Another movie that missed its premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in 2020, Initiation, or Init!iation, finally made its way to VOD platforms this past week. Part slasher movie, part social media horror, director John Berardo promises a horror movie that avoids some of the subgenre’s familiar tropes. Based on the promotional materials, Initiation still […]
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If you’re old enough, Canadian slasher movie Humongous might look familiar. Even if you never saw the movie, you probably caught the VHS cover along the top shelf in the horror section. Yet even at the height of the slasher movie cycle, Humongous didn’t make much of an impression. Its director, Paul Lynch, fared much […]
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Horror loves events. Not just holiday-themed movies, either. After Halloween defied box office expectations in 1978, the horror genre was looking to adapt just about any holiday or calendar event. Hence, we have Christmas and Valentine’s Day-themed movies alongside April Fool’s Day and Friday the 13th. We’ve got Prom Night and Graduation Day and even […]
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Aside from a handful of exceptions, the period between the slasher’s ‘Golden Era’ and Wes Craven’s Scream was a downturn for horror. For every Jacob’s Ladder there was a Brainscan or Man’s Best Friend. And it was in this horror ‘dead zone’ that Universal Pictures released horror-comedy, Dr Giggles. Nearly thirty years later it’s hard […]
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When Wes Craven made Scream he kickstarted a more self-aware approach to horror. It was a self-reflective work Craven had tried previously with New Nightmare. Initially, Scream begot a wave of slasher-lite knockoffs that kind of missed Craven’s point. But the meta-slasher would eventually gain traction. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, Tucker […]
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Some things will never go out of style. In spite of it roller-coaster popularity, slasher movies are a permanent fixture in horror. Occasionally, they slip out of the mainstream, kept alive by the straight-to-video (and now the VOD) industry. But just like the killers that populate their movies, it’s hard to keep the slasher movie […]
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A horror movie called Shrooms sounds like what you would watch at a sleepover in high school. This should be the kind of movie that gains cult status like The Evil Dead. If not, it should at least achieve some level of fondness amongst genre fans like Deathgasm or Zombeavers. And even if Shrooms wanted […]
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With big studios shelving their major releases, horror-streaming platform Shudder has upped its commitment to producing original content. In 2020, Shudder released over 20 feature movies that included Host, Random Acts of Violence, and The Beach House. At present, it’s only March and Shudder already has five original movies available for streaming. While Shook was […]
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