Horrorfest 2026: When Evil Lurks

WHEN EVIL LURKS
Written and directed by Demián Rugna
Starring Ezequiel Rodríguez, Demián Salomón, Silvina Sabater and Luis Ziembrowski
Argentina, 2023

WHEN EVIL LURKS is an Argentinian horror movie about demonic possession, but not the kind where somebody gets tied to a bed while a priest waves a crucifix around. In fact, the movie takes place in a world where demonic possession is apparently a known phenomenon, and people have developed certain rules for dealing with it. Rules that, naturally, aren't always followed.

Ezequiel Rodríguez plays a farmer who, along with his brother (Demián Salomón), discovers that a neighbor has become infected by an evil presence. The brothers attempt to get rid of the problem, but their efforts only make things worse, and before long the evil begins spreading through the countryside. They set out to protect their estranged family, which proves to be difficult.

This is a brutal movie. There are some really nasty moments, and the makeup effects are appropriately disgusting. It's also beautifully photographed, with the rural Argentinian setting providing an unexpected backdrop for all the supernatural unpleasantness. 

One thing I particularly liked was the way Rugna introduces the rules of his supernatural world. The characters already know a lot more about what's happening than we do, and we gradually pick things up by listening to them argue about what to do. Nobody sits down to explain the mythology for the audience's benefit, and the movie is better for it. You never know what’s going to happen next!

But what really makes WHEN EVIL LURKS work is the main character. He's not an especially likable guy, and he makes some terrible decisions, but he's also a believable human being trying to deal with something unimaginably awful. Rodríguez is terrific in the role, and the rest of the cast is equally convincing. Even when I wanted to grab them by the shoulders and shake some sense into them, I was invested in what happened to them.

This is a bleak movie, and it doesn't offer much comfort by the time it's over. But for all the supernatural horror and spectacularly gruesome violence, it's the human stuff that makes it stick with you. 

Horrorfest 2026: Primate

PRIMATE
Written by Johannes Roberts and Ernest Riera

Directed by Johannes Roberts

Starring Johnny Sequoyah, Jess Alexander, Troy Kotsur and Gia Hunter

USA, 2026

I saw the trailer for PRIMATE and thought it looked like good, campy fun. A chimpanzee goes berserk and starts murdering people? Sounds like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the movie itself turned out to be kind of a slog.

The story concerns a young woman (Johnny Sequoyah) who returns to her family's home in Hawaii with a group of friends. The family has a pet chimpanzee named Ben, who's apparently been living with them for years without incident. But then Ben contracts rabies and suddenly develops an appetite for murder.

The rabies thing caught me off guard. The movie introduces it almost immediately, as though the filmmakers felt they needed to provide a plausible explanation for why a chimpanzee might turn violent. But isn't keeping a chimpanzee in your house already a pretty questionable idea? I always assumed a chimp was perfectly capable of tearing somebody's face off without contracting a deadly disease first. Not according to this movie.

Anyway, once Ben starts attacking people, our characters find themselves trapped in the family's swimming pool, where they're relatively safe because Ben can't swim. He can speak sign language but he can’t swim. The problem is that they can't stay in the pool forever, and Ben is waiting for them to come out.

And that's pretty much the movie.

I don't necessarily need a horror movie to have an elaborate plot, but I do like it when things happen. PRIMATE gets its characters into one predicament fairly quickly and then leaves them there for most of the running time. It's not one damn thing after another. It's just one damn thing. The characters make occasional attempts to escape, Ben attacks somebody, and then we're back to waiting around the pool again. At least Jess Alexander, who plays one of the friends, is nice to look at.

The gore effects are impressive, and the chimpanzee itself is pretty convincing. There are moments when the violence is so over-the-top that the movie briefly delivers the outrageous entertainment I was hoping for.

But those moments are too few and far between. This flick’s a lot less fun than a movie about a homicidal chimpanzee has any right to be.

Horrorfest 2026: Clayface

CLAYFACE
Written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini
Story by Mike Flanagan

Directed by James Watkins

Starring Tom Rhys Harries, Naomi Ackie, Max Minghella and David Dencik

USA, 2026

When I was a kid, I remember reading a Batman comic book that explained the histories of the various villains who had called themselves Clayface over the years. There were four or five of them, if I remember correctly, and I was fascinated by the idea that this relatively obscure Batman villain had gone through so many different incarnations. I don't remember much about the individual characters, but for some reason that comic book stuck with me.

So I was intrigued when I heard that DC was making a CLAYFACE movie, although I also thought it was a pretty strange choice for the new DC cinematic universe. Of all the characters they could have used to help establish this new continuity, they went with Clayface? Okay…

I was especially interested to learn that the movie was going to be an actual horror film rather than a conventional superhero adventure. That seemed like a promising approach, considering the character's grotesque shapeshifting abilities.

Tom Rhys Harries plays a rising movie star whose career is destroyed when a gangster horribly disfigures his face. Desperate to restore his appearance, he seeks help from a scientist (Naomi Ackie) who's developed an experimental treatment capable of regenerating damaged tissue. The treatment works, but it also gives him the ability to transform his body into just about anything. Unfortunately, he has a little trouble controlling it.

There's some great body-horror stuff here, and I appreciated the filmmakers' willingness to make things genuinely disgusting. One particularly memorable sequence involves our hero (or villain?) experiencing some unexpected changes to his face while flying on an airplane. His eyelids begin fusing shut, and he attempts to separate them with a pair of scissors while the plane bounces around in turbulence. It's an incredibly unpleasant scene, in the best possible way.

There are several moments like that, and the effects are generally terrific. The movie certainly doesn't shy away from the more horrifying possibilities of a guy whose flesh can melt, stretch and rearrange itself.

Unfortunately, the story surrounding all this is kind of a mess.

Clayface himself is a pretty empty character, although maybe that's intentional. He's an actor whose entire identity is tied to his appearance, and now he's literally lost his face. You'd think the filmmakers could do something with that. Instead, it eventually turns into a fairly generic story about a guy with superpowers taking revenge on the mobsters who wronged him.

I also couldn't help thinking about THE SUBSTANCE, which explored some similar territory involving beauty, identity and grotesque physical transformation. CLAYFACE has some impressive effects, but THE SUBSTANCE did this kind of thing better, and with considerably more purpose and focus.

And then there's the question of Batman. I understand that this is supposed to be a standalone horror movie, and I'm perfectly happy to watch a movie about a Batman villain without Batman in it. But since the whole thing takes place in his universe, I did find myself wondering where the guy was while all this craziness was going on. Isn't this exactly the sort of thing he ought to be investigating? There’s probably a hand-wavey explanation. Oh, this is before Batman became Batman. Or, he’s busy doing other shit. I get it. Still. Even if Batman was real, he wouldn’t be able to bust up every crime all the time. Still, you set a movie in Gotham City and let me get bored enough, eventually I’m going to start daydreaming about Batman. Okay?

Oh, and the soundtrack. There are some aggressively obvious needle drops that feel like the filmmakers are trying awfully hard to make everything seem cool. Sometimes a song can make a scene. Sometimes it can make a scene suck.

Horrorfest 2026: Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker

BUTCHER, BAKER, NIGHTMARE MAKER
Written by Stephen Breimer, Alan Jay Glueckman and Boon Collins

Directed by William Asher

Starring Susan Tyrrell, Jimmy McNichol, Bo Svenson and Julia Duffy

USA, 1982

BUTCHER, BAKER, NIGHTMARE MAKER is undeniably a great title, but it does little to describe the contents of this movie. It was also released as NIGHT WARNING, which is equally anti-descriptive. Whatever you want to call it, this flick was surprisingly entertaining and deserves to be better known.

Jimmy McNichol plays a high school student who's been raised by his aunt (Susan Tyrrell) since his parents died in a car accident when he was a little boy. Incidentally, this car crash opens the movie and it’s an intense, realistic and horrifying sequence. The aunt becomes extremely protective of her nephew, which is putting it mildly. She's devoted her entire life to raising him, and the prospect of his graduating from high school and going away to college is not something she's prepared to accept.

In fact, she's prepared to do just about anything to keep him from leaving.

Tyrrell is incredible in this movie. She gives us one of those characters who initially seems merely overbearing, but the more time you spend with her, the more you realize she's completely out of her mind. She's manipulative, possessive, sexually inappropriate and increasingly dangerous, and Tyrrell throws herself into the role with such conviction that it's hard to take your eyes off her. There are plenty of crazy mothers in horror movies, but crazy aunts don't get nearly as much attention. Tyrrell deserves a place in the pantheon.

Complicating matters is a murder investigation led by a police detective played by Bo Svenson, who turns out to be a spectacularly unpleasant individual. He's corrupt, aggressive and viciously homophobic, and he becomes convinced that our young hero’s high school basketball coach is involved in the crime.

What's interesting is that the coach is gay, and the movie treats him with a surprising degree of sympathy and respect, especially for an early-'80s exploitation picture. The detective, meanwhile, throws around homophobic slurs and seems more interested in persecuting gay people than solving the murder. It's an unexpected subplot, and one that gives the movie a little more substance than I anticipated.

I had a good time with BUTCHER, BAKER, NIGHTMARE MAKER, though I think it loses some momentum toward the end. Once the various secrets start coming out, the story becomes a little more conventional, and the final stretch isn't quite as much fun as everything leading up to it.

Still, Susan Tyrrell alone makes this worth seeing. Her performance is so wonderfully unhinged that I'm surprised it isn't better known among horror fans. 


Horrorfest 2026: Him

HIM
Written by Skip Bronkie, Zack Akers and Justin Tipping

Directed by Justin Tipping

Starring Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, Julia Fox and Tim Heidecker

USA, 2025

HIM is a horror movie about professional football, produced by Jordan Peele and starring Marlon Wayans. That sounded like a pretty interesting combination to me. Peele has been responsible for some of the best horror movies of recent years, and I’m always down for some Wayans.

Unfortunately, the movie is kind of a mess.

Tyriq Withers plays a promising young quarterback who's hoping to become the next big thing in professional football. After suffering a serious injury, he receives an invitation to train with his idol, a legendary quarterback on the verge of retirement, played by Marlon Wayans, at a secluded compound where the training methods are, shall we say, unconventional.

It quickly becomes apparent there’s more afoot here than improving this kid’s throwing arm. There's something sinister going on, involving strange rituals, physical abuse and an almost religious (or blasphemous?) devotion to football. The movie starts suggesting that success in professional sports might require sacrifices considerably greater than the ones we're accustomed to hearing about.

There's plenty of horror to be found in the way professional athletes are exploited. HIM seems like it wants to do something with that idea, but it doesn't get very far.

Instead, HIM throws a lot of flashy imagery at the screen. Some of it looks great, but after a while I started feeling like I was watching a collection of music videos loosely connected by a football-related premise. It's a lot of style over substance. Remember THE SUBSTANCE? Now that’s a movie.

It doesn't help that our main character is pretty empty. Withers is certainly convincing as an athlete, but there's not much personality there. Maybe that's intentional. Maybe the idea is that he's so completely devoted to football that he doesn't have much of an identity outside it. If so, that's an interesting concept, but it doesn't make him especially compelling to watch.

Wayans, on the other hand, is wonderful. He's clearly having a ball playing this guy, and I wish the rest of the movie were as entertaining as he is. I'd love to see him do more roles like this.

Horrorfest 2026: From Beyond

FROM BEYOND
Written by Dennis Paoli
Based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft

Directed by Stuart Gordon

Starring Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree and Ted Sorel

USA, 1986

For years I've been confusing FROM BEYOND with THE BEYOND, Lucio Fulci's Italian horror movie that I watched for a previous Horrorfest and didn't particularly like. So when FROM BEYOND came up on this year's schedule, I wasn't especially excited about it. Then I realized it was directed by Stuart Gordon and featured several members of the team responsible for RE-ANIMATOR. Oh! THAT FROM BEYOND. Never mind.

Like RE-ANIMATOR, this one's based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft, and it concerns a scientist who's conducting experiments that probably shouldn't be conducted. Ted Sorel plays Dr. Pretorius (like the guy from BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN! Neat, huh?), who has developed a machine called the Resonator that stimulates the pineal gland, allowing people to perceive an alternate dimension populated by all sorts of unpleasant creatures.

Unfortunately, the creatures can perceive us, too, which turns out to be a problem.

When Pretorius disappears during an experiment, his assistant (the great Jeffrey Combs) is blamed for his murder and locked away in a psychiatric hospital. A psychiatrist (the great Barbara Crampton) decides to investigate his story, and before long she's persuaded him to return to the laboratory and fire up the machine again. What could possibly go wrong?

The great Ken Foree, who I know best from George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD, plays a police officer who accompanies them. It's nice to see him here, and he brings a welcome dose of common sense to a movie populated largely by people who seem determined to make bad decisions.

Of course, the real attractions are the creatures and the effects. There are all sorts of grotesque, slimy things crawling around, and the movie eventually descends (or ascends?) into a celebration of rubbery, pulsating flesh. This is exactly the sort of elaborate practical-effects extravaganza that makes '80s horror so much fun.

Combs has a particular talent for playing intelligent people who are completely overwhelmed by the horrifying consequences of their own curiosity. And Crampton gets to play a character whose scientific interest in the experiments gradually develops into something considerably stranger.

Horrorfest 2026: X-Ray (aka Hospital Massacre)

X-RAY (aka HOSPITAL MASSACRE)
Written by Marc Behm

Directed by Boaz Davidson

Starring Barbi Benton, Charles Lucia and Jon Van Ness

USA, 1982

X-RAY, also known as HOSPITAL MASSACRE, is an early-'80s slasher movie starring Barbi Benton, who was a Playboy model and Hugh Hefner's longtime girlfriend. And judging by the movie, the filmmakers were well aware of her qualifications.

Benton plays a woman who goes to a hospital for a routine medical examination, only to find herself trapped inside while a deranged killer stalks the corridors, murdering doctors, nurses and anyone else who happens to get in the way. Nobody seems particularly concerned that the hospital is turning into a slaughterhouse, and our heroine spends a good deal of the movie wandering around trying to figure out what's going on.

There's a backstory involving a childhood incident and a murderous Valentine, but the plot is so thin that I had trouble remembering much of it even shortly after watching the movie. What I do remember is that the camera spends an awful lot of time lingering on Benton, including an extended examination scene that seems to exist primarily as an excuse to get her undressed.

Horrorfest 2026: The Nest

THE NEST
Written by Robert King

Directed by Terence H. Winkless

Starring Robert Lansing, Lisa Langlois, Franc Luz and Terri Treas

USA, 1988

THE NEST takes place in a small island community where the local sheriff (Franc Luz) begins noticing some strange things. Animals are turning up dead, people are disappearing and there seem to be an awful lot of cockroaches around. It turns out a corporation has been conducting genetic experiments on the insects, with predictably disastrous results.

The roaches are breeding at an alarming rate, eating everything in sight and eventually mutating into increasingly grotesque creatures. Naturally, the people responsible for creating them are less than forthcoming about what's going on, leaving the sheriff and a handful of locals to deal with the problem.

THE NEST was produced by Julie Corman, Roger's wife, and it feels like exactly the sort of movie you'd expect from the Corman factory in the late '80s. It's cheap, it's gross, and it gets the job done.

There's also a subplot involving the sheriff's former girlfriend, who's returned to town after several years away, and her father, the mayor, who's more concerned with protecting the local economy than acknowledging the insect problem. Because apparently no horror movie about a small town facing a deadly threat is complete without a public official making everything worse. JAWS called. It wants its… whatever. You get it.

THE NEST is okay. If you're in the mood to watch a bunch of people get eaten by cockroaches, you could do worse.

Horrorfest 2026: Dos Monjes

DOS MONJES
Written by Juan Bustillo Oro and José Manuel Cordero

Directed by Juan Bustillo Oro

Starring Víctor Urruchúa, Carlos Villatoro and Magda Haller

Mexico, 1935

DOS MONJES, or TWO MONKS, is a Mexican movie from the early days of sound that's often classified as horror, although it's really more of a psychological melodrama with some horror-movie trappings. Whatever you want to call it, it's cool.

The movie begins in a monastery, where one monk suddenly attacks another with a crucifix. We eventually learn that the monks knew each other before entering the monastery and that their relationship was complicated by their mutual love for the same woman. The story unfolds through two extended flashbacks, with each man telling a different version of what happened.

What makes this particularly cool is that we're essentially watching the same story twice, with each monk telling it differently. It's a little like RASHOMON, except DOS MONJES came along sixteen years earlier.

And it looks great. Director Juan Bustillo Oro was clearly influenced by German expressionist movies like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, with their weird sets and dramatic shadows. The monastery looks like a place where something terrible ought to happen, even when nothing much is happening at all.

The movie was photographed by Agustín Jiménez, who was an important figure in Mexican avant-garde photography, and you can tell that considerable thought went into how everything looks. For such an early sound film, it's surprisingly adventurous visually.

Horrorfest 2026: The Brainiac

THE BRAINIAC
Written by Federico Curiel, Adolfo López Portillo and Antonio Orellana

Directed by Chano Urueta
Starring Abel Salazar, Ariadne Welter and Germán Robles

Mexico, 1963

THE BRAINIAC opens in 1661, when a nobleman (Abel Salazar) is condemned to death by the Inquisition for practicing witchcraft and generally being a bad influence. Before he's executed, he curses the descendants of the men responsible for his death, promising to return and get revenge. Three hundred years later, a comet passes over Mexico, and wouldn't you know it, the Baron comes back.

Except now he's some kind of hideous monster with a grotesque face, a long forked tongue and an appetite for human brains. He can also transform into an ordinary-looking man, hypnotize people and apparently do just about anything else the plot requires. He's a busy guy.

The monster makeup is really something. The Brainiac has this enormous, pulsating, lumpy head with a mouth that looks like it belongs on an entirely different creature. It only gets crazier when he sticks his tongue out. 

THE BRAINIAC is pretty wild stuff. It's one of those movies where the combination of sincere filmmaking and completely preposterous material creates something more entertaining than a deliberately silly version of the same story probably would have been. I don't know if I'd call it scary, but it's certainly memorable. It would fit right in on a show like MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. 

Horrorfest 2026: The Living Skeleton

THE LIVING SKELETON
Written by Kikuma Shimoiizaka and Kyūzō Kobayashi

Directed by Hiroshi Matsuno

Starring Kikko Matsuoka, Yasunori Irikawa and Masumi Okada

Japan, 1968

THE LIVING SKELETON is a Japanese horror movie that begins with a gang of criminals hijacking a ship, murdering everyone aboard and making off with a fortune in gold. Three years later, a young woman (Kikko Matsuoka), whose twin sister was among the victims, begins experiencing strange visions involving a ghost ship and its murdered passengers. Naturally, she decides to investigate.

The movie was directed by Hiroshi Matsuno and photographed in beautiful black and white, with some particularly striking images of the ghost ship emerging from the fog. There's also a lot of eerie imagery involving skeletons, underwater corpses and a bunch of bats that seem to have wandered in from a different kind of horror movie. It's an atmospheric picture, and the widescreen cinematography makes it look more expensive than it probably was.

At first, THE LIVING SKELETON seems like a fairly straightforward supernatural revenge story. The dead are apparently returning to punish the people responsible for murdering them, and our heroine finds herself caught up in the proceedings. But as the movie goes along, things get more complicated, and it becomes increasingly difficult to tell exactly what's supernatural and what isn't.

There's a twist involving the twin sisters that I won't give away, but by the end I wasn't entirely sure whether I'd just watched a ghost story. Or at least what kind of ghost story it was. The movie even throws in some mad-scientist business toward the end, because why not?

Horrorfest 2026: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK
Written by Nigel McKeand

Directed by John Newland

Starring Kim Darby, Jim Hutton and Barbara Anderson

USA, 1973

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK is one of those made-for-TV horror movies I've been hearing about for years. It has a reputation for scaring the shit out of people who happened to catch it on television when they were kids, so I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.

Kim Darby plays a woman who moves into an old mansion with her husband (Jim Hutton). While exploring the place, she discovers a sealed fireplace in the basement and, despite warnings from the handyman, decides to have it opened. This turns out to be a bad idea, because there are some nasty little creatures living behind it, and they've been waiting for an opportunity to get out.

The creatures are these weird, whispering little goblin things that spend most of the movie lurking in the shadows and plotting to drag Darby off to wherever it is they came from. Naturally, her husband doesn't believe any of this is happening. After all, she’s a woman, right? She just needs some rest.

I can see why this movie would have made an impression on somebody who stumbled across it on television without knowing what to expect. The idea of tiny creatures hiding in the dark corners of your house is inherently creepy, and their whispering voices are unsettling.

Unfortunately, I watched a lousy VHS print that was so dark I could barely see what was happening half the time. I realize this is a movie called DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, but I wouldn't have minded being able to see a little more of it. This was supposed to be part of the charm of the presentation I saw, which included era-appropriate TV commercials during the ad breaks, but maybe on first viewing I should have sought out a more pristine print. My bad.

Horrorfest 2026: Ghost in the Cell

GHOST IN THE CELL
Written and directed by Joko Anwar

Starring Abimana Aryasatya, Endy Arfian, Bront Palarae, Yoga Pratama and Aming Sugandhi

Indonesia, 2026

GHOST IN THE CELL is an Indonesian horror movie set in a prison, which is already a pretty unpleasant place to be, even before a murderous ghost starts killing people. And the ghost in question isn't particularly discriminating about how gruesomely it dispatches its victims.

The story takes place in a corrupt, overcrowded prison where the inmates are at the mercy of brutal guards, crooked administrators and various criminal factions. When a new prisoner arrives, people start dying in spectacularly horrible ways, apparently at the hands of an invisible supernatural force. It turns out the ghost is attracted to people with particularly negative energy, which presents something of a problem in a building full of criminals.

The inmates eventually realize that their best chance of surviving might be to start behaving like decent human beings. Easier said than done, especially when they're trapped in a system that seems specifically designed to bring out the worst in everyone.

GHOST IN THE CELL has some things to say about corruption and the Indonesian prison system, but it's not about to let any of that get in the way of a good time. This could have been a pretty grim experience, considering the setting and subject matter, but director Joko Anwar has a sense of humor about the whole thing. Some of the murders are so ridiculous that I couldn't help laughing.

It's also a pretty dynamic-looking movie, with some great gore effects and a soundtrack I enjoyed enough to notice.

There are some memorable characters among the prisoners, including one particularly creepy inmate and the guy who comes closest to being a “hero,” an appealing character I found myself rooting for as the situation got increasingly ridiculous.

Horrorfest 2026: The Haunted Strangler

THE HAUNTED STRANGLER
Written by Jan Read and John C. Cooper

Directed by Robert Day

Starring Boris Karloff, Jean Kent, Elizabeth Allan and Anthony Dawson

UK, 1958

I love Boris Karloff, so I'm always happy to discover another one of his movies I haven't seen. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen bits and pieces of THE HAUNTED STRANGLER on SVENGOOLIE over the years, but I'd never sat down and watched the whole thing. Time to remedy that.

This time out, Karloff’s a nineteenth-century novelist who's become obsessed with a series of murders committed twenty years earlier. He believes the man who was hanged for the crimes was innocent and sets out to prove it. His investigation takes him into some pretty unsavory places, including a prison, a mental asylum and a music hall where the original murders took place. As you might expect, he eventually uncovers something considerably more disturbing than a simple case of mistaken identity. I won't give away the twist, though the movie doesn't make you wait too long to figure out what's going on.

All the best horror icons can project a vulnerability that makes us sympathize with their monsters even as we're horrified by their actions. Karloff might be the best of the best when it comes to this.

What surprised me most was how brutal some of the movie is, particularly the scenes involving the prison and asylum. There's a nasty streak running through THE HAUNTED STRANGLER that I wasn't expecting from a relatively modest British horror movie of this vintage. The treatment of prisoners and mental patients is especially unpleasant, and some of the violence is startling for 1958.

Horrorfest 2026: The Ghost of Yotsuya

THE GHOST OF YOTSUYA
Written by Masayoshi Ônuki and Yoshihiro Ishikawa

Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa

Starring Shigeru Amachi, Katsuko Wakasugi and Shuntarô Emi

Japan, 1959

THE GHOST OF YOTSUYA is based on a famous Japanese kabuki play that's been filmed a bunch of times. This version was directed by Nobuo Nakagawa, who was something of a horror specialist in Japan during the 1950s.

The story concerns a samurai (Shigeru Amachi) who murders his way into a marriage, then decides he'd rather be married to somebody else. Unfortunately for the samurai’s wife, her husband isn't particularly interested in getting a divorce. He's more interested in getting rid of her altogether, which leads to some pretty unpleasant business involving poison, disfigurement and murder. It’s just like a true crime documentary!

The samurai’s wife ultimately does not take this lying down as her ghost comes back to make life miserable for her husband and everyone else involved.

One thing I liked about THE GHOST OF YOTSUYA is how colorful it is. A lot of Japanese horror movies from this period are in black and white, but this one's in vivid color, and Nakagawa really goes crazy with it. Some of the ghostly scenes look like something out of a nightmare, with all sorts of weird lighting and grotesque imagery.

The movie takes its time getting around to the ghostly revenge. For a while, it's almost more of a historical melodrama than a horror movie.

This is a good-looking, atmospheric ghost story, and it's interesting to see an example of Japanese horror from long before the J-horror boom of the '90s and 2000s. 

 

Horrorfest 2026: Dark Night of the Scarecrow

DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW
Written by J.D. Feigelson

Story by J.D. Feigelson and Butler Handcock

Directed by Frank De Felitta

Starring Charles Durning, Larry Drake, Tonya Crowe, Robert F. Lyons and Lane Smith

USA, 1981

DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW is a made-for-TV horror movie from 1981, back when the networks occasionally turned out some pretty effective scary stuff. This one's a solid little revenge story with a supernatural twist, and it features a villainous turn by Charles Durning.

Larry Drake plays an intellectually disabled man who lives with his mother and spends much of his time hanging around with a little girl named Marylee (Tonya Crowe). When Marylee is attacked by a dog, Bubba saves her life, but the local postman (Durning) assumes he's responsible for hurting her and rounds up some of his buddies to hunt him down. They find Bubba hiding in a field disguised as a scarecrow and shoot him dead, only to discover that the girl is alive and Bubba was innocent.

Oops.

The men manage to escape punishment, but before long they start seeing a mysterious scarecrow appearing in places where it shouldn't be, and then members of their little lynch mob begin dying under suspicious circumstances. Could it be that Bubba has returned from the grave to get revenge? Or is somebody else taking matters into their own hands?

I have to say, Durning makes a surprisingly effective villain. He's one of those actors I tend to associate with likable, blustery authority figures, but here he's a thoroughly unpleasant guy whose self-righteousness barely conceals some pretty ugly prejudices. He's the kind of person who thinks he's protecting his community when he's actually one of the worst things in it.

What I liked about DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW is that it doesn't need much in the way of elaborate effects or gore to get the job done. The scarecrow itself is a pretty effective image, and it’s satisfying to see these horrible people gradually realize that they might not have gotten away with what they did after all.

It's a good little revenge movie, with some suspense, a strong villain and a cool ending. Not bad for a made-for-TV movie!

Horrorfest 2026: Creepy

CREEPY
Written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Chihiro Ikeda

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Starring Hidetoshi Nishijima, Yūko Takeuchi, Teruyuki Kagawa and Masahiro Higashide

Japan, 2016

CREEPY is not just a clever title. This movie is, indeed, creepy. Specifically, the guy at the center of it is creepy. How many times can I say creepy? Creepy. 

Hidetoshi Nishijima plays a former police detective who left the force after a particularly unpleasant encounter with a criminal. He's now teaching criminal psychology, but gets drawn into investigating an old case involving a family that mysteriously disappeared. Meanwhile, he and his wife have moved into a new neighborhood, where they meet their next-door neighbor (Teruyuki Kagawa), a strange fellow who seems friendly one minute and deeply unsettling the next. This is the creepy guy I was talking about!

This guy is one of those people who makes you uncomfortable without necessarily doing anything you can point to as obviously threatening. He doesn't seem to understand normal social boundaries, and every interaction with him feels a little off. 

Kagawa is great, switching between awkward friendliness and barely concealed menace. He's the sort of guy you'd probably dismiss as just a weird neighbor, even as you're yelling at the people in the movie to stay away from him. The cop “hero” of the movie even says, if he seems creepy, he must not be bad news, because the real creeps seem normal.

The movie was directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who made CURE and PULSE, both featured in previous Horrorfests, and he's good at creating an atmosphere of dread out of ordinary situations. Here, the suburban setting becomes increasingly sinister as the two mysteries begin to overlap.

At 130 minutes, CREEPY is probably a little longer than it needs to be, and there are times when I wondered why some of the characters were making such questionable decisions. But the movie's effective enough that I was willing to go along with it. The villain certainly lives up to the title, and that's more than enough to make this one worth checking out.

 

Horrorfest 2026: Never After Dark

NEVER AFTER DARK
Written and directed by Dave Boyle

Starring Moeka Hoshi and Mutsuo Yoshioka

Japan, 2026

NEVER AFTER DARK is a Japanese ghost movie written and directed by Dave Boyle, an American filmmaker who's made several movies in Japan. Which is interesting in itself, particularly since Boyle is a white Mormon guy. Not exactly the first person you'd expect to be making Japanese horror movies, but here we are.

Moeka Hoshi plays a young woman who makes her living as a psychic medium, traveling around helping people get rid of ghosts. She's accompanied by a friendly spirit of her own, her dead sister, which is a nice touch. Anyway, she's hired to investigate a haunting at a remote hotel, where the owners are being terrorized by a particularly unpleasant ghost. What initially seems like a straightforward exorcism turns out to be something more complicated, with the supernatural goings-on connected to some very real problems involving the people who live there.

I liked this one. It starts out looking like a pretty conventional Japanese ghost movie, but gradually turns into something else. I won't say what, because figuring out what's really going on is a big part of the fun. Suffice it to say that the filmmakers managed to surprise me, which doesn't happen nearly as often as I'd like.

The movie also features a banger of a song called “Silhouette” by Jonathan Snipes and Sharon Udoh. It was written and performed just for the movie but sounds convincingly like it comes off a 70s concept album. Remind me to stream it later. 

Horrorfest 2026: Other Mommy

OTHER MOMMY
Written by Nathan Elston

Based on the novel “Incidents Around the House” by Josh Malerman

Directed by Rob Savage

Starring Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark and Karen Allen

USA, 2026

Jessica Chastain is terrifying, so it stands to reason that someone would eventually make a horror movie about her. I guess this isn’t even the first one, since she was also in MAMA, another movie about a creepy supernatural mother figure. In that one she was trying to protect a couple of little girls from a ghostly mommy. This time she's playing the mommy. Two of ’em.

Arabella Olivia Clark plays an eight-year-old girl who starts encountering a strange entity in her house that looks and sounds like her mother (Chastain). Except this version of Mommy has sinister intentions. Meanwhile, the girl’s actual parents are dealing with their own problems, making it difficult for the girl to imagine they’d actually care if they ever noticed anything happening.

OTHER MOMMY doesn't waste time getting to the good stuff. We don't have to sit through an hour of strange noises and things moving around in the background before somebody finally acknowledges that there's a monster in the house. This movie’s all business.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much of the story is told from the little girl’s perspective. Horror movies about children being terrorized have a tendency to shift the focus to the adults, but this one really commits to seeing things through the eyes of a little girl who doesn't entirely understand what's happening around her. The young actress is up to the challenge.

Chastain, meanwhile, gets to be both a concerned (if aloof) mother and something considerably less pleasant. There's also a welcome appearance by Karen Allen, who I wasn't expecting to see here, or anywhere, sadly.

My favorite sequence involved a bunch of ghost hunters showing up with all their technical gadgets to hold a séance. I hate to give away the payoff of this sequence, but it was unexpected and fun.

Still, the movie as a whole doesn’t quite hold together. I don’t know exactly what it is. There’s lots to like about it but in the end I was left feeling unsatisfied. Though from the look on Chastain’s face in the last scene, it seems like she is, too, so maybe that’s the point?

 

Horrorfest 2026: The Sentinel

THE SENTINEL
Written and directed by Michael Winner

Starring Cristina Raines, Chris Sarandon, Burgess Meredith, Ava Gardner, Martin Balsam, John Carradine, José Ferrer and Eli Wallach

USA, 1977

THE SENTINEL is one of those '70s horror movies with a cast so ridiculously packed with recognizable actors that you start wondering how they managed to get everyone together. Cristina Raines and Chris Sarandon are the leads, but there's also Burgess Meredith, Ava Gardner, Martin Balsam, John Carradine, José Ferrer, Eli Wallach, Arthur Kennedy, Sylvia Miles, Christopher Walken, Beverly D'Angelo, Jeff Goldblum and Jerry Orbach. And that's not even everybody. Some of these people barely have enough screen time to justify showing up for work.

Raines plays a fashion model who moves into a New York apartment building populated by some very strange people. There's an eccentric old man played by Burgess Meredith, a couple of unsettling women and a blind priest who spends his days sitting at an upstairs window. Before long, our heroine begins experiencing bizarre visions and encounters that suggest something supernatural is going on. Also, her boyfriend (Sarandon) may or may not be involved in something sinister.

The movie was directed by Michael Winner, who made DEATH WISH, and it has that brand of '70s filmmaking where everything feels a little sleazy, even when it isn't supposed to. There's a lot of Catholic imagery, some pretty unpleasant violence and a general atmosphere of people behaving in ways that don't make sense.

The plot eventually involves a gateway to Hell and a religious order charged with keeping the forces of evil from escaping into the world. Points for an ambitious premise. But the movie takes such a roundabout route to get there that I spent a good deal of the running time wondering what I was watching.

And then there are the supporting characters. Burgess Meredith seems to be having a wonderful time playing an increasingly bizarre neighbor, while Ava Gardner turns up as a real estate agent, and Christopher Walken appears as a cop without having much to do, playing second fiddle to his cop boss, Eli Wallach, who also doesn’t have much to do. 

Is THE SENTINEL good? I dunno. It's certainly weird. It’s not a great horror movie, but it’s wacky enough that I think it's worth seeing. If nothing else, you can pass time playing spot-the-celebrity. Blink and you’ll miss José Ferrer.

Horrorfest 2026: Cohen and Tate

COHEN AND TATE
Written and directed by Eric Red

Starring Roy Scheider, Adam Baldwin and Harley Cross

USA, 1989

COHEN AND TATE is more of a crime thriller than a horror movie, but there's enough horrifying stuff going on that I think it qualifies. Especially if you look at it from the point of view of the nine-year-old kid who spends most of the movie being held captive by the two titular professional killers.

Roy Scheider plays Cohen, an aging hitman who's been paired with a younger, more impulsive partner named Tate (Adam Baldwin, no relation to those other Baldwins). Their assignment is to kidnap a little boy (Harley Cross) who witnessed a mob killing and deliver him to their employers. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Tate is a violent psychopath who seems to enjoy making things as unpleasant as possible, while Cohen is an old pro who would prefer to get the job done without any unnecessary complications.

Most of the movie takes place in a car as the two killers drive their hostage across Texas. The kid quickly figures out that his captors don't particularly like each other and starts looking for ways to turn them against one another. Pretty smart, kid.

Scheider is great as the weary professional who's seen it all. Baldwin plays a guy who seems perpetually on the verge of doing something as stupid as it is violent.

The movie was written and directed by Eric Red, who also wrote THE HITCHER and NEAR DARK, and you can see the similarities. There's a hard-boiled, mean-spirited quality to his work that makes even the simplest situations feel dangerous.

Horrorfest 2026: The Cars That Ate Paris

THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS
Written by Peter Weir

Story by Peter Weir, Keith Gow and Piers Davies

Directed by Peter Weir

Starring John Meillon, Terry Camilleri, Kevin Miles and Melissa Jaffer

Australia, 1976

Turns out THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS is not about automobiles devouring the capital of France. Who knew? This Paris is a little town in Australia, and the cars in question aren't so much eating it as being used by its residents to prey on unsuspecting motorists. Still, it's a great title.

This was the first feature film directed by Peter Weir, who would go on to make PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, WITNESS, DEAD POETS SOCIETY and THE TRUMAN SHOW, among others. It's interesting to see him starting out with something this weird, though, with PICNIC on his resumé, not surprising.

The story concerns a young man (Terry Camilleri) who survives a car accident that kills his brother. He winds up stranded in the isolated town of Paris, where the locals seem friendly enough, but there's something seriously wrong with the place. The townspeople have developed an unusual local economy based on causing automobile accidents and salvaging whatever they can from the wreckage. Including, apparently, the survivors.

It's a wild premise, and Weir approaches it with a mixture of black comedy, horror and small-town satire. The residents of Paris are a weird group, particularly the mayor (John Meillon), who seems determined to maintain some semblance of civic respectability despite the fact that his town is essentially a criminal enterprise.

And then there are the cars themselves. Some of the younger residents drive around in these ridiculous customized vehicles covered in spikes, looking like something out of a post-apocalyptic nightmare. In fact, I couldn't help thinking this would make a pretty good double feature with THE ROAD WARRIOR, which came along seven years later.  

Horrorfest 2026: Der Fan

DER FAN
Written and directed by Eckhart Schmidt

Starring Désirée Nosbusch, Bodo Steiger and Simone Brahmann

West Germany, 1982

DER FAN is a German horror movie about a teenage girl who's obsessed with a pop singer. And I mean OBSESSED. She writes him letters, listens to his music constantly and basically organizes her entire life around the possibility of meeting him. 

Désirée Nosbusch plays Simone, whose fixation on a singer named R (Bodo Steiger) eventually leads her to skip school and hang around outside a television studio where he's scheduled to appear. Against all odds, she actually meets him, and the two wind up spending some time together. At first, this seems like the fulfillment of every teenage fan's fantasy, but this is Horrorfest, so things take a turn.

DER FAN does not resemble a conventional horror movie for much of its running time. It's more of a character study of an alienated teenager, with long stretches where not much happens. The whole thing has a cold, detached quality that serves to highlight this is not just a crush. This is psychosis.

The electronic soundtrack, featuring music by the German group Rheingold, adds to the atmosphere. There's something about the combination of early '80s synth-pop and the movie's rather clinical presentation that makes everything feel a little unreal. And, counterintuitively, rather than seeming dated, the unique soundtrack gives the movie a hip edge and timeless feel.

When the movie finally decides to become a horror movie, it REALLY becomes a horror movie. No spoilers here but let’s just say it’s worse than you probably imagine, which, in this case, is a good thing.

 

Horrorfest 2026: The Appointment

THE APPOINTMENT
Written and directed by Lindsey C. Vickers

Starring Edward Woodward, Jane Merrow and Samantha Weysom

UK, 1981

THE APPOINTMENT is a strange little British horror movie starring Edward Woodward, who horror fans will recognize from THE WICKER MAN. It's considerably less famous, and a whole lot harder to figure out.

Woodward plays a businessman who has to miss his teenage daughter's violin recital because of an important work appointment. His daughter (Samantha Weysom) is not happy about this, and we soon get the impression that there's something unusual about her. Meanwhile, Dad starts having disturbing dreams that seem to suggest something terrible is going to happen.

There's also a mysterious incident involving another young girl, some strange business in the woods, and an increasingly ominous atmosphere hanging over what otherwise looks like a perfectly ordinary middle-class family. What’s going on? Good question.

Woodward is good, as you'd expect. He's the sort of actor who can make even the strangest material seem perfectly reasonable, which comes in handy here.
 

Horrorfest 2026: And Soon the Darkness

AND SOON THE DARKNESS
Written by Brian Clemens and Terry Nation

Directed by Robert Fuest

Starring Pamela Franklin, Michele Dotrice and Sandor Elès

UK, 1970

Pamela Franklin and Michele Dotrice play Jane and Cathy, two friends vacationing in rural France. After a disagreement about whether to keep cycling or stop and enjoy the scenery, they split up, with Jane riding ahead and Cathy staying behind to sunbathe. When Jane returns to find her friend, she's disappeared, and the locals aren't much help. There's also a mysterious guy on a motor scooter who keeps turning up, and Jane begins to wonder whether he's involved.

AND SOON THE DARKNESS makes a perfectly ordinary setting seem threatening. The French countryside is beautiful, all wide-open fields and quiet roads, but once Cathy disappears, the isolation becomes unsettling. 

Jane doesn't speak much French, and the people she encounters either can't or won't explain what's going on. Even when someone seems to be trying to help, it's hard to know whether to trust them.

Franklin is good as the increasingly frightened Jane, and Dotrice makes an impression during the first part of the movie, too. Both are easy on the eyes, which doesn't hurt, though the filmmakers are more interested in building suspense than exploiting the attractive stars.

This is one of those thrillers where not a whole lot actually happens, but the filmmakers make you nervous about what might happen. It's a nice example of how you can get a lot of mileage out of a simple premise and a good location.

Horrorfest 2026: Child's Play

CHILD'S PLAY
Written by Don Mancini, John Lafia and Tom Holland

Directed by Tom Holland

Starring Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent and Brad Dourif

USA, 1988

I’ve seen CHILD’S PLAY before, but don’t remember it very well. It was playing nearby on the big screen so I figured it was time to check it out again.

Brad Dourif plays a serial killer who, while being chased by a cop (Chris Sarandon), uses a voodoo spell to transfer his soul into a children's doll. The doll winds up in the possession of a little boy (Alex Vincent), whose mother (Catherine Hicks) has no idea she's just given her son a homicidal maniac for his birthday.

I like Catherine Hicks, probably best known to me as the marine biologist who falls for Kirk in STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME. She was also the mom on 7TH HEAVEN, a show I pretended to watch with my tongue in my cheek but secretly loved. Anyway, she's good here, as is Sarandon, who makes a convincing cop trying to figure out why people keep getting murdered in the vicinity of a six-year-old boy.

Speaking of, Alex Vincent is surprisingly effective as the kid. He’s so convincing that you start feeling genuinely bad for him. He's terrified, nobody believes him and the adults in his life keep making everything worse. Poor kid. 

Also, I couldn't help noticing that the dickhead department store manager is named Criswell. As in the legendary psychic and Ed Wood regular? I’ll eat my hat if that’s not an intentional reference.

As for Chucky himself, the effects hold up well, and the movie is smart enough to take its time before revealing just how alive the doll really is. There's something inherently funny about a foul-mouthed killer trapped in a toy, but the filmmakers don’t overdo it here. They saved that stuff for the many, many sequels. 

Horrorfest 2026: Altered States

ALTERED STATES
Written by Paddy Chayefsky

Directed by Ken Russell

Starring William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban and Charles Haid

USA, 1980

I went into ALTERED STATES expecting a wild ride, because it was directed by Ken Russell, whose movies are insane. And while this one certainly has its moments, I was surprised by how relatively restrained it is. Relatively being the key word here, because it’s still crazy.

William Hurt plays a scientist who's obsessed with discovering the origins of human consciousness. He starts experimenting with sensory deprivation tanks, then decides to throw some powerful hallucinogenic drugs into the mix, because why not? His experiments yield some unexpected physical effects, including temporarily turning him into some kind of prehistoric man. Weird, huh?

What's interesting is how seriously the movie takes all of this. There's a lot of scientific discussion, much of it delivered at breakneck speed, and the characters spend a considerable amount of time debating what exactly is happening to Hurt. The screenplay is by Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote NETWORK, and you can tell there's a writer with a lot on his mind behind all the psychedelic imagery.

The hallucination sequences are where Russell really cuts loose, with religious imagery, bizarre creatures and all sorts of visual madness. There's also some impressive makeup and creature work when the experiments start producing more tangible results.

I liked this one, though I suppose I was expecting Russell to go completely off the rails from beginning to end. Instead, he mostly keeps things under control, only going full-Ken every now and then, which is maybe to the movie’s advantage. 

Horrorfest 2026: Screamplay

SCREAMPLAY
Written by Ed Greenberg and Rufus Butler Seder

Directed by Rufus Butler Seder
Starring Rufus Butler Seder, George Kuchar, Katy Bolger and Eugene Seder

USA, 1984

I had never heard of SCREAMPLAY before, but it turns out this low-budget horror comedy from 1984 is my kinda flick. Within the first few minutes I was reminded of my all-time favorite movie, Tim Burton's ED WOOD. I even began to wonder if Burton had seen this and had it in mind when he made his own tribute to the weirdos of Hollywood.

SCREAMPLAY tells the story of Edgar Allen (Rufus Butler Seder, who also wrote and directed), an aspiring screenwriter who arrives in Hollywood hoping to make it. Instead, he winds up as a janitor at a rundown apartment building populated by a bunch of oddballs, including his sleazy landlord (underground filmmaker George Kuchar). He starts writing a horror screenplay based on the people around him, only to discover that the murders he's dreaming up are actually happening. Is he responsible? Is someone using his script as a blueprint? Or is he just losing his mind?

The movie was made for a measly $50k in Boston, which is pretty remarkable considering how much it manages to get out of so little. It's shot in black and white, with deliberately artificial sets, exaggerated acting and all sorts of old-fashioned camera tricks that make it look like some lost horror movie from the ‘20s or ‘30s. And it’s done well – this isn’t the kind of thing where I have to be charitable to see what the filmmakers were trying to do. This is the kind of thing where they nailed it.

The movie's pretty goofy, and some of the acting is about what you'd expect from a production like this, but the whole thing has a personality that's hard to resist.

Needless to say, I liked this one a lot. It's inventive, funny and clearly made by movie lovers for movie lovers. Like me! 

Horrorfest 2026: Alone

ALONE
Written by Mattias Olsson

Directed by John Hyams

Starring Jules Willcox, Marc Menchaca and Anthony Heald

USA, 2020

ALONE is one of those movies that takes a pretty simple premise and just runs with it, which is fine by me. Plus, it was shot in Oregon, so I got the added pleasure of recognizing some of the scenery.

Jules Willcox plays a recently widowed woman who’s packed everything up and is moving the hell out. While driving through the Pacific Northwest, she encounters a creepy guy (Marc Menchaca) who seems to keep turning up wherever she goes. First he almost runs her off the road in a dangerous passing incident, then he turns up at motels and gas stations where he won’t leave her alone, and before you know it, she’s chained up in his cabin. She manages to escape, but now she’s stuck trying to survive in the wilderness while he hunts her down.

To the movie’s benefit, there’s not much more to it than that. We don’t get a ton of insight into the killer, played as a frustratingly ordinary guy, and our heroine isn’t some secret survival expert who activates her powers to get out of this. The performances are good, the suspense works and the 98-minute run time means no one’s overstaying their welcome.

 

Horrorfest 2026: A Night to Dismember

A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER
Written by Judith J. Kushner

Directed by Doris Wishman

Starring Samantha Fox, Diane Cummins, Saul Meth, Miriam Meth and William Szarka

USA, 1983

Doris Wishman’s one of those legendary exploitation filmmakers whose name comes up all the time. Mostly known for sexploitation, she also made a slasher flick, A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER, in an attempt to get some of that HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH cash.

The story concerns a young woman (Samantha Fox) who gets released from a mental institution after being locked up for murdering two boys. She returns home to her family, who aren't exactly thrilled to see her, and before long people start getting hacked to pieces. Is she responsible? That mystery plays second fiddle to the central mystery of what is going on in this movie at all.

See, Wishman shot this flick in the late '70s, but a disgruntled employee at a film lab destroyed a bunch of the footage, so what we see today is reshoots cobbled together with what little footage survived, some stock footage and simultaneously redundant and confusing voice-over narration. That’s the story, anyway.

The result? One of the strangest movies I've seen in a while. Characters appear and disappear, scenes don't seem to connect to each other and the badly looped dialogue makes the whole thing seem about as accessible as a David Lynch dream sequence. A poorly shot one.

I can't say it's good, exactly, but it's certainly interesting and you have to admire Wishman for not only finishing it at all but also considering this finished.


Horrorfest 2026: Lee Cronin's The Mummy

LEE CRONIN'S THE MUMMY
Written by Lee Cronin

Directed by Lee Cronin

Starring Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace and Verónica Falcón

USA, 2026

First time I saw the title, LEE CRONIN'S THE MUMMY, I was like, “Who’s Lee Cronin?” So I looked it up and it turns out he’s the guy who did EVIL DEAD RISE which was a surprisingly solid EVIL DEAD movie. So, that was promising.

This latest attempt to revive the classic mummy movie doesn’t have much to do with the originals, or the Hammer movies, or even the Brendan Fraser flick. I’ve never seen the Tom Cruise one but I think it’s safe to guess this one has little in common with that, too.

Jack Reynor and Laia Costa play a married couple whose daughter disappears while they're living in Egypt. Eight years later, they've relocated to New Mexico when they're informed that the girl has been found, alive, inside a sarcophagus recovered from a plane crash. Weird, yes. But, still, they’re glad she’s back.

Of course, the girl (Natalie Grace) isn't quite herself, and the premise that you might mistake a living dead person for a simply malnourished and neglected one is kind of interesting, I have to admit. Anyway, it’s not long before the family’s not only trying to figure out what happened to their daughter in the intervening eight years, but also trying to avoid being murdered by her. 

Like EVIL DEAD RISE before it, there’s plenty of gore to go around here, including lots of teeth-stuff. Yikes! The makeup’s good, the effects are good, and I suppose there’s something interesting about trying to take this MUMMY stuff in a new direction, though, this is more of an EXORCIST direction, really. Maybe Lee Cronin really wanted to make LEE CRONIN’S THE EXORCIST? I’d go see that, if he promised not to make it over two hours long. 

He Had the Touch

I took a personal day off for the second anniversary of my dad’s death and, not knowing what to do with myself, I decided to look at the movie listings, which reminded me that Transformers: The Movie is back in theaters celebrating its 40th anniversary. Having correctly targeted me as the exact audience for this movie, the internet has been aggressively advertising it to me for months. But it wasn’t until today that I realized it was appropriate timing.

Back in 1986, my dad was nice enough to take me to see Transformers: The Movie at the Mac Tri Cinema in the little town where I grew up, McMinnville, Oregon. At the time I didn’t think twice about it: as my dad, it was part of his job to take me to movies I wanted to see, especially when my mom was busy. I’m not sure what my mom and sister were up to that day, but my memory is that my dad and I went, just the two of us, and even when we got home, it was an afternoon and evening we had to ourselves.

Now, I’m impressed he was willing to go to a movie that stood against basically everything he believed in. It was a loud, crassly commercial toy advertisement full of violence and explosions, light on plot and heavy on things going “pew, pew” and “boom.” A lesser man would have banned me from seeing it, just because he not only wasn’t interested, but was also probably morally opposed.

My dad was the chaplain at the local college, where he used his position to help fight for civil rights and bring big thinkers and liberal views into our sheltered little town. He was a pacifist who traveled the world in the name of spreading peace. None of that was on my mind as he sat next to me watching Autobots and Decepticons blow each other up for 90 minutes.

Transformers: The Movie is intertwined with the concept of death and loss for an entire generation because the toy manufacturers who bankrolled it saw fit to use it to very publicly kill off their most popular and revered character, Optimus Prime, who, although he was a sentient truck, was also a father figure, symbol of positive masculinity, and model leader for every boy my age.

This was a decision to retire old toys and sell new ones, but what the geniuses at Hasbro didn’t bargain for is the fact that Optimus Prime’s dramatic death at the hands of his arch nemesis, Megatron (a sentient gun), would be viewed by children as tantamount to the assassination of Santa Claus.

I wasn’t among them. Yes, I was shocked Optimus Prime died. But even at the age of five or six, I was thrilled by the dramatic storytelling. It was sad, but I loved how serious the stakes were compared to the cartoon show, where nothing of consequence ever happened. Characters died. The good guys lost. The stakes suddenly mattered in a way they never had on the TV show. It’s not great cinema, by any stretch, and is derivative of other superior hero’s journeys that had come before it, but I was enthralled.

Too enthralled to think much about Optimus Prime’s death. When I heard another kid from the audience come back from a bathroom break and whisper to his parents, “Did Optimus Prime come back to life, yet?” I just rolled my eyes and thought… we’ve got more important stuff to worry about now. He’s not coming back. Of course, Hasbro got cold feet, and Optimus Prime did come back in the next season of the TV show, but by then no one was really watching anymore.

Whenever I really liked a movie, I would get to work reenacting it in one way or another. Either with my action figures, or by jumping around and acting it out myself, or by drawing picture after picture of it. The afternoon we came home from Transformers: The Movie, I went to work setting up a reenactment of the movie in my bedroom and then called my dad in to watch it. It starred a little red plastic rake, for making sand castles, that I thought bore a passing resemblance to one of the spaceships in the movie. My dad patiently watched and when it was over remarked, “That was kind of like the movie we just saw, wasn’t it.” Busted.

The thing is, this guy, my dad, who had a lot more on his mind than nihilistic, violent, trashy cartoons, didn’t stop to lecture me. He didn’t make me feel dumb for liking it. He just put up with it. Because although world peace is important, I was five.

When I got a little older he’d let a little bemused attitude leak through. Like when we saw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie together, and I said it was really about fathers and sons. He kind of chuckled and gave me a knowing look and said, “Suuure.” Just enough to let me know he was onto it — it’s just more violent trash. But nothing to make me feel any less than or stupid or wrong or bad.

Which, I think, is healthy. You don’t want your parents all in on your bullshit when you’re a kid, because then you grow up an entitled brat who thinks they can do no wrong. And you don’t want them totally against you and everything you believe in, either, because that comes with another whole host of problems. Both extremes lead to Dr. Phil and Judge Judy. My dad found the middle: I was allowed to be a dumb kid while being aware there was more to life than being a dumb kid.

I never identified with the legions of nerds my age on the internet who swear up and down the death of Optimus Prime destroyed them. I never felt like it was a total betrayal, either. To me, it was just good storytelling. It was sad, but it was life. For most of my life, fictional deaths were some of my main reference points for the real thing. Optimus Prime was one. Spock was another. By a strange coincidence, I saw The Wrath of Khan on the big screen the night my dad went back into the hospital for the last time.

You could say this is just a sign of how little tragedy I’ve suffered in my life. And you’d be right.

Then my dad died. He’s been dead for two years now. As I was lying on the couch this morning, thinking about his death and what I was supposed to do to remember him, I saw that Transformers was back in theaters.

I didn’t go. But on the way home from the grocery store, I blasted the heroic hair-metal anthem “The Touch” from the Transformers soundtrack. It wasn’t a particularly fitting memorial for my dad, but it made me feel better for a few minutes.