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.

The post ‘The Bay’ Review: Real Sharks and Practical Effects Can’t Overcome Familiar Waters appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

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.

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.”

She listens. She leaves. And she never tells him about the numerous extra canisters of gas they have in the back of their pickup truck.

It’s a striking character beat as our protagonist, even halfway through the film, remains steadfast in her disconnect from others. She’s far from the only one in need of change, though, as it was Daniel’s hubris and ego that led to this situation in the first place. “Our kids should be home safe,” she tells him at one point, “but you just had to let the world know how smart you are.” Woods and his cast mine drama from this brilliant but misaligned couple, and both Wu and O’Brien are convincing in their motivations and emotions.

Somewhat less convincing are the film’s occasional swings at big visual effects. Drones and weather balloons in the sky are passable, but explosions, vast encampments, and more land with an iffy digital thud. None of them are deal breakers, though, both because they’re used sparingly and because the characters and their dilemma take center stage.

Woods, whose best and brightest accomplishment remains serving as a producer on the criminally underseen 2020 film, The Kid Detective, arguably bites off a bit more than he can chew with The Outer Threat. His big ideas on both story and humankind are inevitably under-explored in a film of this size, and you’ll be left wishing he had a bigger budget behind him. Audiences are bound to expect something more from the film’s third act, especially, so set your expectations accordingly going in that this is more a film about human connection and ideals than it is a tale of alien invasion.

There are moments here of genuine suspense and thrills, but the film’s power rests in those human beats. From Sam revealing he was concealing a gun while making them pancakes, to Michelle’s father pushing aside huge news of world-altering significance so he can instead spend time with grandchildren he’s only just met, to feuding kids combining their skills for an act of bravery, this is a movie about people who can be so much more than we believe ourselves capable of being.

“For thousands of years human beings have been the dominant species on this planet,” says a character at a certain point, “but that’s no longer the case.” The trailer teases this line, and while you can’t fault the marketing department, it might feel like a bit of a bait and switch by the time the end credits roll. You can choose to be underwhelmed, but here’s hoping you open the door to the film’s hopefulness instead.

The Outer Threat is now available on VOD and Digital.

The post ‘The Outer Threat’ Review: Thoughtful Sci-Fi Thriller Chooses Hope Over Spectacle appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Alice (Souheila Yacoub) is already a survivor before the arrival of Deadites. She’s suffered domestic abuse and violence at the hands of her husband, Will Price (George Pullar), and finally sees reprieve when the lakeside Deadite that bookended Evil Dead Rise causes his death. It’s a calculated move by the undead; they’re in search of a certain Kandarian dagger that happens to be a Price family heirloom. So, Alice’s grieving with her in-laws becomes a bloodbath as she’s forced to confront literal and metaphorical demons, courtesy of the Necronomicon. 

Vaniček, who co-wrote the script with Florent Bernard, presents a rather rotten family tree before any demonic activity. Will is, after all, his parents’ son, and mom and dad are a nasty piece of work. Erroll Shand manages to top his skin-crawling villain from Mārama as Price patriarch Edgar, a volatile vision of toxicity and control. His wife, Susan (Tandi Wright), reveals herself to be even more vile, doling out cruel barbs that indicate she’s quite comfortable with her husband and eldest son’s penchant for violence.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; flickers of ignorance and bigotry occasionally cut through Grandma’s (Maude Davey) dementia-addled mind. The exception to this family’s rot is with timid youngest son Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan), though he’s too browbeaten to protect anyone from the Prices’ wrath. His cowardice is revealed to be a different form of toxicity, though, a byproduct of the kind of fruit this family tree bears. Which is to say that Evil Dead Burn may be the first in the franchise to operate on such a palpable degree of hate. It’s hard to feel fear when you actively despise the majority of these characters and root for their demise.

The good news is that Vaniček delivers on that front. Adhering to the formula, the family members perish one by one in inventive ways. Including the poor family pup, though his Deadite form doesn’t contribute much to the chaos. It’s the ingenious set pieces and demonic sequences that stand out in Evil Dead Burn, calling Vaniček’s nerve-fraying Infested to mind. An early sequence involving a moving car, one that sees multiple bodies fighting for life or death and utilizing whatever weapon they can, is worth the ticket price alone. A later sequence that sees Alice crawling away as an all-out brawl breaks out around her in a long, continuous take also adds thrilling personality. 

Evil Dead Burn sags dramatically between these sequences, though, forcing us to sit through more vitriol from vicious in-laws with only contact lenses and wounds to distinguish them from human or demon. The somber tone is matched by a flat gray palette evocative of ash, made more literal by the falling of snow. The cold, flat aesthetic also diminishes some of the horror’s visceral impact. It all builds to a rather dismal climax that introduces a shoddy CG monstrosity that makes Alice’s demons made of burnt flesh.

In a film series that has, thus far, maintained fierce commitment to practical effects, the clunky final boss of demons here winds up a huge disappointment. At least the filmmaker commits fully to the Burn part of the title, forgoing the blood-drenched finales of the previous two films to deliver something a bit fresher.

Evil Dead Burn is so heavy-handed in its domestic violence theme that subtext is just text, which in turn clashes with the upbeat splatstick fan service bits. A mid-credit scene aims to bring the laughs, but the post-credit scene is so egregious in its fan service that it reads desperate and feels shoehorned in just to remind fans how much we love this particular character. 

Vaniček most certainly understands the assignment when it comes to delivering gruesome freakouts and brutal carnage. It’s everything else around it that largely frustrates. Yacoub is a winsome final girl who’s already been battered before the events of the film, then we’re forced to watch the rest of the family pile on in even worse ways.

It’s the type of bleak that’s at constant odds with the Evil Dead formula and callbacks, making for a tonally uneven vision of domestic abuse. It makes you miss when the ancient evil in this series didn’t need a trauma metaphor to terrorize. That’s what the demons are for.

Evil Dead Burn releases in theaters on July 10.

The post ‘Evil Dead Burn’ Review: In-Laws Are Hell in Sequel Burned by Its Own Ambition appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Night Nurse, the feature debut from writer/director Georgia Bernstein (best known as a producer on things like All Jacked Up and Full of Worms), thrives in this strangeness, and it’s at its best when it embraces it wholly and without judgement. Despite some narrative stumbles, particularly in the third act, this is an emotionally precise, compelling psychological thriller with layers to spare.

Eleni (Cemre Paksoy) has just taken a job as a nurse at a luxury retirement community, the kind where each patient has a private villa and receives 24-hour care from a pair of nurses, one for daytime and one for night. As the newbie of the group, Eleni gets night nurse duty and ends up paired with Douglas (Bruce McKenzie), a charming, strangely alluring man battling dementia. With input from Douglas’s day shift nurse, Mona (Eleonore Hendricks), Eleni quickly becomes fascinated by the man, who might be a high-functioning old guy with memory issues or might just be a master con artist. 

Soon, the latter impression takes hold, as Douglas ropes Eleni into his ongoing game of phone scamming other members of the community for cash. The danger of these scams, and the risk Eleni feels when she gets on the phone to pretend to be a distressed granddaughter in need of money, is intoxicating, but the longer the game goes on, the more she has to wonder: Who’s taking care of who, and what happens when the relationship starts to fray?

Bernstein approaches this narrative with an intense intimacy, a closeness to the characters and their contained little world of Douglas’s villa that hums with menace and uncertainty. From an opening credits sequence that feels worthy of Brian De Palma to a breathtaking moment when Eleni first discovers what Douglas is really up to, Bernstein leaves us no distance from these characters, and that’s by design. The closeness, helped along by inventive and painterly cinematography from Lidia Nikonova, builds a universe within Douglas’s villa, and probes Eleni’s persistent loneliness while she gets closer and closer to her charge and his schemes.

While it does function as a psychological thriller, with all the requisite darkness, tension, and destructive behavior, Night Nurse works best when it’s patient, something Bernstein and editor Alex Jacobs underscore at every opportunity. The film refuses to spoon feed its audience the details of each character’s motives and judgement, leaving us instead with the often impulsive, often intuitive decisions of Eleni, Douglas, and Mona as they move through this strange space they’ve created for themselves.

It’s a filmmaking method that leans heavily on the performances to communicate emotional subtleties, and while Bernstein’s craft is on-point, it’s the work of Paksoy and McKenzie that makes the movie. Together they’re a duo we can’t look away from, their interactions sometimes erotically charged, sometimes tender in a way that recalls a father-daughter bond, but always laced with something darker. Paksoy can make entire scenes of silence into compelling drama, and McKenzie is a relentless bomb of charm and danger. 

As all of these elements swirl together, Night Nurse becomes a meditation on the strangeness of the bond between a caregiver and a patient, and how far each will go to hold up the other. Eleni enters Douglas’s world and finds a home there not because she’s innately suited to criminal enterprise, but because she finds something thrilling and genuinely satisfying in meeting the old man’s needs, even if they are sometimes nefarious. Douglas, for his part, takes satisfaction in manipulating those around him, but he also relishes the tenderness that comes from Eleni and Mona’s devotion. These elements dance around each other so delicately that it genuinely feels like just about anything could happen next, and for most of its runtime Night Nurse milks that feeling for all it’s worth.

The only place it falters, unfortunately, is in the final act, when characters move into place for a conclusion that feels only partially earned. One of the dangers of building a film so firmly on top of intuition, intimacy, and patience is what happens when you let all of that fall away in service of plotting, and Night Nurse never quite makes that transition. Rough-edged though it is, though, the ending can’t take away from the solid filmmaking foundation that built this movie, and by the third act that foundation is so firm that the film still mostly holds together. 

There are stumbles in Night Nurse, as there are in basically any directorial debut, but those do little to diminish the promise at work in this movie. Georgia Bernstein is a star in the making on the indie scene, and I can’t wait to see what she does next. 

Night Nurse is in theaters July 10.

The post ‘Night Nurse’ Review: A Solid Psychological Thriller Fueled by Uneasy Intimacy appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Games like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Return of the Obra Dinn, or The Outer Wilds all have this same great feeling of progression through knowledge rather than experience points or items, making the process of synthesizing information an integral part of the equation. Last year, Evil Trout Inc added a new game to that pantheon with their remake of The Roottrees are Dead, a deduction game about filling out the family tree of a candy magnate. To follow up on that great game, they remade last year’s Type Help as The Incident at Galley House, an intriguing new mystery game with clever mechanics and an engaging story.

Something strange happened at Galley House in 1936. The mystery remains unsolved, and now, decades later, you arrive at the abandoned manor with a peculiar machine that lets you see echoes of the past. Unfortunately, the machine does not necessarily give you an unbroken chronological view of what went down, forcing you to become deeply immersed in the events in order to follow the activities in the house and solve the mystery once and for all.

The premise is fairly simple. It’s the night of a family gathering at Galley House, and an unfamiliar guest shows up, insisting he was invited by someone that no one at the residence has ever heard of. There’s a bit of commotion as everyone tries to figure out what to do with the man, and that’s when the first body shows up. Over the course of the next 24 hours, the corpses continue to pile up as things only get more confusing, leading you to conclude that something otherworldly may be going on at Galley House. While the spooky old manor vibes are off the charts, the true nature of the ‘haunting’ is unconventional in execution, leaving you with a surprising mystery to untangle.

A Murder Mystery Told Out of Order

Using your machine, you see scenes from the past play out as static images that are lightly animated, but the hook of the game involves how you access those scenes. Much like games like Her Story or Immortality, you’ll be slowly uncovering these scenes in a non-linear fashion, based on the unique setup of your contraption. In order to view a scene, you need to have the moment in the timeline, the location, and who is in the scene. At the beginning, everyone is identified with numbers, and only a handful of locations are given to you, forcing you to listen carefully to the contents of the dialogue to make connections.

For example, you may know that in scene two, person one is in the entrance with person three and four. Listening carefully to this scene may give you a hint as to where any of these people are going next, or maybe a new location to add to your list. Slowly, you’ll fill out the rooms of the house and begin to associate numbers to names or physical descriptions, giving you valuable information to continue your search. It may seem like merely watching scenes isn’t an exciting gameplay mechanic, but the level at which you need to pay attention to these details makes every sequence engaging, forcing you to lean in and fully understand what’s going on.

As I mentioned, I had a notebook with me the whole time, and front and center on that first page was the list of numbers and any information I could get about their identity and relationships. Each scene I was scribbling down new possibilities to enter into the machine based on what was playing out in front of me, giving me tantalizing threads to pull on as I pieced together what was going on. It might not be for everyone, but it’s a riveting feeling to finally figure out the relationship between two characters or finally figure out how a person ended up with a specific item.

An Interface That Makes Every Discovery Feel Earned

To make the fantasy feel complete, you’re not just simply typing in codes; you’re actually interacting with the machine in an extremely tactile fashion to input the correct information. There’s a little slide for the location, knobs to switch on for each character, and a dial to tune in the correct spot in the timeline. When you have it all set up for what you believe is the correct information, there’s a big switch to throw that brings the machine to life. A wonderful little moment of tension follows as the machine powers up, either leading you to a new scene if your inputs are correct or a disappointing shutdown if you get it wrong. I’m a huge fan of this kind of crunchy UI that mimics in-fiction machinery, and it really goes a long way in enhancing the overall experience of The Incident at Galley House.

There can be tons of information to parse at once, and even with a well-organized notebook, it’s going to feel overwhelming at times, but the game has built-in systems to help you track everything. First of all, you’re able to sort any scenes you’ve discovered by timeline, person, or location, allowing you to follow the information in whatever way you need to at the time. Need to figure out something specific about an event in the Living Room? Just tab on over to the Living Room location and it’s all laid out for you.

The timeline section in particular contains incredibly useful information, as it will show you which people you have not located yet during that moment. For example, you may be watching a scene where someone mentions hearing a conversation in a different room, and you can go to the timeline and see that there are only two people unaccounted for at that time, giving you the information you need. There’s even a handy search function that will highlight scenes that mention specific words, something that saved me on several occasions.

Helpful Tools Without Giving Away the Answers

Even with all these tools, you may still find yourself stuck, so there are a few more ways that The Incident at Galley House will help point you in the right direction. Just like in Roottrees are Dead, each scene will show a number on it if there’s more information in it that you haven’t found a way to use. The higher the number, the more information contained within, so it’s always a good idea to look at those first when you’re at a dead end and are trying to figure out where to even start.

Also like Roottrees, there’s a robust and forgiving hint system built into the game that will gradually give you increasingly specific hints when you request it. These start as simple as “where did person X say they were going after this scene” to more pointed hints, before finally just giving you the correct code if you continue to ask. The first tier of hints is so light that I would frequently use it when launching the game for the first time, just as a reminder of what threads there are to pull on if I didn’t have something extremely obvious circled in my notes.

Detective stories like this can really feel bad when you hit a brick wall and can’t figure out a way forward, and The Incident at Galley House gives you so many ways to help move you forward to the finale without taking away all the satisfaction of figuring it out.

A Memorable Cast Hidden Behind Silhouettes

There’s an excellent web of characters that you’re introduced to throughout the course of the 10 to 12 hour narrative, and they are all brought to life vividly through expressive voice acting. While each character is represented by silhouettes with numbers on them, at least until you start being able to associate images with each of them later on, you are still drawn into the scenes thanks to these performances. I felt like I got a sense of who each of these characters was and how they related to each other, making both the detective work and the narrative quality equally satisfying. The nonlinearity of the storytelling adds a layer of investment that draws you in, making the mechanics of the game an integral part of the narrative experience.

As much as I loved most of the tale I uncovered, I think the final act suffers a bit both narratively and mechanically. Without getting into spoilers, there’s a twist in the final stretch that changes things up a bit, and while the switch was initially exciting, it felt like it got the story a bit off track. Mechanically, the scenes become longer, making it a little harder to parse what exactly you’re supposed to glean from the sequence without scrolling through its long transcript. Narratively, it became a bit exposition-heavy, trying to explain the events at the expense of the characters I had grown invested in. It’s not a bad ending by any means; I just felt slightly let down by the change-up, and found the answers in the end slightly less satisfying and a little more frustrating to navigate.

I had heard a lot of great things about Type Help when it was getting buzz last year, but I decided to wait for The Incident at Galley House remake version, and I’m glad I did. The combination of the new audio and visual layer gives the game so much life, adding a solid presentation to a razor-sharp detective game. Its haunting mystery gives us a myriad of compelling characters and relationships, and the supernatural element of what’s going on is something unexpected and unique. The rush you get when things finally start clicking into place is a feeling that other genres just can’t capture, and there were some really excellent moments of revelation that were subtly revealed in a satisfying manner that made me feel like I actively figured it out.

Even with the late game stumbles, this game nails both the mechanical and narrative aspects of a great mystery, creating a compelling detective game that’s challenging while also giving you the tools to meet the challenge.

Review code provided by publisher. The Incident at Galley House launches July 14th on Steam.

The post ‘The Incident at Galley House’ Review: Supernatural Whodunit Builds Upon Its Solid Original Version appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Then Tingle will drop one of the single creepiest bits of imagery you’ve ever read, and you’re right back in the horror space. It’s not always a jump scare, but it is always a pulsing feeling of dread that keeps you hooked through the rest of the book. 

Fabulous Bodies, Tingle’s latest horror novel, carries on these gifts, and the promise Tingle showed on books like Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays. His fiction’s growing ever more confident and precise, and his eye for horrific detail hasn’t dimmed in the least, making this a summer reading delight for horror fans. 

Poppy is a single mother determined to make a better life for her daughter, particularly after growing up in group homes and foster systems. By day, she works hard to keep up the flow of upbeat, enthusiastic content as a fashion influencer, and while that’s going well, it’s not yet making ends meet. To make up the difference, she moonlights as a grave robber, lifting bodies from morgues and funeral homes and selling their pieces on the black market. It’s grueling, dangerous work, and it’s about to pay off big. Out of the blue, Poppy gets a call to transport the newly dead body of her musical hero, the legendary Eddie Michaels. It’s a weird gig, but the payout is big enough that she could walk away from her macabre side gig forever. Poppy takes the job, and things get complicated when Eddie turns out to be, well, only mostly dead. 

From the moment Eddie’s corpse enters the picture, Fabulous Bodies takes on the vibe of a road novel, as the grave robber and the undead rock star make stop after stop, and Poppy tries again and again to wrap her mind about what she’s gotten herself into, and how she might get herself out. It’s a delightful premise, and Tingle never loses his grip on the fun of it. No matter how dark the novel gets, and it does get quite dark, the narrative keeps barreling forward, delivering macabre laughs and moments of beautifully gruesome invention along the way. 

Because he’s set his protagonist up as a fashion influencer, Tingle has lots of room to play in the space of how we view human bodies, both alive and dead, how we use them, and what we value in them. This is the emotional core of Fabulous Bodies, and while it’s sometimes overshadowed by the runaway train of the plot, it remains a potent source of thematic exploration throughout the book, and it gets more complicated when you consider certain gifts Eddie’s been granted in his strange supernatural state.

In essence, we’re looking at a story about a grave robber who discovers a body that not only fights back, but takes control of any given situation. That throws Poppy for repeated loops and keeps the plot moving, but it also makes us consider on a deeper level exactly what we value about our own physical form, and what might happen when we lose our grip on it entirely. 

The book’s themes and emotional concerns hum through the whole narrative, but the overwhelming impression I got while reading Fabulous Bodies was just how much damn fun this book is. I couldn’t stop reading it, not just because it’s so filled with sudden swerves and ghoulish setpieces, but because Tingle has honed his horror storytelling down to a fine, very sharp point. Fabulous Bodies moves like a roller coaster, complete with a tension-filled ramp-up and a finale that’ll leave you breathless by the time the ride is over.

If you haven’t been reading Chuck Tingle’s horror work up to this point, it’s time to get on board, because he’s just getting started, and he’s already mastered the art of the scary page-turner.

Fabulous Bodies is available now.

The post ‘Fabulous Bodies’ Review: Chuck Tingle Latest is a Wild, Unputdownable Ride appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The problem is that when you come at something like Scream, you better not miss, and for all its well-cultivated ’90s horror vibes and its efforts to become something singular along the way, there’s a lot about You’re Dead to Me that misses. This is a movie that wants to be at least half a dozen things at the same time, and while it’s got solid visuals, a game cast, and lots of bravado, it’s simply spread too thin to make any of its ideas satisfying. 

Indy (Siena Agudong) and Brynn (Jessica Belkin) are best friends, bonded by their shared struggles with loss (Brynn’s mother is gone, as is one of Indy’s sisters) and the feeling that they’re the only people in their high school who truly understand one another. When we meet them, they’ve opted to stay away from the traditional high school celebrations and host a “Too Pretty for Prom” party at a secluded mansion owned by Brynn’s absent father. It’s a chance to grow closer and celebrate their way, even if the only other guest is their mutual friend Jordan (Conor Husting) and everyone else seems to have opted for prom. 

But the vibes are soon squashed. While Indy and Jordan try to work up the courage to give Brynn some bad news about their post-high school plans, a classmate turns up dead, reigniting speculation that a serial killer is operating in town. Throw in a deranged neighbor (Denise Richards) who won’t take no for an answer, and it feels like the walls are closing in on the trio, particularly as Indy starts to have visions she can’t explain tied to her sister, Brynn’s mother, and a room she’s never seen before.

A slasher and weird visions? Yes, and here’s where You’re Dead to Me starts to play with its true tribute to ’90s horror, helped along by co-writer and producer Terry Castle, daughter of William Castle, who helped get those Dark Castle remakes off the ground at the turn of the Millennium.

This is a movie that isn’t satisfied to simply be a slasher, playing within the firmly established bounds of that subgenre. It wants to be a slasher and a psychological drama and a possibly supernatural piece of Gothic horror, with notes on internalized misogyny and conformity sprinkled in along the way. There are classic slasher sequences with lots of suspense, but there are also wild dream sequences full of quick cuts, jittery frame rates, and jump scares, all eventually centering around Indy and the transitional phase of her life where the film begins.

She’s on the cusp of college, of a new life full of possibilities, but she feels beholden to the people who got her there, to the support system she’s leaving behind, and, of course, to her best friend. Her mental state is reflected in the often chaotic nature of the film, and when You’re Dead to Me is playing within these bounds, helped along with dreamy visuals and genuine tension, it’s working. 

But somewhere along the way, that sense of chaos starts to grate against the audience, and You’re Dead to Me starts to drag under the weight of its own ambitions. It’s clear that the hybrid subgenre mash-up of the story is meant to render it unconventional in both the slasher space and the psychological horror space, but that can only take you so far before the film needs a narrative around which it can coalesce. The core has to stay strong, and for all the style points it racks up along the way, the movie just can’t hold on to that emotional tether that keeps us hooked to the end, in part because it wants so badly to keep us guessing that we lose all sense of direction. 

I’ll give you an example: At one point, a teenage boy in the year 2025 answers a phone call from another teenage boy who simply says that he’s sending a link. A phone call just to say “I’m sending you a link.” Why? Because the film has established, in the proud Scream tradition, that when the phone rings, a killer might be calling, so the phone needs to ring to keep up suspense. In another scene, a character sits up and swears she hears something, and as we in the audience hear a very audible human scream, she says she hears “footsteps.”

Characters who come and go may as well have “Red Herring” stamped on their foreheads, and the film spends so much time building up lore and backstory that it barely leaves room for slasher chases and spectral nightmares. Then, when the spectral nightmares do come, we’re left unsure what’s real anymore, until the third act finally, sort of, explains why it all feels so disjointed. It’s a movie that aims at deliberate obfuscation and misdirection, but just ends up confusing. 

Which is a shame, because there’s a lot of talent on display here, and I don’t just mean with the visuals. The young cast is earnest and exciting, the premise is interesting, there are flashes of really solid storytelling in the script, and the kills, when we get them, actually work.

If this film had picked a lane, or even two lanes, and tightened up its thematic concerns along the way, it might be something much more satisfying. As it is, it’s an overstuffed mess, but at least it’s an interesting one.

You’re Dead to Me is available on Digital and VOD on July 7.

The post ‘You’re Dead to Me’ Review: An Ambitious but Overcrowded Love Letter to ’90s Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In addition to mobile games, they’ve also created interactive movie experiences where you use your remote to select narrative options at branching points. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was a fairly successful version of this, but my sentimental favorite was the one where WWE’s New Day had to escape a murder house boobytrapped by The Undertaker. Even if some of these made a bit of a splash, it seems it never really hit with mainstream audiences the way their shows do.

One of the studios they purchased while trying to break into the game space was Night School Studio, the creators of the spooky narrative series Oxenfree. This struck me as a particularly smart acquisition, as this type of narrative game seems like something that would feel at home under the Netflix umbrella. While they did release Oxenfree II while owned by the streaming giant, it was released on traditional platforms, which led me to wonder when their first Netflix exclusive would show up.

While they did produce a game called Thronglets, a mobile version of a plot element from an episode of “Black Mirror”, the recently released Unhinged seems to be one of the highest profile Netflix games in a long time.

Unhinged is a first-person, narrative-driven thriller starring Zoë Kravitz, Sadie Sink, and Troy Baker. This 30-minute experience, played on your TV through the standard Netflix app, is controlled by your phone, using some clever tricks to make the whole thing feel more immersive. It’s a neat variation on the “interactive movie” subgenre, with a tiny bit of point-and-click adventure game DNA thrown in for good measure, but it doesn’t exactly offer you as many options as something like Until Dawn.

Kravitz plays Ava, a woman who is hunkering down in her apartment complex during a dangerous hurricane. As she talks with her friend Claire, who lives in a neighboring building, about possibly leaving to find shelter elsewhere, she finds herself in a desperate chase with a crazed killer that stalks her through the halls of the building. It’s a decent setup for a very contained story, but I wish there was a little more meat on the bones. The voice acting is great, but there’s not really a ton of characterization for the two leads, and the killer was a bit “generic psycho” for my taste. There’s some implied backstory with other tenants in the building, but it’s not enough to make me feel like there’s a web of relationships that would give the story more emotional weight.

To play the game, you open up your Netflix app wherever you usually watch, then select the game. This will bring up a QR code, which you’ll scan on your phone, prompting you to download a controller app that will sync up to the game. The majority of the way you’ll interact is by pointing at the screen like a Wiimote, which selects on-screen options for Ava and shines her flashlight around the environment.

While this does give it the feel of an FMV game, Unhinged is rendered in a photorealistic graphics style, and while not quite to the level of something like P.T., it does the trick of drawing you into the action. You’re still put on a pretty strict path while moving around, which is done automatically when you select a direction, but moving your phone gives you the ability to look around your environment, even if only slightly.

The real immersive part of the game is the fact that your phone also acts as Ava’s phone. The plot is frequently moved forward by calls and text messages that you answer as you would on your own cellular device. As sound blasts out of your phone, it does put you in the shoes of the main character, momentarily worrying you that the sound of the call or text is going to alert your on-screen stalker. This part of Unhinged truly takes advantage of the format to draw you deeper into the story, though unfortunately it’s so effective that I wished the game found even more ways to use it.

There are a couple clever moments that make for unique ways of delivering twists or doing extremely light puzzle solving, but most of the time it’s just used to allow your friend to give you instructions on how to move the narrative forward.

All these mechanics come together to give the illusion of tension without actually fully delivering on it. When you get to a situation where you’re under pressure, a timer bar will appear on the top of the screen, indicating how long you have to get to safety. It’s a fine gimmick, but it comes off as a little hard to gauge. Since you don’t have direct control over your character, all your actions are very heavily animated, and sometimes your choice ends up taking longer than you think it will not because of the idea behind the choice, but because of the length of the animation. Fortunately, if you die, you’ll just pick back up at a checkpoint right before the choice, and you’ll even be treated with a voiceover discussion between police officers examining the crime scene, describing how you died.

So in theory, there is tension, counting down as the killer gets closer and closer to reaching you, but what you’re actually doing almost never feels like it’s testing you in any meaningful way. Actual choices come up very infrequently, making most of your interaction with the game world just scanning your pointer across the screen looking for an interaction point to progress, hoping the animation doesn’t take up too much time before the timer runs out. I didn’t hit a ton of friction points with it, and there’s even a Story Mode if you want to take out all possibility of death, but I found myself wishing there were more ways to affect the world around me. The phone calls and texts felt really fun and clever, but the rest of the gameplay just didn’t match that, making me wish there was more emphasis on the unique interaction model rather than the more traditional one.

Even though the mechanics aren’t necessarily pushing the tension as hard as they could be, the actual content of Unhinged’s story contains some pretty brutal situations. The villain isn’t the most unique or fleshed out, but he’s responsible for some gruesome moments that raised the stakes to make the game feel more intense. It makes your fight for survival feel that much more desperate, so even if you’re just highlighting icons on the screen, it feels more visceral thanks to what Ava is witnessing.

While I appreciate the game being lean and mean, I wish it was just a little bit longer. Thirty minutes is a pretty short runtime, and it doesn’t feel like the story for Unhinged has the time to come up with something that really sets it apart from other stories of its kind. The focus on the hurricane at the beginning made me think that was going to be more integral to the plot, but it didn’t really do much aside from explaining why the apartment complex was so empty. Thrillers like this live or die on how memorable their killer is, and there wasn’t anything really clever or unique about him. If this game doubled its runtime to the length of a standard Netflix show, it might have given them more room to build character relationships that made the action more meaningful, or at least given it a bit more personality of its own.

Night School Studio is on to something with the format of Unhinged. The combination of on screen and on phone prompts makes the game feel more immersive, drawing you in even when the narrative itself doesn’t feel fully formed or unique. The short runtime is both a help and a hindrance, keeping the pacing tight at the cost of adding any depth to the proceedings. This feels like a great first draft, and I hope that Night School is given the freedom to continue experimenting with the model, as the level of polish shown here was promising.

Even with its flaws, if you’ve already got a Netflix subscription, there’s no reason not to sit down for half an hour to check out Unhinged. If you can keep your expectations in check, it’s a nasty little thrillride that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Unhinged is streaming now on Netflix.

The post ‘Unhinged’ Review: Netflix’s Interactive Horror Thriller Is Short But Serviceable Gaming Fare appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Matinee (also released as Midnight Matinee in some territories) is a movie that understands this from the jump, setting up a stunning opening kill that predates a similar sequence in Scream 2 by almost a full decade. A smart, layered, very stylish Canadian slasher released at the tail end of the 1980s, it’s one of those films that’s spent a lot of time in the dark even among the horror faithful (I’m willing to admit that I hadn’t seen it until recently). Now, a new Kino Cult Blu-ray release is out to change that, and it reveals a slasher essential that, while not perfect, has charm and style to spare. 

Two years ago, the Paramount Theater in the small town of Halston closed its doors when, during the theater’s annual horror festival, a young moviegoer was murdered in his seat, mid-movie. Leads in the murder quickly dried up, and the case is cold enough now that the town barely talks about it anymore. Fortunately for local horror fans, that means the Paramount can open again in time for its Halloween horror festival, and they’ve got a hotshot producer (William B. Davis) in town for just such an occasion.

As the festival draws closer, the film introduces us to a variety of characters, including rebellious teenager Sherri (Beatrice Boepple), her boyfriend Lawrence (Jeff Schultz), her overbearing mother Marilyn (Gillian Barber), and the theater’s kindly owner, Earle (Don S. Davis), who’s just hoping he can run a business without more bloodshed. But someone clearly remembers what happened two years ago, and their violent streak is on a collision course with opening night. 

Matinee has quite a few things going for it, but what stands out right away, and maintains a consistent grip right up through a wonderful crescendo in the third act, is the film’s visual style. Writer/Director Richard Martin, cinematographer Cyrus Block, and special effects wizard Bob Comer make great use of the film’s limited locations, giving the movie a charming small-town feel reminiscent of Halloween or The Blob while building a self-contained little world inside the theater itself that’ll remind you of films like Popcorn and Demons.

The colors are striking, the framing is clever, and the film clearly has a ball making references to all kinds of other horror cinema moments ranging from The Phantom of the Opera to Friday the 13th. The kills, while relatively sparing with gore, are delivered with style and appropriate tension, creating that sense of unease right in the middle of a place where we as movie fans should be comfortable: The movie theater. Along the way, the Paramount itself becomes a character, and this release definitely dials up its retro splendor.  

The Blu-ray upgrade preserves the film’s attention to detail and ambitious cinematography, helping the colors to pop while never letting go of the texture and feel of a relatively low-budget horror film made in Canada in the 1980s. There’s a certain gauziness to many exploitation films of this era, that haloed light you get when the scene is perhaps overexposed just a little too much. It makes the film dreamlike even when it reaches for realism, and Kino Cult’s upgrade preserves that feeling. Throw in a smart script and a whodunit plot that leans heavily into the psychological details of each character, and you’ve got a winner. 

There are a couple of things that stick out as slight issues here, including the lack of special features beyond an excellent commentary from film historians and Kino regulars Jason Pichonsky and Paul Corupe. The disc is quite reasonably priced, so it’s not a letdown economically speaking, but I’d love a deeper dive into the film and the Canadian slasher boom in general, particularly for a movie like this that seems to have faded from so many memories, including mine. The sound mix also has some issues, probably left over from previous releases, that might have you playing with your volume settings a little more than you’d like over the course of a 90-minute film, particularly when lines of ADR dialogue crop up. 

These are minor concerns, though, and they do nothing to diminish the impact of Matinee, or the joy that’ll come from watching this film for the first time if you’re a slasher devotee in search of something new, or even someone who saw this movie way back when hoping to relive its glories. This is one of those slashers I’ll be talking about with fellow horrorphiles for a long time, and it’s because of this disc.

Matinee is now available on Blu-ray from Kino Cult.

The post ‘Matinee’ Blu-ray Review: Kino Cult Revives an Overlooked Canadian Slasher Gem appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Whether he’s playing with traditional novelistic forms, holding conversations with characters across time, or pushing his stories to their bleakest and strangest possible conclusions (if they have concrete conclusions at all, Tremblay is a daring novelist, never playing it safe for his audience or himself. The author of A Head Full of Ghosts, Horror Movie, and more is always pushing for something in his fiction, digging into the core of an issue until he finds its bloody, beating heart. 

Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep, Tremblay’s latest novel, is no different. From the title alone you might surmise certain things about the narrative, from its Philip K. Dick influence to its sci-fi-horror premise, and you’d be right. But Tremblay always pushes beyond those initial assumptions, and here we get not just a gripping sci-fi-horror showcase, but something much stranger and more profound: An exploration of what it means to be human, fragile bodies and all, in the age of AI. 

Julia, Tremblay’s protagonist, is in a strange place when the novel begins. A former gaming streamer who’s retreated from her digital spotlight, she’s in search of a new direction in life, and she finds one in the last place she might expect. Julia’s mother, who runs a California tech behemoth, has a job offer for her daughter, an unprecedented one. It seems that the company has introduced proprietary new technology into the body of a brain-dead man, and now they need to see what this tech can do. Julia’s job? Using her gaming skills to take this human vegetable (Julia calls him “Bernie” because of Weekend at Bernie’s) from one side of the country to another, using a stealthy controller purpose-built for the experience. 

This is a wonderfully ghoulish premise on which to build a novel, and Tremblay makes full use of its nightmare fuel. As Julia comes to grips with the implications of what she’s about to do, and what she might discover while doing it, the author punctuates her journey with trips into the mad mindscape of Bernie himself, a dark reflection of our own world populated with half-remembered moments and images and hallucinations. As simple exercises in writing craft, they recall Philip K. Dick at his best, building the same sense of overwhelm and wonder so present in his work, but Tremblay’s after something else as well, and it’s purpose-built for this moment. 

The novel builds deliberate juxtapositions with Bernie’s half-remembered life and Julia’s ongoing one, sending them barreling at each other from opposite ends of consciousness. Julia’s brain functions as only her brain can, a mass of pop culture references and dreams and memories she both cherishes and would rather forget. Bernie’s world is one of shadows, but also one of constantly shifting perspective, as the tech in his head remakes him. He’s not just a passenger in his own body, but an unwilling participant in a Frankenstein-ing of human and machine. It’s not the first time an author has attempted such a thing, but through Tremblay’s evocative, visceral prose, it’s one of the most effective, and it hits on something vital that Tremblay says in a way that only he can. 

Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep is a thumping sci-fi yarn, a journey into new frontiers through untested technology with vast implications for the future of the world, and if Tremblay had only explored that genre, he’d have done well. When the horror elements creep in, though, Tremblay’s work raises endless questions over what exactly we are sacrificing when we let machines get so close not just to our flesh, but to our consciousness, even when, medically speaking, that consciousness is gone.

Tremblay breaks this sacrifice down in terrifying detail, sometimes quite literally breaking down the basic flow of prose in Bernie’s head until he’s been hijacked by words and phrases and shapes that he doesn’t understand. Along the way, Tremblay gets almost metafictional with his probing of this hybrid consciousness, asking us to question not just where the story will go, but who gets to be in control when the narrative becomes a runaway train. 

All of this makes Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep the most ambitious book of Paul Tremblay’s career, which is really saying something. His daring, his boldness, and his ability to mine the unspeakable are on full display, and they work together to deliver one of the year’s most unnerving genre books.

Tremblay’s at the peak of his powers with this one. 

Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep hits shelves on June 30. 

The post ‘Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep’ Book Review: Paul Tremblay’s Primal Scream Against the AI Push appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Strung is already off to a tropey start when the protagonist, a bereft violinist named Laila (Chloe Bailey), is vividly hallucinating during one of her recitals. Who does she see in that ghastly vision on stage? The sister whose death she blames herself for, of course. That’s when Laila wakes up from what’s actually a hallucination within a dream.

After a one-night stand with a handsome rando, another too-good-to-be-true opportunity soon falls into Laila’s lap. Because she’s broke, couch-surfing and forced to practice the violin inside her best friend’s closet, she jumps on it without much forethought. That opportunity is indeed suspicious, though; a wealthy grandmother (Lynn Whitfield) hires the main character to be her granddaughter’s live-in music teacher. The pay and accommodations are definitely good, but what about the client? Or clients, as it turns out.

Strung: Anna Diop as Imani, Lucien Laviscount as Marcus. (Photo by: Ilze Kitshoff/Blumhouse)

First, there’s pianist-in-training Zuri (Romy Woods), the walking definition of “precocious child in a horror movie”. She hides behind the bizarre mask once belonging to her late father, and her preferred form of communication is sharing obscure facts. Eventually, though, Zuri is the least of Laila’s problems; it’s her neglectful, demanding, and temperamental mother (Anna Diop) who proves to be the greatest obstacle at each turn. Diop just about snatches every scene with her zealous performance as the expectant Imani. Yet as amusing as that moody matriarch can be, her behavior brings up a good question: Is this cartoonishly devious character the legit villain here, or is she simply a red herring?

The kid’s creepy mask, along with Blumhouse’s involvement, might suggest a different kind of horror movie is at work here. Strung, however, is more like a smutty modernization of classic domestic thrillers that feature big houses, imperiled women, and heaps of paranoia. Keep in mind, this is not a bait-and-switch situation; Alan B. McElroy’s screenplay never leads the viewer down a different path, only to then send them another way.

Strung feels stitched together from other (and better) movies, and your sussing out the suspects is never a hard task. But on the plus side, this movie is often bright and even a little colorful; it’s not too riddled with scenes of flat darkness or washed-out palettes. The music is also another area of interest; certain choices corroborate that comparison to old Hollywood thrillers.

Chloe Bailey as Laila. (Photo by: Ilze Kitshoff/Blumhouse)

So while Strung does string out a number of overplayed twists—with some being less foreseeable than others—it’s a bit comforting to see how some ideas never cease to be used, no matter how familiar they’ve become. The cast’s eagerness also compensates for the general been-there-done-that quality. So often, their commitment to the story is integral to the movie’s best hand-over-mouth moments (and there are quite a few).

Joe Bob Briggs once said the best source of exploitation movies today is the Lifetime network. If you agree, as well as love Tubi’s own efforts in similar filmmaking, then Strung is made for you. This movie taps that same vein of suspense schlock, all while adding a few flourishes of its own.

Strung streams on Peacock starting on June 26.

Strung (photo: Peacock)

The post ‘Strung’ Review: Blumhouse Thriller Plays a Familiar But Fun Tune appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Camp finds itself in harmony, not contention, with its dreamlike parts. Even when a scene comes across as straightforward, there is still something rather surreal in its presentation. Take, for instance, that game of truth or dare that prefaces the story’s inciting incident. Zola Grimmer’s character is pressed to dish out a juicier truth that, ultimately, goes on to make her audience feel both engaged and uncomfortable. The whole quality of this moment is similar to that of our most mortifying dreams.

As the title indicates, the movie takes place at a summer camp. This, of course, is only after Grimmer’s character, Emily, has been directly involved with another person’s death. This time, it’s the loss of a loved one, as opposed to a stranger, that sends the protagonist into a deep and guilt-ridden depression. Emily’s father (Michael Tan) then helps turn things around by signing Emily up to be a camp counselor. That’s when the movie enters more familiar territory, in terms of genre, but astonishingly, Fast doesn’t ever settle into the same-old routine that we now associate with these sorts of camping trips.

Zola Grimmer as Emily in Camp.

Grief and trauma are always on display here. From Emily becoming something of a death magnet in her life, to the other camp counselors working through their own private issues, this movie doesn’t ever avoid personal tragedy and suffering. However, these components of the story are handled with a kind of care that doesn’t come up often enough in modern horror. Rather than sensationalizing or exploiting Emily’s pain, there is an aware attempt at helping her. And not just using the cinematic tactics that would force the character to confront her fears, either.

Camp has the setup for a more traditional-acting horror movie. A bunch of young women ominously head off into the woods, unaware of all the potential terrors that could be waiting for them. Even the trailer implies a sinister movie. In contrast, though, Fast goes the opposite way of addressing Emily’s problems. Most importantly, this new direction is without the act of creating more trauma for the main character.

What sounds unfeasible, especially for a movie marked down as horror, is actually quite the refreshing approach to a very common concept nowadays. Yes, simple revenge has its perks and fans, as does the paring down of casts until only one person is left standing. But opting for restoration, as opposed to destruction, in dark scenarios is surely also worth exploring.

Deeply felt, textured, and always self-questioning, Camp is an extraordinary movie that goes to some unexpected places. The gorgeous presentation alone is one rife with beautiful nature and spotted with haunting, otherworldly imagery. Performance-wise, Grimmer makes a tremendous debut here; she and co-star Alice Wordsworth have this growingly incandescent chemistry that lights up all the right parts of the story. Overall, Camp is a pleasant surprise that is light on conventional horror but never low on compassion for its characters.

Camp plays in select theaters on June 26.

The post ‘Camp’ Review: A Cathartic and Dreamy Tale of Witchcraft appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

However, this more accessible environment also means that, for every Tormented Souls 2 or Ground Zero, we get a deluge of overly familiar cash-grabs that cherry-pick mechanics and imagery from classic survival horror games without really understanding what makes the genre work in the first place. That’s why I was only cautiously optimistic when I first saw the trailer for Tainted Pack’s Flesh Made Fear, a stylish throwback that was originally released on Steam back in October of 2025 and is now making its way over to the PlayStation 5.

In the game, you select between Reaper Intervention Platoon (R.I.P.) agents Jack and Natalie as your team is sent on a mission to stop the nefarious Victor Ripper – a former CIA researcher who appears to have set up shop in an isolated town. Naturally, things take a turn for the worse when the agents discover that the area is now overrun with undead mutants created by Ripper in an attempt to perfect his previous MK Ultra experiments. What follows is a retro horror adventure that takes you from secluded woods all the way to a familiar mansion-turned-laboratory as you track down a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein and his army of gruesome goons.

The setup is standard enough for a survival horror title, with the R.I.P. squad obviously riffing on the S.T.A.R.S. team and Ripper’s manor standing in for the iconic Spencer Mansion, but it’s really the over-the-top presentation that makes Flesh Made Fear stand out from its peers. The high-contrast comic-book aesthetic and stylized menus give the title a certain B-movie/exploitation flick vibe that’s rarely seen in this kind of game, with the exaggerated violence and memorable characters often making it feel like you’re playing through a grindhouse picture.

Although the low-poly graphics here are meant to harken back to classic PSX (and even early PS2) releases, a lot of care went into adjusting the textures and lighting in order to make the most of simple character models and environments. In fact, I can’t think of a single vintage horror title with the same amount of visual flair as Flesh Made Fear, despite the fact that you don’t really visit that many unique locations throughout its 6-8 hour runtime.

Unfortunately, Tainted Pack didn’t go the extra mile when it came to actually writing the game, as Flesh Made Fear suffers from a script that aims for camp but lands in cheap mockbuster territory – and I don’t mean that as a compliment. While the aforementioned R.I.P. team is consistently entertaining despite the amateurish voice-acting (which is more of a quirk of the genre than anything else), the epistolary tapes and notes that you find around the map suffer from prose so generic that I wouldn’t be surprised if large portions of it were actually written by Artificial Intelligence.

This is a huge shame, as the visuals and sound design are so lovingly crafted that the lack of narrative effort stands out like a sore thumb. While the original Resident Evil games never really focused on story as much as gameplay and atmosphere, the developers at Capcom at least went out of their way to include satisfying bits of bite-sized horror like the infamous “itchy tasty” and even Lisa Trevor’s side story in the remake of the first game. Flesh Made Fear has no such luck, with the game’s narrative elements serving as little more than an excuse to revisit age-old mechanics.

Speaking of mechanics, it’s been a while since I’ve played a game so dedicated to its retro premise that it also manages to bring back some of the less savory aspects of the genre it’s attempting to revive. From unpolished combat to awkward camera placement that often hinders level traversal, which is especially annoying when you’re left to rely on a disappointingly vague map, there are plenty of frustrating elements here that I remember showing up in many of the less popular survival horror releases of yesteryear.

Of course, it’s easy to look past most of these blemishes when the experience of hunting down Victor Ripper by solving inventory puzzles and exploding copious amounts of undead heads is so damned addicting. Flesh Made Fear won’t be joining the Mount Rushmore of survival horror anytime soon, but there’s plenty of fun to be had with this brief yet entertaining tribute to classic genre thrills. And while veteran fans may not appreciate the mostly linear level design (and I still wish Tainted Pack had invested more time and effort into writing), you’ve got to love a standalone horror game with fixed camera angles and limited saves that can still be casually completed over the course of a lazy weekend.

Flesh Made Fear is available now on PC and PS5.

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This is why I’m thrilled that, by chance, Kraus’ first post-Pulitzer novel is The Sixth Nik, a spacefaring adventure full of horrifying imagination and brimming over with imagination. Like all of his books, it’s an elegantly written, narratively complex piece full of memorable characters given depth and shade, but as with Angel Down, it’s also an effort by Kraus to stretch his wings, work out some prose muscles that he doesn’t use as much in his straight-ahead horror work. If you’re coming to Kraus for the second time after reading Angel Down, you’re going to get something completely different and yet distinctly Kraus-ian, a space odyssey that’ll make your brain tingle even as your stomach is doing cartwheels. 

In the future, when humanity has colonized Mars, Europa, and other nearby habitable worlds to varying degrees, Earth is the site of a secluded sect that has made Greenland their home. This sect is responsible for nurturing the Niffakoq, a kind of messianic child warrior whose legacy is passed down in a way similar to the Dalai Lama. The Niffakoq are trained from birth for their “Chore,” a task they must complete that will radically improve some aspect of life in the cosmos, and given brain implants known as “Niks” to enhance their innate empathic abilities. They also, due to the danger of their chores, rarely live beyond the age of 11. 

Nine-year-old Sisilla is the latest of these Niffakoq, and she’s just been given her Chore, involving a faraway colonial outpost on a remote planet that’s rarely in touch with the rest of humanity anymore. To achieve her Chore, Sisilla boards The Sickness, an AI-designed, organic ship that looks like a flying tumor, and meets her crew, including everyone from a bodyguard known only as “Murder 005” to a bodacious engineer who revels in changing her appearance through futuristic procedures to a drug-addicted, reconstructed ship’s medic who offers her a chance to try peyote. 

Sisilla is not here to make friends. She’s here to do her Chore, fulfill her purpose in the universe, and pass on to make room for the next Niffakoq. But life on The Sickness determines to surprise her, from an entire room that seems to be made of placenta to a glitching robot that seems to know something of her past. Worst of all, though, it seems that something or someone on board is out to harm the whole crew, and the Chore Sisilla’s spent her whole life preparing for is wrapped around a terrible, paradigm-shifting secret that will make her rethink everything about her life, her purpose, and her place among the stars. 

This is a lot of groundwork to lay for one story, in typical epic science fiction fashion, and it’s only scratching the surface of what The Sixth Nik has to offer, from ship’s quarters hidden behind curtains of impossibly long human hair to an encounter with worms that left even my strong stomach churning a bit. To pull off something this grand, this multi-tonal and big, Kraus has to lay everything out elegantly, using Sisilla as the viewpoint character and narrator while keeping her in the dark about each key revelation until exactly the right time. It’s not the kind of book I associate with Kraus and his imagination, but he rises to the challenge with a novel that offers something surprising on each new page, a kind of prose sensory overload that almost tips off into being overstuffed. But not quite. 

More than the worldbuilding and vibrant cast of characters, though, what makes The Sixth Nik stand out is Kraus’s layered, often cognitively dissonant view of humanity’s future. Technological advances render some troubles obsolete, only to create entirely new problems. Humans morph and shift themselves in so many ways that they sometimes seem to be walking Ships of Theseus. Building ships from organic matter seems more efficient and elegant, yet it fills each voyage with a parade of grotesqueries.

It is a solar system filled with wonders and horrors in equal measure, and it says something deeply relatable and rewarding about the world we’re in now, this mesh of terrors and triumphs, breakthroughs and brokenness. Kraus managed to capture our own fractured view of the present and catapult it several centuries ahead without losing any of his sci-fi bombast or character-driven sense of wonder. That’s a hard trick to pull off, but it makes The Sixth Nik a hell of a read, and a great new primer for the vast imagination of Daniel Kraus. 

The Sixth Nik is available in bookstores now.

The post ‘The Sixth Nik’ Review: Pulitzer Winner Daniel Kraus’s Horror Sci-fi Epic appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The comments are usually from men who simply cannot resist the urge to reply to your posts with criticism about your looks, your weight, or even the way you talk. As if that isn’t enough for women online to deal with, sometimes men become obsessed and stalk, harass, or doxx the object of their unwanted affection. Australian award-winning writer, director, editor, and visual artist David Ward’s (Dorothy, Capable of Anything) first feature film, Lenore, takes a hard look at the scourge of parasocial relationships plaguing the internet, with a focus on the male gaze and the devastating consequences.

Co-written by Josie Hess (Morgana) and director David Ward, Lenore introduces pale, lanky, basement-dweller Max (Nicholas Jaquinot), who goes by the screen name LoneWolf91 online. His basement is a labyrinthine setup of video equipment where Max can watch the controversial content creator he is infatuated with, who calls herself Lenore (Ruby Duncan). Lenore posts makeup tutorials, music, and elaborate vlogs, and has recently been involved in several scandals, which have been broadcast online. She has achieved celebrity status online, and Max believes she is talking directly to him in her videos. He keeps lists of what he believes are their common interests, convinced he can make her love him back. When Lenore suddenly disappears, and her social media is deleted, Max is consumed with finding her so he can have her all to himself.

Jaquinot gives an unsettlingly captivating performance, portraying Max as a meek, lonely, unstable young man who lives vicariously through his online interactions and lacks the ability to socialize with people away from the internet. As the story progresses, Max becomes more unhinged as he hallucinates videos of Lenore, which he believes were meant for only him, and that may contain clues to her location. Max’s slow, painful descent into madness is fueled by his lack of self-awareness and poses the infuriating question of accountability. Her rise to internet fame has stripped Lenore of her agency, but is that the risk that women take when they have an online presence? Is it okay that we’re often objectified and subjected to these one-sided, obsessive, imaginary relationships that men have in their heads?

Duncan gives a convincing, poignant performance as Lenore, who is given a brief attempt at liberation in the form of an emotional monologue. Ward’s storytelling and Lenore’s words loosely echo Edgar Allan Poe’s poems Lenore, a story about the death of a young woman and her fiancé’s fixation on proper decorum for mourning the dead, and The Raven, a tale of a young man grieving his lover Lenore, as Lenore utters the word “nevermore,” in reference to her determination to take back her life, and ultimately her fate.

Ward has meticulously crafted a well-written, disquieting, single-location film that begins by painting an intricate portrait of a chronically online, disturbed young man that evolves into a mystery and becomes an electronic ghost story. Lenore is a cautionary tale that pleads with the audience, specifically men, to start a conversation about the troubling aspects of internet culture, women’s autonomy, and who bears the burden for the treatment of women in online spaces.

Lenore premiered at Chattanooga Film Festival 2026; release info TBA.

The post ‘Lenore’ CFF Review: A Creepy Descent Into Parasocial Madness appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Written and directed by Christopher B. Stokes, the new film stars Taye Diggs as Leon/Kennedy/Darnell, a man in search of the perfect family and willing to kill for it. Following Panic Room-inspired opening credits stretched across downtown buildings, Stepfather opens in 1990 when 10-year-old Leon talks with therapist Marsha Sanders (Lisa Ann Loggins) in the wake of his stepfather Harold’s (Kenneth J. Morgan) death.

In flashbacks, it’s revealed that Harold beat young Leon and, in the process, instilled a key tenet that would define Leon as an adult: “too bad you don’t get to pick your own family.” It’s also evident that Leon allowed Harold to die: following a pretty upsetting beating, the boy watched his stepfather pass from a heart attack rather than call 911.

The film then flashes ahead to the present as adult Leon, now named Kennedy, murders his latest family (this will later be revealed to be his third, stretched across Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico). He then introduces himself to Asia (Tamar Braxton) and her youngest daughter, Sasha (Kalani Jules), as Darnell in a grocery store meet-cute.

Asia has just moved her family away from her cheating ex, Timothy (TJ Shaw). Emotionally vulnerable and susceptible to flattery, Asia and Darnell quickly hit it off and, six months later, they have eloped.

TJ Shaw

The biggest issue with Stokes’ film is that it is both too slight and too familiar. Surprisingly, no one, Darnell is a model husband and stepfather right up until the moment his “perfect” family fails to meet his expectations. When Sasha repeatedly refuses to refer to him as Dad because she misses Timothy, there’s a visual fake-out of Darnell striking and/or yelling at her. These interior glimpses of Darnell’s rage eventually escalate into real-life outbursts, often when he confuses Asia and the kids for the families he’s killed in the past.

One novel visual choice occurs when Darnell accepts that he must terminate his latest imperfect family. As the police close in, he rents a cheap motel room and engages in a three-way conversation with phantom hallucinations of Leon and Kennedy, each of whom has their own distinct costume, vocal mannerism, and personality.

It’s a moment that’s reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, not just for Diggs’ solid performance as three different personas, but also for its questionable pop psychology about mental health. When the police interview Marsha, she unloads a torrent of exposition about her patient’s condition (without a warrant!), explaining: “Leon suffers from extreme trauma…bipolar and schizophrenia, as well as hallucinations,” which he apparently can’t distinguish from reality. Marsha is quick to explain that Leon/Darnell doesn’t even know he’s committed a crime.

It’s an outdated and tired line of thinking, which is unfortunate because it undercuts Diggs’s performance, which is the only reason to check out Stepfather. While Braxton is fine as the deluded housewife torn between husbands new and old, Asia lacks any kind of interiority. The character exists solely in relation to Darnell, a criticism that applies to both of her two daughters, Sasha, the obstacle to Darnell’s fantasy family life, and Melanie (Jessica Jarrell), the College-aged daughter who is more than happy to call Darnell “dad” because she sees how happy her mother is.

L-R: Tamar Braxton, Taye Diggs, Jessica Jarrell

Alas, Stokes never pushes the plot or the characters beyond the most obvious situations, which leads to plenty of predictable dinner and bedroom scenes as the female characters inadvertently trigger Darnell’s psychosis and he fantasizes about murdering them. Any men who wander into the proceedings, such as Timothy or Melanie’s boyfriend, Brad (Koda Kalani Beschen), are obvious Red Shirts destined for slaughter. By contrast, Asia’s curious (and possibly queer-coded) brother, Brett (Troy Brookins), is never given an opportunity to do anything.

And then there are the cops, who occupy a substantial amount of screentime and repeatedly threaten to launch the film into camp territory. With the exception of Detective Bronson (Darrell Philip), who takes “Kennedy’s” statement after the murder of his wife and stepdaughter, every single member of law enforcement in the film is inept, belligerent, or flat-out rude.

Young, boastful Detective John Simmons (Ma‘s Dante Brown) joins the squad late with an introduction that is both ageist, condescending, and completely out of left field. When Bronson outlines their profile of the killer, Simmons’ response is: “Ok, blah blah blah. It’s a lot of information on this killer dude. It’s like a movie.” Like…what?!

He immediately butts heads with new partner Detective Andrews (Janeline Hayes), who one expects might be more open-minded, but proves just as standoffish. Late in the film, when questioning a witness who has tangled with Darnell, Andrews berates the battered victim: “You assumed he was dead, but you didn’t wait to see?!” Even a random police officer gets in on the asshole behavior, heavily inferring that Asia’s promiscuous behavior is to blame for a fight between Darnell and Timothy that leaves the latter with multiple broken ribs.

L-R: Tamar Braxton, Taye Diggs

The baffling human responses across the board feel out of place with the more serious threats of domestic violence, making for an extremely uneven viewing experience. If the film played up its ridiculous elements more, Stepfather could be a fun diversion in the Hallmark/Lifetime vein. Unfortunately, most of its perplexing elements feel accidental, rather than intentional.

Despite Diggs’ commitment to the bit, there just isn’t enough here to recommend. Stepfather could have been a fun guilty pleasure, but Stokes is too content to stick to well-tread narrative beats without offering anything new. Underdeveloped characters and fleeting violent set pieces simply don’t cut it, which makes the brief 93-minute runtime drag badly.

File this under a disappointing missed opportunity.

Stepfather is now streaming on Tubi.

The post ‘Stepfather’ Review: Taye Diggs Can’t Save Tubi’s Familiar, Uninspired Retread appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In 2018, they made their first genre film, The Hatred, which tells the story of a young girl who brings a soldier back from the dead, and they realized they enjoyed making horror movies. By the time they released their second horror movie, The Deeper You Dig, in 2019, genre fans were discovering their unique DIY style of filmmaking and their talent for dark storytelling.

Filmmakers Tina Grapenthin (When God Sleeps), Katie Green (The Family I Had), and Carlye Rubin (The Family I Had) realized the wildly artistic Adams family would be the perfect subject for their documentary Blood and Guts, which provides a fascinating, intimate glimpse into the family’s personal and professional lives. Premiering at the Cucalorus Film Festival in North Carolina in the fall of 2025, Blood and Guts is making the rounds of the festival circuit in 2026 and is playing this year’s Chattanooga Film Festival.

Featuring moody songs from the family’s band H6llb6nd6r as the score for the documentary, Blood and Guts skillfully weaves together candid interviews with John, Toby, Zelda, and Lulu, with the Adams’ personal as well as behind-the-scenes footage of the family making horror movies together.

John’s father shares that his son was an artist at a young age who had a preference for darker art. A painter, a punk rock musician, and eventually a successful high fashion model, John was hit with a cancer diagnosis at a young age, which caused him to reassess what was most important in life. After earning a BFA, Toby was a regular on the soap opera Guiding Light until she met John, got pregnant with Lulu, and was fired from the show. The couple eventually built their extraordinary house in the Catskills, with random skeletons and body parts littering the front yard and porch and showcasing John’s artwork on every inch of the interior walls. Everyone in the small town they call home knows the Adams family; locals frequently ask if they can be killed in their next horror movie, and the Adams sometimes happily oblige.

Despite finding success as indie horror filmmakers and becoming regulars at film festivals, there is nothing pretentious about the Adams family. Blood and Guts confirms John, Toby, Zelda, and Lulu are all outgoing, outspoken, and humble, while being fueled by the need to create new art. John and Toby talk about raising their daughters to be independent, artistic, and fearless, and after Lulu moves away and Zelda goes off to college, the couple fields potential projects. Partially because they love making movies, but according to John, also to avoid the emptiness of the house in the Catskills when their daughters are away.

John and Toby ultimately decide to travel to Serbia to make their first creature feature, Hell Hole, which required them both to work outside of their comfort zones. John details how he initially thought he would be acting as cinematographer on the film, as he has on all the movies they’ve made, only to later discover he would have a camera crew, something that he says was a difficult adjustment for him at first.

From the coming-of-age story Hellbender to their recent film Mother of Flies, it’s evident the Adams family has a flair for witchy storytelling that captures the darker side of femininity. With more than one member of the family being touched by cancer, which particularly manifested in Mother of Flies, they describe their work as a reflection of their life experiences and sometimes also the inverse of their family dynamic.

If you think you know everything there is to know about the Adams family, Blood and Guts will probably prove you wrong. This bewitching documentary is an expertly edited, up close and personal portrait of an endlessly interesting family who excel at macabre storytelling, and yes, even at making their own blood and guts.

Blood and Guts premiered at Chattanooga Film Festival 2026. Release info TBD.

The post ‘Blood and Guts’ CFF Review: An Intimate Portrait of the First Family of Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

However, now that this once-niche creepypasta has escaped the online bubble and permeated all of popular culture, several of these developers have decided to rework and rerelease some of their old titles in order to reach a new audience. Puppet Combo did this with their interpretation of The Backrooms last month (originally released in 2019 as Day Seven), and now Cortez Productions is doing the same with the console release of The Backrooms: Lost Tape.

However, Lost Tape is more than just a cleverly timed rerelease, with Vini Cortez having taken the time to completely overhaul the 2022 game’s graphics and transfer the project over to Unreal Engine 5.6 – complete with bug fixes, exclusive new content, and a brand new visual style that’s a little too impressive when compared to what the original version of the game was trying to do. In fact, I’d argue that this is more of a remake than anything else, though it’s still built over the skeleton of that original game.

In the updated title, which is presented as a found footage anthology where each “tape” tells a self-contained story, players initially take control of a movie theater usher named Josh as he no-clips into the titular Backrooms and tries to find his way out of a liminal labyrinth. The second (and final) tape follows Josh’s brother Nikolas as he attempts to track down the missing usher and ends up embarking on his own journey through infinite hallways and not-so-empty pools.

What follows is a highly atmospheric first-person walking simulator with the occasional light puzzle and a handful of thrilling chase sequences. While the liminal environment is obviously the star of the show here, the rooms are actually populated by monsters in this game, and our characters have plenty to say about the situation they find themselves in.

Unlike Parsons’ more introspective take on the Backrooms mythology, Cortez has decided to incorporate the multiple levels of the Backrooms wiki as well as several crossovers with the SCP “franchise”. While I personally don’t mind this inclusion due to the creepypasta’s collective origins, die-hard fans might be bothered by the fact that you can run into SCP-173 (affectionately referred to as Peanut by some fans) while wandering around the yellow hallways.

However, the real problem here is the fact that the game is simply presenting imagery and ideas made by other people without adding anything new to these familiar elements. There is an undeniable novelty to exploring these beautiful renditions of classic liminal environments, but Lost Tape offers little in the way of originality in both narrative and presentation. This extends to the unfortunate use of generative AI in some of the new textures and audio files – issues that weren’t present in the 2022 version of the title.

Though Cortez has promised that he’s working on bringing back the VHS filter that made the original experience so grungy and atmospheric, the glossy new visuals make the game feel a lot less scary while also consuming way more computing power than can be reasonably expected from an indie title. Sure, the game is pretty in a “tech-demo” sort of way, but there’s no reason for it to be hogging resources like a blockbuster AAA title.

This is made even more frustrating by the fact that this found footage anthology is technically still incomplete. The two existing tapes only scratch the surface of the setting’s narrative potential, and Cortez has announced that the next ones will only be available as (likely paid) DLC. Josh and Nikolas’ tapes are self-contained yarns that’ll each get you about a feature film’s worth of entertainment, though a lot of that runtime is taken up by very slowly walking from one point to another. But it’s a shame that there isn’t a concrete promise of more content to come.

At the end of the day, Backrooms: Lost Tape isn’t a bad game. Cortez really nails the liminal atmosphere and even breathes new life into tired SCP tropes, and the upcoming VHS filter will likely resolve most of my gripes with the revamped visuals. That being said, I find it hard to recommend a project that took a completely functional experience and spoiled it with AI-generated assets and poorly-optimized “upgrades” that no one was really asking for – especially since it doesn’t give existing owners the chance to roll back to a previous version of the game.

So, if you’re looking for more Backrooms-related thrills after enjoying the A24 adaptation, Lost Tape isn’t necessarily a bad place to start, but there are certainly better and more original options out there.

Backrooms: Lost Tape is available now on Steam and PS5.

The post ‘The Backrooms: Lost Tape’ Review: An Entertaining But Unnecessary Upgrade appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s an interesting angle, and when combined with a dreamy visual style and a handful of confident performances, Mark O’Brien‘s film starts with a lot of promise and maintains a consistent dramatic tension throughout. There’s ambition here, and craft, and a sense of care that saves the film from oblivion, but unfortunately, thanks to confused pacing and certain baffling moments of characterization, all The Voices of Our Mother can really do, in the end, is avoid becoming a complete mess. 

The mother of the title is Harriet (Sheila McCarthy), whose four adult children fled the home she shared with her own mother as quickly as they could and never looked back. For years, Harriet’s efforts to stay in touch with her children were in vain, at least until their grandmother dies suddenly and a devastated Harriet is hospitalized after a medical episode of her own. It’s only then that twin siblings William (O’Brien) and Therese (Carolina Bartczak), junkie baby brother Martin (Alex Ozerov-Meyer), and devoted nun Annika (Georgina Reilly) are forced to return home to bury their grandmother and deal with Harriet, whose physical and psychological issues are growing stranger by the day. 

Photo Credit: Shudder

There’s a reason so many horror stories follow adults who must return to the site of their childhood trauma. It’s just such a charged environment for drama and psychological tension, as the characters fight to reconcile the understanding that comes with maturity with the rage and confusion they still feel over what happened long ago. O’Brien, who also wrote the screenplay, digs into this emotionally fertile ground immediately, showing us siblings who’ve left quite a few things unsaid, trying to reconnect even as their mother is constantly upsetting the delicate balance of peace they’re trying to construct for her.

In just his second feature as director (after 2021’s The Righteous), O’Brien recognizes the potency of the environment he’s created, and in the early minutes of the film, he exploits it. While Harriet recuperates in bed, the four siblings explore their various resentments, memories, and flat-out grudges from all angles, and it mostly works. The performances are solid, O’Brien works hard to infuse a genuinely distinctive visual style awash with dramatic reds and the glow of firelight into the proceedings, and the supernatural mystery at the core of the film is intriguing, if a little sloppily laid out. It’s a horror story built on the age-old conundrum over what to do with aging relatives with whom you’ve lost any real sense of emotional connection, and that’s palpably unsettling. 

But these unsettling qualities never translate to real horror, or even a cohesive narrative, once the supernatural mystery of it all really starts rolling forward. As Harriet’s illness progresses, and she starts doing things like whispering secrets in her kids’ ears to turn them against each other, the film stirs up fresh drama but fails to deliver on the emotional throughlines of that drama. Characters make baffling decisions, and not in the way that horror characters often act out of passion or confusion or plain old fear.

Photo Credit: Shudder

The tension over Harriet’s real fate fades in and out as the kids squabble, and she only seems to act out in overtly horrifying ways when the script needs to wrap up an argument without ever actually arriving at any conclusions. It’s a shame, because when McCarthy’s actually able to flex her horror muscles and turn Harriet into something to be feared, she brings remarkably nuanced terror to the film, and yet the film barely wants to showcase it. It would rather, it seems, be a psychological drama about the fallout of Harriet’s illness, which would be fine if that drama held together. Instead, we’re left with a string of interesting scenes that never quite come together into a story worth following, and by the time the more overt horror elements kicked in, I’d grown too frustrated to really be hooked. 

But The Voices of Our Mother is not all bad. McCarthy’s performance is solid, as is O’Brien’s, who injects a welcome naturalism into scenes that might otherwise be stiff. Reilly (who, as a Pontypool fan, I was just really happy to see), Bartczak, and Ozerov-Meyer bring their best to the material, but the film is just too tonally confused to deliver anything truly satisfying out of their work.

Still, I can’t help but think that with a little narrative tightening and some basic brush-ups on things like blocking and scene geography – the film is sometimes ambiguous on purpose but more often ambiguous by accident, like setups arrived half-formed – this thing could’ve gone much further. The Voices of Our Mother doesn’t work, but it’s far from a disaster, and I sincerely hope Mark O’Brien tries his hand at more horror in the future. 

The Voices of Our Mother hits Shudder June 19.

The post ‘The Voices of Our Mother’ Review: Family Trauma Fuels This Uneven Shudder Possession Horror Film appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Talk to Me‘s Joe Bird stars as Naim, a new kid in a small Australian suburb who’s introduced as he’s hanging out with new friend Ryan (Stacy Clausen). Playful ribbing quickly leads to romance between the pair, though one that can only carry on in secret. The town’s prominent religious community, of which Naim’s mom (Mia Wasikowska) is a devout member, doesn’t approve of homosexuality.

When the lovers are outed, they’re subjected to a strange conversion-therapy ritual by a mysterious outsider that marks them as targets for an unrelenting, malevolent entity that takes the form of whoever the afflicted desires most.

If that sounds like It Follows, well, it sort of is. Chiarella refines the horror mechanics and metaphor with much sharper precision, ensuring that the scares and emotional gravity of Naim and Ryan’s terrifying predicament reach their intended impact. Here, the lust-induced curse gets very personal, with the entity offering tantalizing temptation in doppelgänger form, hoping to lure its victim close before brutally ripping them apart.

Chiarella uses this as a launchpad to immerse audiences in the horror of constantly living in fear for simply existing. And it’s here where Leviticus rises above its influences with clear purpose. Through the curse, fleeting moments of tender romance or comfort also breed fear and tension. A discreet kiss leaves the cursed vulnerable in more ways than one; safety doesn’t exist for two young teens simply trying to understand their burgeoning emotions.

Ultimately, though, Leviticus owes much of its success to the tremendous performances by its two leads. Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen deftly navigate all the emotional complexities of coming-of-age in a repressed setting that hits too close to home for any reprieve. While the tenderness beneath Ryan’s machismo endears, it’s Naim’s bone-deep fear and melancholy that’s as heartbreaking as it is compelling.

Naim is scared of his emerging feelings, and it’s exacerbated without any avenue to explore them without violent recourse. The threats aren’t just external but internal as well, and it’s those moral and emotional complexities that transform familiar horror formula into something that feels fresh and timely.

Chiarella injects a few potent jump scares that left the Sundance audience shrieking, but does struggle to stage some of the supernatural sieges. The cold open introduces a previous victim of the curse, but only mildly intrigues with its familiar staging. That’s not to say the entity isn’t scary, though; Clausen in particular is a terrifying menace when in Ryan’s doppelgänger form.

Keeping the focus on the star-crossed lovers was the smart and correct choice, but some plot elements feel underutilized by the succinct conclusion. Wasikowska plays her character too guarded, leaving many questions regarding her background and motives unanswered, even if the film gives her a satisfying end to her arc, for example. The rules, though simple and straightforward, can also bend at whim.

Still, Leviticus is a strong debut with an incisive voice at the helm. Chiarella coaxes poignant, layered performances out of his young leads that ensure that the social horror cuts deep, even if some of the more supernatural components occasionally feel stale. We care deeply about Naim and Ryan’s survival, making Leviticus a tense, atmospheric, and claustrophobic vision of young love in a hateful world.

Leviticus made its world premiere at Sundance and releases in theaters June 19, 2026.

Editor’s Note: This Sundance review was originally published January 24, 2026.

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The process of restoring Day of the Dead, Romero’s 1985 zombie classic, has that same air of the improbable. When the restorers working on Scream Factory’s beautiful new 4K glow-up of the film first set to work, they were delivered cans of film from the much-maligned 2008 remake of the same name, and had to keep searching to get all of the footage necessary to revive the original. A film initially shaped by budget constraints and Romero’s inventive spirit was once again fighting to stay alive. The restorers kept at it, found the footage they needed, and the result is a new horror essential, a 4K set that proves Romero was always worth rooting for, not just because he was a fighter, but because he had the talent to back it up.

Day of the Dead famously began as an epic, only to grow in intimacy as the budget shrank and Romero found he had to limit his locations and setpieces. Like Night of the Living Dead before it, Day then becomes a study in how to do a lot with a little, and my God does Romero do a lot. The film opens with its most expansive sequence, a helicopter flight over a desolate, zombie-ridden Florida, complete with alligators lurking on street corners and zombies piling out of buildings in states of advanced decay. Its heroes, including intrepid scientist Sarah (Lori Cardille), are looking for survivors, for hope. They find nothing and instead retreat back to their bunker, an underground labyrinth of salt mines and cinder blocks, wondering what to do until the end comes for them too. 

If Night is a case study in how people behave in a crisis, Day is a case study in what happens when the crisis grows humdrum, when all that’s left to really squabble over is what the few remaining survivors will do with their time. Some, like the infamous Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato), shift into full-blown violent ideation towards others, while Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) throws himself into bloody work. In the middle of it all is Sarah, still clinging to the idea of a future even if she can’t see or feel it, and the film’s chief dramatic tension becomes not who will break first, but who will be left standing when the break eventually comes. 

All of this serves to make Day especially bleak, even by Romero zombie film standards, not just because of the death surrounding the characters, but because of the grind of it all. It’s a gritty, dirty, shadowy movie, and I don’t know that I recognized quite how intensely focused a film it is stylistically until I saw this restoration. It’s not just sharpening the lines and correcting the colors after years of degradation; there’s a real texture to this movie that even Night and Dawn don’t really have, a sense of people scrounging around in the dirt for whatever they can find, and this restoration highlights that.

It might be Romero’s most visually developed film and compositionally ambitious movie, from the opening dream sequence to the final collapse of the bunker, and it’s all captured and enlivened by a careful, beautiful 4K upgrade. 

If I had my druthers, this set would come with a few more brand-new bells and whistles, but the ones it does come with, including a set of lobby cards in the collector’s edition and new interviews with surviving cast and crew, are quite lovely. The cherry on top, though, is a new commentary track by critic and film historian Drew McWeeny and author Daniel Kraus, who has now completed two unfinished novels of Romero’s, including the epic The Living Dead. Few people working in the horror space right now know more about Romero than Kraus, but more importantly, few people understand Romero as Kraus does. He’s been inside the man’s imagination for so long that he’s imbued with a certain emotional intelligence about the films, and listening to him and McWeeny trade insights for the length of the film is a delight. 

But what comes through most from this new restoration of Day of the Dead is just how much we still want to root for George A. Romero. To this day, he remains one of the great titans of independent cinema, a filmmaker who fought for every dollar on the budget, every creative decision, and every story for as long and as hard as he could. Day of the Dead‘s existence is proof of that, but seeing it with this fresh spotlight is a reminder of the artistry behind that independent spirit, and a celebration of one of horror’s greatest storytellers. 

Day of the Dead is out now in a new Collector’s Edition 4K from Scream! Factory.

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Tabletop roleplaying game manuals are an interesting object. Traditionally, we want them to be laid out cleanly in a way that’s easy to understand so they can be played effectively. But this means they are often dryly written, focusing on clarity instead of style. That’s not to say they don’t have good art, but they are rarely experimenting with the form in a way that makes the book itself exciting.

Some of my favorite games in recent memory are the ones that purposefully break the rules in an attempt to be just as much of an art book as a rule book. Games like Mork Borg, whose aggressive, borderline unreadable layouts are constantly shifting fonts alongside its maximalist artwork. Games like Triangle Agency, which use in-fiction format changes to illustrate the strange forces at play behind the titular agency. Games like Soul Cemetery, a book that kept up the illusion that it was an instruction manual for a lost PS2-era video game, tell a tale of how our relationship with fiction shapes our lives.

You Will Die In This Place takes this to the extreme, mixing its nihilistic dungeon crawling rulebook with a “House of Leaves“-style meta narrative that tells a deeply personal tale about identity, mortality, and the act of creation. Not only is it stylistically bold and endlessly inventive, but it weaves its characters with a raw believability that brings the book itself to life in a way I’ve never seen in the medium.

The Meta-Narrative That Sets You Will Die In This Place Apart

The actual game is by Elizabeth Little, but it’s framed as a reconstruction of an abandoned project pieced together from various notes and design documents. Fictional tabletop designer Samantha Little is cleaning out boxes in her parents’ attic when she comes across the game, which was originally written by a college friend, Charlotte Avery, whom she hasn’t talked to since graduation.

The version of You Will Die In This Place that you’re reading is one that Samantha has “finished,” compiling Charlotte’s notes, which included design work, microfiction, and illustrations, but the line between Charlotte’s original vision and Samantha’s additions to the work remains a tension throughout. There’s also a third character, KC, who is the book’s editor, who comments to Samantha about the process and questions her decisions. The book presented is the “final version” of the game, along with footnotes that give insight into Samantha’s work on the book and how it felt rediscovering her old friend through these notes.

The actual game part has a premise that seems pretty standard, but is done with its own unique flair, both mechanically and narratively. Your party plays a group of people who have been exiled to the Abyssal Labyrinth, a horrific series of corridors and rooms full of creatures warped by manablight.

You will never return from the labyrinth. There’s no winning your way out.

The title says it all. Rather than being a game about heroically slaying the beast that has cursed the labyrinth, it’s about trying to find meaning before you die in this place. While it’s definitely not the first game where you are doomed adventurers that will reach an unfortunate end before the campaign is over, the way it explores the idea thematically feels unique.

It’s hard to figure out where to even begin to talk about this game, and that’s part of the fun. Should I go into the maybe-too-clever class system first, or dig into the themes about what it means to create? Is it best to dive into the strange bestiary, or do you first need to have context about Charlotte’s thought process through her tangential essays that Samantha decided to include? Maybe I don’t even get into the details of that because the rewarding part of the book is watching it all click together in a holistic way.

Experimental Character Classes and Innovative RPG Mechanics

I’ll start by treating it as a traditional tabletop RPG, but even that will immediately give way to talking about the meta layers. One of the most interesting ways for me to look at what a game is capable of is by looking at its character classes and the ways it expects players to use them to interact with the world through their rules. In a bold move, You Will Die In This Place forgoes traditional conventions by having each class operate on a completely different set of rules. While it may seem like a bit of a stunt at first, it’s very clear that each of these disparate ways of playing is well thought out and intended to convey something important about each class.

The Muzeiiyd Mercenary sounds like the most standard class of all of them, a powerful warrior, but you play by rolling a pool of dice and placing them on different body parts to do different actions, almost like a worker placement board game. The Zibari Headhunter uses a deck of cards and asks you to play poker hands to activate your skills, with your deck acting as an alternate health system. The Corpse Engineer forces you to directly control your character while also doing a programming minigame for a flesh golem that does most of your fighting for you.

The Bermail Knight wears a powerful set of armor, but that comes with a heat management system that alters your available actions as you heat up and cool down. The game’s wizard class, the Blight Channeler, writes as many spells as it can fit on a section of its character sheet, but crosses off words of the spells when using them, while also having to physically tear off pieces of its sheet when injured. There’s even a pair of hidden classes, including one that is written in a cipher that I was not able to solve.

At the beginning of this section, there’s a note about how Charlotte wasn’t a fan of class-based systems because they felt immersion-breaking, and these classes are almost a hyperexaggerated response to that, each being as maximally fiddly as possible in its own unique way. As someone who runs a lot of tabletop RPGs, I pride myself on being able to get a good sense of how something will play just by reading, and I have no idea how these would feel at the table. They definitely are clever, but they might be too clever to the point of not being balanced, or maybe even fun, in action. But I feel like Charlotte would agree with that and respond by saying, “Yeah, pretty cool, right?”

Identity, Roleplaying, and Self-Discovery

The classes are successful on two layers, because they not only offer a fun experimentation with the form, but they also use the mechanics of the game to give us insight into the surrounding meta-narrative of who Charlotte is as a designer and as a person. The notes also mention she was not a fan of levels and hit points, and this game plays with those as well. In an inverse of the traditional power fantasy structure, your characters will get worse the further they get into the dungeon.

When you hit certain thresholds of damage, you will take injuries, which will give you debuffs that will constantly make it harder for you until your death. It’s another bold choice that might not make the game as “fun,” but leans hard into the themes in a way that reinforces the text overall.

The idea of creating characters, both for players and creatures, is one that is very important to Charlotte throughout her notes. Not only was she very particular about putting work into non-playable characters in order to make sure they felt like they had lives that didn’t revolve around waiting for the player characters, but it was also an act that was associated with discovering your own identity.

As the story goes on, it’s revealed that Charlotte is a trans woman, and this fact immediately feels like it unlocks the work thematically. Passages about the disproportionate power of choosing your character’s name make sense within that context. The idea of using roleplaying as a mask to try on different identities is a potent one, made all the more powerful by this detail. The real-life author Elizabeth Little is also trans, making this feel like a deeply personal work that’s just as much about her journey as it is about the fictional characters’ journeys.

The Abyssal Labyrinth’s Bestiary and Worldbuilding

The bestiary of the game contains a lot of strange variants on common ideas, some of them even pushing into experimental territory with their mechanics. Each enemy is described sparsely, with just enough stats and special rules to get you rolling, often leaving the minutiae of the physical description up to you. A giant worm with a human-shaped appendage used to lure unsuspecting individuals, animated chunks of alien meat, and innocuous-looking creatures that devour meaning and words are among the creatures you’ll run into in the Abyssal Labyrinth, making for a more surreal and upsetting dungeon crawl than most.

There are several floors laid out to act as your complete campaign of You Will Die In This Place, each with its own grid layout and threats listed. Many of these are pretty simple fights against enemies, but some of them have clever gimmicks that test the player in ways beyond their character sheet. There’s interesting lore contained within these spaces, but never too much that it takes away from the ominous nature of the setting by filling in too many details.

Coming from Charlotte, who describes her GMing style as one that has trended away from overprepping, I found the explicit dungeon maps to be a bit surprising, but it’s here where much of the tension between the two creative forces of the work comes to a head. This was an unfinished game when Samantha found it, but it becomes clearer as the book goes on that she has made significant changes to the final product, including many that seem to go against Charlotte’s design intent.

So many of the notes and microfiction pieces are about the nature of creation, about what it means to create for the artist and what it means for a piece of the author to live on in the art, making this feel like a strange violation. How much of what we’re reading is Charlotte’s work and how much is Samantha’s, and how much does that really matter if we just want to play the game?

Final Verdict on You Will Die In This Place

You Will Die In This Place is the rare tabletop RPG that I would recommend picking up and reading, even if you have no intention of getting it to the table. As a game, it’s deeply experimental, taking a well-worn grimdark dungeon crawl and bringing it to life with intentionally overcomplicated mechanics that feel fresh and odd, even if they perhaps aren’t the most balanced or intuitive.

As a whole, it’s a marvellous work about the act of creation and finding yourself, even in the face of the bleak world in front of you. It was hard not to make this review into just a list of my favorite passages, but I’d rather leave it to you to discover the story of the Corpse Engineer or Charlotte’s tale of being haunted by the memory of a dying fox or the unsettling demonstration of the natural blind spot we all have in our vision.

There’s so much going on in this book, but it all gels together into one of the most unique tabletop RPGs I’ve ever seen. It’s a powerful statement about the creative process, one that’s inspired me to pick up the proverbial pen again and start writing my own RPG, which is honestly the highest compliment I can give it.

You Will Die In This Place is now available in full over on itch.io.

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The Death of Robin Hood bypasses rehashing the origins of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, instead introducing a grizzled brute who opens the film with a ruthless culling of a young girl seeking vengeance against the outlaw. It’s a downright gentle introduction to Hugh Jackson’s Robin, who only escalates the jaw-dropping carnage when reunited with righthand Little John (Bill Skarsgård) as they seek to reclaim Little John’s home and family from vengeance seekers. These early sequences set up a stark contrast to the Disney-fied legends; Robin Hood’s heroics have been grossly exaggerated compared to the blood debts his violent exploits have racked up over the decades, which in turn have made him a hunted man spanning generations.

Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24

Grave injuries from battle lands Robin on a remote island priory under the care of Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer, 28 Years Later), where the strange, idyllic community, an enigmatic leper (Murray Bartlett), and a traumatized young girl, Margaret (Faith Delaney), force him to confront his legacy.

Sarnoski, who writes and directs, makes the hero the villain in his adaptation, ensuring a deeply rewarding character arc. At every point in the film, Robin is openly, often actively, seeking death. The stroke of poetic beauty here is that his view of a worthy death seismically shifts from beginning to end. What’s a hero’s death? That answer deepens and evolves along with its “hero” in his waning years. All the impressive survival instincts and battle savagery can’t outmatch or outrun endless cycles of death and loss, after all, despite Robin’s attempts to shrug off his own myth over the years.

Those cycles of violence loom large as a constant threat as the aged outlaw finds himself surrounded by those directly impacted by his past. It breeds conflict, external and internal, reflected in tense encounters and tenuous alliances that let Robin’s humanity slowly slip through his hardened survivor’s shell. It’s the type of role with just enough similarities that’ll draw inevitable comparisons to Hugh Jackman’s stellar work on Logan, but the tenured actor quickly sets the emotionally and morally complex Robin apart, whose primal ruthlessness belies a surprising capacity for aching empathy.

Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24

While it’s Robin’s relationship with Sister Brigid that drives his final story to its soulful conclusion, it’s the unexpected friendship between the outlaw and the cautious Leper that has the greatest impact. A quiet conversation between the pair comes barbed with soul-shattering revelations, one that irrevocably alters Robin’s outlook while serving as one of the bolder myth revisions. Still, it’s Comer’s quiet heartbreak that yields the film’s biggest devastation.

Sarnoski depicts medieval life for all its cruelty and filth. Death is not remotely gentle in the 13th century; it’s downright nasty and vicious. Cinematographer Pat Scola captures it with startlingly dark realism and grit, but so, too, the breathtaking Northern Ireland landscape that provides this intimate tale with the scale of a sprawling epic. 

The Death of Robin Hood removes the simple binary of heroes and villains, combining both into a complicated interrogation of myth itself. But the biggest magic feat is its demonstration of how myth-making and storytelling can heal even the most grievous wounds, and even provide peace if earned.

The Death of Robin Hood releases in theaters on June 19, 2026.

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After a pair of tourists goes missing to the beast in the opening, Johanne (Khorami) gets assigned to investigate strange salmon behavior at the Sognefjord. Her first stop is the local fish farm, run by Erik (Mikkel Bratt Silset), a former colleague with whom she harbors romantic history and developed a sonic tool that’s been completed to delouse the salmon. The problem is that owner Avaldsnes (Øyvind Brandtzæg) has dialed up the sonic blasts to the max in a desperate bid to clinch investors, wreaking havoc on marine life.

Director Pål Øie (The Tunnel), working from a script by Vilde Eide, Kjersti Jelen Rasmussen, and Natasha Arthur, bides his time releasing the Kraken. A curious tentacle here or there, an occasional demise, and parasites of its own inject a few action-horror moments to keep the proceedings chugging along as Kraken meticulously leans into the science of what’s happening. It’s a film that is more interested in capturing the natural beauty of Sognefjord and what’s at stake under the rule of capitalistic greed than spectacle. That’d be fine if it were more fleshed out.

While Kraken mentions the fjord’s deep depths with some regularity, that doesn’t extend to its plot or characters. Avaldnes’ teen daughter, Maria (Jenny Evensen), factors heavily into the plot as the younger gen whistleblower, but is never developed beyond a plot device. Similarly, it’s entirely left to Khorami and Silset to sell their characters’ romantic history and longing in a script that gives not even a hint of it. Fish farm employee Georg (Jon Erik Myre) consumes snacks and anime while spouting exposition, the closest to characterization this film dares to venture.

It’d be less glaring if Øie moved at a brisker clip or injected fresh aquatic horror ideas. While the filmmaker helms a stunning feature befitting of its setting, it’s also a collection of familiar aquatic horror tropes and moments. Waiting for the characters to draw the conclusions seasoned horror fans already arrived at much sooner can get frustrating when the scant horror moments rehash The Meg 2, Underwater, and especially Jaws, saving the full reveal of its beast until the climax. Its arrival is spectacular, of course, but the moral posturing eventually leaves its showstopping action finale with nowhere to go. Editing choices meant to build suspense instead confuse, though Khorami’s calm control at least carries the emotional beats through to the end.

Norway’s legendary sea monster traverses shallow but gorgeous waters in Kraken, rising like a natural guardian in response to human-made destruction. Øie approaches his latest with workman efficiency, delivering a well-made but slight eco-horror movie indebted to more prominent blockbusters. 

Kraken releases in select theaters and on digital June 12.

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But it’s not the whole story.

Starting with her own experiences might have been Pazkad’s catalyst, but Find Your Friends works because it’s willing to not just interrogate these threats, but to allow its characters to exist in a way that makes them far from perfect horror movie victims when those threats arrive. Intense, confrontational, and relentless, this is a film that begins as a psychological unraveling, then descends into revenge movie madness, all with a style perfect for the Euphoria generation. 

Amber (Helena Howard) just went through a difficult breakup, and she’s looking forward to cutting loose during a trip out to the desert with her friends Lavinia (Bella Thorne), Zosia (Zion Moreno), Lola (Chloe Cherry), and Maddy (Sophia Ali). Her friends all think that what Amber needs is some drinks, drugs, and fun rebound sex, but Amber’s not so sure, particularly after her first attempt to hook up with a guy ends in the kind of casual sexual assault that’s easy for anyone who didn’t witness it to brush off. 

Still, when the ladies make it out to Joshua Tree for their getaway, everyone’s in high spirits, and Amber’s hoping to put the past behind her and get lost in music and mood-altering substances. But the past won’t fade quite so easily, and the quintet of friends is about to find out that the present is even more frightening. 

Structurally, this is a classic plot-driven thriller in which the decisions of the characters and their reactions to adversity inform who they are. We meet Amber and her friends mid-party, and aside from a couple of quiet moments, the party basically never ends, whether the girls are taking Molly at a desert concert or doing mushrooms in the wilderness. Along the way, we come to understand that, with adult responsibilities looming in their lives, these young women are all afraid of drifting apart, and they hope that a maelstrom of experience will bond them in such a way that they’ll reunite for a girls’ trip everywhere.

They’re trying to cling, often unhealthily, to a world in which they can hold each other up, and no one seems to need that more than Amber. Some characters don’t get as much detail brushed in as others – it’s really Amber’s movie despite its ensemble tendencies – but Howard, Thorne, and Moreno in particular imbue the film with emotional weight and palpable tension. 

That tension comes from a few different places, whether it’s Amber trying to hold her friends responsible for what she considers abandonment at a key moment or Lavinia trying to wring every last drop of fun from the trip at all costs, but it’s most evident in the way the girls engage with their environment. If you’ve ever visited any kind of major party destination for twentysomethings, you’ve met these women. I bumped into an almost identical group recently at a resort in San Juan, and I’m sure I’m not alone in my sense of recognition.

These women are loud, energetic, intoxicated, and fiercely devoted both to each other and to their shared goal of shutting out the wider world in favor of an experience they curate together. While their behavior might be jarring at first, especially if you’re an old homebody like me, you soon realize that it’s the whole point of the dramatic tension Pakzad has set out to establish. 

These characters need to be loud, profane, sometimes even self-centered and annoying, because Find Your Friends is a movie that dares you to dislike them. Why? Because Pazkad is interested not just in the slowly unfolding revenge narrative in the film, or in the way Amber’s psyche fractures under the weight of increasingly isolating experiences, but in forcing her audience to confront their own biases. In the eyes of a misogynistic viewer, these women seem to be doing a textbook version of “asking for it” or “being a tease.” They drink, they twerk, they speak frankly and openly about their sexual experiences, and they’re not shy about what they want when it comes to men.

Pakzad places all of this deliberately in our faces so that, when the violence and confusion start to kick in, we’re forced to consider our own internalized misogyny and judgment of women like these. If you’ve ever chastised a horror movie character for making a bad decision, Find Your Friends wants to throw that judgment back in your face. It is a wonderfully thorny exploration of the film’s themes, and it creates a thread of piano wire-tight tension that builds to one of the year’s most unforgettable horror crescendos. 

The film’s thematic oomph and the sheer energy of its pacing, helped along by editor Maxime Pozzi-Garcia and cinematographer Tim Curtin, is strong enough to mask some of its minor flaws. It could stand a bit more nuance, some tighter plotting, perhaps a bit quieter to let its ideas settle into place around the parties and the mayhem, but the film is so immediate and sensuous in its presentation, helped along by a pulsing soundtrack, that these things barely have time to take root in your mind.

This is a dreamy, feral little movie with a taste for blood, and I hope it finds the audience it deserves. 

Find Your Friends arrives June 12 on Shudder.

The post ‘Find Your Friends’ Review: Shudder’s Slow-Burn Revenge Thriller Wants to Make You Squirm appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Starring Simone Ashley as a young woman recovering from a horrible accident that may or may not involve an abusive spouse, the film establishes layers of intrigue early on, delicately folding them together with stylish visual and aural flourishes from Montgomery and the production team. It’s familiar to any seasoned viewer of psychological thrillers, and amnesia thrillers in particular, but it’s clicking…mostly.

Thanks to a solid lead performance, some compelling hooks in the script, and capable direction, This Tempting Madness manages to hold itself together as a solid little thriller, even if a third act that’s too twisty for its own good almost derails the whole thing. 

Ashley is Mia, whose opening moments in the film show us her plunge from a high balcony, down through an atrium, and into a safety net that just barely saves her from death. In the hospital, with her jaw wired shut and her leg broken in several places, Mia finds her memories are horribly fragmented, and her lack of information about what happened to her isn’t helped by her protective brother Ajay (Suraj Sharma), who insists that she’ll know more when she’s well. Soon, portions of the truth come out. Mia’s husband, the volatile Jake (Austin Stowell), is in jail for attempting to murder her, but Mia doesn’t remember that, so what really happened? Is Jake a monster? Is Ajay manipulating her? Or is Mia herself forgetting the person she was before the fall?

While the film settles into certain familiar rhythms of its subgenre, Montgomery, who co-wrote the script with Andrew Davis, also works hard to keep you guessing, and largely succeeds. It’s easy to buy Mia’s suspicion over what’s really happened, in part because her life feels so shattered, and in part because it really does seem like Ajay could be a pushy patriarch-in-training, just as it seems like Jake could be an unstable killer, even if he simply acted in the heat of the moment.

Flashbacks start to shade in details throughout the film’s first half, and they too pull Mia and the viewer in disparate directions. It legitimately feels like the truth, whatever it might be, is both nuanced and very frightening. 

The problem comes in the third act, as revelations start to mount and Mia’s life grows even more chaotic amid her recovery. Her fragmented memory induces visions alongside memories, making it harder to understand what’s real, and when Ajay finally makes good on his promise to reveal what he’s been hiding, it shoots the film off in yet another strange direction that, while promising, doesn’t really resolve into anything satisfying in the climax.

There’s a moment where the film seems like it’s going to swerve into something truly bonkers, and while that moment is thrilling, its ending is far too conventional to make good on what it sets up. Instead of an emotional resolution that brings all of these ideas together, we’re left with a more straightforward ending that brushes over the thornier, more intriguing details of the story. 

But This Tempting Madness makes up for its narrative deficiencies with a focus on style and craft that reminds us what mid-budget thrillers can do in the hands of the right artists. Montgomery, with the help of Davis as her cinematographer, makes her feature directorial debut into a showcase of visual dynamism, whether she’s tracking Mia along a creepy hospital hallway or making her orange dress in a flashback sequence flow into gorgeous abstraction, until Mia might be flying just as easily as she’s falling. Editor Kiran Pallegadda also turns in solid work, working with Montgomery to cut together Mia’s present experiences with flashbacks and visions until it all blends into one effective, nerve-jangling maelstrom. 

The cast also shows up with a clear understanding of the assignment. Led by Ashley, who proves her versatility in a film that demands not just swerving between mental states but spending part of the story unable to talk, This Tempting Madness marshalls a strong ensemble that imbues every character with some degree of emotional substance. The whole cast rises to the twisty melodrama of it all, but the real standout is the reliably compelling Zenobia Shroff as Mia’s mother, Lakshmi, who injects soulful, patient warmth into a very dark story. 

There is, it should be clear by now, a lot to like about This Tempting Madness. In the end, the film is simply trying to carry too much, and starts to cave under the weight of its many twists, but the foundation is solid, and structural issues aside, it’s still mostly left standing. 

This Tempting Madness arrives June 12 in theaters and VOD.

The post ‘This Tempting Madness’ Review: Stylish Psychological Thriller Nearly Collapses Under Its Twists appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

However, it’s still largely a slasher franchise that actually has something to say. Mileage varies regarding the Scream sequels’ reception, but 2011’s Scream 4 — Wes Craven’s final film — is right up there with Scream 2 as far as I’m concerned. Arriving a decade after Scream 3, Scream 4 has plenty of new material to pull from and sinks its claws into the whole horror remake craze that was ramping up during the 2000s. 

Not only does this give Scream 4 more to do than its predecessor, but the film’s grander message about destructive clout chasing and gaining fame through infamy in a social media-obsessed age is wildly ahead of its time. It’s a motivation that rings even truer 15 years later and a sequel that’s only gotten better in the context of the following decades of horror and the subsequent Scream films that have followed in its wake.

Scream 4 is available in Ultra HD 4K for the first time in a Lionsgate Limited 4K Steelbook, a Standard 4K Edition, and even a VHS release. It’s the perfect way to celebrate the franchise’s black sheep sequel before your next franchise binge. 

How Does Scream 4 Look in 4K?

The big reason to pick up this new set is that it’s the first time that Scream 4 has been available in 4K. The film is presented in Dolby Vision, 2.39:1 aspect ratio, and compressed as HEVC (H.265). From what I understand, Scream 4 was finished on a 2K digital intermediate and that a native 4K master was never created. This indicates that this 4K release is an upscale, but it’s well-handled, if that’s in fact the case.

There’s a clear difference in the crispness and details of this new version in comparison to 2011’s Blu-Ray. The colors, reds in particular, pop much better and there’s a greater sense of contrast and depth when dealing with darker tones and blacks. To this point, Scream 4 is a film that’s full of scenes that take place at night and in dark rooms. It’s crucial that the 4K’s black levels aren’t compromised and this transfer doesn’t disappoint. This is definitely the best way to see Scream 4 at this point.

One of the biggest sticking points with Scream 4 fans is the “vaseline filter” that gives the film a bright and hazy soft-focus effect. Some people absolutely hate this effect and were hoping that it would be removed in the 4K. The filter does in fact remain, but this look was always intentional on Craven’s part and an additional meta touch on the glossier look of the decade’s many horror remakes. It wouldn’t be right to remove this filter, yet, an alternate option on the disc that’s without the glossy look – or the ability to toggle it on or off – might have been a welcome alternative.

Audio Gets a Surprise Bonus Inclusion

Lionsgate Limited’s new 4K release also features Dolby Atmos, which rises to the occasion and provides solid audio design throughout the movie. There are no struggles between the broader surround sounds and the more precise and directional effects, the latter of which are boosted so that the simplest of sound effects cut right through a scene. There’s a lot more going on in the background of scenes that are evident in the mix’s rear channels, too.

It’s definitely an audio mix where you’re going to potentially notice new elements that you’ve never noticed before. Speaking of surprises, a bonus inclusion is an additional English 5.1 TrueHD audio track, which is the infamous “UK Version.” While largely the same, this audio track features a few line changes that were dubbed over in ADR and worth checking out for hardocre fans.

Scream 4 4K Release Comes Loaded with Features New and Old

Lionsgate Limited Extras (4K)

In addition to this new release including all the “Legacy” Special Features from the 2011 Blu-Ray, there are a handful of new extras that clock in at about 50 minutes of new material. These features include:

The Meta of Scream 

A 15-minute breakdown on the various ways in which Scream 4 is meta. There’s a playful nature to this, but it really doesn’t feel necessary, especially for an audience who is likely not buying Scream 4 for the first time.

Rebooting the Franchise: Scream 4 Revisited 

A 15-minute discussion with a handful of Scream 4’s actors (David Arquette, Marley Shelton, Nico Tortorella, and Erik Knudsen) while they talk about the film and share some stories. This is also a pretty light feature that’s full of anecdotes that you’ve probably heard before. It’s also too bad that such a small portion of the cast is assembled here.

Ghostface Revealed!

This segment is around eight minutes and gives the voice of Ghostface, Roger L. Jackson, his flowers. A feature on what Jackson brings to the Scream franchise is a decent idea and there’s a certain novelty to seeing Jackson do the voice on camera. While this is the 4K’s shortest feature, it surprisingly has the most depth. 

Wes Craven: The Maestro of Scream

A special feature on Wes Craven feels like a given, but this ten-minute segment does the bare minimum. About half of the feature is made up from archival interviews with Craven, with the rest featuring the cast from “Scream 4 Revisited” weighing in on the director. It’s sweet to hear these actors talk about Craven’s impact, but it’s a rather brief tribute.

In the end, all these new features are fine, but they come across as padded filler instead of anything that actually adds real value to the film’s legacy since its last physical media release. A special feature on how Scream 4 has been reappraised over the past decade, a breakdown on the legacy of Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts), or even a discussion on what the original sequel trilogy plan was for the next films. Roberts might not have been available, but it’s hard to imagine that Kevin Williamson couldn’t have chatted for 15 minutes, especially after he was back in this universe for Scream 7. Even a new audio commentary by Williamson or the Radio Silence team would have been appreciated.

These new features are not some treasure trove of undiscovered Scream 4 intel and they’re not the reason to buy this new set. That being said, the 2011 Legacy Special Features remain robust enough. 

Legacy Special Features (Blu-Ray)

Also included in this set are all the previous special features from the 2011 Blu-Ray release. These special features include: 

•     Feature Commentary with Director Wes Craven and Cast Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, and Neve Campbell (via telephone)
•     Deleted and Extended Scenes
•     Alternate Opening
•     Extended Ending
•     Gag Reel
•     EPKs: B-Roll, Soundbites, Junket Interviews
•     Trailers
•     TV Spot

All of this is pretty much what you’d expect and likely footage you’ve encountered before, at least in the case of the alternate opening and deleted/extended scenes. The Deleted and Extended Scenes are the most substantial of these features with around 30 minutes of material. There’s also optional commentary from Wes Craven on all these sequences, which honestly provides some enlightening context. The audio commentary occasionally sees Roberts and Hayden Panettiere dominate the conversation. It’s still a good reservoir of knowledge from Craven and two up-and-coming talents who clearly respect the hell out of him.

Conclusion

Lionsgate Limited’s 4K Ultra HD remaster of Scream 4 is easily the film’s best release and a must-buy for anyone who has never owned the movie before. Anyone who already has this chapter of the Woodsboro murders in their collection likely doesn’t need to upgrade if they’re purely interested in new supplemental features. However, video and audio hounds, plus hardcore Scream enthusiasts, will want to spring for the improved presentation and upgrades. 

The post ‘Scream 4’ 4K Ultra HD Review: The Franchise’s Black Sheep Gets a Killer Remaster appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It Came From Neverland, Pelayo’s latest novel, takes that search and applies it to one of the most famous children’s stories ever conceived, J.M. Barrie’s beloved and oft-adapted tale of the Boy Who Never Grew Up. But this is not just a Peter Pan retelling, or a Peter Pan meta-sequel. Through gorgeous prose, finely drawn characters, and an iron grip on the themes that drive the story, Pelayo crafts It Came From Neverland into one of the year’s must-read genre novels, both a horrifying spin on Peter Pan and a luminous dark fantasy about the search for salvation in a cold, brutal world.

In Pelayo’s version of events, Wendy Darling and her brothers John and Michael really did travel to Neverland when they were children, drawn there by a charismatic and irresistible figure called Peter Pan. But this Neverland is far from the Disney version, and after fighting to survive in that ageless place, the children made their way home and shut Peter Pan out of their lives, refusing to so much as utter his name, lest he find them again. 

Flash forward to 1914, where Wendy’s working as a schoolteacher at Marigold House, a London orphanage growing increasingly crowded amid the outbreak of World War I. By day, she teaches and volunteers at a local hospital, reading to the war wounded, and by night, she remembers to check every window latch and keep an eye on every shadow. But lately those shadows seem to behave strangely again. Crows caw all around her. And worst of all, children are disappearing again. Peter Pan is back, and faced with memories of how no one believed her the first time, Wendy prepares to face him one more time. 

This is a remarkably well-suited atmosphere for moments of classic, chill-inducing terror, and Pelayo wastes no time weaving a world in which every bird call, every stray thought from the mouth of a child, could be evidence that this monstrous Peter Pan is near. Wendy lives a haunted existence, and as the chaos of war grips London, old fears grip her while new ones fight for position. If you come to this novel looking for something like Stephen King’s IT by way of J.M. Barrie, you’re going to get it, through flashbacks and dark lore and wonderfully well-timed scares, but Pelayo’s not done. 

This version of Wendy Darling, through whom we see most of the narrative, cares for children in adulthood because she did not receive the care she needed herself as a child in the aftermath of a traumatic experience. She considers it her duty to listen to them, to protect them, to understand them in a world that still views them not as human beings, but as potential locked up in tiny bodies.

Setting the book in 1914, when young men across Europe were signing up to go and die in a war they didn’t quite understand, underscores this beautifully. Children are grist for the mill in the world of It Came From Neverland, their eager spirits waiting to be crushed by a machine of war and empire and capitalism that will not relent even if an armistice eventually arrives. It’s a wider, more existential layer of horror than the storybook monster, which gets us to open the book in the first place, but the real brilliance at work here is how Pelayo ties it all together. 

At the core of all of this, the beating, icy heart of It Came From Neverland‘s horror and its search for meaning amid the narratives of war, children’s fiction, collective memory, and more, Pelayo is most interested in what it really means to never grow up. It means retaining a sense of play, yes, but it also means a refusal to move on, to embrace not just the responsibilities of aging, but the moral burdens of it.

Peter Pan is a monster not because he likes to play, but because he does not consider consequences, mortality, or even the needs and desires of others. The same is true of the leaders of Europe sending young men off to die in a war, and the same is true of leaders now, playing dice with human lives amid the rise and fall of the stock market. To never grow up is to lose something essential about being human, and Pelayo depicts that loss as both existentially terrifying and heartbreaking. That terror and heartbreak drive the novel, but Wendy’s efforts to escape that terror and to mend her broken heart make it fly. 

It Came From Neverland is available June 9 wherever books are sold.

The post ‘It Came From Neverland’ Review – A Stunning, Devastating Take on Peter Pan appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s a difficult balancing act, but one that’s magical when it’s properly executed, and this claustrophobic structure connects. Hugo Ruiz (One Night with Adela) rises to the challenge with Dante, a chaotic experience that’s pumping adrenaline, burning rubber, and snorting drugs from frame one and then rarely lets up. It feels like it starts in the middle of a film’s third act and then pushes itself to go to even more radical and exciting places.

Ruiz’s Dante is even more confident and accomplished than his freshman feature. It feels like a spaghetti western that’s trapped in a slaughterhouse. It’s Bringing Out the Dead by way of Quentin Tarantino after he’s come off a giallo binge session. It’s a white-knuckle, blood-soaked ride into hell that keeps its audience on edge until the credits roll.

Ruiz accomplishes something quite remarkable with Dante, a subversive take on Dante’s Inferno in which a paramedic ambulance driver, Eduardo (Chino Darin), gets embroiled in a vicious crime caper that pushes everyone involved closer to salvation. Dante, as its title suggests, isn’t exactly subtle with its allusions to Dante’s Inferno. That being said, none of the film’s efforts to match its source material’s themes and tone ever feels forced. It’s a bold, risky adaptation of the classic 14th-century epic poem, but it’s also a distinct film that stands on its own and becomes an incredibly satisfying sophomore entry in Ruiz’s career. 

Eduardo innocently responds to a standard emergency call, only to find himself tending to a crime boss’s wounds and caught in the middle of a deadly feud between two erratic rival kingpins. Dante digs into an impossibly tense situation with a small cast of larger-than-life characters who really feel like they’re trapped in some layer of hell. Every minor victory is met with yet another physical trial and morality test for Eduardo to overcome. It also distills this harrowing encounter down to its most exciting elements so that Dante is a fast, easy watch that’s beautifully paced and always finds the right moment to heighten its mayhem.

There’s a shocking brutality here. It’s a visceral, gross, oozing horror film that’s often hard to look at. It’s a movie that lingers on not just pain, but how the human body can become such a disgusting mess. Ruiz lingers on gross visuals that reduce people to raw meat and emotion. However, this screaming, bloody mess is also an intimate chamber piece and character study. All this extreme subject matter serves a grander purpose and builds to a sweeping salvation rather than purely existing to be sensational. Dante is vicious, but it’s the film’s heart that stands out the most when everything is said and done. 

Among the criminal capitulations is a deeper commentary on faith, passion, and identity. Eduardo is repeatedly confused for a doctor throughout, which is just one of several instances that reflect its themes regarding duality and labels. Eduardo’s wild night highlights life’s transactional nature and how everyone is the same in death. It’s the ultimate equalizer. Alternatively, Dante looks at the weird, unpredictable places in which people can find humanity, connection, and purpose in life, even if it’s surrounded by death and darkness. Everyone is looking for that spark and light that helps us heal. 

In a film full of strong performances, Darin’s work as Eduardo is really spectacular. It’s a performance that’s so deceptively layered that it makes you want to immediately watch the film again as soon as it’s ended. Ruiz’s film is also really smart in response to when it digs deeper into Eduardo’s life and personality. It’s easy to picture Dante beginning with Eduardo carrying out several normal rounds to get a better sense of who he is before danger strikes with Mario. The film also excels as it asks the audience to make their own conclusions on this blank slate before the film begins to pull back the curtain on him. 

Eduardo is a compelling moral compass throughout this dark night of the soul, albeit a character who is hardly infallible. Some of Dante’s strongest moments are when Eduardo’s mental state is unclear, and the audience is left to wonder if he’s actually getting a rush from this on some level. Eduardo is left to process many heightened emotions on his own. However, there’s also a real camaraderie between Eduardo and Mak (Ester Expósito) that’s genuinely sweet and progresses in a very natural, effortless manner. Their chemistry helps power the second half.

At one point, Eduardo muses that “a director must take risks.” This is a film that certainly adheres to its own advice.

Dante reaches a satisfying conclusion that feels like the natural endpoint of this story, only to then launch into such a wild turn that transforms the film into something considerably darker and a powerful meditation on the pervasiveness of pain and suffering. The ending guarantees that this is a movie that’s destined to be debated by both its lovers and haters.

There’s thankfully a lot more going on here so that Dante doesn’t live or die based on its ending alone. It’s just a brave step forward that reiterates why Hugo Ruiz is a filmmaker to look out for. 

Dante made its world premiere at Tribeca 2026; release info TBD.

The post ‘Dante’ Review – A Paramedic’s Night Shift Turns Into A Blood-Soaked Nightmare [Tribeca 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

As much as pregnancy and childbirth are a period of vulnerability, it’s also an act that creates a remarkable bond that’s also ripe material to exploit in the horror genre. Turkish filmmaker Alphan Eseli’s Mutter: The Diary of a Mother is a modern folk horror film on motherhood that’s reminiscent of titles like Hatching, Lamb, and The Brood that explore separation anxiety, legacy, and transformative grief through a surreal lens that also succeeds as a one-of-a-kind creature feature. 

Mutter becomes a powerful examination of the unbreakable bond between mother and child. Gül (Hazar Ergüçlü) refuses to separate from her offspring, even if it’s more monster than man. It ultimately makes no difference. It’s hers, which is more than enough for Gül. Motherhood is painful and torturous, but an ordeal that’s worth all the trauma. Mutter: The Diary of a Mother is an equally distressing experience that tells a powerful, poignant story that dares to be different.

It bluntly highlights the beautiful and brutal horrors that surround the natural extremes of childbirth. However, this storytelling expands into a broader commentary on not just motherhood, but also the judgmental prejudices and corresponding misogyny that accompany single mothers. Mutter moans that this sweeping disrespect is entrenched in every aspect of the world as Gül cycles through transactional relationships in her life, yet it never feels preachy with its messaging. Occasionally on the nose, yes, but never preachy.

This is a movie that wastes absolutely no time, and it begins by throwing Gül and the audience into chaos. It’s not even a few minutes in and Gül has already given birth to some inexplicable monster and just as quickly been left by her partner. Gül begins this story abruptly, abandoned and afraid. Mutter’s fantastical dream logic makes it feel even more like it’s some kind of folk horror parable. It tragically presents motherhood as this all-encompassing force that takes over Gül’s life and is literally draining her dry. Beyond motherhood, Mutter also explores the fine line between love and hate, good and evil, and how these extremes are always at war and in flux. 

The messaging would be potent regardless of how it’s conveyed, but it’s appreciated that the film opts for old school practical effects for Gül’s inhuman offspring. The larval creature that comes out of her and struggles to exist is truly disgusting, while more instances of gruesome body horror reflect upon motherhood’s sacrificial nature. Mutter is a slimy and gross story that showcases especially disgusting sound design. There are frames that look like they belong in a Stuart Gordon or Brian Yuzna film from the ‘80s.

It’s easy to get caught up in the offensive practical effects. However, the best thing about this movie is the standout performance by Hazar Ergüçlü as Gül. She provides Mutter with a much-needed emotional anchor that gives the audience a reason to continue on this intense endeavor. Ergüçlü’s performance often channels Isabelle Adjani‘s haunting work in Possession, while still bringing plenty of original qualities to this role. When Mutter begins, Gül is left alone in the world, with no one, like a newborn. It’s a very lonely, isolating film that’s full of wide shots, barren spaces, and absent framing.

Gül’s compulsion to stay by her child’s side, no matter what, still manages to be inspiring even if it’s just as heartbreaking. Ergüçlü’s committed performance does a lot of the heavy lifting here, and she’s given many opportunities to convey a wide range of intense emotions. It’s a performance that’s vulnerable, fierce, inscrutable, and so much more. Gül transforms as much as her larval baby does, and it’s as if she’s in her own invisible state of metamorphosis throughout the film that mirrors her baby’s development.

Gül is dealt a bad hand, but the entire film conveys a brutalist aesthetic that’s meant to alienate. There’s bleak, drab lighting and sparse, cold set design that reinforces a depressing world that’s inescapable. It cultivates a heavy, crushing feeling where levity seems impossible. “There are so many sick bastards in the world,” is one of Mutter’s mantras, although this bleak statement is largely talking about men and how they’re this ongoing destructive force in Gül’s life. They’re the one constant that continues to let her down.

Mutter also addresses the concept of “God taking back his blessings” and if, perhaps, Gül actually deserves this cursed offspring for some reason, and that it’s a Biblical form of punishment. The whole film generates dread over a future for Gül that seems fated to fail. There’s some extremely dark messaging in the final act about the selfless nature of motherhood. “Nevertheless, she persisted” doesn’t cover half of it here. The fact that the film is dedicated to Eseli’s own mother is particularly wild and recontextualizes everything that’s come before it. 

Eseli delivers a fierce folk horror film that’s both familiar and disorienting. It checks many of the expected boxes for these types of maternal monster stories, and yet Gül’s plight never wears thin or grows repetitive. Eseli crafts a formidable film that doesn’t struggle to make any of its thoughts on parenthood known. If anything, Mutter’s pitch-black darkness is a little too much at times. The film would actually benefit from pulling back so that all this insurmountable sorrow never feels like parody.

Mutter never reaches this point, but it’s a melancholy exercise in extended sorrow that’s not an especially fun journey once it really locks in. Nevertheless, it is an effective meditation on motherhood and sacrifice that cuts deep despite tackling well-trodden territory.

Mutter: The Diary of a Mother made its premiere at Tribeca 2026, release info TBD.

The post ‘Mutter’ Review – A Mother’s Love Turns Monstrous in This Brutal Folk Horror Tale [Tribeca 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Breeder becomes the tonal and structural hybrid of Barbarian and Misery, but still uniquely its own thing. It’s one of 2026’s best horror surprises.

Goyette’s debut is such an impressive feature film that remains endlessly engaging because of its ability to keep one foot in reality, no matter how extreme the storytelling gets. It builds to a wild complication that actually feels earned because of how it preys upon the protagonist, Russell (Daniel Doheny), and his deep sense of desperation that’s rooted in the world’s grim economic state. Life-changing money makes it a lot easier for red flags to take on a greener hue. 

Russell is a brilliant college student who is at the precipice of a game-changing study that has the potential to prevent a rare bee species’ extinction. He just lacks the funding to make this dream a reality. Russell is cautiously optimistic when a particular poodle breeder, Patti (Dot-Marie Jones), who is a fan of Russell’s work, promises to be an angel investor if he can help her with an experiment of her own. It’s a sublime setup for what turns into a consistently surprising take on the perilous pursuit of perfection and a dark, post-modern version of survival of the fittest.

Credit: Jarryl Lim

Breeder is the very best style of slow-burn storytelling that grows more uncomfortable with each act. There are shades of Dogtooth and even Tusk, to some extent, as this extreme ritual that’s against nature takes place in plain sight and becomes normalized. The blunt, matter-of-fact nature of Patti’s actions makes this all the more horrifying. It’s almost as if Breeder applies a dog trainer approach to a hostage situation. The film deconstructs the complex bond between pet and owner, particularly how this relationship can warp and become toxic. There’s a slipping sense of reality that’s absolutely chilling. However, the film uses this confusion to find the humor in this unsettling premise as it balances these two extremes. Breeder’s sense of humor is low-key its secret weapon, and always feels so natural.

The entire cast shines, but this is really a movie that lives and dies on the success of its villain. Dot-Marie Jones is a revelation as Patti. It’s electric every second that she’s on screen, and there’s taut tension from not knowing when the other shoe will drop. She’s played with such chilling, calculating intensity, even when she’s completely normal. Patti is like Misery’s Annie Wilkes mixed with No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh, and it’s absolutely unforgettable.

Alternatively, Russell’s layered character development and the arc that he experiences highlight the pressures that he faces in life over failing to realize his full potential. Breeder makes Russell feel helpless and establishes why this study is so important to him. It’s so easy to have main characters who make a slew of poor decisions and lose sight of themselves so that their karmic retribution almost feels justified and becomes a cathartic release for the audience. Russell never wavers, and he doesn’t read like any other idiot in a horror film who willingly puts themselves in a dangerous situation.

Credit: Jarryl Lim

Most importantly, Goyette makes sure that the audience cares about Russell and that they’re actively rooting for his survival through all this. He’s put through the wringer, but it’s also fascinating to see how this harsh ordeal helps him grow and eliminate what he perceives to be weaknesses. Russell is a fun foil for every character that he shares time with in Breeder. However, there’s especially great chemistry between him and his girlfriend during the film’s first act. It helps establish a necessary baseline before everything falls apart. There’s a sardonic, dry energy to these scenes that’s such a stark counterpoint to the chaos that follows.

Breeder is such an original take on a low-budget “horror contained in a house” story that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. It’s a unique story that intentionally avoids taking the easy way out, even if that’s occasionally frustrating. The film’s end, for instance, is likely to split audiences. However, it’s a decision that feels real and organic, rather than some gratuitous pivot that only exists to cause controversy. This strong, earned storytelling is lifted through fantastic performances and confident filmmaking that never fail to rise to the occasion.

It’s an excellent showpiece for Goyette, and it’s genuinely exciting to consider what he’ll do with more at his disposal, but it’s also a standout horror film in a year that’s been stacked with creative offerings. Breeder is headed to Shudder after a limited theatrical release, and it will hopefully find an audience and not get lost in the streaming shuffle. Survival of the fittest and all that.

Breeder made its premiere at Tribeca 2026 and is slated for release this fall. 

The post ‘Breeder’ Review – A Modern Horror Classic That Plays Matchmaker With Eugenics [Tribeca 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s a unique lens to experience a familiar story about family secrets, generational trauma, unresolved grief, and the importance of not just legacy, but preservation. It’s a hell of a directorial debut from Henry Chaisson that’s guaranteed to get under the audience’s skin as they’re dragged through this painful, toxic tale.

Recluse is a gothic haunted house story where an isolated audio engineer, Joan (Sasha Frolova), returns to her family’s estate to check in on her father after he suffers a terrible accident. Joan suddenly discovers something much more sinister that paints her family’s tragedies in a very different light. Chaisson’s debut functions as a fascinating companion piece to this year’s undertone, which does a lot of the same things. 

These two films make for a fascinating case of parallel thinking that tackles comparable subject matter through a similar lens, albeit in a bigger, less claustrophobic story in Recluse’s case. In fact, it’s the perfect horror film for anyone who was let down by undertone and didn’t feel like it brought enough to the table. It’s a considerably more conventional horror film, but this isn’t meant to denigrate its high quality. Recluse may hit some familiar notes, but it’s a scary, well-crafted haunted house horror story that goes for the jugular.

A gripping mystery that involves the tragic, unresolved circumstances that surround Joan’s mother teases a chilling connection to the recent horrors that have afflicted her father. Joan desperately tries to put these pieces together and give her family some sense of grander peace before she’s pulled under and becomes another victim of this festering curse that’s systematically worked its way through the Wyatt family. By doing so, Recluse digs into some deeper commentary on collective trauma, a very literal look at the “sins of the father” adage, and how one selfish decision can ripple through generations and fracture off into different dilemmas. By the end, Recluse has brilliantly flipped the powerful concept of legacy on its head by illustrating the horrors and sense of entitlement that can be born out of this idea.

A legacy is just another name for a curse under the right context.

”Listen” is a simple but powerful command from Joan’s father that she briefly obsesses over. In a way, it becomes Recluse’s grander mission statement, whether it’s in response to Joan listening to the people in her life, the signals that her body and mind are telling her, or the world’s greater whims. It’s important to reconnect with these grounding pillars, especially when it feels like control is slipping away.

Recluse excels with how audio and soundscapes can create entire universes that are full of rich details that transport individuals to these environments. There’s also a level of objectivity when it comes to audio recordings and the evergreen permanence that they’re able to provide. Joan’s career as an audio engineer makes sense for someone who wants to cling to hard evidence and proof of existence. It provides great insight into Joan without ever getting lost in contrived exposition.

Joan’s entire life is built around audio engineering, and so it makes sense that Recluse features excellent sound design that really goes above and beyond with its production elements. All of the sound design is expertly handled and turns the film into something special. These auditory elements intuitively keep the audience on edge so that they’re more susceptible to the actual scares that eventually strike. The smallest sound effect gets turned into a crushing, cacophonous assault. It’s a really effective way to build terror. Writer/Director Chaisson also handles the film’s music, which achieves a sublime, unnerving dissonance that further heightens the free-floating anxiety.

The story at the center of Recluse is slightly generic in some respects, but the film’s visual language and tone make it feel distinctly memorable. It also doesn’t hurt that the home that Joan returns to is basically an eerie art studio that’s full of contorted paintings. Recluse never struggles to generate mounting dread and terror that pump through every scene. Powerful, thoughtful cinematography consistently reinforces the film’s themes. Joan is constantly reflected in different surfaces or viewed through mirrors. She’s also often confined to tight, constricting framing that all speaks to her refracted identity during this moment of loss and her attempts to regain agency and control by making sense of something that’s seemingly unexplainable. 

Recluse is full of truly disturbing visuals that make it seem like Joan is lost in a dream that turns out to be an extended nightmare. It’s a surreal journey reminiscent of invasive psychological horror like Silent Hill, with a touch of Sinister and Hereditary thrown in for good measure. There are so many individual frames that could endlessly fuel urban legends and creepypastas.

It does a great job with how it presents Joan’s fragile state of mind, where chilling flashes of the past sneak up on her and unresolved trauma manifests into unsettling imagery. There are endless shots that are obscured in darkness, or shadow is creeping in from the corners of frames like a suffocating force of nature. It’s very rare that a scene is fully lit. It leads to a very lonely, isolating atmosphere that’s easy to get lost in.

Chaisson’s debut stands out from the many other high-minded haunted house horror films without succumbing to the same pretensions that often drag down these stories. It’s a grief-stricken character study that’s full of upsetting visuals that scratch at something visceral and raw. The horror elements connect, and the answers to its grander mystery provide an appropriate and believable sense of closure. Those who are looking for an atmospheric horror film that isn’t afraid to be different while still channeling something real will appreciate Recluse.

Recluse made its world premiere at Tribeca; release info TBD.

The post ‘Recluse’ Review – Harrowing Haunted House Horror With Lots Of Skeletons In Its Closet [Tribeca 2026] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Just as the original Scary Movie (2000) structured its over-the-top parody primarily around 1996’s Scream, the new Scary Movie largely follows 2022’s Scream for its narrative thrust as it reunites the original “core four.”

Since we last caught up with the franchise’s MVPs, Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) has gone full Laurie Strode hermit, complete with a booby-trapped house and familial estrangement. Regina Hall’s Brenda Meeks channels Ma as a suburban mom desperate to befriend her kids and their friends, and time has changed absolutely nothing for Ray (Shawn Wayans), who remains locked in his sexuality struggle. Perma-stoner Shorty (Marlon Wayans) remains trapped in high school, making him an excellent bridge between generations as Ghostface returns to slaughter.

Anna Faris plays Cindy and Regina Hall plays Brenda in Scary Movie from Paramount Pictures.

At the forefront of the new gen cast is Olivia Rose Keegan, whose incredible emulation of Anna Faris’ mannerisms and ticks makes her a perfect choice to play Sara, Cindy’s estranged daughter. Sara and her sister, the Wednesday-like Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif), drive what semblance of plot there is forward, but this is not a vehicle for storytelling.

Director Michael Tiddes and screenwriters Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, original Scary Movie director Keenen Ivory Wayans, Craig Wayans (Scary Movie 2), and Rick Alvarez (A Haunted House) aim solely for laughs with a relentless revolving door of crude humor and parody hijinks from a bygone era, set to a modern horror mixtape.

Tiddes and crew take a kitchen sink approach, leaving absolutely no pop culture stone unturned in its skewering. Scary Movie even turns in on itself, poking fun at its past while scratching that nostalgic itch with a litany of franchise cameos.

It’s too much. Scary Movie is so stuffed to the gills that it keeps lampooning through the end credits, though at least it ends on a strong note (I’d like to buy a ticket to Brosferatu, please). This reboot falls into a frenzied rhythm so densely packed that the humor instead becomes sensory overload, unhelped by the hit-or-miss humor. Editor Jonathan Schwartz works overtime, cramming in every reference, homage, spoof, and movie nod possible into the brisk 95-minute runtime, making for a madcap sprint that leaves you exhausted.

Savannah Lee Nassif plays Tuesday in Scary Movie from Paramount Pictures.

The anarchic spirit of Scary Movie leaves little room for insight or perspective; this reboot never gets as outrageous or as offensive as it intends because much of its humor is empty. There’s no insight or aim for a lot of the gags, making the comedy less reliable.

I keep hammering on the overcrowding of parody here because Regina Hall and Anna Faris remain the series’ biggest assets alongside its beating heart: Marlon Wayans. They still elicit the biggest laughs, and Scary Movie is at its most winsome when the camera lingers just long enough to catch small character moments and comedic choices that demonstrate why each has endured so long in this business.

In short, Scary Movie could’ve used way more of them and scaled back in the sheer volume of joke topics. Save some of the fun for the inevitable sequel. Parodies tend to live or die by their humor, and mileage will most certainly vary here, and Scary Movie simply wants to deliver an entertaining time. I can’t say that a lot of it landed for me, but the energy of original creators returning to the franchise they began, and with such passionate gusto, is felt.

Scary Movie is now playing in theaters.

The post ‘Scary Movie’ Review – An Overstuffed Parody Reboot appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Which has led to a very mixed bag of results that’s usually viewed as a hollow exercise in IP renewal that’s become a growing cliche that’s something to mock. Dead Ringers, Fatal Attraction, Presumed Innocent, and even The Birds are just some of the most recent titles in the movie-to-limited series pipeline. Admittedly, this formula can still work. It just needs to actually have not only a point of view, but a point, otherwise it’s destined to disappear into the vast streaming abyss.

Cape Fear definitely has a point of view and is well aware that it’s the fourth proper adaptation of this story — fifth if The Simpsons’ masterful “Cape Feare” parody is included. It’s an adaptation that’s not only aware of its past’s baggage, but intentionally embraces it and uses it to its advantage. Nick Antosca’s Cape Fear is so exciting because it functions as a remix of every version of this story — the ’60s film, Martin Scorsese’s ’90s remake, and John D. MacDonald’s original novel, The Executioners — to create this glorious amalgamation of the narrative. It’s not unlike what was done with Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal series and how it remixed the breadth of Thomas Harris’ works and their cinematic adaptations. 

This approach is most effective when certain iconic scenes from the ’90s film are recontextualized and given to different characters in order to make grander thematic statements. It’s a really striking approach that reflects the generational ripples and overlap between these adaptations, yet it’s never distracting or ostentatious to anyone who is experiencing this story for the first time. It helps this series feel different from the deluge of forgettable adaptations that are flooding the market.

On paper, Antosca is the perfect showrunner to tell this story. He has an impressive body of work to pull from that includes horror series like Channel Zero, Hannibal, and Brand New Cherry Flavor, but also lots of true-crime titles like The Act, A Friend of the Family, and Candy. This series falls squarely within these two extremes as it blurs the lines between these genres and styles of horror storytelling. It’s Big Little Lies on bath salts. Cape Fear perhaps doesn’t need to exist, but it’s still a hell of a terrifying experience that has something timely to say.

Horror is full of stories in which one bad day is all it takes to break someone and turn them into a completely different person. Cape Fear isn’t doing exactly this. It’s more of a psychological waterboarding until the target’s sense of self is eroded to rubble. However, it takes the kernel of this idea and expands it onto the pristine ideal of the picturesque American family. It plays with the self-aware realization that the stories we tell are not necessarily what we think they are.

It’s a story about forgiveness, salvation, and revenge that blows up the Bowden family when a violent offender, Max Cady (Javier Bardem), is released from prison and systematically sets his sights on the people he holds accountable. Anna and Tom Bowden (Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson), the married couple who represented his case in court, receive a rude awakening when Cady’s psychological torture tour begins. Cape Fear, as a property, is most famously known for being the ultimate cat-and-mouse psychological thriller. This rendition culminates in such an explosive climax that’s right out of a slasher film. 

Antosca was involved with an unproduced Friday the 13th reboot draft back in 2015, and there are certainly moments in which Max Cady moves with the hulking intensity of Jason Voorhees. So much of what makes all this work rests on Bardem’s complex performance. He’s very careful not to just copy Robert Mitchum or Robert De Niro’s versions of Cady, while he also taps into a terrifying intensity that feels completely different from what he brought forward with No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh.

Apple TV’s new series also introduces a mental injury to Cady that adds psychological fractures that pull him between different versions of events as he struggles to grasp the truth. It’s an element that’s not exactly necessary and often feels like a convenient obstacle that can be activated whenever necessary. However, it allows for some creative visual flourishes and more opportunities for Bardem to get lost in Cady’s complexities.

Opposite Bardem’s Cady, Adams and Wilson do some of their best work as Anna and Tom. Anna is much more front and center than Tom, and Cape Fear is really Adams and Bardem’s time to shine. Wilson still does amazing, understated work, especially whenever the rug gets pulled out from under him regarding someone in his family. The visceral, brutal violence that Cady introduces to the Bowden family hits hard and highlights the anger and intensity that’s fundamental to this story.

What Cape Fear does best is its enlightening deconstruction of the ideal American family, how much work it takes to preserve such a pure thing, and the lengths that people go when they feel like the sanctity of this union is under fire. All it takes is for one of these foundational pillars to weaken before the whole unit becomes compromised. It moves the damage and pressure from one family member to the next as everyone struggles, and it’s unclear what will be left of this family when all is said and done.

This dynamic makes Cape Fear’s story so much more layered and interesting than if the series were just focused on Cady, Anna, and Tom, rather than making their children as much of a priority. Each member of the Bowden family experiences their own obstacles and arcs, although Natalie (Lily Collias) and Zack’s (Joe Anders) storylines are often the most grating. It all boils down to forgiveness, identity, and wanting to be perceived as the person we think we are, versus how we’re viewed by the public, and the dangerous dissonance that can exist between these separate selves.

These ideas are at their most potent when Cape Fear taps into the growing paranoia that bubbles up to the surface and becomes unbearable, so that even the littlest action is triggering. These moments are usually captured through a more erratic filming style that ramps up the tension for both the characters and the audience, unsure of what will strike and when. 

Cape Fear never struggles to create uncomfortable setpieces where the anxiety just crescendos and hangs over the scene. On this note, the series’ musical score really captures the perfect aesthetic. It immediately evokes the suspenseful power of the previous Cape Fear films whenever Bernard Herrmann’s virtuosic original theme kicks in. It’s magic every single time.

Antosca delivers an exhilarating update to a classic thriller that pushes its source material to exciting, new places that justify its existence. It’s an exciting story that’s full of terrifying performances and cataclysmic consequences. Admittedly, Cape Fear could have been shortened to eight episodes rather than ten. There are a few plot threads that feel unnecessary and artificially expanded upon, but every episode is still an adrenaline-pumping experience.

If nothing else, it reminds audiences why Cape Fear is such an evergreen story that’s lasted the test of time and will continue to unnerve and get under the skin of whole new generations.

The 10-episode series will make its global debut on June 5 with a two-episode premiere on Apple TV, followed by new episodes every Friday through July 31, 2026.

The post ‘Cape Fear’ Redefines A Cutthroat Classic & Turns The American Dream Into A Psychological Nightmare [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

A musical love-letter to the b-movies of yesteryear that also inspired generations of LGBTQ+ inclusive fan communities around the world, both the film and the original stage musical boast an ongoing legacy that shows no sign of slowing down decades down the line In honor of the 50th anniversary of the original film’s relaunch as a midnight movie that cemented it as a perpetual big screen hit, Linus O’Brien, son of Richard O’Brien, the creator of Rocky Horror and actor behind the fan-favorite Riff Raff, presents fans with his long-awaited documentary: Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror.

Of course, you might be wondering if this new release justifies doing the Time Warp again after so many existing celebrations of the original film, so let’s dig a little deeper into Linus’ production.

Through a dynamic combination of archival footage, personal photographs and in-depth interviews with the original cast (such as Susan Sarandon, Nell Campbell, Patricia Quinn and Tim Curry), as well as commentary by hardcore fans like Jack Black and Trixie Mattel, Strange Journey follows the origins of Rocky Horror all the way from Richard O’Brien’s New Zealand upbringing to the shadow casts and online fandom motivating the film adaptation’s modern-day screenings. The documentary also serves as a surprisingly poignant look at how O’Brien views the “franchise” as a whole and how it reflects his personal journey of self-discovery.

Right out of the gate, the film sets itself up as something of a trip down memory lane for hardcore fans as we’re treated to footage of Richard reckoning with the statue of Riff Raff in Hamilton, New Zealand – right next to where he used to cut hair for a living. While the film benefits from plenty of b-roll borrowed from the Rocky Horror Picture Show as a means of hyping up segments of the documentary and even serving as the occasional punchline, Linus expects that viewers are already familiar with the landmark film and dives straight into the cultural context in which his father began working on the surprisingly lo-fi project.

Information goes by fast due to the brisk 80-minute runtime, but I appreciate the nods to Richard’s creative process as we see handwritten songs in a personal notebook that was eventually expanded into the musical’s script. The idea that O’Brien’s method training informed a different view of B-movie performances is undeniably fascinating -as are his musings on genre cinema – but it’s really when the rest of the cast and director Jim Sharman show up that the documentary really shifts into gear.

Sharman’s insight into the low-budget production aspects of the play makes it clear that this was a rag-tag team of artists taking advantage of raw talent and a new cultural zeitgeist that allowed them to confront taboo subject matter. Susan Sarandon is (unsurprisingly) a joy to watch as she reminisces about her time working on the movie adaptation, showing genuine appreciation for the hardship inherent to passionate indie productions. Of course, Tim Curry’s contributions are some of the most compelling, with his comments on how he originally wanted Dr. Frank-N-Furter to have a German accent until a random encounter on the bus made him realize that the good doctor should speak like the Queen, really making you appreciate the big ideas that turned a small production into a smash hit.

That being said, my personal favorite source of snarky quotes and anecdotes is Patricia Quinn, who originally played Magenta. Her stories about a brief romantic encounter with Meatloaf and how grateful she is that the film adaptation of the musical kept most of the original cast are incredibly entertaining and add to the sense that the production captured lightning in a bottle in a way that can never be replicated.

Susan Sarandon in ‘Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror’

As a longtime fan, it was hard not to get swept up in the nostalgia when the file showed pictures of these young performers unaware that their lives were about to be changed forever by a weird little musical – especially when Richard O’Brien would come in with his guitar and perform acoustic versions of some of his most iconic tracks.

Yet, the completely justified pride that Richard appears to feel when presenting the music to his son, and by extension the audience, alongside the existential questions that this exceedingly personal project forces him to revisit, are what make Strange Journey so much more than a corporate puff piece. While I would have liked to see more interaction between the two generations of O’Brien’s, as you get the feeling that Linus is searching for his place in a legacy that extends far beyond his unusual family history, there is enough of an emotional core here that you’ll likely walk away from the experience thinking about what it means to have a single project define your entire life.

At the end of the day, I can’t imagine a more definitive exploration of everything that makes The Rocky Horror Picture Show such a cultural landmark. Featuring memorable insight from nearly all the major players, with the obvious exception of the late, great Meatloaf, and enough behind-the-scenes imagery to make you feel like you were there alongside the team from the very beginning, Strange Journey is the perfect companion to the 1975 masterpiece. That’s why I’d recommend this return to our favorite Frankenstein Place for both diehard fans and newcomers alike.

Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror is available now on digital platforms everywhere.

The post ‘Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror’ Review – The Definitive Rocky Horror Documentary appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s often worth paying attention, though, when a filmmaker targets a more atypical animal threat, including the likes of Jonathan King’s Black Sheep or Juan Piquer Simón’s Slugs. A new contender rumbles its way onto the screen this month, and while we all grew up thinking hippos are rotund cuties, the truth is far more frightening – this hippo is Hungry.

Sistine (Madison Davenport) and her best friend, Hannah (Olivia Bernstone), are enjoying a vacation in New Orleans, hoping to drown out their troubles back home. They sign up for an early morning bayou tour known for its alligator sightings and are joined by four other tourists and the boat’s skipper, Rodrigo (Michel Curiel). An uneventful trip sees Rodrigo take the group off the beaten path, but when an animal in the water capsizes their boat, the group finds themselves trapped in the swamp by something unexpected and deadly.

It’s a hippo. There’s a hippo in the bayou, and it’s not happy about all these pesky people.

From Joy Houck’s Creature from Black Lake to Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort to Adam Green’s Hatchet, the movies have warned us time and again not to go into the swampy bayous of Louisiana. Those cautionary tales are appreciated, though, as bigfoot, inbred hicks, and undead serial killers are a very real threat. But hippos? In the bayou? Well, that just seems silly.

And yet, Hungry plays its blubbery, big-toothed threat with deadly seriousness, and it’s all the better for it. “But Rob,” I can already hear some of you saying, “just yesterday you reviewed the new shark attack film, Chum, and said it suffered from taking itself too seriously. What gives?” For one thing, you’re misquoting me, but more importantly, the reference there was more of an observation on the animal attack subgenre successes as a whole. The “fun” ones tend to succeed more often than their more serious counterparts, but a dramatic and thrilling time can still be found with filmmakers who know what they’re doing.

Chum may be serious, but it’s also poorly written/performed, lacking in any degree of tension, devoid of personality, and so on. By contrast, Hungry lets its suspense build on the backs of engaging characters, good performances, and believable writing. Only one of its ensemble is obnoxious – a major feat for this kind of film – but even then, their motivations are both well-written and understandable.

The rest of the characters are people you’d be happy to see survive the night, and rather than looking forward to the next kill, director James Nunn and his cast leave us uncertain and nervous about who’s going to go belly up. The nervous business traveler wanting to get back to her kids? The family of three celebrating lost loved ones while on their vacation? Joaquim de Almeida’s Walker, an old hunter, is introduced saying, “The only cute hippo is a dead hippo,” so you pretty much know where he’ll end up.

To that end, the film teases out its hippo’s first appearance until well into the ninety-minute running time. We get ripples and splashes, but it’s only around the midway point that we get our first real look at the beast, and it looks fantastic. Nunn goes on to show the hippo in all its glory, and it’s a convincing antagonist brought to life through practical prosthetic effects and digital work. From the ear twitches to the beast’s giant maw opening wide with awe and malice, the hippo’s presence feels part of the action. There’s a tangible nature to it, something practical effects excel at while digital effects sometimes fail to convince of, and both succeed here with quality work from all involved.

While we get brief exteriors early on and some visually appealing drone shots, the bulk of the film unfolds on what looks to be a highly believable, set-dressed water tank (but could very well be an actual location, in which case, kudos to the team). It’s wholly convincing as a section of the bayou, complete with shoulder-high water and arching, twisting trees emerging into the sky. The film was shot in Malta, which is, coincidentally, where Chum was filmed as well.

Nunn, who also wrote Hungry, is now ten films deep into a fairly interesting career as a genre filmmaker. He’s made four movies with Scott Adkins, three of which are certified action bangers (with 2016’s Eliminators in particular being an underrated gem). He dipped a toe into the animal attack subgenre back in 2022 with the aforementioned Shark Bait, and it’s clear he learned some lessons from that endeavor, as its first hour is an engaging, attractively shot feature that sinks fast as soon as its poorly rendered shark becomes a lead character. Hungry improves on every aspect of that film, with its biggest step up being in regard to the effects.

If there’s an area or two where Hungry lacks bite, it’s in both its gore and its ending. There are numerous kills here, but the nature of the attacks and the choices made by Nunn mean none of them result in gory assaults or outcomes. We’re shown the torn apart corpse of an alligator early on, but most of the human kills see them attacked and dragged underwater, leaving nothing but a blood spill behind. Similarly, while the ending encounter satisfies, it still feels like it should have been a bigger confrontation. Neither of these aspects really hurt the film, but a bolstering of the gore and ending antics would have definitely upped the film’s ultimate entertainment value and rewatchability.

When all is said and done, Hungry is a genuinely solid animal attack film that succeeds in making its creature threat thrilling, entertaining, and, dare I say, educational? Title notwithstanding, the film acknowledges that hippos are vegetarians, meaning the five hundred or so people they kill every year – a true fact! – are slaughtered not out of hunger, but out of spite, self-defense, or a desire to play “land orca” while tossing around us fragile humans like we’re little more than seals in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Characters are grounded and engaging, the film moves well between suspense, character beats, and action, and the effects used to bring the hippo to life are highly effective and never feel like distractions. Drop those expectations of a Hungry Hungry Hippo romp, and settle in for a terrific little survival thriller about an angry, angry hippo instead.

Chomp chomp.

Hungry releases in select theaters today, June 3, before arriving on VOD on June 23, 2026.

The post ‘Hungry’ Review – Finally, a Film Brave Enough to Call Out Hippos for the Monsters They Truly Are appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Until now.

Ha, sorry, that was cruel, but sometimes you have to make your own entertainment when the movie you’re watching and writing about offers none of its own. Chum is the kind of bottom-of-the-barrel shark flick that we’ve seen a lot of in recent years, with interchangeable titles like Great White, Shark Bait, and Maneater. A sunny setting (usually the best thing about the movie), obnoxious characters, poor writing, and horrible effects – that’s the recipe for far too many shark attack movies over the past decade, and Chum ticks off each of those boxes in quick order.

It stands apart from those other bad films, though, with the addition of two simple letters. One is an A, and the other is an I, and together they spell shitty, job-killing digital effects. More on that in a minute, but for now, let’s dive into the guts of Chum.

We open on a fishing trawler moving through the water off Malta while a man provides voiceover. Roy (Jim Klock) talks solemnly about the endless ocean, his lovely wife, and the painful collision between the two that came when a Great White shark bit her in half. “I am not the sea,” he says, “I’m a man, and a man does not forget.”

A quick smash to the title card is followed by the introduction of Tina (Alice Eve) and Tom (Eric Michael Cole) at their wedding reception in Malta. There’s already trouble in paradise, but a last minute wedding gift sees them heading out to sea for a three-hour tour the next afternoon with three friends and Tina’s sister, Sadie (Elle Haymond). A couple of very contrived beats later, and the yacht is sinking and in flames, forcing them to be rescued by a conveniently nearby Roy.

He’s not their savior, though, and instead drugs and binds the gang with the intention of using them for a very particular purpose. It’s vengeance he’s after, and he intends to use them as bait in an effort to attract and then kill the shark that ate half of his wife five years ago. Roy apparently got a tracker on the beast at some point, and over the years, he’s tried luring it in with fish entrails, seals, cats, and dogs – but it only responds to live human chum. Uh oh!

A shark attack movie doesn’t need to be entirely original in its concept or execution for it to work, so I’m not put off that the filmmakers obviously watched Sean Byrne’s Dangerous Animals before concocting the story for Chum. The human antagonist is the only thing they lifted, though, as they apparently decided they just didn’t need any of that film’s fun, suspense, or onscreen/offscreen talent. Director/co-writer Jonathan Zuck and co-writer Joe Leone – this is Leone’s thirteenth produced script since 2017, a feat that grows less impressive if you actually watch those other movies – try to pair character drama with the twin terrors of a madman and a hungry shark, but everything here just falls flat.

What could have been an engaging piece of sunlit terror instead stumbles and falls beneath clunky dialogue and even worse delivery. The cast, Eve surprisingly included, are as unconvincing at saying “good morning” as they are at exclaiming “Jesus! Are you okay?” after pulling a spear from their friend and watching the blood gush out. Did I laugh when someone tells Roy, “You know, for a shark hunter, you’re not very good at this,” or when someone else refers to the aquatic threat as “some aggro incel shark”? Yes, but that says more about my desperate need for entertainment than it does the quality of the movie.

There’s a genuine litany of dumb things worth criticizing, questioning, and calling out with Chum  – one friend confronts Roy because they haven’t seen the shore for hours, but not only has the shore been visible throughout the film, it’s literally in the background of the scene when he says it. Slow motion and repeated, unnecessary flashbacks are frequently used to bolster the eighty-three-minute (pre-credits) running time. The red color tinting whenever there’s blood in the water is horrendous. We’re in Malta, but everyone, including the police, is American? A certain character is given an insulting, post-death voiceover. Climate change is lazily tacked on as a motivation for the shark’s behavior.

There’s also an argument to be made that the film’s serious tone is part of the problem. The issue isn’t that neither the writing nor the performances can deliver on that seriousness, which they can’t, but instead, deadly serious shark attack movies just rarely seem to work. There are examples of great ones like Open Water and The Reef, but in recent years, the overwhelming majority of the shark movies that deliver the goods all seem to have a sense of humor and a genuine personality. They’re not comedies, but from The Shallows and Deep Blue Sea 3 (shut up, it’s a really good time) to Under Paris and Thrash, the shark films that are having fun are the shark films that are fun.

But yes, better scripts, direction, performances, and visual effects would also help.

Which brings us, finally, to the ugly ass elephant in the room – Chum’s use of A.I. to create what looks like all of its shark carnage. The modern ideal will almost always be some combination of practical effects and traditionally created digital effects to breathe life into your film’s sharks, and even then, the end results can still be a mixed bag. Most recent films tend to rely almost exclusively on the digital, with plenty of the sharks looking laughable as a result, but there’s still at least the solace of knowing that hey, real digital FX animators were paid real money to create those ugly visuals, so kudos to them on their journey towards becoming better.

Chum doesn’t list a single digital effects artist in their end credits. Not one. There are a few supervisors and producers, but not a single VFX artist, compositor, or animator.

The charitable explanation is that the filmmakers just decided not to credit the individual artists for some reason. There’s no listing for the end credits song (called “Crimson Tide,” maybe?) either, so it’s entirely possible. The more likely explanation, though, is found in the film’s only credited digital intermediate house, Tunnel Post, which states on their site that their “Artificial Intelligence division augments all of Tunnel’s business disciplines.” A.I. has its place, obviously, and Tunnel’s use of it in other areas might be understandable, but replacing human artists with a garbage machine is just poor form.

Some of you might not care about that aspect, and I can hear you insensitive jerks now yelling, “Get off your soapbox, Hunter, and just tell us how the effects look!” Fair enough. The shark attack sequences in Chum look pretty darn good if you watch from fifty feet away while squinting through a fog bank and some partially closed Venetian blinds.

The A.I. sequences blend real shark and human footage with digital sharks and people to make it look like characters are not just beside the shark in the water, but actually being chomped and eaten. The quickest of glances might seem convincing, partly because we’re just not used to seeing “real” sharks biting down on “real” people, but watch for more than a half second or so, and it’s clearly a cartoon.

The shark looks too smooth, the people sometimes fluctuate weirdly – one character jumps onto the back of the shark and seems to temporarily grow three pant sizes while in the air – and it just never feels like a tangible situation or threat. Try chumming some of this shit, indeed.

Look, if you’re anything like me – well, first off, congratulations – but more relevant to the point at hand, you’re going to watch this movie regardless of what I say. I get it. Animal attack films are an addiction that I am unable and unwilling to quit. (I’m the same way with Bigfoot movies, and hoo boy, let me tell you, the decline rate on those is even steeper.) There are fun, effective shark films with shoddy effects, movies that entertain despite their visuals, but Chum is not one of them.

No thrills, no suspense, no entertainment value, no real effort, no digital effects artists, and no reason to watch. But you will, so I hope you enjoy it more than I do.

Chum releases in theaters on June 5, 2026.

The post ‘Chum’ Review – Get Your A.I. Trash Machine Out of Our Animal Attack Films! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Not just loss. Not just unsuccessful inadequacy. But true, all-encompassing, cataclysmic failure.

The Vampire Lestat, much like the two seasons of Interview with the Vampire before it, is a series that’s profoundly interested in failure. The type of failure that can only be understood by someone who has been making the same mistakes for over 250 years. The Vampire Lestat is utterly consumed by failure, but also temptation, regression, obsession, and evolution. It remains unparalleled when it comes to sprawling, epic love stories that endure for centuries. 

The new season reminds us that we’re all slaves to the past, whether it’s in terms of repeating it or trying to rise above it. This season is such a potent cocktail of pain, vanity, fear, and regret that’s shared between this sad collection of lost souls that culminates in such explosive bursts of tremendous emotion. Human, vampire; nobody wants to burn alone. It’s all too appropriate that a season that functions as a sweeping ode to failure is genuinely one of the year’s most perfect pieces of television, horror or otherwise.

At first, The Vampire Lestat’s transition to rock and roll may seem like a radical pivot. However, this is a series that continues to creatively mythologize and normalize vampires. It presents them as a crucial societal pillar and creates rewarding parallels between vampires and rock stars, right down to their parasitically adoring groupies. Lestat goes so far as to argue that vampires are the original rock stars, and it uses Lestat’s latest metamorphosis as a way to highlight these toxic, unbalanced relationships.

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt and Jennifer Ehle as Gabriella – Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat _ Episode 02 – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

It’s a truly perfect setup that’s a beautiful extension of the previous two seasons as well as a sublime rebirth into a new “hedonistic pursuit of extremity.” It’s an inspired way to continue the franchise’s “interview” and unreliable narrator concept, while also doing something completely original with the construct. Each episode of this season takes Lestat’s traveling menagerie to a different city on his band’s 54-stop tour, while a foreboding sense of dread accumulates over the global catastrophes that are the consequence of this tour and its corresponding album.  

Lestat is like a virus that passes through these metropolitan cities, leaving them ravaged and changed by the time that he leaves. It leads to some stunning commentary and visuals of the New World Order that gradually sets in over the season. Additionally, there’s a powerful apathy to the idea that Daniel Molloy’s (Eric Bogosian) published exposé on Lestat would fizzle out after a year and that humanity would move on and stop caring as they flock to the next big thing that they’re supposed to care about. It’s a cynicism that makes so much sense for this universe and individuals who have been around for centuries and seen it all.

That being said, those who are hoping for more of a direct adaptation of Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned are going to need to be a little more patient. Much like how the series’ first two seasons are companion pieces and halves of a longer story, The Vampire Lestat leaves its Akasha (Sheila Atim) teases to its final episodes. These perfectly set up a hypothetical fourth season, which would presumably tackle the rest of Damned’s material.

Jacob Anderson as Louis De Pointe Du Lac – The Vampire Lestat – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

It’s amazing that Letstat’s whole rockstar persona functions as a petty, egotistical response to regain control of the narrative so that his songs are the definitive text that usurps Daniel’s novel. It’s the perfect distillation of Lestat as a character and one that facilitates a deeply entertaining and even campier season of television that goes places that would have previously been impossible. The series’ evolution remains one of the most fascinating and impressive things about this season.

The Vampire Lestat’s rebirth is a reflection of life’s cyclical nature and how everything old is new again. This is highlighted both explicitly and subtly through not just the season’s messaging, but also through some clever and ambitious casting choices. Several actors pull double duty this season. This could easily be a disaster in less-skilled hands, and yet it’s never a distraction here. If anything, it manages to beautifully enhance the series’ obsession with duality.

The series digs deeper than ever into its characters, but the filmmaking artistry has never been better. It’s a self-indulgent display of aesthetic extremes that underscores how much care is put into every single frame. Much of this season is presented like a rock band doc that shifts between different film styles. It’s such a natural fit that meshes with the series’ broader tendency to be a cinematic magpie. There are so many different directions that The Vampire Lestat could take for its band material. The decision to explicitly pull from Madonna: Truth or Dare is so gonzo but perfect. It’s a strong way to put Lestat on a pedestal and simultaneously demystify him as his many sides are portrayed through the season’s fractured, nonlinear meta-narrative.

Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt – The Vampire Lestat – Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC

To this point, there’s so much effort going into Lestat’s music. These are immaculately written by Daniel Hart, and they all feel like actual songs that could top charts and get audiences screaming and dropping drugs, even without any vampire glamor influencing their opinion. It’s hard territory to authentically nail, and it makes all the difference that The Vampire Lestat knocks it out of the park in this department and features a season that’s full of genuine bangers, rather than one half-decent song that’s repeated ad nauseam. It also doesn’t hurt that this season Baz Luhrmanns the fuck out when it comes to these grandiose musical spectacles. 

Sam Reid embodies the rock star persona so effortlessly that it’s wild to think that this wasn’t always the role that he was playing. It fits him as snug as leather pants. Lestat’s fame becomes so intense that there are literally people cosplaying as him in crowds so that his ego can reach even more untenable heights. This artificial future is powerfully juxtaposed against Lestat’s past, including some key formative moments from his life. There’s also a heartbreaking confrontation that arguably hits even harder than season two’s best moments. It’s so encouraging and exciting to see that The Vampire Lestat continues to top itself and that its best work is not behind it. It’s still finding new ways to thrive.

The series’ narration has always been on point. However, it’s easy to forget just how precise every word is and how perfectly Rolin Jones sticks the landing with his interpretations of these characters and Anne Rice’s universe, while still making it his own. ”Serving cunt has its consequences” might also be the most Lestat line to ever Lestat. Alternatively, the new role Daniel takes on as the director of a Lestat documentary is such a fun position for him to slide into that it becomes another playful echo of the past. It all reinforces the idea that we filter ourselves through the company we keep and that there’s conflict when we’re confronted with the truth.

The Vampire Lestat is everything you could want and then some. It’s a moving meditation on fame, fandom, and legacy that pushes its characters and relationships to their most satisfying places yet. Admittedly, this season throws a lot of new characters at the audience, but this never feels overwhelming or that this influx of new faces is superfluous.

I genuinely don’t know how these seven episodes could be any better. It’s the best Anne Rice adaptation to date and a series that truly feels like it’s just getting started and has greater highs to hit. Bring on the Queen of the Damned.

The Vampire Lestat premieres on June 7 on AMC and AMC+.

The post ‘The Vampire Lestat’ Bares Its Soul With A Rock N’ Roll Blood-Soaked Spectacle [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

MOLE, a new psychological horror game from Off Black Creations, fully delivers on this feeling, throwing you onto a Slavic post-war drilling machine with gloriously retro buttons and levers for you to play with, while managing to deliver a first-person, psychological horror story.

You play a navigator onboard a deep-bore vessel that’s in a fight for survival to keep the colossal machine and the mission going. Set in an alternate 1980s, it’s a world where a calamity has struck the world, and the answer lies deep below the ground. Following in the footsteps of a previous mission, you and your crew are trying to reach the source of a strange signal, one that seems to be having a disastrous effect on your mental state as you go further and further from humanity.

While you don’t interact with your crew in person, MOLE finds other ways to dig into its main character and interesting world. Without getting too much into it, it quickly becomes clear that the reason you are on this mission is to help pay off medical debt accrued after your son passed away.

It’s a heavy topic, but it adds a deep layer of grief to this cosmic horror adjacent setup, making it feel more nuanced in the process. Even though you don’t dig too much into other characters on the vessel, there’s a lot to chew on exploring the protagonist’s damaged psyche as the Signal gets its claws in him.

A Retro-Futuristic Drilling Vessel with Personality

The majority of the game takes place on the vessel, which is nicely rendered in a low-fi art style that brings home its retro aesthetic. This place is cramped, rusty, and moments away from falling apart, but it’s brought to life by 80s-style mechanical interfaces. Big CRT monitors, reel-to-reel tapes, and manual controls immediately convey the world it’s trying to create. There’s a unique focus on cartridges that are used for everything from room keys to data storage, making for a unique hook that makes the setting feel so much more alive and distinct. Even the game’s opening menu forces you to interact with these cartridges to start the game, weaving it thoroughly into the DNA of the experience.

Breaking up the time on the ship are flashback sequences that show you elements of your tragic life before taking this doomed mission. The closer you get to the Signal, the more past and present start to bleed into each other, transitioning to flashbacks in a surreal fashion, often mixing hallucinations with fact. After spending so much of the early portion of the game on the vessel, it felt like other locations were nice little surprises to keep me on my toes. It’s an effective storytelling technique that not only enhances the dread of the current situation but also effortlessly fills in the character’s backstory.

Both of these settings work in concert to deftly control the pacing and tone. The feeling of the vessel is so claustrophobic and catastrophic, with extremely cramped corridors to navigate and even tighter vents to call through. One nice mechanical touch is that you have to keep re-pressing forward to continue crawling rather than just continually holding it, emulating the feeling of squeezing yourself through an impossibly small space.

When you go to more traditional spaces in the flashbacks, it should feel like a relief to be in a wider space, but the somber and occasionally horrifying tone of these flashbacks does not allow you a moment of emotional respite. Constantly shifting across the many tones of the feel-bad spectrum keeps the game consistent without getting exhausted by just one.

Why MOLE‘s Process-Driven Puzzles Are So Satisfying

All the narrative elements are strong, but what makes this game work so much for me is the tactile nature of its puzzles. You feel like an operator on this massive, old vessel, desperately following step-by-step directions to interact with the many interfaces that keep it (just barely) running. Directions are often presented diagetically, with in-universe signs next to various stations that walk you through each switch flip and button press in a way that still leaves room for you to figure things out. The most satisfying part of it all is that many of these interactions require you to do the mouse movement to turn a dial or pull a lever, making it feel immersive in a very hands-on way.

To give you an example, one of the first things you’ll have to do is restore the lights in the floor you’re on (the game will not let you pass through dark spaces, making this a clever gating mechanic) by interacting with a fusebox. There are four slots, one for each of the four floors, and you pop in the one fuse you have into the correct floor. You then need to set the dial to the number of fuses installed, hold a button for a few seconds, flip four out of the eight switches, then pull a lever. It’s nothing overly difficult, but you end up doing it so many times that the first time you do it without referencing the instruction panel, it gives you the satisfying feeling of pattern recognition.

Since your role on the vessel is pilot, the most complicated recurring task in front of you is setting the navigation. It’s a multi-stage process that involves moving a cassette from console to console and dialling in a bunch of different values based on terminal readings. I love having a process-focused game like this that really puts you in the shoes of the role through its mechanics, and this one feels really great because of how tactile things are.

The important part about setting up a process-focused game like this is finding ways of meaningfully escalating things, and MOLE does a good job of forcing you to do these tasks under pressure as the game goes on. It’s the perfect way to reward mastery, making it feel like a satisfying flex of your skills to punch in the navigation sequence or swap out fuses while time is of the essence. It finds smart ways of taking the very specific interaction models they’ve built and adding tension within that framework, rather than adding other mechanics in a way that would feel out of place or extraneous to the scope of the game.

Chase Sequences Undermine Some of the Game’s Strongest Ideas

One element of tension that was less successful for me was the chase sequences in the game. Since this is a horror game, it goes without saying that there’s a threat aboard this vessel, but personally, it didn’t feel like it belonged in the game as much.

Getting chased by monsters in a horror game is a mixed bag sometimes, because the line between scary and frustrating can be crossed very quickly. The first time it showed up, it was a nice surprise that got a jump scare out of me, and I was able to make it to safety before it caught me, which felt tense and exciting.

Near the end of the game, there’s an extended sequence where you’re pursued by the same enemy, but this one was less successful for me. The area you’re being chased through, which starts to get surreal, is very dark in a way that hampered my ability to get through without being caught. I would get to an intersection, and would barely be able to see which way was a viable path forward.

After failing here a couple of times, I actually ended up changing the game’s brightness setting from 1.4 to 2.8 to give me even a fighting chance to make my way to safety. This was an example of that mechanic crossing over into frustration, as I found myself saying “oh come on” out loud anytime I took a wrong turn because I couldn’t see. It’s good in theory, but the actual context of how it plays out is lacking in execution.

A Powerful Psychological Horror Story That Occasionally Overstays Its Welcome

By the end of the game, I found myself really impressed with the way it explored some really deep themes within the context of its contained story. Ultimately, MOLE is a tale of grief and loss, examining the lengths we go to hold onto the past and the terrible effect it can have on our mental state if not done in a healthy manner. The surreal flashbacks put you directly in the shoes of a man going through the horrific loss, allowing you to figure out the exact circumstances of your son’s death, making it feel all the more tragic as you put together what’s going on. It’s not entirely novel, but the way it’s presented feels like it adds to the overall effect.

Some of these sequences went on a little too long, dampening their impact, and sometimes the surrealism felt a little too much like it was reaching for symbolism rather than focusing on the situation at hand, but overall, the narrative is definitely one of the game’s strengths. MOLE runs about four and a half hours, and it’s possible that trimming a bit off that runtime would have benefited it in both focus and pacing.

Scenes like standing in a phone booth making tough calls stand out in my mind way more than surreal chases through shifting landscapes, and a bit of editing might have been able to keep the focus on the former while still making the right amount of space for the latter.

Despite having some gripes with the pacing and chase sequences, MOLE was a surprisingly rich experience that I finished in about two sittings. Its setting feels so lived in and well thought out, allowing the drama that unfolds to feel real and grounded, even when things slip towards cosmic horror. While it wanders a bit in the climax of the story, it wraps up in a satisfying manner, with a great credits sequence that brings everything to a strong close.

The immersive, process-focused puzzles draw you in, putting you directly in the shoes of a tragic character caught in a horrific situation. Fans of games like Mouthwashing and Iron Lung should definitely take notice, because MOLE is another great psychological horror game for you to dig into.

Code provided by publisher. MOLE will release June 15 on Steam.

The post ‘MOLE’ Meshes Process-Focused Gameplay With Satisfying Psychological Horror [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

An analog found footage cold open in 1990 gives an unsettling glimpse at the off-kilter dread that awaits wayward travelers before introducing Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture store owner operating on a steady diet of rage and regret. So much so that he regularly sees Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) to help him find a way out of his self-made life prison. Just as she coaches him to recognize his repeating patterns so he can then forge new pathways, his quirky furniture store presents him with the opportunity to do exactly that.

Late one night, Clark discovers he can slip through the basement walls, leading him to an expansive extension of the store he never knew existed.

The further he explores, though, the more peculiar things get.

There’s nothing subtle about the script that sees its two lead characters conversing over the looping patterns we can trap ourselves in before they find themselves stuck in a mundane cosmic purgatory that doubles as a metaphor for the labyrinthine human mind. It’s even reflected in background details, including The Neverending Story playing on a background television set. And like the mind, the mysterious furniture store backrooms present endless possibilities, forgotten and distorted memories, and a surreal setting with no borders or tether to physical reality.

Yet that lack of subtlety suits Kane Parsons’ debut well, considering how acutely his leads latch onto their characters’ palpable and profound sense of loneliness and isolation. There’s an impressive confidence in the young filmmaker as he methodically entrusts his quiet worldbuilding and talented leads to carry the dramatic weight.

More impressive is the way Parsons mines tension and rattles nerves from empty, brightly lit rooms adorned in yellow wallpaper. The vibes are seriously off in this place, but, like Clark, it’s impossible to look away even as the mundane rooms begin to distort into truly inspired nightmarish uses of uncanny valley.

The production design in Backrooms is as incredible as it is disturbing, and Parsons takes full advantage of the larger budget. As reality becomes more and more unstable, the more alive and intricate Parsons’ filmmaking becomes. Breathtaking transitions and camera trickery further disorients the sensory assault. It’s all so unnerving yet keeps you fully on the hook, made more engaging by cryptic storytelling and a general unpredictability. 

But the Backrooms is a place with no easy explanation; this is the type of existential horror that operates at its best when intentionally vague. Screenwriter Will Soodik presents a more conventional third act that clashes with Parsons’ overarching cryptic vision, one that’s not visceral enough compared to the unnerving build-up. Not helping is the inscrutable coda teasing the obvious: we haven’t even begun to explore the Backrooms, really. That leaves one of its leads with an unfinished arc and a ton of unanswered questions, a move that feels deflating after such a strong front half.

Still, Kane Parsons’ strong eye for composition and visual storytelling marks him as a filmmaker to watch. It’s clear that the young filmmaker has a strong grasp of the mythology he’s building, even if he keeps that mostly close to the chest. Fans of the Backrooms web series will find plenty of Easter eggs and details to deconstruct and decipher, too.

Backrooms is at once complex and sparse, but never repetitive. It might be set in 1990, but it effectively captures modern anxieties and isolation in a way that frequently makes your skin crawl. While the journey ultimately loses steam by its cryptic end, Parsons’ visual representation of the human psyche disturbs like no other.

Backrooms is now playing in theaters from A24. 

The post ‘Backrooms’ Review – A Disturbing Liminal Voyage Through The Human Mind appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

This is basically universally true of any halfway competent horror movie, but unfortunately for many, potential energy is most, if not all, of the energy they can muster. There is loads of potential energy in sMOTHERed, the new Shudder original from directors Kevin Rahardjo and Rafki Hidayat, and it translates to something compelling early on. Sadly, all that potential never quite manifests into anything more, leaving us with a half-baked film that, decent squares aside, squanders all the goodwill it builds in the setup. 

And the setup really is quite compelling. Alif (Rio Dewanto) is a Jakarta-based artist who, after a serious car accident, is struggling with partial amnesia brought on by head trauma. His wife Nadine (Faradina Mufti) and son Emir (Jordan Omar) are supportive when he comes home from the hospital, even as he reveals he doesn’t necessarily remember the issues rumbling beneath his marriage before the accident. Before he has time to truly reacclimate, though, Alif gets a long-awaited visit from his mother, Aminah (Vonny Anggraini). Mother and son haven’t seen each other since Alife left home to seek his fortune as a teenager, and she’s never met her daughter-in-law or her grandson.

So, when she arrives, Aminah dives into her grandmotherly duties, brightening the family home even as Alif is plagued by nosebleeds, strange visions, and bits of his pre-accident life he still can’t explain. Perhaps it’s the memory loss, or perhaps it’s Aminah herself, but the more he digs in search of the truth, the more Alif starts to wonder if the woman in his house is actually his mother. 

There’s a lot of talent here, including Indonesian horror legend Joko Anwar (Impetigore, Satan’s Slaves) co-writing and producing. Throw in the film’s roots in an Indonesian folk tale, and it feels like we’re on the way to some stirring psychological drama with a little folk-horror mixed in. For the first half of the film, that’s exactly what we get. Rahardjo and Hidayat prove adept at composing shots (though the lighting often looks a bit flat) and, more importantly, at working with their cast, exacting tremendous emotional detail out of early scenes.

This is the story of a man whose entire recent life, and chunks of his distant past, has become a mystery to him, and so it’s a detective story even as it’s a surprisingly emotional tale of a man trying to reconnect, trying to be better than his former self as a husband, father, and son. Dewanto brings a ton of depth to this side of the story, as Alif’s visions and complaints of strange voices intensify, he never fails to keep us caring about this wounded man desperate to heal. 

It’s what happens next, after setting this remarkable emotional baseline, that starts to fragment the film, spinning it out into certain directions that are promising, and others that feel like duds. The more convinced he becomes that something in his life is not quite right, and the deeper he digs, the more the film threatens to topple its delicate human balance. For a brief handful of scenes, the film seems to forget its original tone entirely, branching off into a small-time crime film, which would feel more like an organic evolution if it didn’t then wildly swing in a different direction again.

Characters in the ensemble fade out, and the emotional tension they bring fades with them, until by the time the film builds to its big reveal about the secrets Alif has kept, it feels both underdeveloped and overdue. At 99 minutes, sMOTHERed still feels like multiple movies smashed together in the edit, leaving its back half littered with dead ends and stalls, which diminish its emotional returns. That said, there are some creepy little moments still lingering in there, so the film doesn’t entirely lose its sense of atmosphere.

This is made all the more frustrating in the case of sMOTHERed because, in the build-up to this derailment, we saw just how well everything was working. The cast has great chemistry, the dynamic between characters is complex and believable, and the emotional hooks of the film are firmly embedded.