Boy, did this movie make a splash at the box office. One of three movies in wide release this past year that upended industry conventions about horror (the others being Backrooms and Iron Lung), Obsession pulled in over 500 million bucks against a budget of around three-quarters of a million. Those kinds of numbers make the suits take notice. It’s not the first time something like this has happened. In the late 1990s it was The Blair Witch Project that thumbed its nose at Hollywood, and in the next decade Paranormal Activity did it again. Every so often the industry gets a reminder that bigger isn’t better, and that they don’t have sole license on what people are allowed to like. What’s unique is that three movies did this in the same year. But, Missile Test doesn’t give a damn about numbers and return on investment. What we appreciate is that an independent filmmaker was able to make their movie, and get it seen. Continue reading “Obsession”
Tag: Supernatural Flick
The Demon’s Rook
Had The Demon’s Rook been made in the 1980s or 1990s, it would have been shot on videotape. This is very much kin to the kinds of movies the Polonia brothers or Andreas Schnaas were making back then. All the bona fides are there. It was the passion project of an aspiring filmmaker and an amateur cast and crew. It’s very bloody and gory, yet the effects are inexpensive. And it took a long time to shoot, with this particular flick eating up weekends for two years, if the internet is to be believed.
Released in 2013, the driving force of The Demon’s Rook is filmmaker James Sizemore, who wrote (with Akom Tidwell), produced (with Tim Reis), directed, and starred. Reis contributed further as editor and cinematographer. The Demon’s Rook tells the story of Roscoe (Sizemore), who, when he was a young boy (played by Emmett Eckert), was recruited by a demon, Dimwos (John Chatham), to become an apprentice in demonic magic. The price is high, as Roscoe not only has to abandon his life, but his parents become blood sacrifices, and Roscoe is held prisoner well into his adulthood in a separate dimension. Continue reading “The Demon’s Rook”
Fatal Images
In the decades since the 1989 release of Fatal Images, filmmaker Dennis Devine has staked out quite a place in low budget, trash horror cinema. Of the thirty-four directorial credits on his IMDb page that have viewer ratings, the average score is 3.8 out of 10. That’s pretty bad. Any single movie that garners a score that low is probably not worth the effort to watch, and that number covers Devine’s entire career. Some would say he should have thrown in the towel a long time ago, but shit on that. Devine is a filmmaker. It doesn’t matter that he makes crap. He makes movies, and no matter how bad they are, there is an audience of mutants out there who reject force fed studio movies — who experience culture outside the big corporate stranglehold on media. Sure, his movies stink. But every blown line, every plot hole, every frame of bland, desaturated magnetic video is a ‘fuck you’ to the moneyed gatekeepers of cinema.
Fatal Images, also written by Devine, with Mike Bowler and Steve Jarvis, is a supernatural slasher flick. Shot on glorious videotape, the film tells the story of deceased serial killer Kurt Cosgrave (David Williams); the camera that holds his murderous spirit (played by a Panon Widelux); and the photographer who buys the camera at a pawnshop, Amy Stewart (Lane Coyle). Continue reading “Fatal Images”
A Chinese Ghost Story
A Chinese Ghost Story, from Hong Kong actor, stuntman, and filmmaker Siu-Ting Ching (screenplay by Songling Pu and Kai-Chi Yuen), is, according to the internet, a xianxia film. Xianxia are ‘closely related to the wuxia and shenmo genres.’ There is some cultural illiteracy here, on my part, but those strange new terms basically mean ‘based within Chinese mythology.’ Now we’re getting somewhere. If one has seen a Hong Kong martial arts flick that takes place before the emergence of modern China, one will be familiar with the look and feel of A Chinese Ghost Story. It’s a piece of fantasy, encompassing demons and the supernatural, with Hong Kong martial arts movie trickery thrown in, and comedy to keep things light.
The movie follows Leslie Cheung as Ling Choi San, a debt collector suffering from multiple slapstick maladies, who makes the mistake of spending a night in a haunted temple. There, he meets Yin Chek Ha (Wu Ma), a swordsman who retired from the civil service in disgust at the corruption, and now spends his time ridding the country of evil spirits. Yin Chek Ha is at the temple because it has recently been taken over by an evil tree demon (Siu-Ming Lau). All the inhabitants and caretakers have been killed and turned into stop motion zombies by the tree demon. It has also seized some recently deceased souls, which it uses to capture more innocent people to feed its insatiable appetite. Continue reading “A Chinese Ghost Story”
Whistle
Whistle, the 2025 horror film from writer Owen Egerton and director Corin Hardy, is something of a throwback. The conceit of a cursed object whose use brings unexpected, and sometimes ironic, death was a more common theme in horror of decades past. Paired with a cast of teenagers, films like this have been a rich breeding ground of explorations into coming of age and the sudden salience of one’s mortality. There’s a reason most of these films have young protagonists. Done correctly, these flicks give the young’uns serious chills. Done even more correctly, there is plenty of bloody mayhem for the gorehounds among us. Continue reading “Whistle”
Timesweep
Someone out there, somewhere, owns the rights to Timesweep, the 1987 magnum opus from writer/director Dan Diefenderfer (screenplay credits were shared with Larry Nordsieck and John Thonen). As of this writing, Timesweep is nowhere to be found on streaming services, outside of the nooks and crannies where someone has uploaded an old VHS transfer. For shame. This movie is right up Tubi’s alley, and I’m sure whoever owns the rights could use the extra fifty bucks. Anyway…
Timesweep tells the tale of a bunch of mild-mannered 30-something Midwesterners who find themselves trapped in an abandoned building that is hopping through time. Monsters, aliens, zombies, a crazed hermit, killer bugs, and more abound, providing the audience with a surprising amount of gore for so moribund a budget.
The building in question is an old film studio that is slated for demolition. An architecture professor, Vincent Hill (Kevin Brief), a film professor, H.G. Lewis (Frank Vrooman), and students have gathered to explore the old edifice before it’s gone forever. Joining them is a local news anchor covering the story, Angela Markell (Denise Gray), and cameraman Mike Romero (Michael Cornelison). Mike is the rebel of the movie. One can tell because he shows up two minutes late, and he’s rocking a beige jacket. Yeah, there were some wild folks in Kansas City, Missouri in the 1980s. Continue reading “Timesweep”
976-EVIL
The 1980s remain my favorite decade for horror flicks. In general, that decade had a much lighter take on the genre than the 1970s, despite all the splatter. In the ’70s, the aim of horror auteurs was to disturb, or to inspire dread. Take the career of Wes Craven, for example. His two most provocative films of the ’70s were The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes. Both use rape as a plot device, and both rely far more on dread than fear. Then, in the ’80s, Craven launched the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, which embraced a fun house atmosphere, embodied in antagonist Freddy Krueger. And I do mean fun house. Freddy, with his razor glove, the facial scarring, and the exaggerated sweater and hat, is a horror movie clown. Jason Voorhees, over in the Friday the 13th franchise, is a horror movie clown. Chucky, from Child’s Play, is a horror movie clown. Et cetera, et cetera. The ’80s were awash in blood, but the tone is far different than what came before. Continue reading “976-EVIL”
Sinister
So, what is a washed up true crime writer supposed to do when it’s been years since the last bestseller, the previous two books were poorly researched and poorly received, bills keep piling up, and the wife uses the threat of leaving and taking the kids with her as a cudgel? Well, in 2025, this would never be a problem, as this film’s protagonist, Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke), would already be on season three or four of his true crime podcast. But, back in the distant days of 2012, when this film was released, Ellison would have packed up his family, moved them into a house where an appalling mass murder occurred, and tried to bang out a new career and family-saving hit. That’s the premise behind Sinister, from director Scott Derrickson, and written by Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill. Continue reading “Sinister”
Venus
Lucía (Ester Expósito) is having a bad day. A platform dancer at a shady nightclub, Lucía decides the best plan for her life is to steal a gigantic stash of ecstasy pills from the club’s gangster owners and sell it. But, on her way out the door, one of the bouncers/mob muscle, Moro (Fernando Valdivielso), catches her in the act. Lucía escapes, but not before Moro bruises up her face and stabs her in the leg. Her plan ruined, Lucía does what so many others do when in a serious jam: she leans on family.
Rocío (Ángela Cremonte), Lucía’s sister, has problems of her own. A single mother, she is raising young Alba (Inés Fernández) in a decrepit tower block named Edificio Venus that has been bleeding tenants for years. Tragedy after tragedy haunts the Venus’s past, and Rocío has had enough. One last night of pounding sounds coming from the ceiling has convinced her, unlike the protagonists of just about every horror movie ever made, that it’s time to get out of the danger early. Just as she and Alba are packed and in the corridor on their way to safety, the elevator opens and there is the bloodied and exhausted Lucía. That’s the setup for director Jaume Balagueró’s 2022 film Venus, which he wrote with Fernando Navarro. Continue reading “Venus”
The House by the Cemetery, aka Quella villa accanto al cimitero
Leave it to Lucio Fulci to make a haunted house flick with lots of gore. Whereas countless filmmakers have used spooky ghosts as an unseen menace, to varying effect, Fulci decided to stick with what he knew, and he knew gore. He also knew convoluted storytelling.
From 1981, Fulci directed The House by the Cemetery from a screenplay by Dardano Sacchetti, Giorgio Mariuzzo, and Fulci, himself. The movie follows the Boyle family: college professor Dr. Norman Boyle (Paolo Malco); his wife, Lucy (Catriona MacColl); and their young son, Bob (Giovanni Frezza). Fair warning to all potential viewers — Bob is a chore. Missile Test has made it clear how we feel about the talents of child actors, but in this instance, Frezza gets a pass. It’s the awful dubbing that does the most to make Bob one of the more annoying movie children one will see. Anyway… Continue reading “The House by the Cemetery, aka Quella villa accanto al cimitero”