Posts

Review #403: Halloween Ends (2022)

Image
October 2026 Horror Reviews #31 - Halloween Ends (2022) Here we are, folks! The end of another October, and fittingly, the end of another franchise (until the suits at Miramax decide they want more money and they drag this one out of the shed for another go). Before I get into the review, let me just thank everyone who has been following along this year, and I hope you tune in next year (or- spoilers- in December? stay tuned)! I complained at length in the review of Halloween Kills that the ending was so stupid and nonsensical that I strongly suspected it was going to turn out to all have been a dream, and I am sad to say that is not the case- we pick up in this movie (more or less) four years after Michael Myers singlehanded killed an entire mob of idiots and then magically teleported behind Karen and killed her without any of the cops or any of the Strode family noticing- after which Michael escapes off-screen and spends the next four years in hiding, and the world moves on. This mov...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review #402: Halloween Kills (2021)

Image
October 2026 Horror Reviews #30 - Halloween Kills (2021) It's been a while since I saw Halloween (2018), which this movie follows immediately after. I remember having (and still have) strong mixed feelings about that movie, and whether it works as part of an ongoing series of not; coupled with the fact that I've really only heard bad things about this one and its sequel, I went into Halloween Kills with pretty low expectations, if I'm being honest. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised- I enjoyed this one quite a bit, except for the ending (which I'll get to)- but I still have a lot to say about it. Halloween Kills, as I said, follows immediately after the events of the previous film, when Michael Myers- a person who previously had killed... I think five people, forty years ago, and sat quietly in a mental asylum ever since, until some podcasters accused him of having a mental link with the mask he wore one time. With the aid of a psychiatrist who somehow began to thin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review #401: Hellraiser (2022)

Image
October 2026 Horror Reviews #29 - Hellraiser (2022) Hellraiser (2022) is a reboot of the horror series, giving a fresh take on the original idea rather than just remaking or continuing the series as it existed. It follows a recovering drug addict named Riley, whose boyfriend Trevor apparently discovers a forgotten shipping crate locked in a warehouse that contains the iconic puzzle box. In a drunk haze, Riley partially solves the puzzle box, but when her brother finds her passed out with the box beside her, a blade from within it stabs his hand, drawing blood and summoning the cenobites, who whisk him away a whirlwind of pain. When Riley discovers he has disappeared, she and Trevor investigate the origins of the box, which eventually leads them to the home of Roland Voight, a reclusive billionaire obsessed with the occult. It turns out Voight has some secrets, and may have been orchestrating the events around Riley for the entire film- all in an attempt at provoking a meeting with the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review #400: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Image
October 2026 Horror Reviews #28 - A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) Hot on the heels of the Friday the 13th remake, the people over at New Line Cinema knew they had to follow the trend and remake the classic introduction to our favorite dream demon, Freddy Kreuger. In this movie, a bunch of high school students in the town of Springwood, Ohio start having nightmares where a spooky burned man with a bladed glove shows up and terrorizes them, and as the dreams get more and more intense, they start dying in their sleep. It turns out their parents killed Fred Krueger, the gardener at a local preschool whom they suspected had been inappropriate with their kids, and now Freddy is back to take revenge in the children's dreams. As the main group of friends start dying off, the two primary protagonists- Nancy and Quentin- fight to stave off their fatigue and find out the truth behind Fred Krueger's death so that they can stop him once and for all. So, unfortunately I'm going to be mo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review #399: Friday the 13th (2009)

Image
October 2026 Horror Reviews #27 - Friday the 13th (2009) Just when you thought I was done covering the Friday the 13th series, much like Jason after you thought he was dead, I'm back for one more! There was a distinct boom of gritty modern remakes of old movie franchises in the late 00s, and Friday the 13th was no exception. In this entry, we kinda sorta get a retelling of the first four Friday movies, starting off with a very quick summary of the climactic fight where Pamela Voorhees got her head cut off on the shore of Camp Crystal Lake (though this time it's set in 1980). We then fast forward to the "modern day" of 2009, when a group of college kids go on a hike out to the environs of the abandoned camp to look for a grove of marijuana plants they were told about. After a spooky campfire tale about the boy who drowned (but somehow came back) and then watched his mother die, the college kids (seemingly) all get killed by a mysterious outdoorsman. Fast forward again...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review #398: Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

Image
October 2026 Horror Reviews #26 - Freddy vs. Jason (2003) After yesterday's review of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, I'm skipping the next two Friday movies (Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday and Jason X) because I've already reviewed those, several years ago. For anyone who might be following along (but unwilling to read those two reviews), I'll give a quick summary: in Jason Goes to Hell, Jason does not go to hell, he is instead revealed to be a body-hopping magic slug and he's trying to find a blood relative of his original body for some reason, until the final scene when he gets stabbed by a magic dagger and then Freddy Krueger's glove inexplicably pulls Jason's mask into the ground. And in Jason X, we skip forward several hundred years, when Jason's cryogenically frozen body gets taken to a space research station, and his body gets rebuilt by nanobots to make him a half-mechanical super soldier just in time for a fight scene wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review #397: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Image
October 2026 Horror Reviews #25 - Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) Watch it here on PlutoTV! The misleadingly-titled Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan follows a group of high school seniors taking a "cruise" from the Crystal Lake area (presumably in New Jersey) to Manhattan, as part of an end-of-year trip before graduation. But wouldn't you know it, Jason Voorhees has been reawakened once again, and for some reason he decides to hitch a ride on the "cruise ship" (that looks more like a naval vessel than an actual cruise ship) so he can wreak havoc on these unsuspecting teens. Eventually, once two-thirds of the movie have passed, Jason (and the surviving protagonists) arrive in Manhattan, at which point Jason proceeds to "take" it (if you can call it that, he kills like four people) before getting swept up in a wave of toxic sewer sludge that (perhaps metaphorically) turns him back into a living child. Or something....
Post a Comment
Read more