I Know What You Did Last Summer 1997

It’s officially accepted in movie talk that the nineties were a barren wasteland as far as horror was concerned. After some kind of macabre peak in the mid eighties it was a steady decline of ideas and style. So much so that by the mid nineties the best we could hope for was a few…

Friday the 13th Part 2 1981

Apart from the fact that Jason Voorhees has yet to get his infamous hockey mask, Friday the 13th Part 2 is probably the quintessential Friday The 13th movie. Here, the series hasn´t started to feel desperate by adding gimmicks like telekinetic Carrie clones or the island of Manhattan and keeps things pretty straightforward. Teen counsellors…

Death Spa 1989

I understand that there is a never ending desire for a good idea in Hollywood. And that that good idea will hopefully sell tickets by the bucketful. This is why an article in the New Yorker can become a A-List feature or a dance trend can become the next Step Up or Breakin’ 2: Electric…

Happy Death Day 2017

The eighties brought about the high concept movie with such nonsense as Schwarzenegger and Delete Vito as Twins or Eddie Murphy saving the world and The Golden Child or Tom Cruise making a Cocktail* ( obviously the stakes varied wildly from concept to concept). A lot of these films don’t stand up to much critical…

Prevenge 2016

  It’s hard out there for actors. I know we all think of the Hollywood stars swanning about in their luxury trailers with personal trainers as best mates, but that is a tiny decimal point of a percentage of thespians. The rest of them are caught in a relentless series of auditions, or no auditions…

Leatherface 2017

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 was widely criticized at the time of its release for being too far removed from the original film. Not only was there hardly any killing (outside the opening sequence) but it also seemed to be embracing other genres: it mostly play for laughs and seemed to be trying for…

Don’t Hang Up 2016

Pranksters are a staple of the horror genre. As most monsters and/or serial killer will need a bunch of teens to butcher then those teens better have some kind of character trait. You can have the jock, the nerd, the slutty girl and of course someone who likes nothing more than pulling hilarious pranks on…

Prom Night 1980 Vs Prom Night 2008

When it comes to remakes probably the best approach is to take a movie that was kind of shit in the first place and remake that. Then the only way is up: there weren’t that many fans in the first place* so the hate will be limited, and if the orignal was garbage but there…

House of Wax 2005

Mainstream horror was in the doldrums come the mid noughties. Between the so called torture porn movies (which had about one idea) between them and the endless remakes the studios put out it seemed like our favourite genre had reached a point of creative bankruptcy. By the time it came to digging back far enough…

Don’t Go In The Woods 1981

After watching Don’t Go In The Woods  I think the main question we have to ask about the whole Video Nasties debacle is this: WHAT THE FUCK TORIES?!?!!? I’m not saying that the-banned-for-many-years Don’t Go In The Woods isn’t gory, because it is. And I’m not saying that it isn’t occasionally offensive, because it is…