If you were born after 2000, you never experienced the brief moral panic that proceeded New Year’s Eve in 1999. Those were the days of the dreaded Y2K virus. For a brief moment in time, people expected to world to shut down and planes to fall from the sky. Never one to miss a scary […]
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They say ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’. If that’s the case, you can consider 1981 Italian horror movie The Last Shark to be a love letter to Jaws. Too bad Universal Studios responded with a ‘return to sender’. Apparently, following its initial release, Universal was unimpressed enough with the overlap between their classic […]
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Even after nearly 50 years, the Amityville Haunting may be one of the most instantly recognizable ghost stories and urban legends in America. In November of 1974, 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr., shot and murdered his mother, father, and four siblings at 112 Ocean Ave in Amityville, Long Island. Shortly thereafter, George and Kathy Lutz moved […]
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Sixty years after its release, Robert Wise’s 1963 adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House remains a horror classic. In addition to Wise’s haunted house chiller, author Shirley Jackson’s Gothic novel provided the source material for the critically acclaimed Netflix series. Somewhere in between those two interpretations, action director Jan de Bont (Speed, Twister) delivered […]
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If you’re a Gen-X horror fan, you’ll likely remember the hysteria that accompanied the dawn of the new millennium. Fears about the ‘Y2K bug’ had people believing that planes would fall from the sky. Experts warned that entire infrastructures may collapse. Never one to miss a panic the horror genre responded with a handful of […]
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Not surprisingly, Halloween makes logical sense for holiday-themed horror movies. And juxtaposing Christmas with horror marks the kind of transgression for which the genre strives. Other holidays make less sense. But we still have Fourth of July slasher Uncle Sam, Troma Entertainment’s Mother’s Day, an entire Leprechaun series, and New Year’s Evil. Later this year, […]
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Even before Jaws changes the box office rules forever, eco-horror was a somewhat popular horror subgenre in the 1970s. Frogs, Phase IV, and Night of the Lepus found nature in a foul mood with humanity. And technically, Jaws isn’t really an eco-horror in its narrative design. But Spielberg’s classic killer shark movie inspired a host […]
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As Avatar: The Way of Water continues to chug along at the box office, James Cameron has now directed three of the five highest growing movies of all time. Certainly, it’s an impressive feat that confirms few filmmakers understand better than Cameron how to create visual spectacle. Before he was immersing audiences on Pandora or […]
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