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The Lost Causers (2026) - Horror Film Review 12:25 PM (10 hours ago)

Carl Richmond (Price) is a proud member of 'The Brotherhood' - a far right organisation that as is the way, hates blacks and LGBTQ people. When he discovers his beloved daughter is dating a black man, Carl is less than happy. Then, after his daughter is purposely run over while protesting a white supremist march, Carl blames her boyfriend for her being there, hunting him down and strangling the young man to death. Serving only a two year prison sentence, he soon finds himself back out, though under the watchful gaze of his parole officer James Day (Person), a black man who has little sympathy for Carl and who warns him the second he steps out of line, that he will get him sent back to prison. Staying away from his group is something Carl cannot do, not only living with his brother who is also a member, but being surrounded by members of the group who believe Carl still owe them some favours. Keeping his bigoted views, prison and what happened to his daughter has at least made the man realise that he needs to put his violent past behind him. The Brotherhood still have use of him however, so he might not get a choice in the matter.

The majority of The Lost Causers is a drama, taking a look at America back in 2017, and the division that was growing then that has led to the modern day where it seems from an outsiders perspective the country is circling the drain. Real footage is used here, with news clips from protests and rallies in 2017 effortlessly edited into the story. This even includes a clip of alleged paedophile, rapist and Russian asset; Donald Trump (Home Alone 2: Lost in New York). The inclusions of things like that felt quite refreshing when many films, especially horrors, tend to try and avoid real world goings on. Carl is the protagonist here, as unlikeable as he is. His views are certainly extreme and hard to identify with, but he was never portrayed as a complete monster. The true antagonist felt like The Brotherhood itself, who have deep ties into the judiciary system. I thought this low budget drama was definitely interesting but not fitting the type of movie I usually review. That is when that out-there subplot appears, one that includes a ghost skeleton!

It was slightly hinted at within the first half of the movie, mainly with murders of crows with glowing red eyes. These moments were so few and far between that I didn't really pay them any attention. Then roughly halfway through the film, a man is using his metal detector when he uncovers the skeletal remains of a civil war soldier. This thing then comes to life, walking over to the man, then turning into smoke and possessing him! Seemingly he takes on the person's memories as he is able to drive a car and operate modern weapons, this movie monster goes on a path of vengeance, going up against Carl's enemies he had made since leaving jail. The possessed man really hams it up, permanently manically grinning, and acting very over the top. His subplot only takes up around 10 minutes of the rest of the film, and his scenes have no bearing on the rest of the story going on. It was a guilty pleasure to watch, even if the scenes felt completely unrelated to the more grounded story, almost felt like it was a different film entirely. Whether the character was actually possessed by the spirit of the 'Old South' or not, it made for a memorable bit of the film.

The Lost Causers was different to the types of film I usually watch. I did think its story was relevant, and the melding of reality and fiction something fresh, but that wild subplot did stand out like a sore thumb.

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Incomplete Chairs (2025) - Horror Film Review 19 Oct 12:44 PM (yesterday, 12:44 pm)

Shinsuke Kujo (Ryu Ichinose) is a much sought after master chair craftsman, someone who receives no end of job applicants from those hoping to study under him at his apartment based workshop, and no end of potential customers hoping to gain one of his exclusive chairs. At least on the surface that is what Kujo is, but unknown to all, the man hides a dark secret. His life's work is to create a special chair, created exclusively from human body parts. Thanks to his fame, he has a seemingly endless supply of unknowing donators...

Incomplete Chairs was both a very odd and gory horror. Kujo plays the part of the film's anti-hero protagonist. He has most of the screen time, though there are other characters with their own sub-plots going on, notably Natsuko (Ryôka Ôshima) - a scout for a chair company who has an intense fascination with craftsman, willing to look past their eccentricities and obsessions, and admire their complete devotion to their work. Kujo is a sloppy worker, body parts strewn carelessly about his small plastic sheeting covered apartment. He seems uncaring enough that he barely wipes blood away from previous victims, with at least one bloody handprint out on full display for any visitors. That element is where some of the dark humour comes into play. Visitors are so thankful to be with him that they fail to notice any of these alarming details hidden in plain sight. The insanity of Kujo is often mistaken for obsession with his work, but the man is obviously crazy, and barely does anything to hide this, making for one of the recurring black comedy beats. The humour also comes from the man's obvious lack of any real skills. Throughout Incomplete Chairs he is shown playing around with body chairs as he tries to plan his dream chair, but obviously has no idea what he is doing.
Much of the movie felt like one long slow paced montage sequence. There are countless scenes of him receiving people into his apartment and inevitably killing them. Often by suddenly grabbing a mallet and bashing their skulls in!

There is a high body count and some gruesome death scenes. Body parts are everywhere, from severed heads and feet, to torso skin and flesh from hands on hangers to dry. Kujo is often covered head to toe in blood, while his victims have such pleasantries inflicted on them such as being nailed to chairs, and a power drill to the eye. Grim scenes, but they never outstay their welcome, taking place in a relatively short span of time before moving on to the next victim.
The film wasn't without its faults, especially with regards to the plot that is only able to unfold as it does thanks to some very unrealistic actions of the supporting cast that had me stupefied at their bad choices. The film doesn't take itself completely seriously, but it still felt strange that not one person comes to his apartment investigating missing persons. It led to an American Psycho type feel of his crimes being mainly in his own mind, but unlike that film, there wasn't any evidence to support that here. Kujo seems like an invisible presence, even when walking through crowded streets while covered in blood no one seems to notice.

Incomplete Chairs was a twisted horror that benefitted  by its black humour. The increasingly high level of suspension of disbelief did get in the way of my enjoyment and broke the immersion somewhat. Regardless, this was a good horror and something that stuck around in my mind for a bit afterwards. Incomplete Chairs premiered exclusively on BloodStream on October 15th and is available in both original Japanese and English-dubbed versions.

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End of Abyss (2026) - Sci-fi Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 5) 16 Oct 11:38 AM (4 days ago)

In the game you play as Cal - a female technician who has travelled to a remote and vast underground facility alongside her captain and three heavily armoured soldiers. Contact had been lost with the base, so they had gone there to find out what had happened to cause this. With the place on a complete lockdown, Cal's job is to disable the various security systems so that the small team can make it to the heart of the complex deep in the lower levels. It quickly becomes apparent that something catastrophic has occurred. The base's population of workers all either dead, or mutated into grotesque zombie-like creatures.

A sci-fi horror metroidvania sounded like music to my ears, I saw it as the perfect game to play this spooky month. It was apparently made by the same team that did Little Nightmares and it shows, the murky location has a pulled back isometric perspective that gives it a slight dollhouse type feel, the various places full of incidental details that tell a story without notes or dialogue. For example; the hospital wing has a morgue overflowing with corpses, offices have bodies slumped over desks, and there are signs of disaster everywhere. Collapsed walkways, flooded areas, fires, and rampaging security bots, and much of the underground complex firmly sealed shut. The isometric view reminded me of the Xbox 360 Alien Breed Evolution games. It has the same pulled back perspective to make your character appear small on screen, same twin stick shooting gameplay, and similarly detailed, though here, this game is much less linear. Of course, the game also looks a lot better graphicly here, while it maintains a moody blue tint to it throughout, the game world is split into various different feeling locations that provide variation while also seeming unified in the style. Sound design is one of most satisfying aspects here, bringing the world to life. Living quarters, labs, waterworks, industrial areas, ventilation shafts and more. Each place in classic metroidvania style reveals shortcuts to unlock, and areas that can't be explored until the correct item or weapon is discovered. Meaning that backtracking is very much recommended.. The flamethrower lets you burn away fleshy growths, the grappling hook can traverse ruined walkways and pull down raised ladders, explosives can be used to destroy weakened walls etc. The flow of the game has you opening up the various areas, locating key cards and powering-up the required systems to allow you deeper access to the base. The map screen I found to be essential. It does a good job of keeping itself updated, not only showing which doors are currently locked, but also telling you what is required to open them up. The areas are massive, and these include plenty of huge and entirely optional areas. I would say at least a quarter of the game is made up of optional spaces should you want to do more than just mainline the story. Likening it to another game, this also reminded me of Dead Space, especially with the look of the enemies as well as the transit system that acts as a fast travel between areas.

Combat is a constant, using the analogue stick to aim and shoulder button to fire. The default weapon you have is a sci-fi pistol with infinitely recharging ammo. Later upgrades allow you to perform charged shots with it for extra oomph. As you progress, various other weapons are unlocked, including a shotgun, rifle and machine gun. These guns all require ammo however, which has to be created using currency dotted around the map and dropped by enemies. To be honest, these secondary guns never felt great to use, I tended to just stick to the pistol for much of my 15 hour playthrough. Currency can also be used instead to upgrade your weapons, making them stronger and giving them additional abilities. The annoying thing with this currency is that should you die, any ammo you used remains used. This led to situations where I needed a particular ammo type to use on bosses but no currency to create it, leading to me having to grind out more by repeatedly defeating enemies and then respawning them (by using a save station) until I had enough to build up my stocks of bullets.
A key part of the combat is Cal's ability to dodge. It doesn't sound like much, but dodging gives you a few frames of invincibility, making it an essential move to master early on.

The main enemy type you will face are the zombie-like creatures, which have a slight The Last of Us look to them with their mushroom-like growths. There was a good variety of enemy types, with a whole host of different zombie types (such as hulking ones, and ones that spit acid), alongside other enemies such as giant ticks, leeches, Half-Life style head crabs, and giant wasps. There are also the droids that fire laser beams and grenades at you. There was a large amount of boss fights, usually in large arenas that has you facing off a giant mutated mass of flesh of various types. No boss looks exactly the same, but they feel very similar to battle, apart from one giant robot boss, these are all giant mutant creatures. Fighting these could be frustrating at times due to how weak your guns felt, their huge energy bars meaning they took on the feel of bullet sponges. As a reminder, there is a reload button for your guns, something I embarrassingly only realised when I was midway through the final boss fight of End of Abyss!

The worst part of the game for me was the wafer thin story. Cal herself is a silent protagonist, the people she is with do speak but they are very cagey with their information, and never say anything interesting. The intention with the story being barebones is probably to make everything seem mysterious, but I became irritated how nothing much is ever explained. You can find notes dotted around the environments but most of these were hardly interesting. I really hoped that by the games end there would have been a satisfying lore dump, but alas, this was not to be. The end credits rolled with me still not even sure just why we my character had ever travelled to this facility in the first place, my synopsis earlier in this review being what I guessed was going on. The poor story was a real downer for me, sure the environmental storytelling was decent, but I was really yearning for something meatier and more complicated than what was provided.

I really enjoyed my time with End of Abyss, blasting through it in about half a week. It wasn't perfect though, a pathetic story, and later on especially, it became all too easy to get cornered by mobs of enemies and obliterated within moments or to get stuck on bits of the game's scenery (leading to one moment where I was forced to close down my game). I did like playing this, a good graphical style, and I liked the design of the game world, even if it occasionally did feel a little similar, and there was a bit too much backtracking required. With a few weeks since completing the game at the time of review, I would be lying if I said I didn't miss it.

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Natural Thorn Killers: A Creeping Guide to Plant Horror (2026) by Lauren Jane Barnett & Tony Mardon - Horror Film Guide Review 15 Oct 11:14 AM (5 days ago)

So the format for this guide is that it is split into seven sections. Each of these begins with an opening preamble explaining some of the reasoning for the emergence of these plant based horrors into the world. The rest of each section then picks out notable examples, offering more reasoning for their existence, as well as working through the film's plot from beginning to end, focussing on the plant horror based moments. The sections very roughly charts a chronological journey from around the mid 20th Century up to more modern times; the earlier sections more about older films, though all still include examples from multiple decades of the past 80 years or so.

It begins with 'It Came From Outer Space: Alien Plants'. This includes such classics as Day of the Triffids (I am a huge fan of author John Wyndham, so I had expected to find an adaptation of his novel here). It covers the various Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies, classics, and with these the guide suggests alien plants invading reflected societal fears of invasion, such as during the Cold War era. 
'Franken-vine: Man Made Monsters' follows this, here of course these films are stated to reflect a fear of unchecked science, with rogue scientists often the true antagonists. A lot of these involve radiation of one type of another causing mutations. Even not having heard of a lot of these, I of course at least had heard of comic book hero; Swamp Thing, and reading about Attack of the Killer Tomatoes had me recalling I had caught a part of this as a child. I remember thinking as a child the scene in the film where a large group of people are having an important meeting in a comically small room was quite amusing.
It was part 3 'Panic Shroom: Monstrous Mushrooms and Fatal Fungi' (loved all the word puns in those section headings!) where I started to feel that I really needed to check out some of the examples covered. Splinter, Shrooms, The Superdeep and In The Earth all piqued my curiosity. The authors are always keen to express when films have faults, this isn't some propaganda piece for plant horrors, with issues often being pointed out. The Girl With All The Gifts of course featured here, reminding me yet again that my memory is pretty awful!

Branching (pun not intended) the middle of the guide is 'The Root of All Evil: When Trees Attack', with a few of these having the plant horror as a side piece rather than the overarching threat. Of course, as I expected, the infamous tree rape scene from The Evil Dead is delved into, as well as the memorable scene from Poltergeist, and a contrast with its remake's version of that sequence.
'Mystical Di-vine: Plants that are Worshipped or Magical' follows. The Forest, Trick r' Treat and Sleepy Hollow being examples that I was familiar with (but again, my mind had forgotten these involved vegetation as a key feature of the evil.
Penultimate section; 'Thorn This Way: Naturally Evolved Threats' included a look at at horror - The Ruins. I hadn't heard of this, but the description of the film about a group under siege at an old ruined temple complex was very interesting, certainly want to check that one out. 
Finally was 'Field of Screams: Grasslands and Cornfields', including of course the beloved franchise of films Children of the Corn. I was vaguely put out that the authors only felt the first three in the series were worth covering, but to be fair, I've ever seen all of the films once, and that was a long time ago, so I am sure they are right when they say the movies move away from the cornfield angle. Cornfields work so well in horror films, as a teen I remember the excitement when my father tried to grow corn. Even though only a handful of stalks were grown, I still remember standing next to them and my mind going wild with thoughts of related horror films I had seen. The Japanese Onibaba, scarecrow horrors, Husk and Dark Harvest, and nature based Cube variant Escape the Field all sounded like films I needed to see for myself. As expected, In the Tall Grass has its own chapter, not a film I thought was amazing.

With that, the guide was over, with nary even a closing word from the authors. I loved reading through this guide, film guides are always something that have interested me, as there will always be some gems that you haven't heard of before included. Early on in the guide there were a few moments were it felt like the same ground was gone over in multiple parts, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment. A balanced look at the subject of plant based cinema, Natural Thorn Killers: A Creeping Guide to Plant Horror was both informative and entertaining, who knew that sub-genre of horror had roots that went so deep? The guide was published 24th April 2026 and is out worldwide with Telos.

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213 Bones (2025) - Horror Film Review 14 Oct 11:42 AM (6 days ago)

An anthropology class at a college find themselves the target of a mystery killer. As they start to get picked off one by one, they become determined to find and stop this threat, but are not even sure who amongst themselves can be trusted.

213 Bones goes through the typical motions that a nineties set slasher would do. Characters almost feel like a Temu version of the cast of Scream, and are made up of a variety of stereotypes. Included within the group of protagonists are middle aged mature student, Bob (Dean Cameron), eighties obsessed Candice (Toni Weiss), boyfriend and girlfriend - Eric (Liam Woodrum - Geek Girl) and Joanna (Simone Lockhart - Sweet Magnolias), college rebel Clyde (Mason Kennerly), scatterbrain Patty (Allegra Sweeney), studious Lisa (Luna Fujimoto), and geeks; Brent (Hunter Nance) and Jill (Elizabeth O'Brien). The supporting cast are equally typical, including the class lecturer Kelly (Colin Egglesfield), local sheriff, and the local coroner. What was great about almost every single character in the film was how suspicious they are all made to look. The paranoid score, and odd moments made it seem that any of these many characters could be revealed to be the one doing the killing. Side characters were equally, if not more suspicious, such as the ever scowling groundskeeper and the weird blood stained regular at the local diner. There were so many plausible suspects, and so many red herrings that it was fun trying to work out who the culprit would turn out to be. When the reveal does happen, there wasn't the most riveting of motives, but the lead up to this was a genuine thrill ride that had me on the edge of my seat.

The killer wears a grotesque wooden mask with long red hair attached to it, covering their head completely, also helped by the big hooded overcoat they wear. It is about 30 minutes before the first kill occurs, and that is a death that takes place in a scene outside of the film, totally off camera. I did worry that this would be the path the film went on, never showing the actual death, but thankfully that wasn't the case. Beginning slow, they increase in pace until the thrilling finale where characters are dropping like flies. The majority of these deaths involve a smallish looking knife, but even so, there is plenty of variety, including throat slits, a severed eyeball, and an excellent slow motion shot of someone being shoved out an upper floor window. These kills don't always show the point of impact on the victim, but they were satisfying, and I liked that more than a couple of times the victims were able to go out fighting rather than just being a lamb to the slaughter.

I wasn't immediately impressed with 213 Bones. But it was barely any time later that I was fully on board with this familiar, yet enjoyable slasher. I found myself verbally warning characters, and pondering out loud who I felt the antagonist would be revealed as. Kind of brain dead entertainment, but I had a genuine blast watching this for what it was. 213 Bones had its US premiere at Screamfest on Monday October 12th.

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Golem.AI (2025) - Horror Film Review 13 Oct 10:51 AM (7 days ago)

Death Cycle (2025) - Horror Film Review 12 Oct 12:04 PM (8 days ago)

Abby (Kristen Kaster) and her sister are crossing a road one dark evening when they are mown down in a hit & run incident by Eddy (Matt Daciw), a member of a rich and influential family who had been drunk-driving back from a Gala event along with his sister Caterina (Sasha Ormond). Fearing he will be identified when one of the two sisters is found to still be alive, Eddy makes the fateful decision to finish the job, but not touching the second woman who he believes to have already passed. Unfortunately for Eddy, the 'dead' girl survived, and was able to easily identify him. The family fixer is able to give the man a false alibi, using the families influence to make the police drop the matter. Around a year later, members of the family begin turning up dead in violent circumstances. In desperation, Caterina contacts her estranged journalist brother, Luca (Matthew Ninaber - Death on Scenic Drive), requesting he investigate Abby under the guise of writing a news story on the prominent families recent murders. Caterina is convinced that the girl must have something to do with the killings.

This was a great little movie that almost felt like an origin story for a new horror movie slasher. The killer wears all black biking leathers, a face obscuring black motorcycle helmet, and rides everywhere on their powerful sounding black motorbike. The story leaps around in time, much of the action sequences playing out either as flashbacks, or as stand alone moments outside of the core story unfolding. After a fun prologue that introduces the various family members, the story then leaps to present day where the killings are starting. At least two of the entertaining kill scenes play out as events that Luca is retelling to Abby during his pivotal interview scene at her home. Each kill scene opens with the masked assailant riding through the night, and the motorbike is used in several of the biker themed kills. These kills were varied and included two different looking decapitations as well as a disembowelling fatality. All the kills looked great on camera, and effects such as heads being stamped into mush were fun to see.

The evil family were a fun bunch to hate, this also applied to Luca. Being estranged, I had expected he would have more of a conscience to him, yet he goes about his deceptive interview fully on his families side. He acts like he is all about getting justice, yet felt more like revenge was what he also wanted. It felt that Death Cycle almost forgets his actions make him just as detestable, with him painted as the heroic protagonist on occasions when he really wasn't. For all the bike based moments, this was a slow story that unfolds. The kills being flashback sequences or shown out of context made them feel isolated from the more talky pace of the present day story. With such a small cast of characters, it was always obvious who the killer would turn out to be, so no real surprise when that happens. There was a bit of an immersion breaking moment when Luca has a nightmare about the killer, perfectly picturing them despite not knowing what they would have looked like. This also applies to Luca's paranoia about motorbikes, again, I don't believe he would have known that was the killer's vehicle of choice, so there was no reason for him to be suspicious whenever he hears or sees one.

Despite a couple of small issues, I thought Death Cycle was a thrilling and satisfying horror. The end caught me by surprise, not realising how much of the film had passed when it crept up. A lovely open ending that suggests rather than shows, leading to a complete package that was grand stuff indeed. Death Cycle had its UK digital debut on 12th October 2026.

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Wounds (2026) - Horror Film Review 12 Oct 9:49 AM (8 days ago)

Caleb (Jack Kilmer - Lords of Chaos) is a young SFX makeup artist who has been given the opportunity by his studio owning uncle - Jefferson Price (Eric Roberts - Heretics, Devil's Knight) to do the SFX on a low budget vampire horror film being made. Caleb is struggling with this, unable to achieve the realistic effects that he wishes for. Jefferson warns him that if the film is a failure, it could lead to the closure of the studio, and in turn, Caleb losing his home (he is living in a small apartment in the studio complex rent-free). Under pressure, he goes for a walk one evening and witnesses a man being stabbed to death. This event inspires Caleb, who returns home and recreates a throat slash that he had practised on the corpse of the stabbed man. This new effect of his is a hit with the studio, and he comes to realise that for each of the effects he is working on for the film, he is going to have to first act it out on an actual person. He becomes seen as an effects genius within the film crew, but the pressure of the job, and his gory extra circular activities start to weigh on the young man, having a negative effects such as hallucinating about his victims, and seeing blood everywhere he goes. It seems only a matter of time before Caleb's sanity leaves him completely.

The practical makeup effects and prosthetics here looked good on camera, both when used for the kill scenes, and when used as effects for the film within a film being created. The mix between these two parts was done by transitioning the real kills into the fake with some nifty use of editing to achieve this.
Caleb was a loner from the start, not the easiest protagonist to like, but his passion for horror came across well. Kilmer does an admirable job, towards the end I didn't feel his more unhinged performance worked as well as the earlier more measured one. Being obsessed with films, there were plenty of clips from iconic horror films shown as part of his research. It was fun to see Nightmare City, Night of the Living Dead, Scanners, and Videodrome among the classics being watched. Paris Jackson (Scream: The TV Series) plays Caleb's potential love interest, Ginny, with the boy becoming obsessed with her, adding another point of strain to his fracturing mind. I'm used to seeing the prolific Roberts in smaller roles in indie films, so it was nice to see him having a larger role for a change, here playing a character with the third most screen time, and someone who adds more pressure for Caleb by being so demanding of him.

As great as the practical effects were, this wasn't the case for the VFX work. This mostly comes into play during the hallucination sequences that sees room filling up with seas of blood. Something about these looked a bit off though, and didn't really look to fit into the sets as something that looked real - a shame when the practical effects did look so great. The kill scenes here were a lot better, and had some variation to them - throat slashes, a stake through an eye, a vicious hammer attack, and a lovely looking facial burn. A story like this needed to sell violence, and it worked.

For all its dark themes, Wounds remained entertaining, the somewhat implausible story stopped things from feeling too bleak. This was a love letter to the craft of making horror films. The film within a film sections were fun, such as the fake-start that begins the film. It was also neat that a whole bunch of clips from other horror films were shown. I liked the bait & switch ending which subtly subverted expectations, ending a decent horror on a suitably twisted point. Wounds had its world premiere on October 8th at Screamfest LA.

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The Rotting Zombie's News Anthology for Thursday 8th October 2026 8 Oct 9:31 AM (12 days ago)

Coming exclusively to Screamify later this year is Crack, described as '...an ASMR chiropractor thriller...'. Produced and directed by Calvin Morie McCarthy. The film is about a troubled young woman; Anna, (Peyton Grace Bell) who becomes obsessed with an online ASMR chiropractor channel ran by Dr. Ryan Love (Alexander Molina). When there is an opening at his place of operation, Anna seizes a chance to  be a part of his channel. Things come to a head during his first ever live broadcast which sees a neck adjustment go horrifically wrong. The film is also to feature Tuesday Knight (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master), and principal photography beings this Autumn.

Dementium is a psychological horror that came to North American digital HD internet, DVD, cable, and satellite platforms on August 18th. Written by Clayton Thompson, Mark Wilson Sunderland, and Kyle Sunderland (with Mark also directing), this tells the story who heads to a secluded cabin determined to find out the truth about his mother's murder. He isn't alone, for he has the corpse of his father in the boot of his car. His crazed plan is to take DMT and speak to his father's spirit, but this instead leads to him being visited by two forces - his ex-girlfriend Cora, and a twisted witch.

Never Let Go (2024) - Horror Film Review 7 Oct 11:43 AM (13 days ago)

Momma (Halle Berry - Catwoman, Gothika) lives in a remote and secluded woodland home with her young twin sons; Nolan (Percy Daggs IV) and Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins - Stranger Things). As far as Momma is aware they are the last humans left alive, due to a demonic apocalypse that took place many years in the past - demons possessing  humanity and forcing them to kill their loved ones. Her parents had prepared for this calamity however, and had retreated to the woods where a special house was built, the very wood it was made up of was blessed to prevent the demons being able to enter it. By tying ropes to themselves (which in turn are tied to the foundations of the house), the three are able to venture out into the woods to scavenge for food and other supplies without the demons being able to touch them. After a harsh winter almost completely depletes their meagre supplies, the three begin to slowly starve. Nolan was already sceptical of his mother's claims of the outside world being so dangerous, and this event leads to him beginning to suspect more and more that her beliefs are wrong, and that they can't possibly be the only ones left alive.

A few years back I saw Shadows, that film had an extremely similar story of a mum and her two children living in a remote location believing the world had essentially ended (in that one it was believed that sunlight had became deadly). So similar was the feel that it took me a small while to get over the thought that I had already seen Never Let Go. If it hadn't been for that one, this would have felt more unique, but instead it goes through similar plot points, and the story plays out in much the same way. There was a tiny cast here, with mostly the three protagonists carrying the film forward. I admit to not having the best opinion of Berry, I think it comes from never having seen her in any decent films. At best was Gothika which was good, but not amazing.. Despite that I enjoyed her performance here. I was even more surprised that the two child actors were decent, they were enough that they could carry large chunks of the movie entirely on their young backs. I had expected Berry to be front and centre, but she is missing for large parts of the movie, especially in the film's second half. Nolan and Samuel may be twins but they are near polar opposites. Nolan is distrusting and suspicious of his mother's claims, while Samuel takes everything she says as gospel. From the start the film is set up to make it seem like Momma is crazy, after all, she is the only one out of the three who is able to see the possessed humans wandering the woods. There is a little effort to balance out this feeling, such as nightmare sequences the boys have, but by the last act it really seems clear as to the reality of their situation.

Set entirely in woodland this had charm to its look. I loved the design of the old house with its hand carved symbols and words everywhere. Such a dilapidated look to it that the place almost seemed like part of the woodland. The effects for the possessed humans were great, I especially liked the old woman with the forked tongue. These possessed could speak, but had the look of zombies to them, carrying the wounds that led to their original deaths. The soundtrack was passable but nothing special, with the exception of the old song that recurringly plays out on the family gramophone.

Never Let Go didn't blow me away, but it wasn't bad. I enjoyed it's story even if it was very familiar, and the acting was much better than it had any right to be. Not scary, and it was too obvious where this was going, but I never found myself clock watching at all during the 100 minute runtime. Never Let Go is currently streaming on Netflix, though is leaving the service on 13th October 2026.

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Crushed (2025) - Thriller Film Review 5 Oct 2:05 AM (15 days ago)

Father Daniel (Steve Oram - The World's End) works and lives in Bangkok with his Thai wife and their ten year old daughter, Olivia. After her new kitten goes missing, Olivia becomes obsessed with finding it, with her search eventually leading her to the home of a South African man; Stanley (Christian Ferriera). She is convinced that is where her cat had ended up, as she recognises the location from an animal-snuff film that her best friend's teenage brother had made her watch, so she thinks her cat was captured to be killed in a similar video. It turns out that Stanley was indeed responsible for the animal torture videos, and discovering Olivia in his home, he sees dollar signs and decides to imprison her, in order to sell her to a paedophile contact he has - Mr. Jeffreys (Jonathan Samson - Daytime Nightmare). As the local police and Olivia's family desperately search for her, Stanley begins to struggle with his conscience at what his plans are for the girl.

This was a slow paced drama with some very dark moments, moments which were often alluded to, but kept off camera. There were just a handful of these, among them included a person having their fingernails pulled off, as one such example. For the most part, Crushed had an almost laid-back and chilled approach to its story. It took a good 30 minutes before the story really got going, and before hand there were several almost annoying false starts where it looked like Olivia would be kidnapped, but then wasn't. Father Daniel was quite a naïve character whose faith in God meant he never seemed too upset about the situation. With his daughter missing he still holds sermons at his church, and remains upbeat that it is all a test of his faith, not so much his wife who begins to feel the strain, nor his daughter, who was already questioning the existence of God before she was taken. I had wrongly assumed the priest would go on a path of bloody vengeance to rescue his daughter, this turned out not to be the case, instead the plot meanders along without too much really happening. The actress playing the child was ok, but didn't give a particularly amazing performance.

There were some bizarre editing choices here that at times felt a bit amateurish. Weirdly edited montage sequences made up of fast cuts, a city overview shot that played out in fast forward, and then the end credits that played out in complete silence and felt like music was missing. The setting of the film was interesting at least, set in Bangkok it looked suitably different to the norm, and the film also had a large cast of characters. This did feel more like a crime drama than a thriller, which isn't to deny the harrowing real life topics it covers. Not having children of my own, this part didn't resonate as much with me as it appears to have affected others. Crushed wasn't a boring film, but I couldn't help feeling there were better things I could be doing with my time.

This was a movie that suggested more than it showed. Of course, I didn't want to see everything alluded to play out on screen (certainly nothing to do with paedophilia), but there was at least one scene near the end that would have been fun to see. The relatively low peril and lack of too many decent characters meant this didn't really leave me feeling anything. Not terrible by any means, but not one I would recommend. Following an acclaimed festival run, Crushed came to UK digital on 5th October thanks to GrimmVision.

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Erie (2026) - Horror Film Review 1 Oct 10:25 PM (19 days ago)

Beginning in a familiar way, you are treated to white text on a black background explaining that there had been a mysterious rise in suicides in the area of Pennsylvania, and that the following footage was recovered from two camcorder tapes that were found on one of these suicide victims. It is the 90s and siblings Stella (Carly Stewart) and Oscar (Grant Carter - EverythingNowShow) have returned to their hometown to investigate the out of nowhere suicide of their sister, Iris (Aimee Paxton) a year previously. Unhappy with the police investigation into the death, Stella has taken it upon herself to do her own investigation, hoping to both gets answers for her sister's death, while at the same time making a documentary that she hopes will assist with her aspirations of becoming a journalist. Her ace in the hole is that unknown to the police, she has the last moments of Iris caught on camera (something the film opens on), and that has given her clues she otherwise might not have known about. Her search leads the two first to the home of an odd man named Red (Markiplier lookalike Ryan W. Garcia - Helldivers II voicework), and then to the woods where Iris took her life.

The two tapes making up the found footage is presented as if unedited and in a cohesive forward path. It is presented in a old style square format, with a grainy look  that felt authentically nineties, and all characters and locations also look of the time, giving a nostalgic feel. To add to the illusion, there are snippets of footage that the pair have recorded over, such as childhood moments of the two, which creepily appear at key moments, as if the tape was encountering errors. Stella is mostly front and centre with Oscar filming her and the footage is shown as raw, multiple takes of Stella talking to the camera, and her brother's humorous teasing of her (such as purposely shooting her out of focus or shooting with objects obscuring her view) added a spark between the two. Classic brother and sister things that I could easily identify with. Stewart was great in her role, and while Carter had a more melodramatic and occasionally cheesy performance at times, was still also decent. Garcia was fantastic in his supporting role as Red, coming across as both amusingly as well as uncomfortably weird, with it feeling possible there might be more to him than meets the eye. The small cast helped things feel more real and insular, and the effective look footage really added a lot to the atmosphere.

Then there is an odd third act decision. With no fanfare, Erie suddenly stops being a found footage horror and transitions to a traditionally shot horror for its final 25 minutes, all pretence of being real footage abandoned with a more familiar widescreen look, and characters being filmed a out of film cameraman. This abrupt change took me by surprise, and it was a good ten minutes before I had gotten over this and was able to get back into the story being told. It felt a shame as it had been working out well as a found footage. I understand why this decision was made, with an actual explanation for everything being disclosed somewhere that wouldn't be seen on the in-film found tapes, but I found (footage) myself thinking about how these details could have naturally fitted into the core film style. After I had recovered from this change in direction, I did get back into the story, and came to like this final part. Even if large amounts of it were a character slowly hobbling through dark woodland. The explanation did feel a little silly at first, but I came to appreciate it and it did make for some genuinely unsettling moments, and the red herrings were appreciated.

The choice to blend found footage with normally created footage just about worked, though personally I would have preferred things had stuck to just the one format. Nonetheless, this was a good horror that had some horror filled moments. Erie had its world premiere at Beyond Fest on October 1st.

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No More Room in Hell 2 (2024) - Horror Video Game Review (X-Box Series X) 1 Oct 11:01 AM (19 days ago)

There isn't much story to be found here, other than the small titbits that play out over the radio during missions. The internet states the story involves a ancient frozen corpse found at a dig site, this corpse happened to have a lethal virus frozen with it, which when free swiftly spreads, causing a worldwide zombie apocalypse. It isn't entirely clear if this sequel is a reboot of the series, or if it takes place before or after the events of the first game. Playing as a randomly generated responder, you are taken to various areas along with 7 other responders, there you are tasked with completing tasks such as causing distractions so trapped survivors can escape, and finding intel to help understand the zombie hordes.

The first time me and my best friend played this we were blind drunk. Stumbling our way through the game's tutorial, we launched into a random map where it was utter chaos. We soon learned we had to play this one differently to others such as the fast zombie games Left4Dead. The undead here are slow moving and not as plentiful, but your ammo and healing items are much reduced. I only really appreciated that after unloading my gun into the first ghoul I saw and realising I was out of ammo! The slow moving zombies can smash down doors, barricades and break windows in their quest to get to you. Seemingly dead bodies might suddenly stand up to attack, while you might witness body bags unzipping from the inside as you pass them.
Each map takes place in a different location with a unique look to them. Along the way you explore a hospital complex, the centre of New York, an isolated community, a rural town, a remote power plant, a farmhouse, an industrial area and a lighthouse. Maps vary in size, with the survival maps being smaller contained areas, and the objective maps spanning from a solitary complex, to a massive open area out in the woods. Playing with people is more immersive than you might expect, proximity chat meaning that you can easily have a feeling of isolation if you don't stick together with your team, and a nice touch is that spawning into levels has you and your team mates all in different starting areas. You have access to 3 randomly generated characters at a time, needed as the game has permadeath. Unless you are playing on beginner difficulty, or take a specific item into the level with you, if you die that it is, you lose all that characters progress and have to start over.

Zombies are the only enemy type and unlike the first game, this time around there are no child undead. Occasionally you will encounter special zombie types, such as ones who leave a poisonous cloud upon death and running ones. These fit in with the more grounded vibe, so no giant mutants with crazy powers to be found here. Dotted around the levels are healing items such as bandages, med kits and revive syringes, but with a weight limit to what you can carry you can never have so much that you can relax. Also, take too much damage and your character can become infected. While infected there are audio hallucinations and screen obscuring effects such as flies and blood vessels, and if you don't constantly take a preventative serum, then you will eventually automatically die and become one of the walking dead. The slow moving enemies gives more of a chilled vibe to the game, at least on lower difficulties. You have time to group up and discuss tactics, while doors and windows can be barricaded to slow the progress of the enemies. Even on the survival maps there is a more laid back vibe. I had expected Call of Duty: Zombies levels of threat, but instead it is a horde mode where you must defend three different areas before then extracting. Extraction is a key part of the game, with your character having to get to and defend an extraction point at the climax of each mission. There are various melee weapons and guns in the levels to find. These range from baseball bats and hedge trimmers to pistols, shotguns, rifles and SMGs. There is a stamina that is used up when running and using melee weapons, and also drains when you either shove or kick the undead.
Even with all the bug fixes, I encountered a few on my beginner playthrough, nothing major, but was a tiny bit frustrating occasionally. Replay value is provided by not only a levelling system that grants your characters better abilities as they improve, but also randomised item locations, and even randomised objectives and extraction points.

So far (having only played through beginner mode and a few ill-fated attempts on nightmare difficulty), this has been a load of fun. The more methodical slow pace of the game feels refreshing, and with new maps and a solo mode coming next year, No More Room in Hell 2 is something I can see myself enjoying for a good while.

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Black Mirror: Season 7 (2025) - Horror Anthology TV Series Review 30 Sep 9:43 AM (20 days ago)

It begins with 'Common People' which is exactly the type of harrowing episode you would expect from the show. Amanda; a school teacher (Rashida Jones - Parks and Recreation) gets afflicted with a terminal and incurable disease, but seemingly fortunate help is at hand. She discovers a medical company who are able to prevent the illness from spreading, though only if their monthly subscription is continued to be paid for. Companies are going to company, and so over the time the subscription cost is increased, while the perks are reduced as more and more expensive packages are launched. Forced to go on lower tiers, the penalty is not only extreme tiredness for Amanda, but her body gets hijacked at random times to force her to act out adverts that have been beamed into her mind. These downsides begin to have a drastic effect on her life, and so, to try and help her, her husband Mike (Chris O'Dowd - The Cloverfield Paradox, The IT Crowd) resorts to increasingly desperate measures to make money. This is prime Black Mirror, feel bad entertainment that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Next up is 'Bête Noire', a strange and fantastical feeling episode. Confectionary expert Maria's (Siena Kelly) life is upended when Verity (Rosy McEwen - The Alienist) joins the company she works at. Maria had previously been in the same school as her, where Verity had been seen as a weird loner, so is immediately uncomfortable with her presence. Everything the new employee does is highly successful, while Maria's career begins to collapse when she is blamed for increasingly wild actions that despite her knowing she hasn't done, all the evidence appears otherwise. It appears the very nature of the world is being re-written, leading to Maria beginning to question her sanity. This was a crazy episode that dealt with an idea that hadn't been explored before in the show, a good thing as some of the previous seasons felt like they had really ran out of any new type of idea. This leads up to one of the more out-there Black Mirror endings.

The third episode, 'Hotel Reverie' takes the form of a love story. This one sees actress Brandy (Issa Rae - Barbie) accepting a film role that involves her being sent into a digitally constructed recreation of a classic black and white film. The idea is that she will replace the role of the protagonist, letting the film work for a modern audience. While in the simulation, the machine malfunctions, trapping her inside the film world. With time passing much more quickly inside it, Brandy finds herself trapped in a static world, where the only other person not frozen in time is the A.I construct of Dorothy (Emma Corrin - Deadpool & Wolverine), a recreated character from the original movie. As the weeks (for them) pass, the two begin to fall in love, leading to heartbreak when the machine is eventually fixed and everything resets, including the construct of Dorothy. This was a unique and more slow paced episode, but not one that left too much of an impression for me.
This slow pace certainly doesn't continue with 'Plaything', that charges along with a lean 45 minute runtime and was one of the best episodes I have yet seen of Black Mirror. In present day, an eccentric former video game reviewer; Cameron Walker (Peter Capaldi - Doctor Who, World War Z) is arrested for shoplifting. While being interviewed at the police station, the man admits to an unsolved murder decades previously in the 1990s. The majority of the episode then heads back in time to show how that murder happened, along the way telling the story of a younger Cameron (Lewis Gribben) who becomes obsessed with a prototype video game he is given, a game where the A.I creatures in it are able to evolve and learn, based on how they are treated. A wonderful episode with a goose-bump inducing ending, and a supreme performance from Capaldi.

The penultimate episode is 'Eulogy' that was another slow one and also the seasons most forgettable. Here, lonely old man Phillip (Paul Giamatti - Morgan) is contacted by a memorial company who have technology that allow people to enter a limited reconstructed world from the image of a photo and the persons forgotten memories of what they were doing when that photo was originally taken. A former lover of his has died, and her daughter had asked for Phillip's recollections to be included in her funeral service. The only problem being that it has been so long that the man frustratingly can't remember even what this former lover of his looked like, and the only photos he can find with her in it have her face obscured from view. In true Black Mirror fashion, things don't go smoothly for Phillip, with his recollections leading to harrowing revelations about the type of person he used to be, though it did finish on a somewhat positive finish.
Last but not least is the very exciting season finale, 'USS Callister: Into Infinity'. This is the first ever direct sequel to a previous episode, and takes place after the events of season four's 'USS Callister'. Spoilers for that one to follow, and if you are not familiar, a recap of that first one is given at the start. Having escaped the bubble VR world where uploaded A.I consciousness's of real people had been trapped by twisted VR creator Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons - Breaking Bad), the crew of the USS Callister now find themselves in the popular sci-fi VR game, 'Infinity'. The trouble being now that while normal players can be killed with no penalty other than being forced out the game, the crew themselves die for real if they are killed. With increasing monetisation of the game world, they are forced to piracy, robbing from players to get money to pay for fuel and basic supplies. It took me the longest time to get around to watching this, the 90 minute episode runtime really putting me off seeing it. This was very exciting that had me getting more and more on the edge of my seat as it played out. It was fantastic to see Plemons reprise his role, and though he had died in the original, a way for him to come back is found, him appearing in flashbacks and in other unique ways. He is such a fantastic actor and he nails his role here. Hardly the most serious of episodes, alongside some needless comedic scenes, there is even the inclusion of a comic relief character, which did seem to be a bridge too far, detracting rather than adding to the story.

Season seven of Black Mirror had some fantastic episodes, making for yet another great season. A good mix of episode types, and some great casting choices. Not all bangers, but mostly it was firing on all cylinders.

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The Rotting Zombie's News Round-up for September 2026 29 Sep 9:46 AM (21 days ago)

Mahal Empire's Cursed Waters is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video. This nautical horror is about a crew of shipwrecked pirates who wash up on an uncharted island populated by a bloodthirsty cult. Directed by Adam Werth, and features John Wells, BJ Mezek, and Vernon Wells.

Resident Evil (2026) - Comedy Horror Film Review 28 Sep 9:02 AM (22 days ago)

Daphne (2026) - Short Horror Film Review 25 Sep 11:45 AM (25 days ago)

Daphne is a new short three minute found footage horror film from North Carolina based indie filmmaker Caulkdraggin (Ryan McGee), someone whose work has gotten over 75 million views on TikTok. I checked out some of his short form horror stories on there and was impressed with the quality of them.

Daphne Root stars as the titular Daphne, a young woman who has been given a unique opportunity by Professor Caulkdraggin (Caulkdraggin of course). Excited for this unexplained event, she has gotten her friend to film her thoughts on this as she walks through a busy park.

There is heavy use of digital effects here, it was relatively recently I was watching the dull Karen the Beauty Queen Butcher and lambasting the terrible digital effects. Here, while similar types of digital effect is used, it looks markedly better and much more impressive. These types of effects are coming on leaps and bounds, and the fact these still veer into a kind of uncanny valley really help this with the short film's surreal and quietly sinister vibe.
The first half takes place in a park, following the excitable Daphne as she talks to the camera. The dialogue was pretty forgettable and had an odd cadence to it, but that fed into the vaguely unsettling feel of the world, that while on the surface everything seemed normal, there was just something a little off about everything that was going on, and how characters interact with each other.

The horror begins at around the two minute mark, without going into too much detail, it came out of nowhere, and was very bloody, violent, and surprising, all in equal measure. I did enjoy how it transitioned from normal to crazy in the blink of an eye. The digital effects lead to some moments you don't typically get to see in such detail. My biggest complaint with this as a whole was how wafer thin the story was, it was all designed as a lead up to a surprising moment, but didn't really tell much of a tale, ending on shock rather than something that made you think. Caulkdraggin aims to make a feature length film of Daphne using these digital effects, with this specifically referred to as a proof of concept. His almost fourth wall breaking appearance at the end to do his trademark "Witness Me!" catchphrase was certainly fun, he was an undeniable presence on screen even if the 'Caulkdraggin' name itself is a bit hard to take seriously due to the way it is pronounced.

As a micro film, I did appreciate that this didn't end on a lame jump scare, something that short horror films are usually all too keen to finish with. While I was yearning for more of a story, this really did go to an unexpected place. Caulkdraggin wrote, directed, edited and produced Daphne, and it is an undeniably impressive feat; an unsettling facsimile of reality. It has piqued my interest in how a feature length film in this style would be like to watch. Could this type of digital effect heavy work be the vanguard for a new sub-genre of horror? Daphne is due to head to the film festival circuit in the near future, be sure to check it out for yourself if you get the chance.

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The Rotting Zombie's News Anthology for Thursday 24th September 2026 24 Sep 11:56 AM (26 days ago)

Shudder Original film, V.H.S Mixtape is set to premiere on October 9th, the theme for this latest entry in the long running found footage anthology series is based around music and sound being the source of horror. One of the segments in the film, directed by Ernest Dickerson (tying into the previous news, he directed a bunch of episodes of The Walking Dead) is set to feature prolific horror actor Mike Ferguson. Other segments are by RZA, David Moreau, and an interesting sounding segment by Renee Zhan that uses creations carried out by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

Finally for today, is news of Bag Lady, which the press release describes as '...They Live meets The Terminator'. Written and directed by Eric Jacobus, this short dystopian sci-fi creature feature is about two homeless men who discover a pair of special sunglasses that allow them to see that the local homeless population are being covertly replaced by androids. Joined by a corporate security guard, the three set out on a journey to stop this hidden takeover. One of the big draws here is that every main character is played by a stuntman, so expect some thrilling scenes. Bag Lady is planned to be made into a feature film.

The Rotting Zombie's News Anthology for Tuesday 21st September 2026 22 Sep 12:08 PM (28 days ago)

Retro horror sequel - Say Cheese 2 has launched exclusively on streaming platform; Fawesome. I can't say I've seen the first film, but in this sequel, a cursed 80s camera returns to cause terror once again, when it captures a photo of its victim their end is all but inevitable. Written, directed and edited by Frank Palangi, this supernatural horror brings together a cast that includes Jolie Wells, Aaron Michael Lambert, and Palangi reprising his role as 'Jeff'. Say Cheese 2 can be viewed on Fawesome by following this link.

Slasher film, Cinefiend is to get its premiere on streaming platform The Monster Channel on October 2nd at 20:00 ET. This one time event will be free to anyone who downloads the platform before that time. The film follows Dora; a late night horror hostess whose studio crew begin getting killed off one by one, in a similar fashion to the movie Dora is hosting. The cast here includes Sparkle Soojian, Lisa London, Megan Laro, Felissa Rose, and Sally Kirkland in one of her final roles.

Return to Silent Hill (2026) - Horror Film Review 21 Sep 8:25 AM (29 days ago)

I was never that impressed with the original Christophe Gans directed Silent Hill that came out in 2006. I've watched it multiple times over the years, but it just never clicked for me. The same weirdly couldn't be said for the M.J Bassett directed and co-written sequel, Silent Hill: Revelation. Most people hate it, but on my admittedly sole watch of it, I enjoyed it, stating in my 8/10 review that while it wasn't a great film, I loved it, and it felt like a movie made for me. So, Return to Silent Hill released at the start of the year and is based on one of more beloved games; Silent Hill 2, whose successful remake came out a few years earlier. Being unemployed at the time I just couldn't afford to go see it at the cinema, and then hearing it was a disappointment my enthusiasm for it kind of dried up and it was forgotten. Having recently gotten Amazon Prime Video again, I spotted it on the service and just had to check it out for myself.

One day while speeding down mountain roads in his open-top car, artist James Sunderland (Jeremy Irvine - The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death) accidentally crashes through the luggage of Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson - Jigsaw), a woman who had been waiting at a coach stop outside the town of Silent Hill, having intended to leave the place for good. There is an immediate attraction between the two, and Mary sees their encounter as a sign that maybe she shouldn't leave the area. In present day some unknown amount of years later, James for unspecified reasons is a complete mess, regularly drowning his sorrows in alcohol, and with a psychiatrist on speed dial. Getting back from a drunken night one evening, he spots a note on his apartment floor, and upon reading it he is surprised to find it is from Mary. The letter asks him to return to Silent Hill, and being so desperate to see this woman once again (his present day trauma seemingly related to her), he immediately gets in his car and drives there. With the route to town blocked off, he heads the remainder of the way on foot and is shocked to see the once bustling town has been reduced to an ash filled ghost town. Things go from bad to worse when he discovers there are grotesque monsters roaming the streets, but being so desperate to meet with Mary, even this isn't enough to get him to turn back.

I started watching this last Friday night, and roughly made it halfway through the 100 minute film before tiredness claimed me and I retreated to my bed chambers. I left that night feeling optimistic, I had liked what I had seen, so was eager to return to the movie the next day. There were some big changes with regards to the story, but it did feel to me like a video game once again brought to life. It turns out the second half of Return to Silent Hill wasn't anywhere near as good, making this a film of two halves. I felt Irvine was a good choice for protagonist, maybe not so much in the flashback scenes, but I loved his performance as the messed up present day James. Most of the film takes place in the present, but when James (who seems to have short term memory loss) revisits key locations in the town, he recalls past events that happened with Mary there. It seems a bit silly to avoid spoilers for a 25 year old video game, but the film gives a different approach, things that are revealed early on in the game are instead revealed as late revelations in this adaption. One change I really enjoyed was with Mary, here she is given a back story that directly links her to the demon worshipping cult that had existed in the town in the previous films, making the slow reveals in the flashback sequences fun to watch. In the games, the conflict that occurred with James and Mary was her getting very sick, here, it is her involvement in this cult that begins to tear the two characters apart. All the other key characters from the game get film versions, though their individual side stories are diluted down to always link everything back to James. Angela (also played here by Anderson) was more akin to walking exposition, rather than a character who felt like she had her own journey going on. Laura (Evie Templeton - Wednesday, Silent Hill 2) acted similar to the games, but she is given a more supernatural feel, operating within the terror filled otherworld version of the town, rather than an innocent who only sees a deserted town. Maria (again Anderson) appears as the strangely familiar looking woman James encounters, but her role is reduced somewhat. Not as much as poor Eddie (Pearse Egan), who only appears in a couple of scenes for about a five minute period of time.

The second half wasn't as good in my eyes as it felt like this part was really rushed through. The apartment block and hospital scenes had time dedicated to them, but after this it becomes dizzying, with James moving from key location to key location via supernatural means, designed to share James' confusion with reality with the viewer. For a game whose story wasn't too large, it seemed weird to cut out so much of it, and some of the changes were plain odd. I appreciated it focused the story squarely on James, but the supporting cast lost a bit to them as a result.
Like in the original film, the monsters here are a lovely blend of live action with CG effects placed over them. A highlight of the film in terms of design, there were some exciting scenes here, such as James being chased across the town by a legion of giant bugs, acid spewing humanoids, and a great (if expected) scene where he is being chased by monstrous looking nurses in a hospital basement. Of course the iconic Pyramid Head also features, and again, like the side characters, he is more linked to James than in the games.
I loved the set design, and the fact that some scenes almost looked like you were watching a video game rather than reality (such as overhead CG shots of James running through the deserted streets) felt strangely fitting for a video game adaption. I get what the director was going for with the dizzying location changes of the second half, but it did lead to a feeling that everything was being rushed through far too quickly.

Return to Silent Hill started off promising, with the first half really feeling like the game brought to life. Many of the changes story wise here seemed to be to the detriment of the story, and these changes began to bother me more and more. It leads to a complicated finish, and an ending that was merely adequate rather than memorable. While not amazing, I could see myself watching this again in the future, and it has made me really want to replay the 2024 remake, so it did something for me. Return to Silent Hill can currently be streamed on Amazon Prime Video.

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The Flesh People (2026) - Comedy Horror Film Review 11 Sep 12:02 PM (last month)

Ricky (Jorge Carrión Álvarez in his film debut) is an American immigrant who is in the country to get a medical degree. However, not long before film's start, he has been kicked out of medical school after three years due to getting caught stealing drugs. Needing a place to stay in New York, he has become the roommate of Geraldine (Louise Heller); a lady in the second half of her life, a former stage actress who lives in a rundown apartment in a poor part of the city. The disparate pair discover they have a similarity with the nihilistic outlook of life they share. Both are frauds in their professions, and both are prepared to go to extreme lengths in anything they attempt. Their friendship becomes very co-dependent the longer they spend together. This leads to increasingly deranged situations.

The film goes to some grim places, but never looses the black humour at any point. I liked this began with a present day section before the film then moves back in time to show how that (bloody) present came to be. The situations increasingly got more dark, following a natural path with its incremental nature. The odd friendship between the two leads is the core of the story, with the majority of the 105 minute film being based inside their lived-in apartment. Over wild drug trips, the pair come up with various plans to improve their finances. From performing back-street medical procedures, to selling meat from a questionable and gruesome source, there soon comes a police presence due to their illegal activities. By the end things have gotten all too crazy, leading to a suitably zany ending. The escalation was fun and the infrequent outdoor scenes were always lovely to see.

Make-up effects such as injuries sustained looked great on camera, with some scenes that had me feeling a little queasy. It was great to see the hallucinations of the characters during the drug trip scenes, the most pure horror part of the movie. There was a gradual body count as the film progresses, with some fun kill scenes that included parts where the camera follows the path of the murder weapon, these were pretty neat looking. The plot wasn't designed to be deep and involved or full of twists and turns. Instead it felt more like a claustrophobic gaze at these two lost characters who have just happened by unlucky fortune to come into each others lives. The characters go from situation to situation at a regular pace, which does lead to some of these situations sometimes feeling like a bunch of disconnected skits rather than a continually running story.

The Flesh People featured very well cast duel protagonists. I found some scenes a bit too gross for my liking, though this was an entertainingly depraved jet-black comedic odd-ball movie.

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The Rotting Zombie's News Anthology for Thursday 10th September 2026 10 Sep 12:11 PM (last month)

Trinity Content Partners announced at the end of July, three UK digital premieres that arrived last month. The first of these is The Demon Detective. Starring Doug Jones, Adrienne Barbeau, Vivica A. Fox and Tom Virtue, this, as the title hints at, has a supernatural detective discovering a link between demonic possession and his past. That arrived on 17th August thanks to Miracle Media. Deadly Games arrived on 10th August. This sees a group of influencers lured to a deserted island; a survival thriller. Last is Soul Snatchers, a supernatural thriller that I reviewed yesterday. A family return to the island they used to live on, to use the power of God to help the poor, but face hostility from the power hungry mayor.

Soul Snatchers (2026) - Horror Film Review 9 Sep 1:15 PM (last month)

As children, Daniel and older brother, Saul witnessed their mother being kidnapped in broad daylight as she evangelised on a remote Puerto Rico based island. Now grown up, the two - Daniel (William Oliver) and Saul (Luis Sebastián Borges - Toxic Shark) have returned to this island alongside their evangelist father, Emmanuel (Cameron Arnett - Nefarious), to try and help the poor there with the power of Christianity and music. In their way however is the island's almost warlord like Mayor. The mayor rules the island with an iron fist, keeping law and order with his small army of enforcers. When their musical instruments are stolen, Daniel against his father's wishes, decides to ask the mayor for help. The help is given, but comes at a cost, with Daniel getting seduced by the power the mayor wields. As Daniel falls to temptation and leaves his family, Emmanuelle believes that love will bring him back home one day.

There was lots here to make this feel more like a fable than a real story. Daniel is the walking embodiment of gullible, all too quick to believe the outlandish lies of the comically evil mayor and his goons. Hot tempered and impatient, his fall to the 'dark side' was entertaining, even if it seemed to happen far too quickly. Along the way, he is asked to beat a defenceless man, gets spiked with a hallucinogenic drug, and too abuses the power he has been given. The mayor was fantastic, sadly, I didn't catch the actor's name, so can't credit him. He put on a wonderful performance, over the top, flamboyant and unpredictable, effortlessly stealing all his scenes. The mayor's spiritual opposite; Emmanuel was also a fun character, albeit in a different way. Full of the love of God, he was extremely peaceful and devout. He also is able to perform literal miracles with his belief in the Lord, early on the film he returns the sight to a blind boy purely from prayer! In a world where it appears God does exist, then too shall the demonic. A slight part of the movie, mostly insinuated than shown, but this part does culminate in a fun horror scene that I really wished more of Soul Snatchers had included.

This is a thriller rather than a horror, the focus on the division between the good and the bad guys. There were a few fight scenes and a couple of on-screen deaths, but these were few and far between. The fact the story had a fable type feel actually made me enjoy it more. Sometimes good and evil really can be plain black and white without any grey areas. Most impressive for the film were the gigantic cast, it felt like nearly every scene was populated with huge groups of background characters. Perhaps a little heavy handed with its message of love and forgiveness, but I was still rooting for the protagonists to win, even if the bad guys were so entertaining.

I liked Soul Snatchers more than I expected to. The mayor actor, Arnett, and Oliver were great in their roles, and the film world felt like a living place due to the abundance of people in the movie. Personally, I wish the horror element had been featured more, but I did enjoy a feel good ending for a change. Soul Snatchers had its digital UK premiere on 31st August thanks to Seven Tales.

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The Dead Don't Die (2019) - Comedy Horror Film Review 7 Sep 7:31 AM (last month)

The world is in a bad place. Knocked off its axis, Earth is experiencing ever increasing natural disasters. Not that this is something that is bothering the residents of the small sleepy town of Centerville, who are too caught up in their small town dramas. That is until they get a disaster of their own, with the dead inexplicably returning to life and crawling out of their graves. With the town soon overrun, and events spiralling out of control, the local police force comprised of Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray - Zombieland, Hamlet, Ghostbusters), Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver - Star Wars: Episode VII - IX), and Officer Mindy Morrison (Chloë Sevigny - Russian Doll, Antibirth), decide to head out on a routine patrol. Despite the overwhelming odds, the trio hope to bring law and order back to their town.

The Dead Don't Die may not be as dull as I was led to believe, but it wasn't without its issues. The comedy is quite dry, so much so that it took me about 45 minutes to realise that yes, this was supposed to be a comedy horror film. It is full of long empty scenes of characters chewing the fat, odd and meandering conversations that at times felt ad-libbed. Murray felt like he was bored in his central role, his character serious and calm, but he never stood out. Sevigny fared worse, a generic 'straight man' role that saw her character panicking and crying throughout the film as opposed to the unfazed duo of Murray and Driver's characters. Every time Mindy spoke it made the film that little bit worse. Driver really was the saving grace, his almost sociopathic pragmatic character took to the zombie apocalypse like a fish to water. I loved his role as Ronnie, and it was him arriving to a crime scene in a ridiculously small smart car that was the first moment here to make me smile. He was a constant delight with his dead cold outlook, and much humour was made of the viewer expecting him to finally react and show emotion, but that reaction never coming, even when he is slicing the head off of a recently killed potential love interest he is still all business. Away from him, the humour really is hit and miss, some parts are so bad as to be distracting. A prime example is late in the film when Cliff asks Ronnie why he has been so certain all along that they will fail to stop the outbreak. This leads to a weird fourth-wall breaking scene where Ronnie explains that he has read the film's script, and so knows how the story will end. This bizarre scene went on far too long, it felt tonally out of place, and it was a bad explanation for what had been a running joke with the character.

There were too many subplots going on, with the film following about seven different stories unfolding. In addition to the police patrol there were three teenage inmates at a juvenile detention centre that were seemingly the only inmates there. Their story was so uninteresting that I honestly can't even remember what the resolution of their part of the movie was. Then there is the off-putting strange Scottish mortician, Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton - We Need to Talk About Kevin, Doctor Strange). She spends the film casually walking around town killing undead with a samurai sword while making painfully unfunny puns. The same applied to Hermit Bob (Tom Waits - Mystery Men), another character who spent the film visiting various locations. He acted as the in-movie narrator, always happening to be in the background of pivotal scenes to give more information to the viewer. Hermit Bob was totally pointless, adding nothing whatsoever to his scenes. At least the hardware store owner and his friend added a lovely traditional zombie siege story. Sure it was generic, but otherwise The Dead Don't Die would have been missing that trope of zombie films. Even more subplots come with racist farmer - Frank Miller (Steve Buscemi - Ghost World, Reservoir Dogs); another pointless one, and a trio of city folk stuck in the area while travelling through (including popstar Selena Gomez). There was just too much going on, when this should have been something more focussed on just a few storylines. Different subplots rarely intersected with one another and felt disjointed.
The backdrop of the world heading towards disaster was also odd. It seemed to only be there as an excuse why much of the film takes place during daytime, and why no ones mobile phones or radios worked.

It took half an hour for zombies to appear, and then it is just the two of them (including Ziggy Pop in a cameo). Roughly another 30 minutes later and this finally felt like a proper zombie film. There were finally plenty of scenes full of streets of stumbling undead. I was all there for the stereotypical scenes of people being attacked by the ghouls, my highlight of this. Special effects, especially make-up effects were great, and it was an interesting decision to have zombie leak black dust rather than blood when they take damage. More than a few exciting fight scenes against the zombies, and it was novel to have a zombie child make an appearance, still a rare thing for a zombie film to include.

There was potential with The Dead Don't Die, but it would have need a bit of work to transform this. It could have worked as a more serious and traditional zombie film, especially with so much humour falling flat in the current version. I would have also stripped out a lot of the needless subplots, to focus on the more essential ones. I don't get why this was so full of notable actors, it wasn't needed, especially when with the exception of Driver, none of these famous people stood out and did anything interesting. One actor cannot save a film, it was too patchy in its execution to be classed as a good film, but there were plenty of great, if stereotypical zombie scenes here. For me who loves generic zombie stuff, that was one part of the whole that really appealed. The Dead Don't Die is currently streaming on Disney+.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026) - Comedy Horror Film Review 4 Sep 10:12 AM (last month)

Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) stars as Kris; a gay up and coming film director who has been given the chance to revitalise a long running slasher film series called - 'Camp Miasma'. The film's trans villain - Little Death (Jack Haven) is seen as problematic for a modern audience, and so the film has been given to Kris, hoping that a gay director will appease critics of the film. Being a huge fan of the original entry, with one particular scene being pivotal to her gay awakening as a child, Kris has decided to track down the film's original final girl, Billy (Anderson), an actress who since that role has became very reclusive. Kris plans to travel to Billy's remote property and try and convince her to come back to the series for a role in the latest entry. Arriving, she is surprised to see that Billy lives at the same location that the first Camp Miasma was filmed at. Kris becomes entranced with the mysterious and strange Billy, and as the days of her visit pass, she becomes more and more taken with the former actress. Also going on in the background - Camp Miasma's slasher; Little Death, might exist in the real world, and might be looking to kill.

I had imagined that this would be a slasher that took place in a meta-way, much as what happened with The Final Girls. It was slightly similar here, though with characters not falling into a horror film (though there is a bit of that), but in a hallucinogenic way falling into the creation of a horror film. Peppered throughout the main movie are scenes from the film within a film - Camp Miasma. It had a filter to give a suitably seventies look, but the directing was pure modern day on how it was shot, and kills were shown in an artsy and stylish way. I enjoyed these film clips, and they integrated into the real story in very purposeful ways. Much of the horror here was from the clips of the film, and so lose any power due to knowing it wasn't real. That isn't to take away from the pleasure of the very violent kills. Little Death is a diminutive white overall wearing trans-person who wears a metal box on their head, and wields a huge spear. During the many lovely looking kill scenes, he tears limbs and heads off of victims, as stylised fountains of over the top red gore spurting out the bodies. These scenes were great fun to watch, the highlight being a protracted massacre scene that focuses the camera directly on Little Death, swinging away as he slashes his way through a room.

The film had a trippy vibe, with the real world blending with the fake. Exterior locations often use obvious painted backgrounds, and characters from the film are encountered in the real world, making for some surreal moments. Unexpectedly, the core of the story is a lesbian love story, with Kris discovering a sexual awakening. It included long (non-graphic) sex scenes of the two leads, which included some nudity. Horror films were key to the plot, but not really the point of the film, being there more as an allegory for desire. Kill scenes are done in a way that aren't designed to create fear, and the protagonists never felt like they were in any threat The humour here isn't a constant, but there were moments that made me laugh out loud, with Dylan Baker (Immortal, Fido) shining in a tiny role as someone Kris is speaking to on a Zoom call - the comedic highlight of the film that had the audience laughing.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma was a good film even if it never felt like it was too much for me. This isn't a slasher, not even a meta-one, and that is perfectly fine, it never said it was. Instead, its a dark gay romantic arty story of self discovery, that nonetheless includes plenty of references to classic slasher films, with everything from Friday the 13th, Halloween, Sleepaway Camp and A Nightmare on Elm Street brought up at one point or another. Just be prepared for some weirdness along the way.

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