RELIC (2020) film review
A haze of red and purple light fades in and out of the blackness, their source becoming more and more distinct as the hues continue to retreat and then reappear from the originating void....
Can I Bug You For a Ride? The Subway Car in Mimic (1997)
Growing up, my house tended to be the spot where most of my friends hung out. We had video games, a pantry stacked with snacks, parents that didn’t interfere… you know, the usual. but...
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...
Boredom of the Lower Class in The Snowtown Murders (2011)
In North America, the name John Bunting isn’t particularly well known. But in Australia, his name continues to instil a sense of dread in those who were alive during his gruesome streak of murders,...
Writing Horror with Depth; or, an Argument Against “Blank Isn’t Actually Horror”
Blank isn’t Horror
A recent tweet by Patrick Bromley was infused with palpable sass directed at a review that claim “Hereditary isn’t a horror film. As much as critics would would like to call...
The Weird World of Kongsploitation: From 1933 to 2020
This week for Toku Tuesday we are delving into a truly bizarre subgenre in the world of giant monsters, Kongsploitation. This is a subgenre of a subgenre since Man-in-a-Gorilla-Suit is a subgenre all of...
Gun Violence, Small Town Stability and the Cauterized Wound in Out of the Blue...
America’s all but resigned itself as a nation to being rocked every week or so by new gun massacres. People who’ve seen it as a worse steady decline than ever since Sandy Hook have...
A Toku Tuesday Look at Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is not a nice game. It challenges you at every turn and any mistake you make will be met with brutality. Set in the Sengoku period (known as the Warring...
Get Down with Godzilla: Big G’s Music Video Appearances
Godzilla has meant a lot of things to a lot of people. If his recent appearances in the realm of music videos are of any indication, the things that Godzilla can mean vary A...
5 Places to Find Horror Screenplays Online
If you're anything like me, you've read enough advice or listened to enough interviews to know that one the best ways to improve as a screenwriter is to read screenplays. It seems to easy...
Reasoning with the Unreasonable in No Country for Old Men
Horror, deep in its dark heart, is about forcing characters to confront the unimaginable: the killer with a knife, the book that raises the dead, the alien life-form that shouldn't exist, the haunted house...
Exploring the Addiction to Darkness
Kelly Warner
When I first fell in love with the power of film, the thing that drew me in was that ‘sense of wonder’ of seeing something awe-inspiring on the big screen. Spielberg’s adventure stories,...
Toku Forgiveness
One of the greatest recurring themes in Tokusatsu is the act of forgiving oneself after contemplating your own actions or upon discovering a sin you never knew you were being complicit in. Various Ultra...
Toku Tuesday: Ultramega Issue #1
Par for the course, whenever I make a list of upcoming material I always miss something. In this case I literally missed a GODZILLA comic, which is nigh heresy on my part, however the...
The Mystical Revenge of the Mighty ORCA (1977)
Humans have the capacity for great evil. Oftentimes the public is complicit in this cruelty without their knowledge. One of the cruelest things we do as a species is cage animals and put them...
Deep Red (1975), a Bloody Good Mystery
Here in Everything But Bone, we’re heading back to the horror subgenre giallo, or Italian horror-thriller-slashers. It’s been awhile, last time I wrote about one was Zombie 2 last summer. I believe a return...
An Interview with Subject #44’s Spencer MacKay
This week I got a chance to sit down with my good friend Spencer MacKay and speak with him about his newest short film, Subject #44 (2019). Subject #44 was made as an entry...
Primeval Surgery in The Ruins (2008)
In my fledgling days of horror fandom, browsing the new release aisle at the local retailers was a weekly tradition. Every Tuesday, I would hit my electronics store of choice, scouring the shelves for...
In Defence of Outlines
In his book On Writing, Stephen King discusses his method for discovering the story as he writes it and why he is not a fan of outlining his books. King suggests that he can...
Fear Academy – Horror! The Definitive Companion to the Most Terrifying Movies Ever Made...
Welcome back Scream Scholars!
The last time the academy met we looked at Wheeler Winston Dixon's A History of Horror and found it to be a rather disappointing volume. While the earlier part of the history it...
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...
A Pain in the Butt: The Tiny Ashs of Army of Darkness (1984)
The day the Hollywood Video finally opened its doors was a notable one in the small town where I grew up.
Over the months leading up to its grand opening, my friends and I had...
Untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999)
I know that by now I have written a lot on PTSD and its portrayal in film. In Gerald’s Game (2017) and Strange Circus (2005), I explored the themes that resonated with me on...
One Missed Pod #31: OCCULT (2009)
In the latest episode of One Missed Pod, Kelly and Zack sit down to talk about Kōji Shiraishi's found-footage horror film Occult from 2009.
The film is available on YouTube, as of the time of...
Holy Horror: More isn’t Always Better in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004)
The story is over two thousand years old and important to people all over the world. It is an integral part of several religions. Even non-believers can be fond of him. So of course...