in the name of reuniting with her own lost relative.

This is all solid stuff, and when you add in various shrines and candlelight altars placed strategically in the woods to conjure a folk horror vibe, you get something that feels quite ripe for a bonkers, gore-strewn ride. But that ride never comes, and to make matters worse, it isn’t replaced by anything narratively satisfying. There are several reasons for this, which I’ll try to unpack without spoiling anything, but unfortunately it begins with the subtitles.

I debated even bringing this up, because I do not speak Burmese and therefore cannot attest to the accuracy of the subtitles, but…something is off. The dialogue often arrives in sentence fragments, like a literal translation of another language rather than an adaptation to make the characters speak in complete thoughts. At one point, a character is frequently referred to as “Chris,” and I can’t figure out whether that’s a deliberate Anglicization of his name or simply an error. We were told before screening this film that the subtitles initially arrived unfinished as the film is still being finalized, so hopefully this is corrected by the time The Last Footage sees wider release.

Even with the subtitle issues in mind, though, the dialogue is an issue unto itself, in that it plays like a second screen experience you might find on a streaming service. Characters are constantly restating key bits of information, whether it’s a character’s dark past, bits of magical lore they’ve picked up on, or simple directions. Making sure an audience is keeping up with your story is one thing, but this feels like repetition to the point that it crowds out any actual attempt at character development. With a couple of exceptions, the sole character traits for these young people seem to be “They are friends,” which only adds to the frustration of the narrative. There’s very little chance to latch onto these people as people, something crucial to establishing the immediacy and tension of a found footage movie that’s hurtling toward a violent end.

Which brings us back around to the footage itself. Arkar Soe Oo definitely prepared for this film on a technical level, lighting and blocking things in such a way that the film works in long takes to build tension, and allows characters to take long walks out into the dark that genuinely conjure the feeling of something lurking out there.

The problem, of course, comes when you realize that the sole camera in the film is mounted to the eyes of the person wearing the glasses, so as a character, Aung Khant’s job is mostly to…well, just kinda look at stuff. Even in the film’s third act, when monstrous violence is happening around him, he just mostly stands and stares at it, maybe mumbling a plea for the horrors to end along the way. Of course, he has to do this because we wouldn’t have a movie if he didn’t, but the framing just makes it look like he’s a guy standing around waiting for his friends to die. There’s an interesting conversation to be had here about the way these smart glasses work, particularly as more and more news stories pop up about how people use that technology maliciously.

There’s also the philosophical concern of why someone like Aung Khant would want to record every single moment of this trip, from the mundane to the dramatic, a concern that many found footage films have thrived in. The answer seems to be “He likes gadgets,” and the rest of the characters just shrug about it. It’s dramatic meat left on the bone, and does the film no favors.

I wish I liked this film more, not just because it’s made by a group of people who seem genuinely out to do something new and open a new frontier of Asian horror, but because there really is something interesting lurking in all of this half-formed filmmaking. The Last Footage is a light that burns hot and fast, fizzling before the movie even really gets off the ground, and that’s a shame, because there are things in here that could’ve made it great.

The Last Footage made its world premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.

The post ‘The Last Footage’ Review: Myanmar’s Found Footage Debut is Dead on Arrival [Fantasia 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Everything is rosy for popular girl Penny Lane (Bailey Spalding) in the summer of 1986. She’s celebrating her final days of high school with friends Toni (Tahlee Faraday) and Amy (Alexandra Jensen) at a remote family cabin before setting off to the college of her dreams. Penny is also riding the highs of her new secret romantic relationship with Toni; not even the naive and tender-hearted Amy is aware. Her good mood prompts her to also invite her family’s black sheep: cousin Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn, daughter of actor Ben Mendelsohn). 

Though the trio braces themselves for Kat’s bad mood, she instead comes with cupcakes and a smile. It’s all a ruse; Kat gleefully sets about making Toni and Amy uncomfortable as Penny falls unconscious to her spiked treat. When Toni ejects her for the party foul, Kat then turns to criminal boyfriend Angus (Ben O’Toole) to crash the party. It transforms a night of intended revelry into a harrowing fight to survive.

Russell fully embraces B-movie, Ozploitation chaos, putting her characters through the absolute wringer. Punk rock energy and free-flowing drugs for party girl Kat set off simmering tension that roars to a boil with an inciting sexual assault. From there, Russell unleashes a no-holds-barred torrent of violence that delivers no shortage of arterial spray and wince-inducing prosthetic work. It’s not just the practical effects that are cheerworthy here, but Faraday’s resolute performance as Penny’s protector that forces her into fight mode. Penny Lane is Dead is prone to forcing its characters into making dumb decisions for the sake of plot momentum, but it at least imbues Toni with the adaptable street smarts that make her a rootworthy protagonist. 

Penny Lane is Dead also excels at making you loathe its detestable villains. Wright-Mendelsohn gives excellent crazy eye; there’s a sadistic, manic edge to Kat that makes her instantly unsettling and unpredictable. She doesn’t bat a (crazy) eye as her much older lover, Angus, and his unsavory henchmen Rodowsky (Fletcher Humphrys) and Merrick (Steve Le Marquand), set about hunting Toni and Amy. But by the final act, Wright-Mendelsohn’s unhinged portrayal of the young psycho stretches thin with nowhere left to go. The one-note villainess descends into cartoon mustache-twirling that an unsatisfying conclusion fails to overcome.

Not helping is the clashing tone; Penny Lane is Dead wants to be a fun romp despite broaching bleak territory. The film’s baddies do their best to channel the ’80s with larger-than-life character choices; O’Toole and Wright-Mendelsohn in particular really latched onto the enjoyment their characters derive from inflicting skin-crawling sexual violence. It’s here where Russell’s examination of genre norms grows confusing, especially as it assigns all responsibility to Kat only for the horrors inflicted upon female bodies. And it really doles out brutal punishment upon Penny, Toni, and Amy.

As a lean, mean horror siege, Penny Lane is Dead holds your attention and effectively pulls you into Toni’s bid to meet dawn with her lives and friendships intact. It’s visceral, propulsive, and a strong debut in terms of style and energy. But Russell’s explorations never venture very deep, and that punk rock energy fizzles out by the film’s end, leaving you split on whether this rape-revenge tale offers enough catharsis at the end of its zany, brutal ride.

Penny Lane is Dead made its world premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival and releases on Shudder on August 28.

The post ‘Penny Lane is Dead’ Review: A Bloody Ozploitation Throwback Fueled by Punk Rock Energy [Fantasia 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

With a small cast, intimate setting, and black-and-white photography meant to evoke something Rod Serling might have conjured in his heyday, Godhead has all the ingredients for remarkable low-budget horror. What makes the film special, though, is not its intimacy, but its eye on grander concepts which shift the film into almost cosmic territory. It’s a small movie with big ideas and even bigger ambitions, and that makes it one of the most compelling indie breakouts from this year’s Fantasia Festival. 

In a small rural parish church, a priest known only as Father (Al Warren) spends his days tending to his congregation and, more importantly, sheltering his adopted son Matthew (Luke Speakman) from the wider world. The boy, who showed up in a basket on the church doorstep not unlike Moses on the Nile, is Father’s only secret, a being entirely sheltered from the outside world and guided only by the principles of God’s teachings, which the lone adult in his life shares with him. 

The boy’s presence means that Father doesn’t like it when people pry or overstay their welcome, and a pair of newly arrived twins seem primed to do both. Calling themselves simply Firstborn (Sarah Coffey) and Seconborn (Kimball Farley), they arrive with a very direct charge for the priest: They believe that one of them is the physical incarnation of the Holy Spirit, the entity that completes the Godhead (the essence of God), and that they need a “judge” to determine which one of them is actually divine. How? Well, he has to take the gun that they provide and shoot whichever one of them is the Holy Spirit, so they can attain divine form. 

Father, naturally, protests this very strange request, first and foremost because by its very nature the Holy Spirit shouldn’t have a physical form, but the twins persist, and what starts as an effort to humor his strange visitors soon becomes a taut philosophical struggle between two very different visions of Faith.

Rapaport’s script begins masterfully, layering these characters together in a vision of the world that feels deliberately lonesome, then forcing them into a battle of wits with their own versions of reason. The conflict comes from a basic disruption of what “reason” means to each of these people. Firstborn is all bluster and confidence, certain that she’s the herald of a new age of divine power, while Secondborn is withdrawn, childlike, pliable. Matthew is smart but limited in his knowledge of the world, and then there’s Father, who believes he understands the world completely. It’s why he’s locked his son away in a back room, playing apocalyptic sounds through loudspeakers to make sure he stays compliant, because the world outside is frightening and uncertain.

Father does this because of faith, but what kind of faith drives a person to such a sheltered way of being? How strong is your God if you can’t open yourself to new possibilities?

These are the underpinnings of what becomes a dread-laced psychological thriller with cosmic implications. The script asks all the right questions – Why can’t the twins simply kill one another? What makes them think they have this holy connection? What drove Father to hide the child in the first place? – but the answers are not always direct. The film follows the logic not of science or narrative reason, but of faith, making its journey far more twisty and unpredictable.

The moment you think you see the reasonable outcome, the film swerves, blending elements of crime thrillers, religious horror, and existential terror into something juicy for its cast. It’s a puzzle box that just keeps opening to reveal new layers, new questions, and new threats.

The cast all savor it, particularly Warren, who feels like a William Faulkner character with his shades of light and dark and his heavy Southern accent. The damaged priest with a point to make, he’s masterful in the leading role, and the supporting cast back him up wonderfully, particularly Coffey, who makes a perfect foil. 

The craft behind Godhead is potent stuff. It’s a well-written, beautifully shot, stripped down indie feature with lots of big ideas about human potential, the limits of absolution, and how faith shapes our worlds even when we’re not believers. It falls short of absolute greatness, ultimately, because the answers at the center of the puzzle box emerge neither ambiguous nor narratively satisfying.

Its third act gets murky, taking leaps that the characters can’t quite follow and landing in a muddy space that feels a little too haphazard given the care and potency of what came before. But even in its murkiness, it still finds ways to be compelling, making Godhead an indie horror showcase well worth seeking out as soon as you can. 

Godhead made its world premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.

The post ‘Godhead’ Review: Psychological Horror Puzzle Box Grapples With Faith [Fantasia 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The action starts off immediately as a teen girl (Morgan Saunders) survives a brutal encounter that requires a sad familial sacrifice. This is eventually revealed to be a haunting incident from Lucia’s (Toni Ellwand) childhood; the woman is now a mother of three adult children: Franky (Oliver Renaud), Angela (Cristina Rosato) and protagonist Gino (Marc Bendavid).

Gino isn’t exactly the black sheep of the family, but he is the subject of the family’s judgmental commentary. Whereas his older siblings have promising careers and are married, to Marissa (Celia Owen) and Trevor (David Light) respectively, Gino still lives at home, works as a paint specialist, and hasn’t dated anyone since his ex, Rene (Shailene Garnett). The fact that they broke up because he never told his family they were dating speaks volumes about both Gino and his relationship with his family.

When the extended clan gathers for Christmas dinner, the reverie is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Gino’s Nonna (Jacqueline Robbins) in the kitchen making her famously too-salty pasta sauce. The only problem: Nonna has been dead for a while.

Unlike most other zombie films, Unholy Dead gets a lot of mileage out of its unique depiction of zombies. Plural, because Nonna isn’t the only one who came back for some Christmas cheer. The film taps into another traditional aspect of the holiday, embodied by the classic A Christmas Carol, in which the living and the dead interact and make amends. At least initially, it seems as if the ritornati have some regrets or unfinished business to attend to before the night is out.

As a concept, there’s plenty of potential here. These zombies aren’t here for brains; they have the capacity for conversation, which allows Gino to apologize for the way he acted in the last days leading up to Nonna’s death, or for Lucia to confess that she wasn’t always sure if her mother loved her. The cathartic interactions between the living and the dead are where Unholy Night works best.

This is still a horror film, however, and a bloody one at that. Nonna’s introduction has a body count because – while these creatures have the capacity for dialogue – they’re also prone to fits of rage, accompanied by a supernatural strength that facilitates plenty of bloody damage. Gabriele visually cues the audience that a rampage is imminent by changing the ritornati’s eyes to reddish orange; this tends to precede characters having their heads slammed against walls, being choked to death, having their necks broken or, in one of the film’s best FX moments, a wooden spoon being forcibly shoved all the way down someone’s throat.

Between Lucia’s opening attack and Nonna’s rampage, Unholy Night certainly gets off to a violent, visceral bang. After that, the film settles into something of a siege film as the remaining family members hunker down. Additional details eventually come to light which confirm that other people are under attack, causing Gino and Rene to hypothesize about who or what has prompted the return of the living dead.

Unfortunately, when it comes to lore and the rules governing these creatures, that’s where Unholy Night loses its way.

Gabriele’s screenplay takes a page from It Follows by having characters make assumptions that don’t entirely pan out, but while there’s power in subverting expectations, both the characters’ and the audience’s, Unholy Night is seemingly unsure of its own internal logic. Why does a ritornati react in one way, but another does not? There’s a lack of consistency that, rather than generate surprise or suspense, becomes increasingly frustrating as the film progresses. The rules of this world don’t make sense, and Gabriele seems unconcerned by the fact.

There are also too many people onscreen, both living and undead, leading to a wealth of underdeveloped characters and half-conflicts. This becomes more challenging in the climax when the film introduces a brand new location and supernatural element. It looks cool, but the film’s final set piece feels incongruous with what came before and raises more questions than answers.

Overall, the second half of the film is the weaker of the two. The longer Unholy Night goes on, the more repetitive and depreciating its attacks become, and the film never recovers the highs of its opening. By the time the existential crisis of the climax arrives, Unholy Night has stalled out.

Not helping matters are the low stakes of the last act when the film actively begins to pull its punches by allowing multiple characters who should be dead to miraculously survive. While its sentimental emotional beats are doing a lot of the heavy lifting keeping the film afloat, the back half of Unholy Night nevertheless still feels like a bit of a slog.

The film may have some good violence, and the central relationship between Gino, his critical family, and his romance with Rene are solid, but by the time the credits roll, Unholy Night has long overstayed its holiday welcome.

Unholy Night made its world premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.

The post ‘Unholy Night’ Review: Christmas Zombie Film Stumbles on Its Own Rules [Fantasia 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The latest entry hails from Jenn Wexler, the director of The Ranger and The Sacrifice Game, who co-writes the script with Matt Angel from a story by Angel and Suzanne Coote (The Wrath of Becky). Temptation opens on a now-adult Becky on her latest mission with the CIA. The caper is a complete failure, ending unsurprisingly in extremely bloody fashion.

In a post-mission debrief, CIA director Baker (Fiona Marr) explains to the young agent that she’s too much of a loose cannon, but as flashbacks to her psych evaluations and select events from the first film confirm, Becky has never truly recovered from the murder of her father by white supremacists.

It makes sense, then, that this outing brings Nazis back to the forefront as a kind of full circle moment. Becky’s new adversary is General Wilhelm Reuss (Neil Patrick Harris), a devout member of the Reich who believes so strongly in the cause that he recently moved his family, along with enforcer Russell and Dr Friedrich Metzger (James Urbaniak), to the Wolf’s Lair in Poland.

Turns out that despite the passage of several in-universe years between films, Becky still hasn’t learned how to play well with others or follow the rules, despite the guiding touch of handler Montana (Kate Siegel, Hush) and the model set by fellow agent Rigby (Brandon Flynn, Hellraiser). When Becky is given one final opportunity to prove her worth to the CIA, it sets up a collision course between her and Reuss that is guaranteed to be an all-out bloodbath.

The series continues to get good mileage casting against-type for its villains, although it should be noted that NPH doesn’t get as much to do as either the first film’s Kevin James or the sequel’s Sean William Scott. That’s because, in part, Reuss’s family comes as an evil package. Introduced in a great comedic scene when Becky checks in – all smiles – to the family’s Nazi motel, mother Helga (Catherine Walker), daughter Luisa (Aiofe Hughes), and son Otto (Noah Leggott) are as much of a threat as the patriarch.

Of course, the main selling feature of the film is Becky, and Wilson continues to have a blast bringing the prickly, quippy, and trigger-happy character to life. Wilson remains an absolute delight, from her delicious voiceover (“Mission ‘find out what these fuckers are up to’: commence”) to her dinner table banter with the Reuss family (“Where do you heil from?” she asks them). Three films in, there’s no fear that Becky could actually die, but the film isn’t afraid to put its characters through the wringer – Becky sports a broken nose for most of the film’s last act – and there are, naturally, some extremely cathartic Nazi casualties.

While there’s a disappointing lack of rocket launchers in this entry, by employing the tropes of the spy movie, The Last Temptation of Becky does get to have its James Bond/Q moment when Montana walks her pint-sized agent through a litany of Chekhov’s items that are inevitably used to destroy Nazis later. Ditto Becky’s newfound interest in fencing with Rigby, which serves her well when she goes up against Luisa in a duel. This sequence also includes the best exchange of the film, when Becky enquires where the girl went to Hitler Youth Camp and Luisa replies: “Mississippi.”

The Nazis are rightfully portrayed as a legitimate threat and, simultaneously, the subject of complete mockery. The brownies – armed guards who do the dirty work of patrolling the woods and escorting prisoners – are comprised of men who explain they’re just following orders or they are “media and Performing Arts majors from Ohio State.” They’re idiots who are the brunt of multiple jokes and insults throughout the film, including Becky’s immediately iconic jacket emblazoned with “Fuck Nazis” on the back.

Then there’s the hilarious reveal of Reuss and Dr. Metzger’s master plan, which is simultaneously pathetic and hilariously short-lived…because even The Last Temptation of Becky understands that the only logical response to Nazis making a literal comeback in 2026 is to barf on them, punch them in the face, or blow them up. Preferably all of the above.

If there’s a misstep, it’s the film’s uneasy mix of practical FX and CGI. An early death involving a drone and a landmine would be much more compelling if the accompanying explosion and fire were real, and a decapitation winds up looking cheap because of the digital blood. Compare this to another death later when someone bleeds from every facial orifice: it’s clearly practical and, as a result, looks great.

There are a few other instances of violence that miss the mark. A potentially brutal knife in the mouth is partially obscured; some of the hand-to-hand combat in the last act doesn’t hit terribly hard. But overall, it’s impossible not to cheer on Becky as she fucks Nazis up at every opportunity.

If that’s what your heart desires, then The Last Temptation of Becky will be right up your alley. Here’s hoping that, despite the possible implications teased by the title, Lulu Wilson decides to return to the role every three years (or less!) for a new Becky film.

The Last Temptation of Becky made its world premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.

The post ‘The Last Temptation of Becky’ Review: Threequel Has A Blast Destroying Nazis [Fantasia 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Her Private Hell is pure art, too, bearing the filmmaker’s neon and synth signatures, as well as a deep disinterest in scrutable storytelling. Much like The Neon Demon, Refn’s latest demands you bend to its wavelength: an expressionistic vision more interested in the artistic process than the narrative.

That’s not to say that Her Private Hell lacks plot; this sci-fi horror noir features two central overlapping plots. At the forefront is actress Elle (Sophie Thatcher), who lives in the penthouse suite overlooking a hazy neon metropolis with her father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), and young stepmom Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), who happens to be Elle’s former best friend before marriage got in the way.

To say that Elle has daddy issues would be an understatement, made worse by insecurities, the arrival of a new acting ingenue (Kristine Froseth), and a vicious killer prowling the city: the Leather Man.

The secondary plot follows the enigmatic Private K (Charles Melton), an American soldier in Japan with resolute vengeance on his mind. Whereas Elle’s world exists in a space of glamour and opulence, Private K pummels his way bare-knuckled through the sweaty backstreets ruled by local crime syndicates down below.

Refn, who co-writes with Esti Giordani, manages to corral a variety of seemingly disparate genres and influences into a clinically cold and cryptic whole. The filmmaker infuses his signature style with everything from ’60s sci-fi to Golden Age Hollywood melodrama to Japanese folklore, hung on the framework of a Dario Argento-style Giallo. There’s a prominent psychosexual edge to both Elle and Private K’s separate journeys, one that dials up to zany excess when it comes to the former character.

There’s an overarching sense of mystic mythmaking to Her Private Hell, with elusive seamstresses, played by Shioli Kutsuna and Aoi Yamada, dipping in and out like folkloric, omnipotent kitsune as they seemingly preside over the increasing chaos that entails brutal knife fights, Freudian melodrama, and a supernatural killer that brutally rips his victims apart. All of it told with Refn’s detached, sterile style. 

It’s less a conventional movie and more a stream of consciousness, a collection of inspirations and personal thoughts and themes. Nothing is really explained in this nonsensical fairy tale fever dream. Thatcher gives herself fully to the spoiled Elle, whose affluent privilege makes her a bundle of raw, primal emotions that erodes her sense of identity and reality. It makes her the tonal and visual opposite of the elusive Private K., and much credit goes to Refn, Melton, and Thatcher for wringing compelling performances out of such nebulous, vague characters.

As with most of Refn’s work, you’re either on his frequency or not. Her Private Hell is wholly uninterested in explanation or convention. It’s also heavily disjointed and unhurried in its eclectic, sparse amalgamation of genre inspirations. Still, it’s tough not to fall sway to the magnetic allure of its exquisite, pulse-pounding sights and sounds, complete with an incredible score by legendary composer Pino Donaggio.

While it never fully pulls you into its tangled web of artistic musings, there’s a lot to admire in a technically stunning feature this fearless in its incomprehensibility and ambition. 

Her Private Hell releases in theaters on July 24.

The post ‘Her Private Hell’ Review: Nicolas Winding Refn Returns With a Hypnotic, Inscrutable Neon Fever Dream appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

You have a fungal infection in your foot, and it’s demanding that you go UP UP UP. It’s a strange game that feels like a combination of Look Outside’s messed up apartment and Outer Wilds’ learn-through-exploration game loop, but does so in a compact and smartly-scoped package.

Moldrise opens with a horrifically gross cutscene that’s a mix of FMV and surreal imagery, perfectly setting the tone for the game. After this weird dream, you exit your apartment with the goal of ascending to the rooftop at the request of your infection. While going up in a building sounds like a pretty simple task for a video game, it of course becomes complicated. Broken stairs, an out of order elevator, and locked doors all stand in our way, forcing you to interact with the bizarre and possibly dangerous tenants in order to progress higher.

A Brilliant Loop of Knowledge and Resource Management

To make matters more difficult, you’ll be constantly managing three different meters: hunger, thirst, and infection. As you explore, you’ll come across items that will help keep these all in check, but doing so while you are completing your neighbors’ odd requests is a balancing act that you will most certainly fail at. Every time you die, you’ll wake up from a strange dream, once again at your apartment, ready to try again. Since nothing in the game is randomized, each run you’ll retain your ideas, which are recorded in a handy little menu screen, that will allow you to skip previous tasks using the knowledge progression from previous runs.

It’s a clever loop that incentivizes experimentation, encouraging you to push your interactions into weirder and weird places. Even if it goes badly, you’ll still be able to essentially pick up where you left often, retaining the wisdom you gained from your mistakes.

The progression for the puzzles feels really natural, as you discover solutions organically through your interaction with neighbors. You’re pretty much always in the stairwell in this game, interacting with people through partially opened doors, but it still manages to build a ton of character for each person and the apartment as a whole. In order to get them to help you progress, they’ll send you around the building on fetch quests to deliver items or messages to other characters. While the puzzles don’t really come in the form of critical thinking as in a game like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, you do end up having to do quite a bit of problem solving in the realm of resource management, as all this time spent walking around and interacting will cause you meters to rise.

An Apartment Building Full of Memorable Weirdos

There’s a very basic economy involved, but it makes every decision matter. Your limited money, which is either found on the ground or earned from residents, can be spent on healing items or rides on the elevator, once that’s operational. Many times I was trying to make the most out of my elevator trips by picking a floor and doing multiple tasks at once to make it worthwhile. The sense of desperation really heightened the atmosphere of the game, forcing me to try to find ways to optimize my runs to push myself closer and closer to my goal.

In addition to the promise of progression, each of these neighbors has their own little narrative associated with them, and discovering these is the majority of the pleasure of Moldrise. Your dialogue options are pretty desperate and out there, given your condition, but the varying levels of reactions from everyone only make the tone feel stranger. Many of them know more about your condition than you would expect, and it’s fun to watch the pieces of the larger world come together. As these stories unfold, it’s clear that the game has a dark sense of humor, and it feels right in line with the narrative it’s telling.

Enhancing the distinct mood is a uniformly excellent presentation that combines retro visual aesthetics, immersive sound design, and a killer score from Buckshot Roulette developer Mike Klubnika. Its pixelated textures swim eerily to make everything feel more dreamlike. As the meters fill up, your vision gets distorted, and you begin hearing unsettling whispers all around you, making you, the player, feel like the one who’s got the voice in your head telling you to climb. The soundtrack reacts to your actions perfectly with music that is pulsing in a way that feels tense and offputting, rather than exciting and motivating.

At certain milestones of progression, you’ll be dropped into strange hallucination sequences where you are ascending through other spaces. These were a nice way to break up the claustrophobic monotony that the rest of the game was striving for, but ultimately they felt a little repetitive. The first time I got them, it was a neat way to show the effects of the infection, but having to repeat them on later loops when I hit the same milestone felt unnecessary to me. There’s a bit of a payoff for it at the end, but overall they didn’t quite add as much and felt like distractions by the time I reached my successful run.

A Short Runtime That Leaves You Wanting More

Even after I completed the game, which I managed to do in one sitting lasting about an hour and a half, I was compelled to return to the game to hunt down more stories that I missed. Many of the interactions have a wealth of dialogue options, and some of them will end your run prematurely, in the most entertaining way possible. As you get higher up, you’ll find connections between residents, and fitting in back-and-forth visits to their various apartments can be tricky while you’re trying to complete the game, so going back and not caring about ‘success’ gives you the opportunity to see these stories to their end. While this doesn’t blow up the game to a 10-hour epic, it does add some replay value in the form of interesting narrative rather than meaningless collectibles, and I definitely think it’s worth doing.

Many people may balk at the idea of playing $12 for a ninety minute game, but I find its brevity to be its strength. After all, I didn’t have a problem spending that much on a ticket to see Obsession, which has a comparable runtime, but everyone assesses value in different ways, and I can’t blame them for that. For me, these types of games can be mentally taxing, and while that leads to a lot of satisfaction, it’s not something I can play all the time without wearing out my brain. To be able to capture that feeling in a single-sitting game is quite the feat. Rather than thinking of it as a “notebook game” where you have to keep pages of detailed notes in order to remember everything going on, think of it as a “scrap of paper game,” where all your notes can be kept to a tinier space.

As much as I enjoyed the brief nature, I do think that there’s more to be explored in such a rich setting with such a clever conceptual hook. The game has 30 floors, but many of those are empty, and it would have been satisfying to see a few more characters, especially since the ones we are presented with have such strong writing. Since it’s a bit of a notebook game, I also wished the puzzles were a little more complicated than the fetch quests that it sent me on. There were a couple ah-ha moments in the game where I was impressed that the solution was sitting in front of me the whole time, but those moments were few and far between. Moldrise was expanded from a game jam project, so I think it could have used a bit more expansion to make it fully satisfying, even if what’s here is a good time.

Moldrise may be short, but it’s a unique setup that packs an absolute ton of delightfully rancid vibes in its small package. I cherished every interaction with the apartment complex’s resident weirdos, relishing in the game’s dark sense of humor and commitment to the madness. Every door I knocked on was an oddball surprise that added to the overall picture of this building where I was somehow not the strangest person living there, despite my character’s condition.

The resource management does a great job of keeping things tense, while the sound design and music complement it by stressing you out. Even though the short runtime felt good, the game’s world felt like one that I wanted more of. That being said, I’d rather a game get out before it gets stale than overstay its welcome, so I definitely recommend checking out Moldrise for a movie-length gaming experience.

Review code provided by publisher. Moldrise is available now on PC via Steam and itch.io.

The post ‘Moldrise’ Review: A Short But Creepy, Atmospheric Horror Adventure appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Populating this environment are two babies – one swaddled in red; the other in blue – who grow up, in an immediate time jump, to become pre-teens: Red (Emma Ho) and Blue (Ian Ho). What is going on, including how these children survive, is part of the film’s central mystery.

The kids have familiar language, albeit with a few tweaks: catch becomes “ball catch”, milk becomes “milky”, and hide and go seek becomes “hide and look”, etc. They have familiar activities, such as coloring and watching VHS tapes of a puppet show called “The Barn”. Most intriguingly, they have a parental figure in Papa, voiced by the director, who is visually represented by a rectangle with a lit circle in the middle and kept secluded in a room with an intercom that Red and Blue must buzz to get into.

For the most part, however, Red and Blue’s lives are dictated by routine and the rules that Papa ominously dictates. They parent themselves, with Blue preparing three meals a day that transform in the microwave, a bun becomes a loaded hot dog, for example. They put themselves to sleep in their color-coordinated beds when it’s time for lights out. The food replenishes whenever they run low on supplies, and waste is left at the bottom of the cellar stairs, vanishing in the blink of an eye when the word “garbage” is repeated three times.

It’s a perfect, uncomplicated dystopian life that screams “social experiment.”

Their sterile, repetitious life is complicated when, on the 42nd Noel, ie: Christmas, Blue and Red are confronted by another living being lurking behind the tree. This is Pal (played by The Boys and Motherland: Fort Salem non-binary actor Ess Hödlmoser), so named by Papa because Red and Blue are in need of one, but also because they’re at the age when they can – and must – take care of something.

The introduction of Pal immediately upends the social order within the environment. Blue, the more rule-abiding and domineering of the two, is uncomfortable with Pal’s non-verbal status and tendency to lurk (Hödlmoser never speaks, but they do plenty of acting with their eyes and stiff body language). Red, meanwhile, is more open-minded: she not only has empathy for Pal, but quickly strikes up a friendship that Blue naturally finds threatening.

One of Papa’s unbreakable rules is that the children must not hurt each other. To do so is to invite punishment, which is established when they break a window playing ball catch, and Papa reminds Blue about a large scar he bears on the back of his hand from a previous infraction. So while the children have been forced to parent themselves, they still live at the mercy of the voice that controls every aspect of their environment – from the heating to the food and water supply.

If there is a weakness to Home Bodies, it is that screenwriters Adrian Murray and Marcus Sullivan establish the world of the film and its corresponding rules in such a way that it is relatively easy to anticipate where the narrative will go. In many ways, the film feels like a parable: a dystopian recreation of the Garden of Eden (with a brother/sister pair filling in for Adam and Eve) or a tweaked version of Cain and Abel. The fact that Pal’s introduction is swiftly followed by violence, distrust, and anarchy is wholly anticipated, though that doesn’t necessarily detract from the overall enjoyment of the film. It feels akin to an episode of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror.

As the situation becomes increasingly dire, the fact that we are observing children who are being controlled and lied to also becomes harder to ignore. While the film’s half-hearted final reveal about what is happening (kind of?) doesn’t fully satisfy, it is tantalizing and brazen in a speculative sci-fi kind of way.

There are two main reasons to watch the film: the acting from the Ho siblings and the visual aesthetic. The former confirms that the brother/sister pair are ones to watch because the film lives and dies on the relationship between Red and Blue. They’re distinct, fully fleshed-out characters in their own right and the escalating tension between them, particularly following Pal’s arrival, feels extremely authentic and believable.

As for the film’s distinctive look, production designer Chareese Steinhoff and art director David-William Martel have crafted something unique. The aesthetic feels like a bunker combined with an ’80s home, complete with wood paneling, flat matte walls and a distinct blue/red colour scheme in the bedroom, mirroring Red and Blue’s costumes. Interspersed among this somewhat familiar environment, however, are thin vertical light panels, triangular throw pillows, and geometric patterns in the windowpanes. It’s striking and tactile, with a lived-in feel that contrasts with the usual antiseptic or futuristic look these films tend to employ.

In contrast to the twins, Pal has a shaved head and wears a cream/nude colored latex suit. This obviously distinguishes them from the other two, but also distinctly avoids the traditional gender binary embodied by Red and Blue. Intriguingly, in the script, Red identifies Pal as female, while Blue switches back and forth between she/her pronouns and it – which tracks due to his dislike of the interloper, but also plays into the casting of a non-binary actor in the role.

Walker’s direction toes the line between claustrophobic and innovative. He ensures the space feels restrictive in order to emphasize Red and Blue’s experiences, but finds plenty of ways to keep the film visually interesting for the audience. This includes plenty of angled shots, including some choice Dutch angles when things go to shit, as well as a 360-degree pan around the breakfast table, and a dimly lit hallway sequence that emphasizes both the literal and emotional distance between the siblings.

Then there’s the sequence in the cellar. Beginning with an extreme wide shot and plenty of echoes to emphasize how big and threatening the space is, we follow Red as she is swallowed up in piles of squelchy, maggoty garbage. It’s completely nightmarish and the closest the film comes to full-blown horror (interestingly, Natalie Erika James’ latest, Saccharine, has a nearly identical sequence; there must be something in the garbage).

Overall, despite some telegraphed narrative developments and an ending that teases rather than satisfies, Home Bodies is fascinating. Featuring two fantastic child performances and a unique production design, Home Bodies is a distinct and compelling dystopian parable.

Home Bodies had its world premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

The post ‘Home Bodies’ Review: A Haunting Dystopian Sci-Fi Parable [Fantasia 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

His latest task involves abducting a fellow worker, Sakuraku (Wan Marui), after she steals the gem she was supposed to deliver and swallows it instead. Sora and some others take the young woman out to the woods, tie her to a tree, and prepare to reluctantly open up her belly, but an aggressively hungry bear interrupts their evening and paints the forest red with some of their blood and guts. On the run for his life, Sora has to decide where his priorities sit – making it home alive, or helping Sakuraku achieve the same.

Let’s just get this out of the way right at the start. The killer bear at the center of Higuma! The Killer Bear looks… unique. It’s a spirited blend of puppetry, animatronics, and guy (guys?) in a monster suit, and you will never for a second “believe” that it’s real. The bear lumbers along with an awkward gait, occasionally rearing its head and opening its slobbering, bloodied jaws with a roar, and there’s an odd stiffness to its neck and head (no, we’re not talking Rawhead Rex level of rigidity here). Its fur is singed and matted with blood, smoke wisps upward from bullet holes along its sides, its eyes glow in the darkness – some of you are going to find it very silly looking, and I can’t argue with that.

But the damn thing works for me all the same.

Writer/director Eisuke Naito commits to the bear and stands firmly behind its presence on the screen. He doesn’t skimp on its appearances, and while there are closeups and fast cuts during some of the attacks, Naito also lets the camera and viewers take in the bear in all its head-to-toe prosthetic effects glory. He enjoys a comedic tone throughout, but he also finds the intensity in those attack scenes as limbs are bitten off, heads are gloriously disfigured, and characters are mauled. You can almost smell the beast’s fetid breath as it exhales into terrified faces, and the actors sell the horror of it all when they’re in the bear’s grip. It looks a bit goofy, but it’s ultimately an effectively entertaining creation in an equally entertaining movie.

While the bear itself might turn some viewers off, Higuma!! The Killer Bear’s bigger issue is arguably a protagonist who really tests the audience’s patience throughout the first two acts. The film’s opening makes him an empathetic character, a young man visited by tragedy and forced to abandon his goals to help support his own mother, but he burns through that goodwill with lightning speed. He goes along with the thugs to the point of even letting them approach Sakuraku with the intent of disemboweling her, and it’s only the bear’s arrival that saves her initially.

Similar beats appear throughout that first hour with Sora being a cowardly fool, and it quickly comes clear that it’s Sakuraku we should all be rooting for. Naito’s script brushes past anything resembling character depth, but while she’s clearly in her own financial distress, she isn’t tossing Sora to the wolves – or to the bear – just to save her own hide. Marui makes the most of the role, unleashing a handful of beatdowns and showcasing an energetic and determined will to live no matter what comes her way. The case can be made that she’s the bear’s spirit animal (or vice versa), especially when the beast seemingly mirrors her by swallowing the gem a short while later, but it also seems clear that only one of them will be walking out of the woods alive.

Naito packs Higuma!! The Killer Bear’s early scenes with contemporary food for thought, from the financial threat of scammers to an employment economy that leaves vulnerable people making poor choices just to cover their bills, but the killer bear itself is every bit as timely. While the whole of North America sees a handful of deadly bear attacks each year, Japan saw 13 deaths at the claws and maws of bears in 2025 alone. A serious issue, clearly, but Naito isn’t here to reflect on it seriously.

For a film with such a heavy opening, this is a comedy through and through. Gags run rampant, humorous dialogue is tossed around even more frequently than the dismembered limbs, and the film even ends with a character looking directly into the camera and laughing. (You’ll want to stay through all of the end credits for that.) Naito knows this is a comedy, and he embraces that tone just as he embraces his goofy-ass looking bear. Whether or not all of it (or even any of it) lands comes down to the individual viewers’ senses of humor, but it works for me.

Less defensible is the aforementioned lack of character depth beyond Sora, and even there the film seems to forget about his own opening drama by the time the film ends. This is mostly a three-hander between Sora, Sakuraku, and the bear, but Naito does introduce another character in the form of an old hunter (Takashi Ukaji) pursuing the bear out of revenge. It’s no coincidence that he’s both the most surprising character and the funniest, and that same kind of creativity would have benefited the others as well.

Higuma!! The Killer Bear is far from a serious animal attack thriller, and that’s obviously a smart play given this bear design. It is an entertaining animal attack flick, though, with the degree of that entertainment really coming down to the viewer. So on the list of fun killer bear movies? Not nearly as good as Grizzly, but better than Cocaine Bear.

Higuma!! The Killer Bear made its North American premiere at the 25th New York Asian Film Festival.

The post ‘Higuma!! The Killer Bear’ Review: A Goofy Creature Feature That Knows Exactly What It Is [NYAFF 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Tha Rae: The Exorcist adds an intriguing wrinkle into that trope by introducing a demonic entity that rebuffs both a Catholic priest and a local Yao shaman. It’s only when the two join forces that they’re able to put up a fight against the evil being.

The film opens with a Catholic exorcist out of options. A possessed child writhes before him, pustules and other signs of devilish control wracking the little girl’s body with snarls and contortions. Unable to beat the demon, and unwilling to let it grow stronger and move to another host, the priest convinces the child’s mother that death is the only choice left – so they plunge a knife into the girl’s heart.

Forty years later, it’s that same priest, Ming (Thaneth Warakulnukroh), who’s become possessed to the point of attacking and trying to eat other villagers. His daughter Malee (Nichaphat Chatchaipholra) arrives to check in on her father, but she too soon falls prey to a possessive entity with a taste for flesh. Two exorcists with wildly differing faiths and styles are called in – Sopha (Phiravich Attachitsataporn) is a self-described Yao witch doctor and TikTok exorcist who uses props, dance, theatricality, and ancestral spirits to combat the forces of evil, while Father Paolo (Jirayu Tangsrisuk) is entrenched in the traditions and rituals of the Catholic Church.

There’s both tragedy and betrayal at play in the narrative of Tha Rae: The Exorcist, but director/co-writer Taweewat Wantha puts the thematic focus on the collaboration and understanding required to go toe to toe with a deviously malevolent force. It’s an interesting spin on the expected formula, and while the rest of the film stumbles in its supporting players and follows more traditional beats – albeit with some fun, gooey gore – that core element is enough to make it stand apart from the crowd.

Wantha broke onto the film scene with 2004’s memorably titled Sars Wars: Bangkok Zombie Crisis and continued that trend with oddball genre comedies like The Sperm and Kindergarten War, but he found major success with the one-two horror punch of Death Whisperer and Death Whisperer 2. His latest is more in line with those hits as jump scares and local mythologies play into his creepy tale of possession and generational punishment.

Tha Rae: The Exorcist arguably has more personality and humor, and both are due in large part to the character of Sopha and the playful but sincere performance that brings it to life. Where Tangsrisuk is saddled with the more straightlaced priest, Attachitsataporn’s witch doctor enjoys his local celebrity and has fun while aiding his community. Sopha’s social media followers expect a show, and he delivers, but there’s an engaging dynamic at play within him.

Sopha’s grandmother was the original witch doctor, and he was just her apprentice. When she passed – and subsequently became the primary ancestral spirit that he calls upon during his rituals – Sopha took up the mantle. For one reason or another, continuing her legacy requires him to carry on with his more feminine foot forward. Makeup, costumes, and a feminine lilt to the way he walks and talks are all part of the show. He apologizes to Paulo for it, but there’s no shame in his words or tone as he embraces the gifts he holds and the power he wields.

There’s no disdain between the two even as they seem initially unimpressed by each other’s efforts. Eventually, though, after each has struck out in dramatic and painful fashion, they realize a combined approach to fighting this particular demon is the only way forward. It’s here where the film shines brightest with the idea that beliefs can intermingle and co-exist without the need for disdain or dismissal.

The two of them are the heart of Tha Rae: The Exorcist, but the meat and potatoes of the genre come in the form of creepy antics and a bit of the ol’ gut munching. Intestines are nibbled, a feral man bursts through floorboards to terrorize young girls, and the possessed have a generally unsettling look about them. Wantha too often neuters his atmosphere and mood, though, by jumping quickly to the gore. It cuts into the horror of it all, leaving the film to work in fits and bursts rather than as a cohesive, propulsive whole.

Shortcomings in both the script and direction prevent the film from coming close to denser, more memorable, and atmospheric possession horrors like It Comes or The Wailing, but its main theme and dual lead characters still offer up an intriguing combination.

Genre tropes exist for a reason, but Tha Rae: The Exorcist is a good reminder that they also exist to be twisted, teased, and, when necessary, torn to shreds.

Tha Rae: The Exorcist made its North American premiere at the 25th New York Asian Film Festival.

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But he yearns for something more.

The easy answer is that he wants to go explore the world. Despite being isolated, the islands are frequented by ships that stop for trade, and there are 19th-century equivalent seasonal workers who pass through, which provides Baldur with a glimpse of the outside world that he’s missing out on.

When Baldur rescues Danish man Helge (Pilou Asbæk) after the latter has an accident in the foggy waters, the young man’s life begins to expand. While the two aren’t fluent in the other’s language, they can communicate on a rudimentary level, and Baldur quickly becomes entranced by Helge’s transient stories. To say the other man is more worldly is an understatement. The appeal becomes more significant and complicated when Baldur and Helge begin to act on their mutual attraction, sneaking in bouts of lovemaking under Ásla’s nose.

Obviously this is where the film’s conflict lies, but screenwriter Rasmus Birch’s languid script takes its time, chronicling dinners and late-night talks between the men in order to develop their romance. As the intimacy deepens and Baldur becomes increasingly enamored, he imagines a life for himself away from the islands and his mother.

Ásla inevitably discovers what the men have been up to, but the issue truly comes to a head when Baldur declares his intent to ship off with Helge. Ásla protests, laying the emotional blackmail on thick to the point that her son relents, leaving Helge to go off on his own.

Then a massive storm strikes. And Helge dies. No Rest for the Wicked shifts gears dramatically because the dead man begins to come back to haunt Baldur – continuing their nocturnal dalliances with such intensity that Baldur’s body is left bloody.

No Rest for the Wicked is teased as a vampire narrative, but it is unlike other predatory queer horror texts. Helge’s return is damaging, yes, but it is clear that the intent is romantic; these are men whose love was cut short, and that connection persists after death via supernatural means. Of course, the other islanders don’t react as such when the truth comes out, resulting in some classic visual tropes of the subgenre, albeit with several intriguing subversions.

The film is more than content to take its time, though, which means that the hour and forty-minute runtime can occasionally feel narratively rudderless. When an unexpected development arises in the last act that dramatically affects the other townspeople, it’s genuinely exciting and unusual, but it also makes it clear how intimate and contained the story has been. We barely know these other characters, which makes their fates less involving to audiences.

It’s also challenging to distinguish between several of these men, a fact not helped by cinematographer Jacob Møller’s dim lighting. It’s candlelight romanticism, but there are several points where I was happy that the film was in Faorese because the subtitles helped to identify which character was which.

Writer/director Kasper Kalle has crafted a beautiful and atmospheric supernatural romance that capitalizes on the beauty of the Faroe Islands. Seriously, the scenery is so stunning that large swaths of the movie play like an advertisement for the tourism board. Aside from being gorgeous to look at, the film lives and dies based on the relationship between Baldur and Helge, which is romantic and forbidden in the film’s first half and melancholy and tragic in the back half.

It’s also quite hot, with great chemistry between the innocent, naïve Venned and the more experienced and worldly Asbæk. When Helge returns after the Biblical-level storm, the result is unnerving, sure, but it also feels like the universe correcting a misstep. In this capacity, the film plays like a sweeping historical romance about the lengths that true love will go to persist.

Despite the laggy pacing, due to a strong romantic component and the fascinating complications introduced in the film’s last act, No Rest for the Wicked is an easy recommend for fans of queer horror.

No Rest for the Wicked had its world debut at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

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Its message is still evergreen, and the reason that two separate big-budget Pinocchio films by auteur directors were released in 2022. And yet, it’s a story that also has creepy enough bones to fuel a really potent horror film when properly executed (please watch Pinocchio’s Revenge if you’ve never seen that piece of dark, gonzo filmmaking before).

The Twisted Childhood Universe – or TCU, if we must call it this – has largely been more hits than misses. That being said, Pinocchio Unstrung isn’t just a surprisingly entertaining horror film, but it’s a genuine love letter to practical effects and old-fashioned animatronics instead of being some cheap CG slog. Rhys Frake-Wakefield has crafted a disturbing reimagining of Pinocchio that doesn’t get its strings tied up in knots.

In Pinocchio Unstrung, James (Cameron Bell) loses his mother and best friend, so he’s sent to live with his grandfather Geppetto (Richard Brake, 3 From Hell), who seems detached and isn’t necessarily the best role model for this grieving boy. There’s actually a fairly interesting idea here by having both Pinocchio (Jude Evan Lloyd) and a real boy living with Geppetto, while Pinocchio forms a frightening attachment towards James.

Geppetto built Pinocchio for James so he can have a friend, rather than it being a creation to heal his own sadness and loneliness. This heads into even more tragic territory for this vulnerable boy that feels like something that’s more akin to The Boy, Child’s Play, or even the later Puppet Master sequels, rather than Pinocchio. This Pinocchio wants more than to just be a real boy. He wants to be James’ “best mate” and a real friend, which is achieved by killing the various people who have wronged him in life and gotten in James’ way.

Going against Geppetto’s wishes, James brings Pinocchio to school and chaotic carnage ensues as the student body – particularly James’ bullies – become casualties in this macabre learning experience. The messaging is very heavy-handed, which is not unexpected for a film of this nature, especially one that’s pulling from such a moralistic fairy tale in the first place that’s designed to teach lessons.

To the film’s credit, there are some genuinely creepy and unnerving scenes during the film’s first act when Pinocchio bonds with James and demonstrates a fascination with his anatomy and how they’re different. Pinocchio also acquires a checklist of body parts, skin, teeth, hair, eyes, and items to become a real boy. This, while formulaic, is the right style of creepy for this film. It provides a clear focus and trajectory for what’s to come, but also facilitates a lot of gruesome gore.

There are actually some decent gore effects that are well-executed, even if some of them have weak and unearned setups. Obviously, a film like this is trying to be tongue-in-cheek and doesn’t strive to be taken as high art, but it could work a little harder to build to its gory setpieces instead of just throwing them out there and making it seem like it doesn’t care about anything else. A second pass could have helped refine a lot of these elements and turned this into something truly great, rather than operating like a clunky series of poorly written scenes that are designed to string together exaggerated deaths.

These vicious kills are very Terrifier–coded and, on their own, aren’t bad and should please the gorehounds in the audience. There’s an inspired “nose kill” that Pinocchio Unstrung holds off on, but is worth the wait. Pinocchio Unstrung is arguably the goriest of the TCU films, which is a step in the right direction, even if other elements are lacking. In the end, there’s effort here, and director Frake-Waterfield is genuinely trying, even if some of his instincts are misguided or need to be sharpened. For instance, there’s a running throughline where Pinocchio wishes that he had had a penis.

Robert Englund delivers a committed and satisfying performance as Cricket, Pinocchio’s de facto conscience. However, Frake-Wakefield also includes a ridiculous “Wood Mother” concept, which is another wooden abomination who is there to get in Pinocchio’s head. The Wood Mother is presumably meant to be a Blue Fairy analogue, but she just feels extraneous and an excuse to show off more animatronics. Somehow all this leads into a story about rebirth and immortality as the film broadens its scope, which doesn’t always work in its favor. There are plenty of ideas here that are interesting, but ultimately half-baked.

When it comes to Pinocchio himself, the titular puppet’s design initially feels a little lacking, albeit still creepy. Fortunately, it actively improves throughout the film as Pinocchio builds upon his anatomy and “becomes” more human. It also doesn’t hurt that Jude Evan Lloyd is actually a competent actor and a worthy foil for Pinocchio.

Most importantly, it looks like a real movie and features some compelling lighting, which is more than what some of the earlier Twisted Childhood Universe films can claim.

To this point, Pinocchio Unstrung proudly boasts that the film is all done with practical effects and puppetry, which makes such a difference. There’d be no point in even making this movie if it didn’t commit to this practical authenticity. It’s not just a better movie because of this, but it reflects a respect and passion for the craft that’s lacking in other TCU entries. It’d be very easy to cut corners here, and so it’s appreciated that it puts in the effort and goes the extra mile. There’s also a really effective shadow puppetry introduction that’s reminiscent of 2021’s Candyman and a great way to kick off the movie.

Pinocchio Unstrung gradually finds its rhythm and confidence as it goes on, just like a young boy who is figuring out his way in the world. It develops a genuine personality by its end, and there are some weird, unique scenes that really unexpectedly go off the rails and transcend anything from the other TCU films. The place that the film ends is legitimately shocking and feels completely different than the type of movie that’s initially teased. This sort of radical pivot is worth it and turns Pinocchio Unstrung into something weird and wonderful, even if a lot of it still doesn’t work. It deserves credit for taking such big swings, even when they’re unsuccessful.

Those who were left empty from Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey and its various offshoots may be pleasantly surprised by this. It actually manages to say something about identity, morality, autonomy, and rising above the expectations that are placed on us, which seems like an insane thing to say for a film like this. It’s a morbid, mindless way to spend 80 minutes.

By the end of this experience, Pinocchio Unstrung transforms from a wooden concept into a real horror film.

Pinocchio Unstrung releases in theaters on July 24, 2026.

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Mackay’s latest, Our Effed Up World, is something of a departure. It’s still a low-budget film with a talented young cast, yes, but it’s more of a science fiction film than a horror title. But while the genre trappings may differ slightly from the vampires and the witches of her other films, Mackay and her regular co-screenwriter Benjamin Pahl Robinson haven’t completely abandoned one of their defining traits: the (queer) community at the center of the narrative.

Our Effed Up World follows Sheri (Sara Thompson, One of Us Is Lying), a young woman grieving the death of her grandmother Grace (Kerry Armstrong). They were close ever since Sheri and her father moved in at the start of high school, but, with Grace gone, Sheri finds herself increasingly angry at the world.

As her father Hank (Scott Major) withdraws into his work tracking meteorites for the government, Sheri spends her days hanging out with best friend Poppy (Annapurna Sriram, Fucktoys), non-binary video rental store owner Finn (Jess McLeod, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma), and Finn’s co-worker and roommate, Ash (Karis Oka). Oh, and Sheri’s also in a terrible relationship with a dimwit named Harry (Jordan Dulieu, The Serpent’s Skin), who has a great body and poor sexual techniques.

Everything changes when a meteorite lands on the outskirts of town and Harry, dejected after Sheri finally dumps him, is infected by an alien that assimilates him. From there, other people in town are gobbled up, as Sheri, her father, and her friends must find a way to stop the invasion.

Sidebar: as a bonus for attentive audiences, keep an ear out for vocal cameo performances by Hellraiser’s Brandon Flynn and I Saw The TV Glow’s Jack Haven during the extended flashback that explains Hank’s backstory.

The stakes may seem high, but the reality is that outside of a few tense sequences, Our Effed Up World is more of a hang-out movie and character study than a full-blown science fiction film. There are a few FX shots of a green-tentacled meteorite and a humanoid alien creature with a blurred face, but the low budget limits the visuals and the scope of the storytelling.

In general, the sci-fi elements feel a little too familiar, particularly Sheri’s discovery that what remains of Harry (and his affection for her) offers her a measure of protection from the creature. We’ve seen similar developments in other films, and the short runtime (the film barely clocks in at an hour before credits) means the film doesn’t have time to explore its alien aspects in any detail.

Our Effed Up World still works, though. Because of the budget confines and the lack of visual effects, the film wisely keeps the focus on Sheri and her friends as they hang out and get into adventures. What’s impressive is how seamlessly the screenplay unpacks Sheri’s grief and engages in a philosophical debate about what it means to be human amidst lived-in character beats such as Poppy’s concern about Sheri’s anger, Sheri’s attempts to entice her father into conversation using food, and Finn’s financial woes after inheriting a failing business from their uncle.

Mackay and Pahl Robinson’s trademark acerbic dialogue helps this all to go down easily. For example: Sheri describes herself to Harry as “a living fleshlight” after she suffers through a particularly unsatisfying sexual encounter. The quips are particularly applicable to Finn, who is easily the film’s MVP – largely because McLeod gets all of the best lines, but also because the It’s A Wonderful Knife actor knows exactly how to stand out.

All in all, Our Effed up World is almost enough to make you wish that Mackay would dispense with the genre trappings entirely and simply make a fun, queer Mallrats-esque hang-out film. As it stands, the film is fun, breezy, and brief!

Our Effed Up World made its international premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.

The post ‘Our Effed Up World’ Review: Alice Maio Mackay’s Alien Invasion Hang-Out Film [Fantasia 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The Black Rain came out of nowhere and drowned the world. The oceans rose and buried our world in a watery grave. You play as a band of survivors living in a floating village trying to save what’s left of the world. Old Jack, a member of your group, is haunted by visions and believes you can appease the Maker of Rain, the incomprehensible being that flooded the planet, by diving into the depths and collecting eight lost idols. But time is of the essence, as there’s only 40 days left until the final flood comes to take you.

Each day, you send one of your people down into the depths in search of an idol, but it’s not quite that simple. The dives are presented in 2D, making it feel slightly Metroidvania-y in the way you explore. Your divers each have their own unique set of stats that are upgraded over time that will help them on their dive. Oxygen capacity, carry weight, hit points, and sanity all are important to monitor as you plunge the depths and face the horrors beneath. At the beginning, when your characters’ air capacity is still low, these dives can be pretty brief, lasting only a couple of minutes, but still full of important decisions about what types of resources you should collect on your specific run.

It should be noted that while the resources and enemies change a bit from day to day, the map you’re exploring is static, so navigational knowledge can quickly become just as important as any resources you may pick up. These resources will be crucial to your success, as there’s upkeep that needs to be done at your base. The community has a nutrition and morale value, and those both tick down depending on the number of people you have in your base. Picking up food and heirlooms will help increase your stats, while going into a negative value can have disastrous effects for your community. Narrative events will frequently happen at the base, sometimes involving a simple choice to make, and this can give characters different status effects, which greatly affects their efficiency during a dive.

Fortunately, they don’t all have to be good divers. Your base has a variety of buildings that all grant bonuses if you station a member of your team there. For example, having someone manning the lighthouse will allow you to send people on expeditions where they have a certain percent chance to come back with items and survivors, while stationing someone at the Town Hall can increase your upper limit of nutrition and morale. Not only can each building be upgraded as you collect and spend resources, but leveling up a character can give you a chance to pick new abilities that enhance their abilities at a specific location.

Characters will gain experience points both for diving and for manning locations, and leveling up always feels meaningful. Not only are you given an opportunity to increase their stats, but the abilities they gain can help you focus their utility, whether that be for exploration, resource gathering, or a specific function in the town. When getting new characters in your camp, by default you get one per day but others can join from expeditions, they will often come with specific abilities that show you how best to use them. Whenever I got someone with Iron Lungs, a skill that allowed them to dash without any penalty to oxygen consumption, I knew that I would end up focusing all their skills on diving, making a powerful explorer that I used when I had specific, challenging goals in mind.

Another way to help improve your characters is crafting new items at the workshop. You start the game with a rudimentary knife and needle gun, but as you find blueprints and upgrade the structure, you’ll be given options to craft more useful consumables along with permanent upgrades. At the beginning, it was exciting to get things like a brighter lantern or bigger oxygen tank, but by the end I was getting things like supernaturally enhanced storage lockers and a teleport option called the “blood gates.” Occasionally, exploration is gated behind new technology, limiting you on where you can go until you are able to upgrade yourself to a specific level. This not only gives you a satisfying feeling when you finally are able to, for example, pass through toxic areas, but also helps keep you to earlier areas while you’re lower level, without letting you go too far out of your depth, pun intended.

As I mentioned, there’s a 40 day countdown timer that you’re given, but there’s an important structure in your camp that can help you push back the countdown. When manned, the altar allows you to make sacrifices to the Maker of Rain, which fills up a meter that will delay the flood. Sacrificing nutrition or morale will fill the meter 25 percent, which means it will take a while for you to build up to actually earning a day, so the real way to keep your head above water is by sacrificing your characters. These will give you 15 percent per level, so you’re incentivized to kill the best of your roster when times get tough. It’s a brutal choice to have to make, and it really elevates the decision making you’re doing. I would occasionally get a level four character from an expedition and give them abilities that helped them earn XP faster, just fattening them up for the altar with no intention of ever using them as a useful member of my society. It really shows you how the dark, cultish mindset of your society quickly devolves into desperate barbarism, making for a bleak tone that might not be for everyone.

When you plunge into the Abyssal Pool, you’ll find distinct biomes with their own types of creatures that are out to tear you to shreds. Things start out pretty basic, with serene reefs around sunken buildings, but things quickly get horrifying and surreal. Each of the areas has their own visual theming, each gorgeous in their own right, and often have specific creatures that have their own gimmick. Running into these beasts and figuring out how they operate is part of the fun and mystery of the game, so I won’t spoil it here, but they provided some of the best horror moments I’ve had in gaming this year. Thanks to the excellent sound design, you’ll always hear them coming before seeing them, making for truly terrifying moments. I’ll never forget hearing a guttural roar from the deep, dashing my way back to the surface, and seeing a glimpse of something at the edge of my lantern range encroaching on me from the abyss below.

Getting to actually see the creature is just as exciting, because the monsters are rendered in a heavily-lined art style with designs that capture the alien feel of what lurks in the oceans. Classic sea creatures twisted into Lovecraftian forms lurk the Abyssal Pool, and their beautiful, Mike Mignola-like forms will always leave me with a combination of terror and awe. They each have their own unique audio cues, allowing you to prepare for what’s coming, though forewarned rarely means forearmed.

Since you’re going to be frequently passing through the earlier biomes, there’s a clever mechanic incorporated that allows you to escalate the challenge for greater resources. Each zone has a place where you can sacrifice a diver, which makes the monsters in that area more dangerous while also allowing for blessed resources to spawn there. The blessed versions are necessary for higher level crafting and upgrades, so you will need to make the sacrifice at some point, but when you do it is up to you. It’s a smart way for allowing you to opt in to higher level stuff at your own pace, even if you still have the countdown bearing down on you.

Searching for the idols is the main driver of progress, and the way they dole out the objectives is clever and thematic, if occasionally frustrating. You’ll be given instructions on how to find them in the form of visions from Jack, providing vague guidance without giving you concrete direction. It’s a double edge sword, because I do really enjoy the exploration, and the experience of something clicking into place feels so great when you finally figure it out, but there have been times that I’ve wasted so many in-game days following the directions incorrectly in a dangerous zone.

You’ll assemble your in-game map by collecting fragments as you explore, but it can only be viewed at the library between dives. Once you’re being guided to the later areas, it feels really punishing to die quickly in a new, unmapped environment after spending a lot of time struggling to get a high level character down there. The game does provide ways for you to get up or down faster through quick travel as you get upgrades, but it still feels like there were too many times I took a level 7+ character to a lower area only to get eaten by something I didn’t know how to deal with. Much like Darkest Dungeon, it feels extremely punishing to lose someone you spent so much time on. I know this is the intended experience from the developers, but I found it more frustrating than exciting most of the time.

Once you do get your hand on an idol, there is a new ability unlocked associated with it. These can be equipped at the altar, and the number you can equip is based on the structure’s current level. For how central these are to the plot, I was hoping that they would be a little more useful, but I found myself often forgetting they were there. While they definitely helped me out in a pinch more than once, nothing felt like a massive jump in the power curve that I was looking for.

Every day, there’s a chance for the world condition to change, adding some strange modifiers to your dives. Much like the discovery inherent in the exploration, these were fun to figure out as I went. The first time I saw it say “RED MOON” made my skin crawl with the possibilities, as I had no idea how it would affect my dive. Since you’re usually trying to plan a dive around a specific objective, whether it’s resource gathering or exploring or an idol run, these conditions derailed those plans several times, causing me to figure out how to pivot to get something out of a more dangerous day.

As much as I enjoy all the resource and base management involved in the game, the real secret sauce for Dive or Die is how good those dives feel. Even when you have a creature’s gimmick figured out, it’s never in a way that trivializes it, keeping you on the edge of your seat trying to execute perfectly to circumvent it. There’s nothing more thrilling than grabbing that idol with 30 percent oxygen left and making a mad dash to the surface, panicking and making a wrong turn, only to successfully get to an exit with five percent oxygen to spare. While I think having a map that you could view while exploring would be immensely helpful, I usually had a screenshot of it on my second monitor, there’s something about forcing you into a position where you have to intimately know the world yourself is so satisfying.

Pressure mechanics like the incoming flood are extremely risky for games, as that extra layer of challenge can really make your losses free double frustrating. If I take out my level 10 diver to the deepest zone I’ve ever been, only to have them get killed by something I had no idea existed, it feels devastating. Not only do I lose a diver I’ve put a ton of work into, but I also just spent one of my valuable days getting absolutely nothing. This can be compounded if you made mistakes early on without realizing it, making things extremely rough as you’re sacrificing high level divers just to hold back the flood. I saw a post on the Steam forums from the developers saying that there would be an Endless Mode available from day one, but it wasn’t in the review build I played. I hope it exists upon release, because it’s something I would definitely recommend if you find countdowns like that to be too stressful.

About halfway through, I got very frustrated by the timer because one of the upgrades for my workshop was stuck behind an extremely rare resource that I had no idea where to find. Based on the name of the resource, I tried to guess where it was, but could not find it after wasting several days looking for it. I had so many blueprints that told me I needed to upgrade my workshop, and even though I possessed the resources to craft the items, I wasn’t allowed to. Once I found the needed upgrade material, I was actually able to upgrade the workshop twice in a row because I had already collected the other materials needed for the next level in the time it took me to find it. It’s a fine line to walk when you are putting this level of challenge in front of the player and trusting that they’ll be able to find things in the order that you want, and this part crossed that line and massively demoralized me for several hours of playtime, and probably not in the way the developers intended.

Dive or Die: Children of Rain is a punishingly challenging game that finds multiple ways to keep the pressure on you. While most of the time it works to make your successes feel truly thrilling, there are times when your losses take the wind out of your sails in a negative way. Despite my frustrations with later game difficulty, it’s hard to deny that the game captures the combination of wonder and terror of the deep better than almost any other game I’ve played. The environments are horrifically beautiful, populated with the unsettling eldritch monstrosities and plenty of eerie mystery. The experience of desperately ascending to the surface, trying to remember the turns to take as the sound of a massive beast gets louder and louder on your heels is such a unique brand of horror that this game manages to capture. Even when the setbacks were mounting and I was losing hope, I found myself saying “just one more dive” over and over again. The level of difficulty won’t be for everyone, but fans of the desperate feeling of Darkest Dungeon or XCOM will find a lot to love here.

Review code provided by publisher.

Dive or Die: Children of Rain is available now on Steam and the Epic Games Store.

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Emma (Francesca Eastwood) and Lani (Dani Oliveros) are best friends who’ve traveled to Thailand for a destination wedding, and a chance encounter at the buffet table leads to an unexpected adventure. Mandal (Alexander Wraith) is a friendly, knowledgeable transplant who connects with nature and makes a living by offering boat tours through the area’s scenic waterways. The trips culminate with the opportunity for tourists to witness a shark feeding with local tiger sharks. The tourists aren’t meant to be the food, obviously, but sometimes accidents happen.

The Bay checks off most of the subgenre’s expected beats – an attractive location, an iffy ensemble of characters, a series of poor choices – but it does a few things differently along the way. For one thing, while we see plenty of sharks in the build-up, the first attack doesn’t happen until past the film’s midpoint. Writer/director Phil Volken fills the time leading up to that attack with engaging enough character beats, some genuine suspense, and an abundance of dialogue about how sharks aren’t typically a threat to people – or threats like people. “Sharks hunt,” says Mandal, “humans kill.”

It’s a bit of foreshadowing, perhaps, but it’s also the film’s presiding theme. Sharks don’t want to hurt or kill humans, but “mistakes happen.” Mandal offers up numerous eco-friendly spiels about the role sharks play in the environment, how overhunting could lead to disaster, and how humans are the ones invading their territory. “Don’t act like prey,” and you won’t be bitten, eaten, digested, and shat out by a shark. Pretty simple, if you think about it.

Trouble starts when they toss a chunk of meat into the water attached to a chain and a large female tiger shark gets caught up in it. Mandal’s sidekick, a local man named Ruhan (Ta’imua), panics and starts stabbing at the thrashing creature. He has a history of being bitten by a shark and is clearly frightened, and as the situation worsens, he becomes a far more active threat to the others’ safety than the actual sharks. That character type is pretty common in these films, but it’s a curious choice to make the film’s sole indigenous member of the ensemble the morally weak link.

To be clear, Ta’imua is playing a local but isn’t actually Thai. He is, however, Hawaiian, and The Bay was filmed off Oahu, meaning he’s the only indigenous representation on both counts. The other three characters, all Americans, are brave and willing to risk their own safety for the group, leaving only Ruhan to put a face to the cruel, selfish humans mentioned earlier in the film. It’s certainly a choice!

His performance is somewhat stifled by the desire to make him seem menacing, but it’s passable. The others are equally okay as performers, but it’s only Oliveros’ Dani who stands apart as a spirited individual worthy of viewer fist pumps. Cinematographer Helge Gerull delivers some attractive landscape shots destined to make you consider a Hawaiian vacation, and composer Gad Emile Zeitune finds some effective aural backdrops for the film’s teasingly emotional moments.

Then there’s the sharks. A major drag on the subgenre these days is the use of cheap CG effects (including the abysmal use of A.I. in Chum), but The Bay sidesteps that problem for the most part. There are real sharks here, lots of them, but they appear to be solely present via stock footage edited into the film. Some CG is used here and there, too, with shots being comped together to tighten the proximity between humans and sharks. Most effective, arguably, are the practical effects used to create fins cutting through the water near the characters.

There’s a sense of grounded reality to the shark kills, and while they’re less showy, they’re weightier as a result. Wounded bodies drift away, and the moment where shark nibbles turn into ferocious feasting feels more inevitable and affecting than sudden or scary. The sole exception to the general quality of those kills is the film’s final shark encounter, which doubles down on the poor choices by pairing a silly CG beat with some poorly matched stock footage.

Pretty much every shark attack movie lives or dies on its presentation of the sharks themselves. There are exceptions, of course, with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws being chief among them – everything about that film, from the writing and acting to the directing and editing, helps make it a masterpiece despite the mechanical shark looking goofy as hell outside of the water – but The Bay isn’t Jaws. It’s not even Jaws: The Revenge. Its live sharks are mildly effective, though, and give it a subdued realism that will likely appeal to viewers averse to CG intrusions. Will that be enough to win them over, though?

“When you enter the ocean, you enter the food chain… and not necessarily at the top,” says an opening onscreen quote from Jacques Cousteau, and something similar could be said for shark attack movies in general. When you make one of these movies, you enter a well-trodden and densely populated subgenre… and you’re all but guaranteed to not be at or even near the top. The Bay is closer to the ocean floor than the water’s surface, and while that still puts it above the bulk of the genre, it’s probably not enough of a reason to step foot in these waters.

The Bay opens in theaters and on demand on July 17, 2026.

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I think this pre-existing bias is why I was so thoroughly impressed with Happy’s Humble Burger Cult, as this disturbing fast food restaurant simulator boasts a surprisingly engaging single player mode that’s already worth the price of admission. However, the experience truly shines once you add other players into the mix and realize that the project was sculpted from the ground up to be one hell of an online party game.

Clearly inspired by multiplayer classics like Overcooked! and Phasmophobia, Scythe Dev Team’s latest release is actually a bigger and more elaborate follow-up to their cult-favorite 2021 title, Happy’s Humble Burger Farm. While the new game is similar to that first release in that it also miraculously blends the time-sensitive thrills of working as a fry cook with randomized paranormal phenomena in a twisted simulation, the added multiplayer elements and increased polish make this the definitive Happy Humble Burger experience.

Clock In, Cook Fast, Survive the Shift

In the new game, players take on the role of a masked test subject trapped inside of a procedurally generated labor experiment orchestrated by the mysterious Paragon Corporation. During your shift at a simulated fast food restaurant, you’ll be expected to prepare cleverly named dishes ranging from Meat Heater burgers to Agent Orange soda and serve them to zombie-like customers in an attempt at satisfying your automated overlords. Unfortunately for you and your minimum wage buddies, the simulation tends to degrade over time, meaning that life-threatening anomalies will inevitably take over the workplace by the end of the shift.

In gameplay terms, this means that the main loop here consists of rushing around the restaurant in first-person and taking orders from bizarre NPCs while you sort through unsanitary ingredients and questionable prep stations before the timer runs out, though you can also spit in your customers’ orders if you feel so inclined. Meanwhile, you’ll also have to deal with common kitchen mishaps like grease fires and interdimensional pest control.

The game also reacts to your microphone, with certain words and phrases activating anomalies that can both help and hinder your progress as you attempt to hit your quota for the day. Naturally, this is only really a factor when playing online, but there’s plenty of opportunity for emergent gameplay here as the unpredictable nature of co-op means that there will be plenty of unintentional incantations going on in the background.

Then we get to my favorite part of the experience in both the game and real-life labor: the final moments of each shift where you have to ritualistically close up shop before you’re allowed to exit the simulation. During these climactic sequences, players have to run to turn off appliances, take out the trash, and perform an assortment of other seemingly menial chores while being chased by a demonic manager with a mean streak and a nasty habit of preventing you from walking away with a paycheck.

Infinite Replay Value in the World’s Worst Restaurant

In between shifts, players will find themselves transported back to a dystopian hub/lobby area where they can engage in a multitude of mini-games ranging from blackjack to janky basketball, and even purchase useful items as well as cosmetic upgrades. It’s here that you realize how the experience is specifically tailored for multiplayer, as this space is obviously meant to be a bustling base of operations for a group of weary co-workers trying to have a good time despite their hellish predicament.

This highly detailed hub also contains most of the lore and story elements that provide narrative context for the overall experience. I honestly felt kind of lost during my first few hours with the title since I had never actually finished Scythe Dev Team’s original Happy’s Humble Burger game, but I ended up looking forward to more of their surprisingly in-depth worldbuilding here after each shift, with the story only getting wackier the deeper I fell into this satirical rabbit hole.

This steady drip-feed of new content, including terrifying/humorous collectables like in-universe VHS tapes, is enough to keep you going for several shifts despite the relatively simple controls and mechanics. The stylish visuals and ominous atmosphere also help to cover up most of the title’s indie blemishes, such as occasionally wonky physics, but it’s really the addicting gameplay loop that’ll keep you hooked to Happy’s Humble Burger Cult.

You’ll inevitably find yourself wanting to fulfill orders faster and faster as you make more money and continue to serve customers in increasingly bizarre situations. Being able to compete/collaborate with friends gives you even more incentive to keep coming back to work -especially once you unlock a unique outfit for your masked guinea pig- with the whole thing feeling a lot like a team-building exercise from hell (but in a good way).

Couple that manic multiplayer energy with procedurally generated challenges and six unique restaurants to manage and you’ve got an interactive horror-comedy experience with nearly limitless replay value.

That being said, I have a feeling that Happy’s Humble Burger Cult might just cause the end of a few friendships due to the game’s high-stakes approach to the junk food industry.

Review code provided by publisher. Happy’s Humble Burger Cult is available now on Steam.

The post ‘Happy’s Humble Burger Cult’ Review: Deliciously Addictive Multiplayer Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

As someone who liked The Dark Ages but bounced off of Eternal, this made me a little bit worried. Thankfully, they do not remove the heavy combat that The Dark Ages’ shield brought into the mix, while layering on new options to add quick movement with the introduction of the new spear.

Revelations picks up right after the events of The Dark Ages, but quickly takes you down a peg and removes some of your high level upgrades, including taking away the iconic shield. It continues The Dark Ages’ strange insistence on being more narrative-focused, with dramatic cutscenes and self-important lore. This was something id started doing in DOOM Eternal, and I feel like it’s one of the things that pushed me away from enjoying the game.

I’m not entirely sure why, but it always feels sacrilegious to me when I see a third person view of the Doomslayer, especially after DOOM (2016) did such a great job of humorously rejecting deep narrative through its first-person sequences. I don’t remember this happening in other games, but Revelations even goes as far as to have narrative sequences when you walk through areas without being able to shoot anything, which feels very bizarre for a series that’s known for its focus on gameplay.

The game is asking me to have a reverence for the lore of this world that I just don’t feel like they’ve earned, which is off-putting to me, at times. Every time I get into a cutscene where I’m watching paper-thin characters discuss the war against Hell, I’m just looking at my watch waiting for the moment I can get back to ripping and tearing.

The Spear Changes the Rhythm of Combat

The biggest introduction that Revelations brings to the franchise is the brand new spear, which goes in your left hand slot where the shield resided. Eventually, you will be juggling both, but much of the beginning of the DLC is spent with only the spear. While the shield gave you the ability to tank hits when under fire, the spear is all about mobility, giving you a dash ability to dance between projectiles rather than blocking them. Replacing the shield ramming ability is a grapple that lets you pull yourself towards an enemy, albeit slower than the shield bash.

You can also slash with the spear, which doubles as the weapon’s version of the parry, making it a versatile tool that creates a different playstyle that’s distinct from the shield, but still fits into the established gameplay.

It did take me a while to get used to the spear, though. Oddly, the slash that you use to parry is mapped to a different button than the shield’s block/parry, which was an adjustment for my brain. Modern DOOM games are so much about muscle memory, so having to switch parry buttons depending on which weapon I was carrying always caused me to stumble for a fraction of a second, and those moments can be critical ones in such an aggressive game. Some of the more fun and useful moves, like the ability to chain yourself to an enemy and orbit around them while firing, were locked behind an upgrade tree, making it an even slower curve for the spear to start firing on all cylinders.

For the most part, once the narrative restored my shield, I was once again using that most of the time, switching to spear for the more movement-based exploration sections. The spear definitely had its usefulness in battle, but the rhythm I had with the shield from the base game was just too good for me to permanently make the switch.

Fresh Locations Keep Hell Interesting

After a brief prologue, the Doomslayer finds himself cast down into a purgatory prison, aided by a mysterious creature that resides within. To escape, he must complete three challenges in three different stages. These are accessed through a hub area that has a light Metroidvania aspect, allowing you to explore more areas as your abilities are returned to you. I actually had some fun trying to track down secrets, which usually come in the form of extra encounters and some upgrade resources, but the reward was usually the act of discovery itself, in this case.

My favorite example of these involved finding the anchors for chains and smashing them with your shields, then chasing down the reward that dropped once you broke them all. It’s not like the hub is the most compelling part of the game, but I did appreciate that Revelations rewarded me for exploring.

Despite really liking DOOM: The Dark Ages, I got a bit tired of its more bland medieval setting by the end, so I was glad to see that each of these levels changed up the visual style. The first section and the hub were ice-themed, bringing to mind the final circle of Dante’s hell. The brightness was a refreshing change of pace, with blues and whites being the dominant color palette rather than the muddy browns. The second level brought to mind the cosmic realm of the base game, leaning more into clever puzzles and shifting spaces that felt like DOOM’s version of Control. The final level is called Osseus, and its environments are constructed out of bones, making for some satisfyingly destructible arenas. None of these areas were too long, each about an hour or two, so the density of Revelations’ variety felt a lot higher than the base game.

Upon completion of each of these levels, you’re dropped in sections where you are playing as the Doom Marine. As I mentioned before, I’m a bit allergic to the lore of this game, so I’m not exactly up-to-date on how this may or may not help unify the Doom timelines narratively, but it was a cool change of pace to see the action in a more modern setting again. To make it feel more like the old school version of DOOM, your shotgun is placed in the center of the screen with a strong headbob, putting you right back into 1993. Oddly the actual content of these sequences felt a bit like Call of Duty, putting you on a linear path to blast your way through soldiers, but I appreciated the change of pace, and I’m sure DOOM lorehounds will eat it up.

High-Level Encounters Reward Skilled Play

Encounters in Revelations pick up right along the difficulty curve of The Dark Ages, throwing you into a high-level deep end pretty early on. Given your new set of tools, it’s a lot of fun to blast your way through hordes in well laid out arenas with strong encounter design. Everything I said in my review of The Dark Ages still stands, the combat is exciting and challenging, creating an exhilerating rhythm through the parry mechanic that adds a layer of complexity to an already great combat feel. While I still leaned a lot on the shield, the addition of the spear is awesome for those that appreciated the mobility focus that DOOM Eternal provided, so there’s something for lovers of all modern DOOM games.

There are a couple new additions to the enemy roster for the DLC, but unfortunately they were some of my least favorites. The classic Archville is back, but I didn’t like the style of challenge he brought to the encounters. He belongs to one of my least favorite enemy types, which is “guy who moves around the battlefield avoiding you and making things worse while still around.” He is constantly summoning glowing red spectral versions of standard enemies that continue to swarm you until he’s defeated.

As you’re getting overwhelmed, it becomes hard to spot him as he teleports around, especially when his glowing summons are a lot more visible than he is. Encounters where he showed up felt overwhelming in a frustrating way more than an exciting way, which made me sigh in disappointment any time he showed up.

Other than that, I appreciated the addition of the Cosmic Elemental, who flies around and throws smaller elementals at you. It was clear anytime that he showed up that he was an immediate emergency that needed to be dealt with, adding an interesting dynamic to the battlefield. While some of the encounters frustrated me with the inclusion of the Archville, I still came out of them feeling like an unstoppable killing machine, which is exactly the feeling I come to DOOM for, so mission accomplished.

In addition to the combat, there’s some nice traversal challenges and puzzle solving, though nothing like the precise platforming that I remember disliking from DOOM Eternal. The puzzles, which peak in the second trial, feel really clever when you have to alternate between using the shield and the spear to accomplish your tasks. Like other DOOM games, there are plenty of secrets to find hidden throughout, though this time they did not mark them on the map. It felt weird in The Dark Ages that their locations were shown to you, so I welcome this change, as it makes finding them feel more satisfying.

Endgame Content Gives Players More to Conquer

After completing the three trials, there is a suitably epic conclusion with some memorable boss fights and setpieces. While the narrative isn’t too deep or complex, it gets the job done when it stays out of the way, providing a satisfying-enough story that leaves room for further adventures. Given that id was hit with massive layoffs, a fact that was floating in the back of my mind throughout the entire time I was playing Revelations, it’s unclear whether or not they will be able to follow up on this cliffhanger or not.

When you complete the main story, you are given the Master Key, which opens previously locked doors throughout the stages. With this new tool, you can backtrack through levels and find new challenges, which come along with new rewards. There are Rituals of Power, challenge stages that award you a tiered medal based on your performance, Praetor Fights, extra-hard encounters meant to push your combat abilities to their limits, and Classic Levels, recreations of stages from older games. Fully completing Rituals of Power and Praetor Fights will give you pieces to another key that will unlock the game’s true final boss, giving you an Endgame goal should you decide you want more of what Revelations has to offer.

Completing the Classic Levels will eventually give you access to the ‘93 Shotgun, an extra-powerful recreation of the original game’s weapon. I’m not usually one for post-game content like this, but I did find the Classic Levels to be particularly satisfying, and playing them even made me re-install the classics on my Steam Deck.

It’s bittersweet to play DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations knowing that the team behind it has been left in a diminished capacity. They did an excellent job merging the successes of The Dark Ages and Eternal into one challenging package, putting a neat bow on this era of DOOM. Even if some of the enemies were more frustrating than fun, I left every encounter with a triumphant smile on my face, fistpumping at the carnage I created.

While I don’t have the reverence for the DOOM lore that the game wants me to, the journey the six to eight hour narrative took me on was a fun blockbuster with an appropriately exciting conclusion, along with post-game content to discover if you want more. It may not convert new fans to the franchise, but Revelations is a worthy addition to the series that feels like a triumphant culmination of the last two games.

Code provided by publisher. DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations is available now on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and the PC via Steam.

The post ‘DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations’ Review: A Worthy Expansion That Delivers One Last Thrilling Battle appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

After all, one of the main conditions imposed by these games is that you’re always left to fend for yourself in a hostile environment, with barely any resources, barely any direction, and barely any lifelines to call upon, which might as well be the storefront page description for every Resident Evil released to date.

In addition to this, the titles will also have you forging shaky alliances with strangers, who are liable to desert or outright double-cross you the second that these temporary pacts cease to be advantageous; a quintessential trope of zombie movies and many other subdivisions of horror. And then there’s the high-stakes proposition that’s inherent to the genre, whereby all the valuables you retrieve out on a mission could be lost forever if you don’t manage to exfiltrate in a safe and timely manner. Again, petrifying.

Honestly, one of the most nerve-wracking experiences you can have in multiplayer gaming these days is trying to haul ass to the cargo elevator in Arc Raiders while you’ve got an inventory full of precious loot and everything’s on the line. The way your heart races as you nervously scan the horizon for threats, try to suss out the intentions of other players who could be enviously eyeing your plunder, take calculated risks, and wait on tenterhooks for your escape route to open is identical to the biological response you have when being chased by, say, a drill-wielding lunatic in The Outlast Trials. The only thing that’s different is the cause of fear and what you’re afraid to lose. That, and the fact that enemies in Arc don’t tend to have their genitals brazenly flapping around when trying to kill you (although it can never be guaranteed with some of the weirdos that populate online lobbies).

It’s therefore mindboggling that, out of all the biggest names in the extraction shooter space right now (Escape from Tarkov, Delta Force and this year’s Marathon), only Hunt: Showdown engages with horror themes directly. Even then, it’s kind of its own thing and doesn’t quite tick all of the genre’s boxes.

Enter The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu. The latest from Chilean developers ACE Team, this new contender brings a bounty of fresh ideas to the table, but its most significant innovation to the extraction shooter formula is how it embraces horror with open arms. And it’s a match made in heaven. Or in the depths of some eldritch, unfathomable nightmare, depending on how you look at it.

Fortune and Glory

As you may be able to figure out from the subtle clues in its title, The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is firmly situated in the H. P. Lovecraft universe. The game’s press notes adorably claim that this puts it in the company of about a hundred other releases that have similarly embedded themselves in the cult author’s public domain oeuvre. Which actually seems like a conservative estimate, unless they meant to say: “a hundred other releases from this year” (see Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, The Sinking City 2, Cosmic Fear and The Necromancer’s Tale).

I truly believe there’s a danger that we are fast approaching the saturation point for Lovecraftian media. The appeal of these things is supposed to lie in the horror of the unknown, yet by now we’re as acquainted with Deep Ones, Shoggoths and Yith as we are with our 9-to-5 work colleagues. And they provoke a comparable feeling of ambivalent disdain. I, for one, cover Lovecraft adaptations so often that my word processor has gone from not recognising the spelling of Cthulhu to predictively writing out The Great Dreamer’s terrible name whenever my finger so much as glides over the “C” key.

At least ACE Team are taking inspiration from lesser-known and lesser-mined source material here. Loosely based on the novella of the same name (or at least the story within that story), The Mound transports you not to the well-trodden mountains of madness, the overdone sunken city of R’lyeh or the familiar streets of Arkham, but instead to the untamed wilds of the Americas.

Taking place during the so-called “Age of Discovery”, it casts you in the role of a Spanish conquistador embarking on a perilous voyage across the New World. Following the trail of an ill-fated expedition that went missing somewhere south of the equator, you’re on the search for riches that are beyond human imagining. Of course, this being the Cthulhu mythos, the only things beyond human imagining that you’re bound to find here are ancient sinister forces and ghastly abominations unfit for mortal gaze.

You see, this lost continent you’re charting is not an especially hospitable one. The further inland you go, the less inclined anyone with the vaguest of self-preservation instincts would be to hang around. Impossibly thick canopy blots out the sun, chattering whispers emanate from the treeline, the desecrated corpses of your fallen brethren litter the ground, and the forest itself starts to play tricks on your mind. Not to mention, the local fauna just keeps getting bigger and meaner.

Alas, the myriad treasures of these accursed lands are too tantalizing to abandon, and so it’s up to a few courageous (or perhaps certifiable) explorers to brave this tropical hell and bring back some booty. For God, for gold, and for Spain.

Into the Heart of Darkness

In gameplay terms, this maps rather neatly onto the standard extraction shooter format. Every day starts with you waking aboard your galleon, the Tempestad, from which you can interact with members of the crew — both NPCs and co-op partners — customise certain aspects of your loadout, trade resources, and eventually pick your next quest.

When it comes to the latter, you’ll sign a contract stipulating the required objectives you agree to complete, as well as the starting gear that you’ll get to take with you. Conditions for payment can range from you needing to bring in a certain quota of goods to rescuing survivors from other ships or acquiring logbooks that will help you edge closer to the overarching goal of finding that previous expedition.

Once you’ve signed on the dotted line, you’ll then choose a place to make landfall (effectively your map for the coming session) and head out on a skiff with your party of firebrand comrades. Upon arrival, you’ll be met with gorgeously rendered, handcrafted environments that are ripe for exploration and, with minimal direction, are then left to your own devices as you strive to meet the terms of your selected contract. Nine times out of ten, this means scavenging for loot and bringing it back to the Tempestad without falling victim to the unutterable terrors that lurk in the underbrush.

Speaking of which, threats here can take on both a physical and metaphysical form. There’s certainly no shortage of ferocious beasties that call the region home, including giant insects, betentacled freaks, strange quadrupeds that look like panthers from an alien world, and congealed knots of maggots that have lumped together into some kind of perverse mockery of human anatomy. However, the much more insidious scourge is the one that inexorably worms its way into your head, causing you to hallucinate startling images, luring you into traps with false promises of fortune, and even leaving you unable to discern friend from foe. So, lush vistas aside, it’s not really a place where you’ll want to take up a timeshare!

The equipment you’re loaned by the quartermaster can help to keep the evil at bay for a time (there are muskets, crossbows, spears, rapier swords, crucifixes, and darkness-expelling lanterns). Still, there’s only so long you can push your luck and hope to endure the innumerable attacks before you just have to call it quits.

It’s then that the agonising retreat to the rowboat begins, as you try to lug your haul back to the starting point, usually with depleted survival resources. Should you successfully navigate the labyrinthine jungle and its many perils in one piece, then you’ll be escorted to your galleon and taken to the captain’s quarters, whereupon the client will assess whether you’ve fulfilled your end of the bargain or not.

New World, New Ideas

When divorced from its theming, the basic mission structure of Omen of Cthulhu isn’t too dissimilar from what we’re used to with Arc Raiders or Escape from Tarkov. Yet the execution is impressive, particularly for such a small development studio, and there are clever touches throughout to make the whole thing feel fresh and unique.

Almost every mechanic is filtered through the prism of either cosmic horror or seventeenth-century monasticism, leading to some ingenious twists on well-worn conventions. Case in point, you’re accompanied on expeditions by a rickety ox-drawn cart that acts as both a mobile storage unit and a lifesaving waypoint (its monk driver can blow a horn to summon scattered party members back to the same location, while a pierced bag of grain at its rear leaves behind a breadcrumb-like trail that ensures you never get too lost).

Another neat period detail is how the flintlock pistol is prone to malfunctioning in the rain, making it a bit of a gamble to pack said firearm when there’s a perfectly dependable bow & arrow available. The consequences of bad weather can be abated, however, by yet another one of ACE Team’s nifty ideas. Before heading out into the bush, you have an opportunity to dedicate your expedition to one of several patron saints, each of whom will grant different boons and blessings, including one who, yes, can quell that pesky precipitation. It’s a cool bit of flavouring that adds an extra layer of strategy to proceedings, as well as replay value for when the public matchmaking inevitably has you going through certain levels again and again.

Taking a cue from Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, the game also toys with your perception in some smartly meta ways. For instance, if your character ends up succumbing to madness, then you may start seeing flies buzzing around your periphery and landing on the screen — in a way that I’m ashamed to admit had me batting at my laptop display on at least two occasions — while your auditory senses can be simultaneously deceived by misleading directional sounds piped in through the headset. Should you really lose your grip on what’s real and what’s not, then it can even escalate to the point where you begin confusing teammates for hostiles (and vice versa) thanks to fiendish hallucinations.

That last part makes for an inventive twist on the every-man-for-himself dynamic at the heart of a typical extraction shooter. You’re always encouraged to maintain a healthy level of distrust in other players when competing in these things. Normally, that’s because they have sufficient motivation to gun you down and rob your stuff, but here you’re all supposed to be on the same side, and everyone’s contributions go in the exact same pot. So, there’s no rational reason to turn on each other.

However, if you can’t be 100% sure what your teammates think is happening in their immediate vicinity, or if they even are your teammates to begin with, then it creates a scenario reminiscent of John Carpenter’s The Thing. The reassuring logic of “safety in numbers” goes entirely out the window and you’ll not want to let anybody out of your sight for too long, lest they come back crazed or, worse, are supplanted by some monstrous imposter intent on sabotaging your crusade.

Misery Loves Company

On that note, multiplayer — and to a certain extent, multiplayer with strangers — really is the best way to experience The Mound.

At its core, it is built around the unreplicable interplay between reactive, hard-to-predict meatbags. Not only does this mean that there’s palpable tension whenever suspicions do arise amongst the group, and everyone’s furtively clutching to their weapons, but it’s equally electric when you manage to strike up an effective rapport with someone and just blast through contract after contract.

If the team doesn’t click, then the run can turn into a brutal war of attrition that affords next to no breathing room, as the RNG throws dozens upon dozens of enemy mobs at you, inflicts devastating bleed damage that drains your HP at an alarming rate, and relentlessly bombards you with compounding sanity effects. When a never-ending string of calamities befalls you like this, and you’ve got no one in your corner, you start to feel like the beleaguered protagonist of Beau Is Afraid during that movie’s absurd opening sequence.

Conversely, if you’re paired up with someone who actually communicates, shares the gear fairly, pulls their weight in finding treasures, and covers you when you’ve got your hands full, you can really turn the tables on the forces of darkness here. And it’s immensely satisfying to pull off, because it’s almost like you’re standing up to a school bully who’s overdue some comeuppance.

During our review stint, we played a couple of matches with someone who didn’t have a mic and, though we never exchanged so much as a whisper, we instinctively knew how to support one another. Before long, we settled into a beautiful, wordless routine whereby one of us would throw an axe to stun a zombie and the other would sneak up behind it for a close-quarters finisher. We don’t know their name. We never heard their voice. And yet we will forever cherish our time together as a supremely efficient monster-slaying duo.

By comparison, solo play is less invigorating. It’s technically possible, as a single bot will stand in for human players if you elect to go it alone. However, they’re a very poor substitution, and you can only rely on them so far. At best, they’ll dispatch a couple of creatures and sporadically lob junk into the ox cart.

Yet as you discover new areas deeper in the jungle, where the odds are increasingly stacked against you, it becomes a frankly unsustainable way of playing. The A.I. doesn’t show any urgency when you need to get somewhere quick, it often fails to collect items (including health and ammo that it desperately needs), there’s a bizarre tendency for it to go wandering off so that it can aimlessly hack away at foliage for a bit, and it’s of no use whatsoever when you’re in that climactic mad dash to the extraction point.

We similarly found ourselves getting a little peeved at the ox cart driver NPC as well, with their annoying habit of blocking the path to key areas and absentmindedly wedging us into positions from which we were unable to break free. Again, if you’re playing with another person, there’s a chance they could potentially coax the A.I. out of these tricky spots and liberate you from the impasse. Otherwise, it’s tantamount to a game over.

Better Run Through the Jungle

In all fairness, you’re not going to have a flat-out bad time if you end up soloing in Omen of Cthulhu. Just a more punishing, drawn-out one.

Indeed, whether you’re a solitary wolf, part of a tight-knit friendship group, or a social butterfly eager to spread their wings, there’ll be thrills aplenty here. That’s because ACE Team absolutely nail the fundamentals of both genres they’re combining.

For a start, the game is a real looker, with richly detailed environments, convincingly humid weather effects and pleasingly crunchy gore (obliterating a zombie’s skull into a glorious shower of pulp and bone never loses its novelty). Furthermore, the levels are as thoughtfully designed as in any good horror game — with the developers wisely abstaining from the use of procedural generation — while the first-person combat is slick and responsive, the stealth deliberate and nail-biting, and the island atmosphere so vivid you’ll find yourself perspiring within minutes.

It all comes together for a superlative offering that’s perhaps the most pulse-pounding extraction shooter we’ve played to date. Making a beeline for the rowboat as horrendous shrieks echo through the rainforest, and stygian darkness conceals how many monstrosities are on your tail, is one of the scariest experiences we’ve had all year. When you’re out of ammo, out of health, out of friends, and clinging to cargo that only slows your gait, there’s a tangible sense of panic that very few horror titles can elicit. I don’t remember the last time a game had me breaking into a sweat, but whenever I had everything to lose and something terrible breathing down my neck here, I got legitimately anxious.

Of course, if you do manage to exfiltrate, then it’s a triumphant moment deserving of an air punch. Or so one might assume. However, The Mound has one last devious mind game up its sleeve before you can confidently kick your feet up and take pride in a job well done. A post-match debrief in the captain’s quarters will put you at the mercy of a snivelling appraiser, who looks over your bounty piece by piece and tallies up its cumulative worth to see if you’ve been able to meet the agreed quota. It’s a final bit of jeopardy at the finish line that makes a prospective victory all the sweeter, and a prospective defeat all the bitterer.

Rest assured, though, that your efforts aren’t necessarily in vain if you don’t hit the requisite value target. Sure, you forgo the XP payment (which earns character upgrades like increased inventory space), but there are still other ways to make lasting progress. Certain artifacts that you collect, for instance, will be permanently added to the stocks of the Tempestad merchant, while any deer carcasses you bring back from hunting will go towards improving the effectiveness of consumables. Should you happen across a logbook, then you’ll also unlock brand-new areas of the world to explore, with brand-new creatures, brand-new treasures, and brand-new opportunities.

It’s thus rare that you come away from an expedition completely empty-handed. There’s still a sense of peril when you’re out in the wilds, as death doesn’t lose its sting, but these small wins help you feel like you’re making meaningful headway and give you the encouragement to stick with it.

And we really do see ourselves sticking with The Mound for the long haul. With its clever innovations, intriguing world-building, finely tuned co-op mechanics, and exhilarating risk-reward stakes, we believe this one has got a promising shelf-life and could emerge as a serious rival to some of the biggest names in both the extraction shooter and cooperative horror genres. Even the stupid lemming bots can’t bring it down.

Review code provided by publisher. The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu releases on PC  via Steam, PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series on July 15.

The post ‘The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu’ Review: Cosmic Horror Elevates a Thrilling Co-Op Shooter appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

They’re all, standing alone and taken together, very promising ingredients, and when Smith starts to bounce all those secrets and all that seclusion around with a little murder in the mix, they make for some juicy plotting. But fun twists and macabre themed party nights do not a thriller make. There is fun to be had here, but for all its reliance on classic horror tropes and the films of a master of cinematic suspense, Scary Movie Night never quite finds a way to become something more. 

Movie blogger and influencer Tippi (yes, she’s named for Tippi Hedren from The Birds) is going through a rough patch. Her upcoming marriage was just called off, and she’s planning to hit the Cannes Film Festival then travel the world as a newly single woman, even shifting her career focus from movies to travel in the process. Her friends Ava, Marlowe, and Constance are supportive, but they also know it might be the last time they see Tippi for a while, so master party planner Ava comes up with the perfect sendoff: A themed scary movie night party, complete with costumes, hosted at the elegant estate of Tippi’s grandmother, Marmee.

Marmee, you see, has her own history with the glamour of Hollywood, and even has a private cinema set up in her mansion. It’s the perfect venue for the perfect night, at least until Tippi starts receiving vaguely threatening notes from her ex, and the first body turns up. 

See what I mean about all the ingredients being there? This book starts with so much promise, particularly when guests turn up for the party and reveal their various movie costumes. There’s so much to chew on, and Smith wastes no time diving directly into the drama of it all. The book moves primarily through Tippi’s first-person perspective, so we get the lowdown on her friends, their various relationships, the quarrels that have defined previous social interactions, and much more. It’s a series of rich veins all tapped at once, and it feels like the book is genuinely going somewhere quite fun. 

Here’s the thing: The book does go somewhere quite fun; it just gets there in a way that I found both frustrating and often unfulfilling. The characters aren’t defined by their choices in the book so much as they’re defined by what Tippi tells us about each of them, and while the notion of Tippi as an unreliable narrator is key to the plot, her supporting cast never really gets a chance to sit up and exist as anything other than archetypes in her head. The dialogue doesn’t help matters in this regard, and I kept finding myself wishing one of Tippi’s friends would just seize the narrative, just for a moment, so I’d get some sense of these people beyond the broad brushstrokes of the protagonist. 

Which brings us to the issue of Tippi as the narrator in the first place. Like the Hitchcock blondes on which she’s clearly modeled, we’re meant to learn about her through her choices, and constantly question whether or not she’s made the right ones. Why did she leave her ex with a wedding looming? Why is she changing career paths? Why does she have to be talked into her own going-away party? How she reacts to these things, and what she’s really after, will be what defines her, but here’s the thing: Tippi, for all her Hitchcockian layers of plotting, never steps forward as a fully formed character. Like the Hitch films playing in the background during the party, she’s more like a suggestion of a character than a person.

Writing first-person present-tense is tricky under the best of circumstances, but doing it when your protagonist is meant to be harboring secrets of her own is especially challenging, and it just…never quite entirely works here, and drawing very direct parallels between her and Hitchcock’s various leading ladies doesn’t really help matters.

But here’s the really interesting part: I wouldn’t be invested in any of these issues were it not for a story that genuinely kept me reading. For all of this book’s shortcomings, and I found a few, it ultimately holds together because Smith has a genuine gift for plot twists, and secrets, and the kind of juicy drama that makes a thriller keep barreling forward on the page. There’s good stuff in here, even if it’s sometimes overshadowed by missteps, and that means that while Scary Movie Night might not obsess you or give you nightmares or stick in your head for weeks on end, it will entertain you. I wanted more from this book, but I also want to see what Miranda Smith writes next, and that’s an achievement in itself. 

Scary Movie Night is available July 14 wherever books are sold. 

The post ‘Scary Movie Night’ Review: A Hitchcock-Themed Thriller Full of Juicy Twists But Not Much Else appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

On the surface, Mariana Cruz (Christina Milian) has a great life. She’s the Head of Personnel at Pana Optic Security, where she’s introduced calmly and confidently dealing with Herbert (Andrew E. Wheeler), a predatory CFO who has abused his company status with a female subordinate. It’s a lengthy sequence, but one that serves to both introduce Mariana’s talent for reading body language, as well as what appears to be the film’s antagonist.

It’s the former aspect that provided the film’s original title, and director Cory Miller provides ample visual cues to help the audience see the world through Mariana’s eyes. Tight close-ups on Herbert’s hands as he fiddles with his cufflinks, or the movement of his feet, confirm when he’s lying, all of which is clocked by Mariana and then unsubtly confirmed by screenwriter Robert Belushi’s dialogue: “Your mouth can lie, but your body won’t”.

After Herbert escapes security and flees the building, He Couldn’t Let Go resets to flesh out the rest of Mariana’s life, including her relationship with hunky fiancé Nick (Gregg Wayans); a plucky best friend in co-worker Fay (Annie Gonzalez); and a beautiful, semi-isolated home in the burbs.

The plot kicks back into gear when Nick is delayed at work, and Mariana is forced to entertain his old College friend Dylan (Steven Strait), a chef visiting from Hong Kong. Shocking no one, there’s nothing but red flags when it comes to Dylan. He’s too perfect: he cooks a near-perfect mofongo, a favorite dish of Mariana’s; he’s familiar with her Bogotá hangouts, and he’s ready to learn salsa moves from her in the living room.

But Mariana’s FBI training (!) means that eventually she begins to pick up on his deceptive body language, and, as the evening progresses, she chips away at his pat answers. What keeps this cat-and-mouse section interesting, since we obviously know there’s more to Dylan than he’s letting on, is how Dylan manages to subtly get under Mariana’s skin while she’s reading him.

Dylan does so by undermining her faith in Nick by suggesting that he has a questionable past, which deftly ties back to the events of the opening with Herbert. The questions Dylan raises also allow the introduction of Calvin (screenwriter Belushi), a red shirt who is called into action when Mariana covertly tries to fact check Dylan’s claims about Nick.

Of course, there’s never any doubt about who will meet a violent end or where the true danger lies. This means that despite the brief 90-minute runtime, the film’s second act drags a little because we’re waiting for the profiler to catch up to what the audience already knows.*

*Sidebar: It’s here that the FBI training element doesn’t fully work because it takes Mariana far too long to catch on to Dylan.

Thankfully, the last act kicks the violence into overdrive as the house becomes a battlefield. While one wishes that Milian was given more to do in the first two acts than simply react to Dylan’s revelations, the character never comes off as dumb. In fact, there are several moments when she makes the best possible decision available and circumstances – or Dylan – cut her off at the pass.

The reveal about who Dylan is and what he wants isn’t particularly revelatory, but the extended climax, which features several chases and violent set pieces, is effective. Milian and Strait also have good chemistry, which helps to carry the saggy pacing of the middle stretch, while the height difference between the actors ensures that Dylan is appropriately menacing when they’re in close quarters.

Aside from the surprising detail about Mariana’s FBI training, He Couldn’t Let Me Go doesn’t stray far from the typical Lifetime formula. For fans of domestic thrillers, however, that won’t be an issue; there’s comfort to be found in these kinds of narratives, so why mess with a good thing?

He Couldn’t Let Go premiered on Lifetime Movie Network on July 11.

The post ‘He Couldn’t Let Go’ Review: Lifetime’s Latest Psychological Thriller Sticks to the Formula appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Daniel (Mark O’Brien) is an astrophysicist living on a remote farm with Michelle (Constance Wu) and their two children (Callista Crowe, Isaac Smelcer-Zhang). He retreats every day to an underground bunker where he monitors and searches the universe for signs of extraterrestrial life, and one morning he finds just that – clear evidence of an advanced civilization that’s successfully found a way to harvest the power of their solar system’s sun. He’s understandably ecstatic and in a hurry to tell the world, but Michelle, a retired scientist who’s nearly given up on humanity as a whole and chooses to focus solely on her family, is adamant that he keep quiet.

He goes against her wishes, obviously, and sends an email filled with data attachments to his boss at NORAD. The result is almost immediate as electrical power, internet connections, and cell service all shut off in and around their small nearby town. Soon small drones are buzzing their farm and peeping in their windows, MQ-9 Reapers are bombing their bunker, and unmarked cars are following their every move.

Writer/director William Woods makes his directorial debut with The Outer Threat, and while his ambitions dwarf his resources, the end result is a compelling family adventure that argues for opening our metaphorical doors to the unknown. A strong cast, that also includes a supporting turn from the always welcome William Fichtner, helps carry the downtime between suspense sequences and minor set pieces. It’s an undeniably small film, but its ideas and conversations are exponentially bigger.

Michelle’s beef with humankind stems from both the personal and the general state of the world at large. Her father (Oscar Hsu) is also a scientist, and like Daniel, he risked valuing his work over his family to the point that Michelle no longer speaks with him. Her bigger issue is knowing that our species is a poor steward of both this planet and each other, and when Daniel accuses her of having little faith in humanity, she replies only “not without reason.”

One of The Outer Threat’s most interesting sequences will feel like a disjointed detour to some, but it actually encapsulates one of the film’s central themes in one simple exchange. The family is on the road and heading to Michelle’s father’s place – she’s not thrilled, but his past work with the government might come in handy – when they decide to stop for food. They reach a tiny town that looks deceptively abandoned and are welcomed into a diner by the owner, Sam (Fichtner), and his young granddaughter.

He’s initially cautious and explains that soldiers had passed through, telling everyone to remain indoors, but he proceeds to feed the family in need while explaining that he’s hoping to scrounge up some fuel to reconnect with the rest of his family. Sam also shares with Michelle that he hesitated to open his door to them simply because they were different. He was fearful, and now he’s ashamed and worried that maybe he’s not the man he thought he was. “What really scares me,” he adds, “was the thought that maybe, just maybe, we’re all rotten.”