Horror

In the 2010 film Rabbit Hole, a character compares grief to a stone that you carry around in your pocket. There are times when it is easy to forget about this extra weight, but then one day you reach into your jacket and suddenly remember that it’s there. The grief of losing a loved one can never fully vanish. It will always be there in some form, whether it be as a stone in your pocket or as a spindly fingered, top hat-wearing boogeyman. If that latter comparison makes little sense, then you should see Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook. In addition to being a thoroughly satisfying horror film, it is an extraordinary character-driven story about a woman trying to recover from the loss of her husband.

It seems only natural for an expansive anthology like ABCs of Death 2 to offer up such a mixed bag
of short films. There are 26 in total, each running for approximately four to five minutes. Such the-abcs-of-death-2-stills-3time constraints act as a hindrance to many of the directors involved in the project. A large number of the shorts are either underdeveloped or conventional in terms of their story. However, there are a handful of standouts that make the viewing experience worthwhile.

If you weren’t at this year’s Montreal Comic-con, which was held from the 12th until the 14th of September at the Palais des Congres, then did you ever miss out. Although the Montreal convention isn’t normally known for its selection of guests, this year the con managed to not just pull in a few stars, …

Kevin Smith’s early work, guerilla-style films about disenfranchised geeks and losers, helped gain him a strong and dedicated audience. While many of his most dedicated fans seem to find the best in even his weakest films, Smith has never found the same success in critical circles. The negative critiques of his films has only been exasperated by Smith himself, who seems to struggle with dissenting takes on his work, leading him to withdraw into podcasting. Though this was not a strategic choice on Smith’s part, it seemed to pay off as his audience only grew and he is now among the most influential people in the ‘Twittersphere’. This allowed Smith to distribute his 2011 film Red State himself. He described the entire process as “Indie Film 2.0.”; it was no longer about just making the film yourself but distributing it as well.

Lurking may not seem like much, what with your screen showing you a whole lot of nothing most of the time, but this short detour into darkness packs a powerful punch. Developed by four students at the Digipen Institute of Technology over the course of two semesters, Lurking is a first-person survival thriller game where sound provides sight, and danger.

The first 45 minutes of The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears lay the foundation for a full-throated suspense thriller that might have felt at home in the ‘70s. Sadly, the last hour degenerates into a monotonous slash-fest that’s too preoccupied with its own weirdness to bother with our enjoyment. By the end, you may be unsure what is real and what is imagined, but you’re damn certain you no longer care.

Who needs words when you can deliver a visceral punch with nothing more than images? In Moebius, South Korean writer-director, Kim Ki-duk, has crafted nothing short of a masterpiece in minimalism. Though challenging and uncompromising, Moebius never sacrifices its humanity in favor of experimental flourishes. Through evocative imagery and savagely dark humor, Kim creates a mesmerizing film about lust, degradation and tranquility. An Oedipal feast that should not be missed.

The universe of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser is a rich and dark one and it is ripe to have writers come in and explore in a multitude of gruesome ways. That is the goal of BOOM!’s new Hellraiser: Bestiary mini-series. This first issue of the six-part anthology is a bit of a mixed bag, as is …

Linnea Quigley is a prolific actress with over a hundred credited film and television appearances including the likes of Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Demons, Graduation Day, Savage Streets, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings, and Silent Night, Deadly Night. Ms. Quigley, who was kind enough to sit down for an …

Wes Craven’s 1996 Scream was easily one of the best and most influential horror films of the 1990s. Its sequel in 1997 was just as successful with critics, audiences, and at the box office. The franchise faltered with 2000’s Scream 3, but started to take a step back in the right direction with 2011’s Scream …

Aux yeux des vivants Written and Directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury France, 2014 Aux yeux des vivants is the newest film from the French extremist duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury. Their best known film, À l’intérieur, ushered their misanthropic and violent vision to genre fests across the world and became a much …

The ABCs of Death 2 now officially has a release date and it is just in time for Halloween. The film will be released by Magnet and Drafthouse Films on VOD on October 2nd and a limited theatrical run a few weeks later on the 31st . The sequel is a follow-up to 2012’s horror …

Heavy metal artist turned filmmaker Rob Zombie, director of horror classics House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, Halloween and more is back with his new film 31, and this time he’s crowd sourcing on Fanbacked.com. Zombie says that his new film was inspired by his love of Halloween and that he learned that more people go …

This is a bit of an odd story. For years The Poughkeepsie Tapes, a 2007 mockumentary horror film directed by John Erick Dowdle (Quarantine, Devil, and the upcoming As Above, So Below), has been sitting on the shelf unreleased. Though it never officially came out (outside of a few film festivals), the film has had pirated …

Scream Factory has been doing an amazing job for a few years now with their amazing home releases of cult classics and lesser-known gems of the past few decades. With releases like From Beyond, Day of the Dead, The Howling, Darkman, Ginger Snaps, John Carpenter’s The Fog, Sleepaway Camp, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, and …

Sam Raimi has been making his rounds at San Diego Comic-Con, talking about various upcoming projects like his upcoming adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, which he’ll be producing, but he also dropped some news that he, Ivan Raimi and Bruce Campbell are currently collaborating on writing an Evil Dead TV series, as …

From the director of cult classics like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Wild Things, The Harvest is John McNaughton’s first film in over a decade.

Lake Erie Monster #1 Written and Illustrated by: J. Kelly and John G. Published by: Shiner Comics Group Remember Creepy and Eerie comics? Did you grow up with Tales from the Crypt? Did you love watching Creepshow? The Lake Erie Monster is a wonderful throwback to the classic horror comics of the 70’s. The art, …

Ravenous Written by Ted Griffin Directed by Antonia Bird USA, 1999 Ravenous is a film that is deceitful above all things. Almost from the outset, and certainly from the trailers, it portrays itself as a horror comedy in the vein of perhaps Evil Dead II or Cabin Fever. However, as the film comes together, the viewer quickly begins to see …

Candyman’s designs on his victim are two-fold: exposing what was once considered taboo and pointing out that it is still considered as such.

This is it. This is the final chapter in the Krampus comic series. Writer Brian Joines and illustrator Dean Kotz go big from the very first pages of the comic, wasting no time getting right into the action.

As a fervent fan of both the films based on the character Hannibal Lecter and the source material written by Thomas Harris, I found myself very excited at the prospect of a television series based on the relationship between the titular cannibalistic sadist and the man who would eventually catch him hiding in plain sight, the highly intuitive Will Graham. When I heard that actors like Mads Mikkelsen, Laurence Fishburne, and Gillian Anderson had signed up to be a part of it, my anticipation became palpable, tempered only by the fear that this would be a short-lived cash-in on a mostly dead franchise. In that regard, I was happy to be mostly wrong.

The first Silent Hill game introduced us to a very different version of the survival horror genre we had come to know. Before its release, it was only the jump scares and twitch action of the Resident Evil series that most players were really familiar with. Silent Hill would come to shake up that formula dramatically.