Holy Horror: Noroi the Curse and the Importance of Folk Rituals
Hello and welcome to the first Holy Horror! Scriptophobic’s very own comparative religion meets horror movie analysis column. To get this off on the right foot, I decided to start with Koji Shirashi’s 2005...
An Appreciation for the Tokusatsu Fanbase in 2020
This year has been a hard one for all of us. As the year ends it feels like a good time for reflection. Despite the seemingly unending darkness that was 2020, there were bright...
A Hand, Broken Dishes, and a Chainsaw in Evil Dead II
Lend me a hand?
I came upon the first Evil Dead (1981) while researching influential horror movies online. I had heard the title before and had previously assumed it to be a schlock oddity, something...
What Survival Horror Teaches Scream Writers About Scaring People
There was a moment while I was playing Outlast (2013) that made me scream at the top of my lungs. At 2:30AM. Waking up my neighbours. And getting me a noise complaint. As the...
An Interview with Video Palace’s Ben Rock and Bob DeRosa
Gathering around the campfire and telling ghost stories is such a powerful image of how we share our mythologies that John Carpenter used it to open The Fog (1980). Often we forget that there...
Babysitting Jud in Pet Sematary (1989)
Even as a child, with no knowledge or interest in the more horrific stories that the world had to offer me, I was aware of the name: Stephen King.
The moniker felt more like a...
Going for a Drive: Scream 2 (1997)
The soft glow of multi-colored florescent lights was the only thing polluting the darkness. The shadows from the limbs of the faux-evergreen which they adorned creeped into the entryway of the room housing our...
The Heartfelt Absurdism of Kamen Rider Build (2017-18)
Kamen Rider is one of the pillars of Tokusatsu. Along with Ultraman and Super Sentai, it remains in production to this day. We briefly delved into the Rider universe when we talked about Kamen...
THE GUYVER (1991): A Movie at War with Itself
In 1990, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie became the most successful independent movie of all time. It would hold onto this honour until 1999’s The Blair Witch Project stole the crown. The turtles...
Violence and Its Relationship with Film
Chris Vander Kaay
I’m always fascinated by the idea of wanting to be so accurate in the portrayal of a real event that they involve people from the actual event in the reenactment. They did...
What’s Real When Everything’s Constructed in Perfect Blue
And now for something completely different, I’m going to be writing about an animated movie this time: Satoshi Kon’s 1997 masterpiece Perfect Blue. Writing about visual storytelling in animated films is different on a...
Choking on Day of the Dead (1985)
I placed the DVD down on the table excitedly, bright yellow and featuring the jutting out visage of a forlorn looking zombie. I had watched Dawn of the Dead (1978) only the night before...
An Interview With Sequence Break’s Writer/Director Graham Skipper
I grew up on the tale end of the arcade boom, only encountering them in my travels a few times as a youth (aboard a cruise ship or in an out of the way...
Ultraman By Way of Takashi Miike
Takashi Miike is one of Japan's most prolific directors. At the age of 60, he has donned the director cap 104 times. In North America, the work he is mainly known for is his...
Written in Blood: That Bloody Mirror Scene from Poltergeist (1982)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: as a kid who was terrified of the mere idea of watching a horror movie, little on this Earth distressed me more than the horror...
NOTZILLA (2019): King of the Kaiju Spoofs
Kaiju parody has been done a lot. Whether it is minor snippets of other spoof movies such as the truly dreadful ‘Spermzilla’ from Chillerama or the lovingly-crafted works of Minoru Kawasaki, their effectiveness varies...
Ode to the Giant Praying Mantis
One of the few creatures on this earth that terrifies and mystifies me in equal measure is that of the Praying Mantis. They are fearsome looking, especially when they strike out at lightning speed....