Category: Horror Movies
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Fantasia 2026: ‘Unholy Night’ is a welcome addition to Christmas horror
Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Michael Gabriele’s Unholy Night twists together the campiness of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the cheery terror of Krampus, and the sobering aftertaste of Camille Griffin’s Silent Night. In recent years, the pool of well-made Christmas/holiday horror films has expanded—Silent Night Deadly Night (2025), Christmas Bloody Christmas, and Advent Calendar among…
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Fantasia 2026: ‘Insectasy’ never fully hatches
Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Angus Silver’s Insectasy aims for bizarro eroticism, but it neither gets gross and weird enough nor sexually charged enough to arouse the senses. Its sticky 1960s and ’70s aesthetic, from its carefully peculiar zoom shots and visual crackle, rips from the classics such as Dark Argento’s Phenomena (also referencing its…
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Fantasia 2026: ‘Home Bodies’ goes through the motions
Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Casey Walker’s Home Bodies robotically shuffles between homage and a sleepy The Twilight Zone carbon copy. Sci-fi thrillers can so easily fall into the Black Mirror trap, or better yet feel too indebted to the Rod Serling-created television show to carve out a unique place of their own. As such,…
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Fantasia 2026: ‘Ancestral Beasts’ lacks bite, vision, and purpose
Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Tim Riedel’s Ancestral Beasts follows a well-trodden path of familial roots, burying the past, and learning to move on. But it fails to generate anything meaningful and fresh for the conversation. It arrives in the world merely as an amalgam of better films with more gripping performances, better scripts, and…
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Fantasia 2026: ‘No Rest for the Wicked’ spins a harrowing queer folk tale
Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Kasper Kalle’s No Rest for the Wicked adapts the 1884 short story, Manor, written by German author and out gay man Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, and spins a beautiful and tragic, stunning and despairing, and poetic and terrifying love story. Kalle, who co-wrote the script with Rasmus Birch, examines the vilification…
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Fantasia 2026: ‘Someone’s Daughter’ analyzes moral judgements around rape
Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Wiebke von Carolsfeld’s Someone’s Daughter arrives like a hive of angry bees in a hot tin roof. Von Carolsfeld, who co-wrote the script with Doug Taylor, mines the rape/revenge genre with a fine-tooth comb. She pulls on threads found in Promising Young Woman and Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge, which in turn…
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Review: ‘Watchful Eyes’ upends every expectation
JustWatch.com Gianluca Lasaracina’s Watchful Eyes is your standard found footage film—until it isn’t. Lasaracina, who co-wrote the script with Riccardo Silli and Filippo Tancredi, shows great respect for the first-person POV format. He understands how to build relationship dynamics, conflict, atmosphere, and mood that’ll tighten your skin. He uses reliable conventions to engage with the…
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Fantasia 2026: ‘You Are the Film’ is a sweet meta romp
Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Makoto Ueda surprises with his directorial debut, You Are the Film. At a time when theatrical tentpole films push creative and thematic boundaries, seeing an independent film follow suit with its own unique spin on genre storytelling is quite refreshing. Ueda ambitiously ventures into a mind-melting space to explore themes…
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Fantasia 2026: ‘Big Break’ bulldozes comedy horror dividing line
Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Ian Faria’s Big Break is sure to be a romping crowd pleaser. The film mines the comedy/horror chops of genre titans such as Josh Ruben, Patrick Brice, and Mark Duplass. Written by Sam Lanier, it incisively cuts into the dog-eat-dog world of Hollywood and the strain that fame puts on…
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Review: ‘Autonomous’ drives over our fear of robot cabs
Much like AI itself, AI-focused horror permeates our lives these days. And not every single film or TV show works (e.g., Chris Weitz’s 2024 film, Afraid). When it hits, though, it really hits. Kyle Valle’s Autonomous film, shown in bite-sized episodes on Screamify, firmly sits in the latter category. Its exploration of a fractured relationship,…
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Review: ‘Stream’ slashes through our salivating fixation with the macabre
The slasher renaissance continues raging on with Michael Leavy’s Stream. When it comes to a post-Scream world, slashers either comment on current culture or harken to the slasher boom of the ’80s. For every Totally Killer, there’s a Terrifier feeling ripped from yesteryear. Leavy, who co-wrote the script with Steven Della Salla, Jason Leavy, and…
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The 50 Best Thrillers & Horror Movies of 2026 (So Far)
2026 is a banner year for horror. While Backrooms and Obsession wrecked the box office, there are dozens of indie films that were just as good as, if not better than, the tentpole theatrical releases. With the mid-year point, it’s time to take stock of what we’ve seen so far and what’s stood out most.…
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Fantasia Festival 2026: 20 Most Anticipated Horror Films
Fantasia Film Festival‘s 30th edition is less than two weeks away! It seems just like yesterday that the 2025 festival took place. This year’s lineup might be the best yet, with countless films ranging from vintage slashers to bone-rattling psychological thrillers, promising to blow the minds of horror audiences. When it comes to narrowing down…
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5 Horror Movies That Made Me: Chris VanderKaay
Steven Espinoza’s Go to Sleep may be a bit of a, well, sleeper. A FoundTV original, the film follows a newly separated man suffering from sleepwalking. His midnight wanderings become so dangerous that he installs cameras to find out exactly what he’s up to. Chris VanderKaay, writer and actor of the project, shares the five…
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Pride 2026: A Conversation with Isaiah Rice (Axel’s Night)
For Pride Month 2026, B-Sides & Badlands is raising money for The Trevor Project. Our celebration of queerness features interviews with filmmakers and artists, reviews of queer horror and albums, and queer essays. Donate here. Isaiah Rice, the writer and actor of the short film Axel’s Night (review), doesn’t want to be called a “horror filmmaker.” He…
Recent Posts
- Fantasia 2026: ‘Unholy Night’ is a welcome addition to Christmas horror
- Fantasia 2026: ‘Insectasy’ never fully hatches
- Fantasia 2026: ‘Home Bodies’ goes through the motions
- Fantasia 2026: ‘Ancestral Beasts’ lacks bite, vision, and purpose
- Fantasia 2026: ‘No Rest for the Wicked’ spins a harrowing queer folk tale
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Comments
This is one of my favorite horror comedies that's came out in a long time. It's the absolute perfect popcorn…
[…] However, his songs here are as relevant and crushing as ever, as queer non-binary music critic Bee Delores recently…