Category: Horror Movies

Fantasia 2026: ‘When You Open the Door’ slams shut immediately

Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Eriko Katagiri’s When You Open the Door moves at an agonizingly glacial pace and guns for the feeling, tone, and approach of Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In, but it fails to move or provoke in any significant way. It’s poetically dreary without the weight of real, affecting lyricism…
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August 1, 2026
Review: ‘Nightborn’ sprouts folk horror tentacles

Hanna Bergholm’s Nightborn marries the folk horror of Avery Crounse’s Eyes of Fire with the newborn terror of Rosemary’s Baby and the reality-melting of Darren Aronofsky’s mother! While the film feels thematically similar to dozens of films we’ve previously seen, the performances enrich the script, co-written by Bergholm and Ilja Rautsi, with a coarse emotional…
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July 31, 2026
Fantasia 2026: ‘Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson’

First-time director Nick Taylor brings special effects makeup artist Steve Johnson’s life and work to pulsing vitality in a brand new documentary. Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson peeks behind the curtain for an intimate glimpse into all the ups and downs of the business and Johnson’s personal…
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July 29, 2026
Fantasia 2026: ‘The Last Footage’ goes absolutely nowhere

Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Arkar Soe Oo’s The Last Footage packs every found footage cliché into its 88-minute runtime and fails to generate any level of fear. Many filmmakers believe found footage films are quite easy to make—give your friends a camera and shoot. Easy peasy, right? As we’ve seen with other indie films…
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July 28, 2026
Stream & Scream: FoundTV (August 2026)

August is here, and I have just one question for you, dear reader: Why aren’t you subscribed to FoundTV yet? It is the go-to hub for all things found footage, screenlife, and mockumentaries. This month, the streaming service nabs an exclusive and a host of other must-see features that’ll chill your blood and keep you up…
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July 28, 2026
Fantasia 2026: ‘Corpus’ is pure queer cinema

1990s media (film, television, etc.) portrayed New York City as a sticky, sweaty, and thrilling concrete jungle of sexual liberation and pure abandon. It makes sense, then, that filmmaker Corrin Evans places her story during the peak of post-grunge and Lilith Fair, a period which saw youth growing increasingly reckless in their pursuit of freedom…
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July 27, 2026
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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July 26, 2026
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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July 26, 2026
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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July 25, 2026
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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July 24, 2026
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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July 23, 2026
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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July 21, 2026
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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July 20, 2026
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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July 19, 2026
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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July 19, 2026