Sick Re-Imagines the Slasher With Ultra-Lean, Tense Results

For any horror fan living outside of the United States and without access to the Peacock streaming service, you’ve been likely wait for this news. Several months after debuting on the limited platform, John Hyams and Kevin Williamson’s critically-acclaimed slasher Sick has finally made its way to other VOD sites. Described as a mix of […]

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Bad Girl Boogey Mixes Slasher Formula With Strong Social Messaging

While it might sound strange to say, slasher movies were, at their core, very conservative horror movies. Yes, Christian fundamentalists and other moralists may have been up in arms about the violence. But the basic tropes of masked killers ‘punishing’ young adults flaunting moral conventions by drinking, doing drugs, and engaging in pre-marital sex felt […]

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The Town That Dreaded Sundown a Better-Than-Expected Mix of Remake and Sequel

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Black Christmas rightly have earned acknowledgement as early slashers paving the way for John Carpenter’s Halloween. Though it’s a much smaller entry in the horror genre, the 1976 The Town That Dreaded Sundown is something of a proto-slasher itself. Based loosely on a series of 1946 killings in the small […]

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New Year’s Evil Fails On Its Resolution To Be a Decent 80s Slasher

Black Christmas and Halloween didn’t just kick off the slasher subgenre – they turned filmmakers on to holiday-themed horror movies. Following on the heels of Halloween, Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine, April Fool’s Day, Graduation Day, and Uncle Sam all capitalized on the calendar. Despite the extent to which it’s celebrated, New Year’s Eve […]

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Haunted Trail Offers Nothing New to the Haunted Attraction Horror Subgenre

October is just around the corner now, so cue the haunted attractions-based horror movie for this Halloween season. Over the last several years, the genre has treated horror fans to deadly escape rooms (Escape Room), killer haunted attractions (Haunt, Hell House LLC, The Houses October Built), and chilling fun houses (The Fun House, The Fun […]

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Uncle Sam Stretches The Slasher Tradition of Holiday-Themed Horror

Just how bad of a state was the slasher subgenre in by the mid-1990s? In between Candyman and Scream, we got movies like Doctor Giggles, Leprechaun, Jason Goes to Hell, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, and Ice Cream Man. To say the slasher had run out of gas at that time would have been […]

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The Black Phone Dials Up a Dark Coming-of-Age Story

The Black Phone has taken a bit of a winding road to get to theaters. Filmed amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Blumhouse production was twice delayed before getting its release today. It’s also worth noting that director Scott Derrickson jumped on this project after leaving the Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness production. Based […]

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Adam & Evil A Forgettable Dollar-Bin Slasher Movie

Sometimes a late night with a cheesy horror movie isn’t a bad thing. Wooden acting, mindless story, choppy editing, visible boom mics – the kind of movies you’d find at the bottom of a $5 DVD bin in a grocery store. The 1980s defined itself with these sorts of B-movies you’d find on video store […]

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