By John Corrado A young nun begins to discover ominous things are afoot after arriving in Italy. This is the basic plot of the indie horror film Immaculate released two weeks ago. But it’s also the setup for director Arkasha Stevenson’s The First Omen. Stevenson’s film serves as a surprisingly solid prequel to The Omen,… Read More Movie Review: The First Omen
By John Corrado Late Night with the Devil is an indie horror film from directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes that is built around the inventive concept of being assembled from the lost tapes from a live TV broadcast of an old 1970s late night talk show. David Dastmalchian stars as Jack Delroy, the old school… Read More Movie Review: Late Night with the Devil
By John Corrado Director Michael Mohan’s new “nunsploitation” flick Immaculate, a passion project for star Sydney Sweeney, seems mainly intended as a throwback to the Italian Giallo genre. But beyond this aesthetic inspiration (Dario Argento is chief among its influences), the film is a mixed bag that lacks some of its own ideas or identity,… Read More Movie Review: Immaculate
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) Positioned as a prequel to the 2019 adaptation of the Stephen King novel Pet Sematary, the Paramount+ original movie Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is an example of a needless franchise expansion that doesn’t do enough with the source material to really justify itself. Set in 1969, the story expands… Read More Blu-ray Review: Pet Sematary: Bloodlines
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the Blu-ray release of The Exorcist: Believer. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. David Gordon Green’s legacy sequel The Exorcist: Believer is being released on physical media this week, following a run in theatres… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Exorcist: Believer (Collector’s Edition)
By Jon Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Built around the pun in its title, It’s a Wonderful Knife is an ode to Frank Capra’s perennial classic It’s a Wonderful Life, except done in the style of a Christmas slasher comedy. The film is set in the town of Angel Falls, and follows a teen girl… Read More Review: It’s a Wonderful Knife
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) After completing his Halloween trilogy last year with the divisive Halloween Ends, director David Gordon Green now sets his sights on rebooting another classic horror property with The Exorcist: Believer, though the results are largely disappointing this time around. Like Green’s 2018 legacy sequel Halloween, The Exorcist: Believer positions… Read More Review: The Exorcist: Believer
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Based on a chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a vampire horror movie that takes place aboard a merchant ship in 1897, and fleshes out the backstory of the doomed voyage carrying Count Dracula. The Demeter is a Russian schooner that is travelling… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Last Voyage of the Demeter (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Nearly twenty years after the original Saw in 2004, John Kramer (Tobin Bell) returns in Saw X, the tenth film in the franchise that somewhat cleverly serves as a sort of “midquel” by positioning itself between the events of Saw and Saw II. There is only so much… Read More Review: Saw X
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 7th to 17th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Finn Wolfhard of Stranger Things fame makes the jump to filmmaking with Hell of a Summer, a pretty fun 1980s throwback slasher movie that he co-directed… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Hell of a Summer (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Are You Afraid of the Dark? Ghost Island is the third season in Nickelodeon’s reboot of the kids horror series from the 1990s, banking heavily on nostalgia while also appealing to a modern audience of tweenaged viewers. Like the first two instalments of this limited series that began… Read More DVD Review: Are You Afraid of the Dark? Ghost Island
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the Blu-ray release of Scream VI. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. The sixth film in the Scream franchise, Scream VI is being released on 4K Ultra HD (and Blu-ray) this week from Paramount,… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Scream VI (SteelBook Edition)
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Renfield is a horror comedy that serves as a modern take on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, only telling the story from the perspective of the vampire’s assistant, Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult). For over a century, Renfield has been the servant to Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage), charged… Read More Blu-ray Review: Renfield (Dracula Sucks Edition)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) In Cocaine Bear, director Elizabeth Banks takes the inspired by a true story premise of a bear in the 1980s who consumed copious amounts of cocaine that had been dumped from a drug runner’s plane, and fashions it into an absurdly gory and intentionally cheesy B-movie creature feature… Read More Blu-ray Review: Cocaine Bear
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Here comes M3GAN, the latest killer doll movie that follows in the footsteps of previous films about murderous toys like Chucky and Annabelle. The difference is that M3GAN (which was produced by James Wan, the driving force behind the Annabelle movies) aims to be more campy than scary.… Read More Blu-ray Review: M3GAN (Unrated Edition)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Scream VI is a direct sequel to last year’s quasi-reboot Scream, which served as a belated continuation of Wes Craven’s original slasher series and passed the torch to a new cast of characters. Like last year’s “requel” (or whatever you want to call it), Scream VI is co-directed… Read More Review: Scream VI
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Made on a budget of $15,000 dollars, Canadian director Kyle Edward Ball’s lo-fi horror film Skinamarink has become something of a sensation, having now grossed $1.9 million in theatres. This success is all the more impressive considering the heavily experimental nature of the film itself, which eschews conventional… Read More Review: Skinamarink
By John Corrado It’s been fifteen years since director Matt Reeves and producer J.J. Abrams first unleashed their found footage monster movie Cloverfield in theatres on January 18th, 2008. Paramount is honouring the milestone by re-releasing the film on 4K Ultra HD this week, in a very nice new limited edition SteelBook set. The film… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Cloverfield: 15th Anniversary – Limited Edition SteelBook
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the Blu-ray release of Halloween Ends. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. The third film in director David Gordon Green’s modern Halloween trilogy that began in 2018, Halloween Ends is now arriving on Blu-ray… Read More Blu-ray Review: Halloween Ends (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The surprise box office hit Smile is an original horror movie from writer-director Parker Finn, that mixes the paranoia of It Follows, with the ticking time bomb once-you-see-it-you-die conceit of The Ring, and the dysfunctional family drama mixed with supernatural horror of Hereditary. Despite these obvious influences, Finn’s… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Smile
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