Horrorfest 2025: Christine

Christine

Written by Bill Phillips

Based on the novel by Stephen King

Directed by John Carpenter

Starring Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky and Harry Dean Stanton

USA, 1983

Well, I can move CHRISTINE from the “movies I sorta kinda saw once but not really” file into the “I saw the whole thing!” file. 

Stephen King’s timeless tale of a boy and his car is a pretty fun ride, even if it makes little to no sense. You can view it on two levels. It’s literally about a sentient, murderous car. But it’s also about how a nerd can turn into an asshole if he gets a little confidence, which is oddly more topical today than ever.

Under John Carpenter’s steady and stylish hand, this 80s teen horror flick is elevated about as high as a movie with this kind of premise can get. The cast is all charismatic and appealing, the characters all memorable, even the side ones, and the special effects are top notch. I want to see a documentary on how they made the car, Christine, “repair” itself in a stunning sequence that looks just as good today as it ever did.

To the movie’s credit, it leaves any hint of explanation of Christine’s supernatural abilities completely to our imaginations, and spends zero screen time attempting to explain it. This leaves more room for us to hang out with the characters, who range from interesting and three dimensional to well-done examples of stock types. For instance, this movie has Stephen King’s favorite, a bully with a switchblade and a leather jacket, but he’s so over the top and memorably played, we forgive it. On the other end of the spectrum is Alexandra (Baywatch!) Paul as the love interest, an under-developed and forgettable character. Paul deserved better!

The movie’s star, Keith Gordon, is particularly good, here, convincingly playing both a nerd and a normal guy at the same time. Usually movies, especially 80s genre ones, view nerds as a completely separate breed of human. CHRISTINE allows this guy to be seen by everyone else as a nerd, but inside, just be a guy like anyone else. He also has the chance to transform into a dickhead throughout the flick. It’s really a great role, and well played. It’s no wonder he went on to a successful directing career.

Horrorfest 2025: Good Boy

Good Boy

Written by Alex Cannon and Ben Leonberg

Directed by Ben Leonberg

Starring Shane Jensen, Arielle Friedman, Larry Fessenden and Indy

USA, 2025

I once joked that I wished I AM LEGEND was about the dog and not about Will Smith. When I say “once” I mean “every time I AM LEGEND has ever come up in conversation over the last 20 years.” Spoiler: there’s a scene halfway through where Smith’s dog, his only companion, dies, and Smith must carry on alone. It occurred to me it might have been a better movie if the twist was that Smith dies and the dog must carry on alone.

GOOD BOY is likely the closest thing we’ll ever get to that — a haunted house movie told almost entirely from the point of view of the dog. 

Indy, the dog, who plays himself, moves to a broken down old house in the country after his owner inherits it from his dad. The dog’s owner is chronically ill, and his sister is convinced there’s something sinister about the house.

Indy’s pretty convinced, too. He sees stuff his owner does not, like shadowy figures and visions of another dog who used to live there but has since disappeared, Bandit, which is officially a good name for a dog. So is Indy. Good job, filmmakers.

This movie reminded me of a quote I heard once that I’m going to mangle here but it was something along the lines of: “Humans and animals view each other over a gulf of complete misunderstanding.” I feel like that about sums up this flick. The dog and his owner are just completely incapable of understanding each other, which is a refreshing take on the bond between pets and their owners you don’t often see in movies and also a useful starting point for a haunted house movie. Most haunted house movies have dull human characters who are written to be deliberately obtuse as a function of the plot. In this one, we don’t have to suffer through that, because we understand when a dog and a man are not on the same page in a way that we don’t when it’s two people.

Much has been said about Indy’s command performance, but I recommend you stay after the credits for a making-of segment in which director Ben Leonberg makes no bones about the fact Indy has no idea he’s in a movie and any acting you see him do is all you projecting your feelings onto him. Again, a refreshing and realistic take on the subject. I don’t know if this making-of is tacked onto the streaming version, because I saw this movie in a theater, but I found it to be the most interesting part of the movie, and would gladly watch a feature length doc about the making of this one, which was clearly a labor of love and story worth telling.

Oh, but what about the movie itself? It’s okay. I’m not a big haunted house movie guy. Throwing a dog into this one elevates it a little. The fact that this movie operates as both a ghost story and a story of facing death and letting go only serves to make me wonder what a movie from a dog’s point of view WITHOUT ghosts about death and dying would have been like. Sort of like when I watched DROP and wished it was just about a terrible date instead of a murder plot. Woof!

Horrorfest 2025: Drop

Drop

Written by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach

Directed by Christopher Landon
Starring Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Violett Beane and Jeffery Self

USA, 2025

DROP reminded me of HEART EYES, not in a good way, so I was not surprised to see that it shares one chief suspect: Christopher Landon directed this one and wrote the other one. It’s surprising considering I liked a bunch of his other stuff. Maybe he’s jumped the (baby) shark! (Get it? Because that song is in this movie!).

Meghann Fahy stars as a single mother who is tentatively getting back into the dating game after a traumatic experience in which she was forced to kill her husband in self defense. Her dinner date’s in a fancy restaurant at the top of a skyscraper, offering a breathtaking view of the city.

The movie lost me at the premise, which is a terrible sign. Maybe this dates me, but the premise is that everyone in this movie has their phone’s airdrop thing both turned on and set so literally anyone can drop them stuff/see them on the app. I mean I understand maybe like kids do this or something, especially around school where they “know” everyone, but these are adults. Am I an out of touch luddite or is it normal for all adults to default to having their drop thingy totally accessible to all strangers?

So, that required some disbelief it was difficult for me to suspend right from the get-go, and then the movie just got stupider and less believable from there. We’re introduced toe veryone in the restaurant like it’s a disaster movie, so that we can have lots of suspects and wonder who the mysterious stranger is who is sending threatening “drops” to our heroine, the most threatening of which reveals that there is an intruder in her home waiting to off her kid and her sister (who is babysitting) if she doesn’t do the stuff the dropper wants her to do, blah, blah, blah.

First I was annoyed much of the movie takes place on her phone’s screen and, not being in a movie theater, it was too small for me to read the texts from across the room. I thought, how come this movie doesn’t project the texts all big like every other movie these days? Then, the movie started finding creative ways to do that, and I thought, boy that sure looks dumb. So I guess the movie can’t win?

Early on I wanted to be like, “Just call the police,” to which you’d say, “Yeahbut then he’ll kill her kid!” But — spoiler alert — it ends up just coming down to that, anyway. After this tiptoeing around, trying to figure out some sly way out of the situation, writing notes on money with lipstick, trying to write notes with eyeliner… it ends with her just rushing home real fast to try to stop her kid from getting killed. She could have just done that from the get-go, movie!

Also not for nothing but everyone looks the same in this flick. There’s like five different white guys with beards, and one of them is in a “big reveal” at the end that’s not a big reveal at all, but still, had me going, “Uh who is everyone.” Again, maybe I’m old.

Like HEART EYES, this mercifully short movie feels about twice as long as it actually is as there are more and more contrivances, by both the filmmakers and the characters within the movie, to deliberately stretch out the process of having dinner as long as possible. Being bored, my mind wandered to wondering what it’d be like to make a fan edit of the movie where you remove the horror plot and just edit it down so that it is the most awkward and weird first date of all time. I would have liked that movie better.

Still, the movie has a nice set and good cinematography.

Horrorfest 2025: Dead of Winter

Dead of Winter
Written by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb
Directed by Brian Kirk
Starring Emma Thompson, Judy Greer, Marc Menchaca, Laurel Marsden, Brían F. O'Byrne
USA/Germany, 2025

Emma Thompson goes against type as a Minnesota widow who finds herself fighting kidnappers in an attempt to save a young girl from their murder plot. This is all set against the backdrop of an isolated frozen lake in… you guessed it… the DEAD OF WINTER.

Part DIE HARD, part FARGO, the movie’s most interesting when you get to see Emma Thompson do stuff like shoot people, blow up trucks and get into fist fights. It’s less interesting when it indulges in flashbacks explaining why she’s at this particular isolated lake at this particular time.

Thompson stumbles ass-backwards into a kidnap plot and realizes she’s the kidnapped girl’s only hope, setting about trying to infiltrate the kidnappers’ cabin, call for help, anything. The fun of the movie is watching how she develops plans, puts them into motion, and seeing the setbacks that crop up.

Unfortunately, the tone’s all over the place. This is a movie not only about a suspenseful kidnap rescue but also about multiple different kinds of grief and rumination on death, which makes it awkward when we can tell the filmmakers want us to think it’s sorta funny that Thompson’s character is springing into action. Not only is that tonally weird, but it also undermines the characters’ capabilities (she’s extremely capable) and unfortunately reminds us of FARGO. I understand just because FARGO exists it’s not like you’re never allowed to have another woman with a midwestern accent be more cunning and resourceful than you’d expect, but this movie kind of tries to hit some of the same notes a few too many times, thus making it impossible not to think of the much better movie that I’d rather be watching.

I’d be remiss if I did not mention the villainous performance, also against type, by national treasure Judy Greer. I could have used more of her and less of the flashbacks, please.

Horrorfest 2025: Heart Eyes

Heart Eyes

Written by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy

Directed by Josh Ruben

Starring Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Gigi Zumbado, Michaela Watkins, Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster

USA, 2025

A killer with a “heart eyes” mask and a crossbow targets couples on Valentine’s Day in this attempt at a comedy-slasher. I say attempt because it’s not very funny. To get an idea of the comedic misfires, you can just take a look at the first five or ten minutes of the movie, parodying a couple staging an Insta-worthy engagement at a winery, only to be murdered. It looks so fake, is so over-the-top, and is such a cartoon, that all the satire or whatever it’s meant to be is sucked right out of it and we’re left with… not much.

Anyway, the rest of the movie doesn’t quite lower itself to the cinematic depths of the opening, and settles into slightly more formulaic and boring territory which doesn’t necessarily make it any better and is instead just another form of badness. There’s one really good scare that I have to give the movie props for, maybe a half hour in, but that is the only highlight in the 97-minute run time that feels like 3 hours.

Look, I get it. This is as much a parody of rom-coms as it is a slasher movie. But, just because I get it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Horrorfest 2025: Death of a Unicorn

Death of a Unicorn
Written and directed by Alex Scharfman
Starring Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni and Richard E. Grant

USA, 2025

Jenna Ortega’s quickly becoming a bonafide scream queen. Or maybe she already was one, and I’m just now noticing. Not only has she done two literal SCREAM movies, she also showed up for Ti West’s X and the horror-adjacent WEDNESDAY and BEETLEJUICE, BEETLEJUICE. Now she’s chased by deadly unicorns in DEATH OF A UNICORN.

You’ll be shocked to learn Ortega stars as a sullen teen (or early 20-something? I think she’s in college) who is forced to accompany her goofy dad (Paul Rudd, a lawyer on a business trip to the isolated estate of a SUCCESSION-esque family (Richard E. Grant, Téa Leoni and Will Poulter). The patriarch’s on his deathbed so it’s time to sort out some SUCCESSION-esque stuff.

On the way there, they run over a unicorn. Before Rudd puts it out of its misery, Ortega bonds with it, and instead of calling someone Rudd decides to put the body in his car and continue on his business trip. How they get the body in the car is beyond me. They should have thrown in a line about how unicorns are miraculously lightweight. Instead they just had me wondering how they lifted the creature.

The movie actually had me wondering a lot of stuff, much to its detriment. As the whole crew figures out the dead unicorn’s body has miraculous healing properties and decide to exploit it for cash, the clock starts ticking until the time other unicorns show up toe exact their bloody revenge. Ortega keeps on telling everyone this is a bad idea, and attempting to explain a unicorn legend from some tapestries she saw once, but she explains it poorly and also doesn’t even really understand it. So the movie turns into JURASSIC PARK, with unicorns.


Not a bad premise. Just bad execution. Highlights include Leoni and Poulter as the one percent. Leoni walks a tight rope of acting concerned and like she has a heart while also being totally insincere, while Poulter supplies all the most comedic moments as he insists on both hot tubbing and snorting/drinking/mainlining anything he can get from the unicorn.

I think there could have been a good movie in here if they had abandoned all pretenses at trying to be a formulaic mainstream Hollywood movie and instead embraced the insanity of B-movie schlock. It IS schlock, it’s just a shame it’s self conscious schlock. Let your schlock flag fly, movie! Be free!

Horrorfest 2025: In a Violent Nature

In a Violent Nature

Written and directed by Chris Nash

Starring Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, Liam Leone, Charlotte Creaghan, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Sam Roulston, Alexander Oliver and Lauren Taylor

Canada, 2024

IN A VIOLENT NATURE is a slasher flick with an interesting premise: what if a movie like FRIDAY THE 13th was told from the point of view of the killer instead of the victims? But, almost as soon as I thought, “Oh that’s cool,” I also thought, “Wait a minute. Don’t most slasher movies routinely tell at least part of the story literally from the killer’s point of view? Doesn’t HALLOWEEN start literally through the eyes of Michael Myers? Don’t we spend a lot of FRIDAY’s run time stalking through the forest from the killer’s perspective?”

The answer is yes. However, the idea that IN A VIOLENT NATURE is told from the slasher’s POV is only part of the idea. First of all, it’s not REALLY all just from the slasher’s POV. Secondly, the filmmakers use this limited POV to make a sort of inverted ZONE OF INTEREST for slashers, commenting on the absurdity of slasher movies and their sequels by allowing the annoying stuff like relationships between victims and plot exposition, to unfold incidentally on the sidelines so that we catch only snippets of it here and there as the killer does the nuts and bolts of slashing we never see like walking from one place to another and hide behind stuff and stage stuff for others to find.

This approach also does away with the pretense that we should care about this stuff. The killer doesn’t care about this stuff, why should we. Also, we see how and why he does everything he does, first hand, so while the premise is contrived, the actual movie is less contrived than others in the genre, rendering it somehow less cynical than some of the “classics” of the genre. It’s counter intuitive: you’d think focusing on the killer over the victims would be a nihilistic move, but it comes off as less performative, and therefore, less insulting and exploitative.

The movie is also full of a bunch of other stuff lacking in most slashers, like a slow pace, time to look at the beautiful scenery and nice cinematography. Still, I was surprised to find most of the online commentary is that the movie sucks, is boring, the acting is bad and there’s no point to it. So… watch at your own risk.

I guess I never got around to describing the plot, but if there was ever a movie that embodied Ebert’s notion a flick is not about WHAT it is about, but HOW it is about it, it’s this one. I wonder if he would have liked it? Probably not. But I did!

Horrorfest 2025: Strange Darling

Strange Darling
Written and directed by JT Mollner

Starring Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner, Madison Beaty, Steven Michael Quezada, Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey
USA, 2024

A game of cat and mouse unfolds between a woman on the run and a man with a gun in STRANGE DARLING, a movie where you’re never quite sure who’s the cat and who’s the mouse. Or if they’re both cats? Or if they’re both mice?

We’re told up front this is going to be a story told in six chapters, and then immediately have the rug pulled out from under us when we realize the six chapters are not going to be in order. This could be a moment where you roll your eyes and go, “I get it. I’ve seen a Tarantino flick before.” Except, for once, the non linear storytelling fits well with the premise, which is this: a woman and a man meet up to do a little bondage/rape role play. Where does the play start and end? What’s REALLY going on? If you’re like me, you’ll be kept guessing until the movie’s last moments.

The movie wouldn’t work as well as it does without the two central performances by Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner who are able to keep us guessing where they’re coming from while also embodying specific characters and rising to the physical challenge of what’s basically nonstop action. I wasn’t familiar with Fitzgerald before this, thought she’s been at it for 20 years, but I’m a fan of Gallner’s from his charismatic performance in the great DINNER IN AMERICA.

As Stefon might say, this movie has everything: gore, action, suspense, sex and even laughs. It’s the kind of movie that makes me want to say stuff like, “They don’t make ’em like this anymore” and, “Now THAT’S a movie,” but I won’t because that’d be cliched. 

It’s interesting to note the great cinematography is by Giovanni Ribisi, of all people, known to me mostly as one of the brighter spots in the less-good seasons of THE WONDER YEARS. He’s acted in everything from SAVING PRIVATE RYAN to AVATAR and now shows his chops as an accomplished DP. Good for him!

Anyway, the movie’s good. Go watch it.

Horrorfest 2025: The Last Man on Earth

The Last Man on Earth

Written by Richard Matheson and William F. Leicester

Based on the novel by Richard Matheson

Directed by Sidney Salkow and Ubaldo B. Ragona

Starring Vincent Price, Franca Bettoia, Emma Danieli and Giacomo Rossi Stuart

USA/Italy, 1964

What better way to start Horrorfest 2025 than with one of the first names in fear, Vincent Price. What’s Horrofest, you ask? It’s my way of celebrating spooky season, when the weather cools, the days shorten and the leaves get crunchy and fall: write about 31 horror movies in 31 days, preferably ones I’ve never seen before.

This year we kick things off with THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, the first film adaptation of the novel I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson, which was later remade as OMEGA MAN with Charlton Heston and I AM LEGEND with Will Smith.

Vincent Price, as the titular last man, spends his days hunting the vampires that have taken over the Earth and nights hiding from them as they come out and bang on his door. We know they’re vampires because Price wards them off by hanging garlic and mirrors on his front door and dispatches them with the old stake-in-heart routine. But other than that, they function as precursors to what we now think of as zombies — turns out a virus got out of control (like that would ever happen, amirite) and turned everyone into zombie-like vampires.

It’s nice to see Price carry almost the whole movie on his own, but his performance is held a bit at arm’s length because this Italian co-production has a lot of overdubbing, typical of that country’s productions of the time. Also, he seems to be a bit miscast, not necessarily as the scientist he was before the apocalypse, but as the family man and later vampire hunter he has the edge he needs but maybe doesn’t generate the sympathy the movie is looking for? It’s hard to put your finger on why this master of horror isn’t the right lead for this picture, but he’s not.

Still, the movie has an interesting twist ending that explains the title of the novel (I AM LEGEND) in a way I feel like the Will Smith flick never did. Or, it did, and I forgot. Either way, it was a fun and surprising end to an otherwise fairly dull movie.