The 200+ Best and Worst Horror Movies of 2025, Ranked

This list is an ongoing ranking of horror and horror-adjacent thriller movies released during 2025. To be considered for the list, the film must have its first wide release in the United States—whether the release is in theaters, on streaming, or on physical media—at some time during 2025. Limited releases, film festival screenings, and international releases in 2025 don’t necessarily count unless those movies also receive a wide release in the United States during the year (because that’s where we’re based).

Bring Her Back is exactly the kind of horror I enjoy immensely. It’s dark, disturbing, and thoroughly unsettling. It has an overwhelming feeling of near-hopeless inevitability because the film plays around with the parameters of genre trappings, but the emotional heart of the story pulsates to its own twisted beat. The audience is given a clear indication of what is likely going to happen (it’s even coded plainly in the title), so the journey becomes more about holding onto hope that the sympathetic characters we meet can somehow avoid their fate. The character work in the script and through the actors is meticulous and rewarding, and the horror of what we’re witnessing these characters go through is hard to shake even after the credits roll.

Filled with heart and humor, Dead Talents Society is fantastic! A ghost with no self-confidence is going to disappear completely in less than a month, and the only way to save her ethereal existence is to earn her haunting license. But with no self-confidence and seemingly no talent for haunting, the task of helping her unlock her true potential is going to be difficult for a small-time ghostly talent agent and a formerly popular spirit who has trust issues. The setup might sound a little complex and a lot silly—and it definitely is both of those things—but the movie is amazingly entertaining.

Zach Cregger made a name for himself in horror with the wild ride that is Barbarian (2022). With Weapons, Cregger was able to follow up his earlier success with another imaginative premise and effective narrative structure. Divided into chapters that follow the perspectives of multiple characters, Weapons is a story about the events surrounding the night when nearly every student in a single elementary school classroom left their homes and disappeared. The way the layers of the mystery are peeled back is good, but the conclusion is even better. Weapons has one of the best finales of the year.

Read more about Weapons in our daily digest.

It’s safe to say that Sinners is already an American classic. Filled with layers of meaning, history, and music, it is a remarkable cinematic achievement. Leading the way are Ryan Coogler, a filmmaker who can seamlessly integrate genre thrills with strong character work, and Michael B. Jordan, who pulls off a dual role as twin brothers who feel distinct in every way. The best part might be how, in the movie, we are shown how music can connect people through time. Sinners, as it is seen by more and more people now and into the future, is also going to keep connecting people in a similar way.

Dangerous Animals is a serial killer movie with a great hook: the killer feeds his victims to sharks. This idea has been done a few times before, but the killer has never been as fun to watch as Tucker (played by Jai Courtney). However, the heart of the story lies with Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), a surfer kidnapped by Tucker and kept on his boat as he prepares to send her to her tooth-filled doom. Zephyr’s escape attempts are the basis of the movie’s suspense, and it’s a thrill to watch.

Read our full review of Dangerous Animals.

Beautifully filmed and wonderfully told, The Ugly Stepsister is one of the best anti-fairy-tales ever made. It’s essentially just a dark retelling of Cinderella, but the shift in perspective from Cinderella to one of her stepsisters completely changes how the story is perceived. Plus, the uncomfortable body horror seen throughout the movie emphasizes the story’s themes perfectly; It shows us the ugliness and the horror hiding just beneath the surface of the unrealistic expectations established by society (and fairy tales).

Fréwaka is folk horror at its most ominous and unnerving. After the death of her mother, Shoo (Clare Monnelly) takes a job as a live-in caregiver for Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain), an older woman who shows signs of having delusions. For instance, Peig thinks the people of the nearby community are trying to get her, and she has various habits and rituals to keep them away. As Shoo cares for the woman, she realizes there might be some truth to Peig’s fears. Fréwaka steadily builds tension from deep within the two main characters, just as the world closes in on them both.

Surprisingly funny while being equally uncomfortable and creepy, Together is a wonderfully realized body-horror relationship thriller. The metaphors for codependency are not subtle in any way, and that’s why the humor and horror blend together so well. It’s absurd, but it’s also well directed and fantastically acted.

From stars Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid, to its violent and twisty plot, to its themes that touch on technology, consent, and what it means to be human, Companion is great. Though the movie is more of a straightforward sci-fi horror/thriller than the initial, ambiguous teaser trailer might suggest, it is an extremely satisfying genre movie. If you haven’t seen the trailers, just skip them all and go watch the movie now. It’s easily one of the best films of the first part of 2025, and going into it blind is the best way to see it.

28 Years Later is not what I expected. It’s not really what I’d hoped for. Leaving the theater, I wasn’t sure if I even liked it that much. But after sitting with it, I do think it is a very good coming-of-age story set in a regional “zombie” apocalypse. It’s nearly impossible to recapture the spirit and the effectiveness of 28 Days Later since it came out at exactly the right time in history for the way that story was told. So, 28 Years Later can’t compete with its own legacy, but it’s forging ahead with something new. I’m interested to see where it goes.

I really didn’t expect to enjoy Final Destination: Bloodlines as much as I did. This movie is just pure fun. The twists on the lore work well, the Death scenes are a blast, and the ending is top-notch. It can get a little self-indulgent with its trickery, but most of the hiccups in story and execution can be forgiven if you’re having fun with it. I had a ton of fun with Bloodlines.

Read more about Final Destination: Bloodlines in the daily digest.

Body horror is back in fashion, and Grafted is a terrifically worthy entry in that stomach-turning subgenre. The film is about Wei, a shy young woman from Hong Kong who travels to New Zealand for college. She works to continue her late father’s research into a revolutionary skin grafting technique, but many of the people around Wei aren’t very nice. Among other problems, Wei has trouble fitting in. So, when an opportunity presents itself, she decides to take drastic action to see what it feels like to finally be seen. Grafted is gory and funny in a dark way, and you might even feel it tug on your heartstrings between all the death and grotesqueries.

Read our full review of Grafted.

In Et Tu, the pursuit of artistic perfection leads to murder. Lots and lots of murder. Brent (Lou Diamond Phillips) is the director of a regional production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but he isn’t satisfied with most of his cast and crew. He takes advantage of an opportunity to make his play better, but that one incident quickly snowballs into a spree. Directed by Max Tzannes, Et Tu is a pitch-black comedy that is Shakespearean in its motivation.

Read more about Et Tu in the daily digest.

Though it might take some viewers a little while to get into it, the unique way Presence is presented to the audience is a very effective way of telling a haunted house story. From the perspective we’re given, Presence minimizes scares and emphasizes the drama of a dysfunctional family who moves into a new house. The daughter, Chloe, can feel something in the house, and we, as the viewer, know for a fact that it is there. But the mystery of what (or who) the presence is and what it is there to do serves as the force that drives the movie towards its impressive finale.

Read our full review of Presence.

The vampire romance film isn’t the most obscure of horror subgenres, but don’t let that prevent you from watching this movie. Drained is about a lovable loser who falls for a seductive vampire, and the movie is excellently made. It looks fantastic, the characters are fully developed and intriguing, and the story mixes metaphors and drama in the exact right proportions. Even though Drained is often described as a romance, it’s really a tragedy. You can see that things are going to end very badly for our star-crossed lovers right from the start, but the way the story progresses makes the emotions of the final scenes anything but straightforward.

Read our full review of Drained.

Everyone loves Nicolas Cage, and he’s the best reason to watch The Surfer. But when you do watch The Surfer, you might find that it’s a deeper movie than you expected. Cage plays an unnamed man, credited as The Surfer, who just wants to buy a house overlooking the beach where he grew up, but some of the local surfers don’t want him there. The Surfer decides to stay near the beach and stake his claim, but he begins to lose his sense of self as the continued aggression from the locals begins taking a toll on his mental stability. It’s a trippy treat for fans of odd movies.

Read our full review of The Surfer.

Mark has finally met the woman of his dreams. At least, he thinks so. Ash is beautiful and kind, and she lives an interesting life. Perhaps most interesting is what she does for a living. She eats lots of food for people who watch her online (i.e. mukbang). When Mark finds out what kind of meat she eats during her mukbang sessions (and how she obtains that meat), his growing love for Ash will be tested. How far will he go for love? Cannibal Mukbang is a tremendously entertaining love story with clever twists and utterly engaging characters. It’s also kind of gross, which just adds to its charm.

Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project is a horror comedy for people who love low-budget movies. It’s presented as a pseudo-documentary about the making of a found footage movie. The first half of the movie feels a lot like the ridiculousness of American Movie (1999), with the comical struggles of micro-budget filmmaking taking the spotlight. But as the film shoot continues, the cast and crew slowly realize the cabin they’re using as their home base has something sinister in the basement. Found Footage is hilarious, but it does get pretty dark (in a funny way). It also has a surprising amount of heart.

Read more about Found Footage in the daily digest.

In a world where a mutated vaccine has decimated the world’s population, three young brothers are surviving on their own. Zombie-like monsters roam the forests outside their house, and a couple of them are living in their basement. When the youngest boy gets curious about the monsters, he starts a chain of events that will change their lives and threaten to tear the remains of their family apart. Párvulos is an exceptional coming-of-age horror movie that is emotional, gory, brutal, and even a bit heartwarming at times.

Read our full review of Párvulos.

Best Wishes to All is all about happiness, and the price some people pay for the happiness of others. The story follows a young woman’s visit to her grandparents’ house. She discovers the horrifying way they’ve maintained their happiness, and she learns that their home isn’t the only one that partakes in this terrible method of ensuring their well-being. There’s a bit of folk horror in Best Wishes to All, but mostly it’s just a strange journey that results in an effectively uncomfortable experience.

Animal rights activists invade a pig farm with some extreme ideas about how to get their points across, but tempers flare and the violence spirals out of control. Meat Kills reaches towards the extreme horror of something like Frontier(s) (2007), without going quite as far. But there’s still a good amount of gore to go along with some surprisingly good character development for the naive young woman caught between the activists and the pig farmer’s family.

Read our full review of Meat Kills.

Have you ever seen a Southern Gothic musical? Well, if not, then Devil and the Daylong Brothers should be your first. The story follows three brothers (same father, different mothers) who are on a quest for revenge. Their father sold their souls to the Devil, and they’re in desperate need of a confrontation with their old man. With pulpy, graphic-novel visuals and eminently catchy music throughout, The Devil and the Daylong Brothers is a violent and emotional blast.

Read our full review of The Devil and the Daylong Brothers.

Among the multitude of public-domain inspired horror, few stand out like The Death of Snow White. This is a grim fairy tale that vaguely follows the original tale of Snow White, but with more blood and gore. It works surprisingly well. The budget is obviously low, but that helps give it a retro-appeal akin to low-budget, straight-to-video fantasy movies of the 1980s and 1990s. The Death of Snow White is super fun.

Read an extended review of The Death of Snow White.

Chainsaws Were Singing might get a little too goofy at times, but it’s ultimately a beautifully crafted musical horror comedy. It follows a man’s search for his girlfriend after she’s kidnapped by a chainsaw-wielding murderer and taken back to his family of cannibals. The journey is strange and silly, and the songs are incredibly catchy.

Read a brief review of Chainsaws Were Singing.

A group of female vampires is pitched an idea by an amateur monster hunter: why not start a spicy site that features photos and videos of “hot vampire chicks,” while offering an authentic vampire experience for users willing to pay more money (and give a little blood in the process)? The OnlyFangs app is a hit, but with the attention come forces who would destroy the vamps. OnlyFangs is a micro-budget horror comedy that is sexy, bloody, and fun.

Read our full review of OnlyFangs.

The Wild does an amazing job building its characters and thrusting them into emotional conflict. The story is about three friends who have grown apart after the death of their mutual friend Bea. They go on a camping trip to reconnect, but secrets and lies among them boil over as the truth about Bea’s death bubbles towards the surface. A little more ambiguity concerning the ending could have made The Wild even better, but as it is, it’s one of the best dark thrillers of the year.

Even though The Monkey is advertised as a horror-comedy, it still might surprise you with how goofy it actually is. It is incredibly goofy, almost to the point of wearing out its welcome at times. Almost. If you’re in the right frame of mind and have a sense of humor that aligns with the film’s absurdity, then The Monkey can be a ton of fun. The deaths caused by the cursed monkey are often a blast, even if the story starts to shake itself off its tracks as it hurtles towards the finale.

The Damned employs a strong sense of dread to tell a story about isolation, survival, and guilt. The story is set in the late 1800s in a frozen fjord in northern Iceland. A fishing crew struggles with poor catches this season, and when they spot a ship sinking not too far away, the decision is made to let the sailors fend for themselves rather than help them and use up their dwindling supplies. After the dead bodies of sailors begin washing ashore, the fishermen and their leader, a widowed woman who inherited the fishing station from her husband, begin having experiences they can’t help but attribute to a monster created by their callousness. The Damned is filled with psychological chills and a touch of monster-movie frights.

Read our full review of The Damned.

Revelations is at its best when it’s creating interesting moral dilemmas among its three lead characters. At the center is Kwon Yong-rae, a troubled man who was recently released after committing a horrific crime. Then there is Lee Yeon-hui, a police inspector whose sister was assaulted by Kwon. Completing the triangle is Sung Min-chan, the pastor of a small church who begins investigating Kwon when his daughter disappears, and who then becomes convinced that God has chosen him to deal with Kwon in his own way. The movie is smartly written, and it asks a lot of questions about the nature of culpability, retribution, and psychology.

The I Know What You Did Last Summer legacy sequel might be formulaic, but it has fun within the standard slasher formula. This movie does get a sizable bump up in this list thanks to the resolution of the story. I won’t spoil it here, but the killer reveal is satisfying in a way that another popular slasher franchise (which is closely associated with I Know What You Did Last Summer) hasn’t been in pretty much all of its sequels. This movie is far from perfect, but the good and fun outweighs the bad and contrived.

Read our review of I Know What You Did Last Summer.

In a town where “slasher villain” is a job description and their murders are caught on tape and viewed as entertainment, Abbie feels that she’s ready to enter into her father’s deadly profession. Her dad, Roger Bladecut, has his doubts about Abbie, but he agrees to let her slice and dice the local teens he’d planned to slaughter himself. But stalking teens opens a whole new world to Abbie, a world where friends her own age might be more important to her than her father’s legacy. Bloody Axe Wound is set in a world that is odd and inexplicable a lot of the time, but this gory mashup of a slasher and a coming-of-age teen dramedy works well thanks to its heart.

Read our extended review of Bloody Axe Wound.

A woman is granted power by a spirit of the sea so that she may exact revenge on the men responsible for another woman’s brutal murder. The Rage, Blood from the Sea is a revenge movie that feels like it’s paying homage to 1970s-era exploitation movies. Some of the CGI is dodgy, but the story is straightforward and satisfying, and the torture/revenge scenarios are well developed.

Read our full review of The Rage, Blood from the Sea.

Though it isn’t as funny as, say, Evil Dead 2 (1987), Death Whisperer 2 feels like it owes a lot to that movie. From the shotgun-wielding hero wearing a blue shirt, to the people being possessed in ways similar to Deadites, and even to the contrasting darkness/lightness of the movie’s tone, Death Whisperer 2 definitely feels inspired by Sam Raimi’s iconic franchise. That’s a good thing, because it makes the movie feel vaguely familiar while still covering new ground through its Thai-urban-legend lens. At the end of the day, it’s simply a very fun supernatural horror movie.

In Push, a pregnant realtor attempting to show and sell an isolated house is stalked by a mysterious man. The dark atmosphere and slowly building tension are the best parts of this movie. The ending stumbles a bit, but the creeping dread of the cat-and-mouse portion of the movie is extremely effective.

Read our review of Push.

Somnium is a dramatic psychological thriller with a few sci-fi and horror twists. The sleep center where aspiring actress Gemma works is doing experiments to plant ideas of success into people’s minds. The basic theory is, if they can dream it, they can achieve it. Gemma’s personal struggles with self-confidence threaten to overtake her, and as she learns more about Somnium’s darker side, she starts having inexplicable and terrifying experiences. The resolution to the story feels a little unearned, but the drama leading up to it is very well done.

Read our review of Somnium.

Sometimes you just want to watch a good and gory slasher movie (well, I do). Popeye the Slayer Man is exactly that. It’s cheesy and funny, but it doesn’t tread into parody or mockery of the slasher subgenre. Instead, it’s a well-made low-budget slasher that uses just enough of Popeye’s lore to make the inclusion of the public-domain character actually worthwhile (which many recent public-domain-inspired movies fail to do). Popeye the Slayer Man is the best of the current wave of public domain horror that’s been going on for the last few years.

The biggest compliment I can give Harvest Brood is that it feels like a homemade, shot-on-VHS movie straight out of the late 1990s. If that’s your genre, then you’re probably going to enjoy this. The movie is presented as part pseudo-documentary, part no-budget narrative film, and the story focuses on the days leading up to Halloween in a small Alabama town in 2006. Strange murders are occurring, and we watch as the lore surrounding “four mutant beings” is examined before our characters come face to face with them.

Read our full review of Harvest Brood.

New Fears Eve is a gloriously fun slasher comedy with a retro appeal. It’s loaded with many, many kills featuring old-school practical effects, the jokes range from eye-rolling chuckles to sudden guffaws, and there’s even enough character development and mystery to make this feel like the beginning of a series (fingers crossed). The movie is about a masked killer who invades an office New Year’s Eve party, and the three friends/co-workers who try to find an escape from all the bloodshed.

Desendent is, first and foremost, a psychological thriller and drama. It’s about a man who sees a mysterious light in the sky, is blinded by a light, and then wakes up with memories of being abducted by aliens. His personality begins to change as he deals with the lingering effects of his experience, and as he continues to have unsettling visions. There’s a kind of dream logic running through Descendent which could put some viewers off, but that approach to the story is also the film’s biggest strength.

Read our brief review of Desendent.

The construction of a resort wakes up ancient sharks with the ability to swim through water pipes, resulting in a series of deadly shark attacks popping up in the public baths spread throughout the city of Atsumi. Hot Spring Shark Attack is supremely silly and utterly enjoyable. It has a pleasant mixture of goofy CGI and practical effects, and the story is dumb. In a good way.

Read our extended review of Hot Spring Shark Attack.

Blood Star is a nicely paced thriller about a woman driving through the desert who is stalked by a murderous small-town sheriff. The movie begins with a tense and somewhat familiar scenario, but the stakes are raised dramatically thanks to a few well-timed, brutal moments.

Read our brief review of Blood Star.

Clown in a Cornfield is a fun and predictable slasher. Set in the small town of Kettle Springs, teens are stalked and slaughtered by someone wearing a costume made in the image of the town’s beloved mascot, Frendo the Clown. The how’s and why’s of the killing spree are fine, but the kill scenes are the real highlights of the movie.

Read our brief review of Clown in a Cornfield.

A drag show in Brooklyn is cut short when the dead rise. Queens of the Dead starts off well. It’s funny and filled with interesting characters, and the setup is engaging. As the movie goes on it starts to lose some of its charm as the focus of the story begins to wear a bit thin. Even so, Queens of the Dead is a pleasantly fun zombie comedy.

Read our brief review of Queens of the Dead.

Ash feels like it’s setting viewers up for something deep and meaningful, but it ends up being a B-movie masquerading as high art. And that’s exactly why it works so well. The movie looks good, the atmosphere is dark and foreboding, and the structure of the narrative borders on pretentiousness. But then the reveal of the story’s central mystery happens, and it turns into a familiar sci-fi/horror plot. It’s a fun misdirection if you can get into it.

Read our review of Ash.

What Lives Here is a micro-budget slasher that gets back to the basics of the genre. A junk removal crew takes a job at a house with a history of murder, and they are killed one by one. It’s a basic story presented in a straightforward way with a bunch of bloody kill scenes. It’s awesome.

Read our brief review of What Lives Here.

Nicky and his friends travel to his late uncle’s house, and they are confronted by fear, paranoia, and death Though the premise sounds like a slasher movie, The Only Ones isn’t quite a slasher in the traditional sense. No spoilers here, but the twist on the genre makes it feel more like Bodies Bodies Bodies rather than a simple “stalk and slash” film. It works very well, making The Only Ones a wonderful micro-budget surprise.

Read our full review of The Only Ones.

Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare is the best movie in the Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey shared universe. Easily. It’s about Wendy Darling’s search for her brother Michael after he is kidnapped by a twisted killer named Peter Pan. The film is creepy, unsettling, and bloody. The story might be a bit shallow, but from an aesthetic point of view it’s well made.

Read our review of Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare.

Brynne and Ezra are having relationship issues, so they decide to go to a massage parlor to see if a “happy ending” will help their intimacy issues. The trouble is, they’ve chosen a parlor where a stalker has fixated on one of the workers. Happy Ending is more of a suspense thriller than a horror movie, with character-building drama being a main focus for the first half of the movie. There is some deadly danger by the end though, along with some satisfyingly surprising moments along the way.

Read our review of Happy Ending.

Wolf Man is good. After Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man (2020), many people were probably expecting Wolf Man to be great. But it’s good. The most interesting aspect of Wolf Man is how it treats becoming a werewolf like a disease rather than a curse like in The Wolf Man from 1941. Other movies since that Universal classic have treated werewolves like an infection, but few focus on the werewolf’s deteriorating mental and physical state as deeply as Wolf Man. The best moments in the movie are when the audience is shown what a husband and father sees and hears as the wolf takes over his body. As for everything else in the movie, it’s a fine genre effort.

The basic premise of The Matriarch is disturbing all on its own. It’s about a mother who chases her 13-year-old daughter around their house with the intention of murdering her. It’s as dark and upsetting as it sounds, though some of the characters’ decisions take some considerable suspension of disbelief to get past.

Read our brief review of The Matriarch.

The Redemption of Sin mixes a missing-person thriller with a supernatural horror movie, and it does so quite well. The story follows Ning, a single mother whose troubled past led her to make a fateful decision. Ning loses her mother and daughter in an accident, but her daughter’s body is never found. Convinced the girl is still alive, Ning ceaselessly searches for her daughter, even enlisting the aid of a podcaster with unclear motivations, and a shaman who suggests that Ning’s little girl can’t come home until Ning atones for her past sins. The ending of The Redemption of Sin is a bit of a stretch, but the rest of the movie is solidly creepy and compelling.

A woman named Ana (Vero Maynez) suspects that something is wrong when she can’t get a hold of her cousin when she travels to visit her. Eventually arriving at her cousin’s house, her fears are confirmed. Invader is a smartly plotted movie that builds suspense very well. The ending goes on a little too long, but everything up until the final few minutes is tense and unnerving.

In Brute 1976, the crew of a photo shoot is stalked by a “family” of masked maniacs in the desert. The movie is an homage to movies like The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and it does well recreating the feeling of the 1970s era of horror through a modern lens.

Read our review of Brute 1976.

Restless captures the plight of having to endure noisy neighbors fabulously. When the other half of the duplex Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal) lives in becomes occupied by people with a love for loud music late at night, she tries to be nice. Nicky asks politely for them to keep it down, but after days of increasingly aggressive refusals, the sleepless nights take their toll on her. Though the movie foreshadows something much darker than what actually happens in the end, Restless is still a nicely-made thriller with good suspense.

Night of the Reaper follows Deena, a young woman who feels like somebody is stalking her while she babysits the sheriff’s son. Meanwhile, the town sheriff tracks down clues that could lead to a killer. How those two stories converge isn’t as satisfying as you might expect or hope, but there is some good suspense throughout the movie.

Read our review of Night of the Reaper.

Fear Street: Prom Queen delivers a fun, straightforward slasher movie with a good amount of (CGI) gore. It’s a movie that is derivative of other movies in its genre, but that’s okay. The movie is entertaining in a light and bloody way, and the characters are likable. If you’re like me and that’s all you need to enjoy a slasher movie, then Prom Queen is worth a look.

A trip to a villa isolated in the wilderness becomes a meta-horror adventure in this entertaining horror comedy. This movie can’t really be talked about without spoilers, so all that can be said is that if you’re a fan of horror comedies that are upfront about commenting on and skewering horror tropes, then you should give The Draft a watch.

Read our non-spoiler review of The Draft.

Ziam is an action-horror film about a guy who uses his Muay Thai skills to fight his way through a zombie-filled hospital to rescue his girlfriend. Simple, straightforward, and enjoyable. Ziam has cool-looking zombies and good action. It lacks drama up until the very end, but it’s still a fun watch if you like action-heavy zombie movies.

Read our review of Ziam.

As a possession/exorcism movie, Shadow of God feels pretty generic for the first two-thirds of its run time. Then something special happens, and it turns into what feels like an homage to some of the more ridiculous late ’90s religious horror movies like Stigmata or The Prophecy. The action picks up considerably, some wonderfully cheesy CGI is on display, and the resolution of the story is satisfyingly silly. Without that ending, Shadow of God would have ranked a lot lower in this list.

This is a strange one. The movie begins with a birthday celebration at a cabin in the woods. The birthday boy, Adam (Ben Baur), sees a zombie standing outside of the cabin, but, naturally, nobody believes him. Then things get weird, and the less you know about the plot progression, the better. The only thing I’ll say is that There’s a Zombie Outside is a meta art film about the blurred lines that separate an artist from their art. How the movie makes its point is a strange and wonderful journey.

Set in France, Hood Witch is the story of a modern-day witch hunt. Nour is a mother who provides for her son by smuggling exotic and illegal goods into the country and selling them to local occult practitioners. She also connects people in need with spiritual healers. One of those connections ends in death, and Nour is blamed for it. She is forced to go on the run as an angry mob tries to hunt her down and make her pay for what they believe she has done. The title Hood Witch might sound like supernatural horror, but it’s actually a tense thriller that is grounded in real-life fears including mob mentality and religious fanaticism.

Paola tries out online dating, but her first date ends up with her being imprisoned in a maze of rooms with a very affectionate monster. There are a few big gross-out moments in Match, but that’s not the only reason why it’s worth watching. The suspense is good and the main characters are all written and performed well. There’s heart in this story, even though the movie does work hard to break the heart of the viewer.

Read our full review of Match.

Creep Box is kind of like a seance movie, but utilizing science fiction instead of the supernatural. A tech company creates a device that basically copies a deceased person’s brain onto a drive used in a box-shaped computer. It results in a recreation of the person’s mind which can be interacted with through conversation. The process isn’t perfect though. Different sides of the person’s personality come through all at once, and the creator of the box, Dr. Caul, uses keywords to keep the personality from “corrupting” during conversation. Creep Box is a slow burn, and the pace might be too lethargic for some viewers. The film is also largely about grief, and there isn’t much respite from the dark themes at any point throughout the film. It is, however, very well made, and the themes are interesting.

Read our full review of Creep Box.

Rounding is a medical drama first, but its dark tone and the intense mental struggles of its main character slowly transform it into a psychological thriller. Dr. Hayman goes through a traumatic experience in the opening of the film. Afterward, he transfers to a smaller hospital in a rural area for a fresh start, but he can’t outrun the darkness in his mind. When he becomes obsessed with figuring out the true cause of a young woman’s chronic illness, his fears begin to overwhelm him.

Erotic video makers Jasper and Harriet receive an unusual request from a client that involves a strange audio recording. After fulfilling the request, Jasper starts down a rabbit hole of paranoia when sees himself and Harriet doing things on video that neither of them remember doing while filming. This arthouse thriller gets dark with its themes, though maybe not dark enough to make the kind of impact that it seems to be building towards.

Read our brief review of Custom.

In Borderline, Samara Weaving plays Sofia, a ridiculously popular pop-star in the 1990s. Sofia has a stalker by the name of Paul (Ray Nicholson) who thinks he and Sofia are to be married. Paul breaks out of the facility he was being held in, and he breaks into Sofia’s house along with two of his friends who support him in his quest for marital bliss. The movie is tonally bizarre, so it’s not always clear if we’re meant to laugh or cringe at what’s happening at any given moment. Which means, the movie isn’t very funny, even for a dark comedy. Still, the performances from most of the cast are good, with Alba Baptista stealing every scene she’s in as a supporting character who is wildly unpredictable.

Katie is a freelance video editor who is struggling to find decent work. With bills stacking up, she decides to take an editing job from an anonymous source. When she starts going through the footage, she is disturbed. Has she been hired to edit a horror movie, or is she piecing together a snuff film? Freelance isn’t really as unsettling as its premise suggests. Instead, it is an interesting character study of someone who is in a horrible situation. The suspense is solid, and the psychological nature of the story is well done.

Read our full review of Freelance.

Getting ghosted by someone is awful. For Alex, who is ghosted after spending the night with Kyle who helps her feel something good for once in her mundane life, it’s something she can’t let go of. Alex searches for Kyle, and when she finds him, he acts like he doesn’t remember her. What’s going on might be more obvious than you think. The premise of The Dead Thing is intriguing, and the dreamlike quality of Alex and Kyle’s relationship is great, but some odd filmmaking decisions towards the end might leave some viewers wanting more.

Read our full review of The Dead Thing.

Set during World War II, Monster Island is about two escaped prisoners from opposite sides of the war stranded together on an island with a humanoid fish monster. Storytelling choices limit the character drama, but the movie is a lot of fun as a straightforward monster movie.

Read our review of Monster Island.

The setup in The Woman in the Yard is well done. The rift between Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) and her two children is portrayed in an interesting way that makes everyone sympathetic. The creepiness of the woman in the yard is also successful in the first parts of the film. But as the movie delves more into its psychological aspects towards the end, it all becomes a bit messy. The ending is nicely ambiguous though.

When environmental activists stay inside a home store overnight to vandalize the place, they become prey for a security guard who has a passion for hunting. The villain is so shallow to almost be a caricature, but the “human hunting humans” aspect of the story is good once it gets going.

Emily travels to Las Cruces, New Mexico to spend Thanksgiving with her estranged mother, but when her mother disappears, the trip turns into a hunt for dark truths. In Our Blood is an entertaining found-footage thriller, though some of the revelations in the final act might put off viewers looking for heavier drama.

Read our brief review of In Our Blood.

Hell of a Summer is an amusing slasher comedy, but it never has a moment where it rises above being just amusing. The story is a riff on the campground slasher formula, and it’s fine. Perfectly fine. And if you can get on the same wavelength as the comedy, it’s even better.

Horror Westerns can be tough to do on low budgets, but Resurrection Road pulls it off admirably. One of the movie’s best qualities is that, despite its budget, it uses practical effects whenever possible, including actual (blank) gunfire and squibs for bullet impacts! That’s a rarity these days. The story is also good for an exploitation-style movie. During the American Civil War, a squadron of six Black Union soldiers are sent to destroy a fort, but they find a supernatural evil when they arrive at their destination. Even though there is some wonky CGI towards the end of the movie, the overall experience is a lot of fun (and surprisingly brutal).

Haunted House of Pancakes is a silly horror comedy about a cursed waffle iron that churns out possessed food which attacks diners and staff in a small restaurant. It takes a while for the action to really get going, but the movie is goofy fun throughout.

Read our review of Haunted House of Pancakes.

The Surrender effectively conveys a spooky atmosphere, but the story sometimes dips into unsubtle melodrama. The story is about a woman who risks everything to bring her husband back from the dead, and her daughter who goes along with her planned ritual. The strained relationship between the mother and daughter is played in the most obvious of ways, which kind of undercuts some of the nuanced grief that the movie seems to want to express. Still, the spooky stuff is pretty good.

Daydreamers has lots of style, but it also has a lot going on in the story. Maybe too much. The heart of the story is with Nhat and Ha, a vampire and a human who (eventually) fall in love. Nhat gets in trouble because he’s not supposed to reveal that he is a vampire to humans, and his brother Marco repeatedly tries to save Nhat from being killed by their fellow vampires. There’s a lot more to the story involving lots of characters, a feud between vampire factions, Marco’s girlfriend, everyone’s backstory, and more, which doesn’t leave much time for building emotional depth. But, for a stylish vampire movie, Daydreamers is pretty good.

The Man in the White Van is a decent serial-killer thriller. Set in the 1970s, it’s about a teenage girl, Annie (Madison Wolfe), who is stalked by a man in a van. The problem is, Annie is known for telling tall tales, so nobody believes her when she talks about seeing the same van everywhere she goes. The movie might be too reliant on the tropes of the genre, and the continued disbelief of Annie’s story can get tiresome, but the film does deliver some nice thrills as the stalker (who is shown to be a violent killer) closes in on his target.

Read our full review of The Man in the White Van.

A virus has turned most of the world’s population into zombie-like cannibals. Surviving outside of a nearby major settlement is Rory, a woman with a dark past. She and her companion are visited by a man on the run, which forces Rory to make a life-altering (and possibly life-ending) decision. Forgive Us All is rooted heavily in drama, which makes it unfortunate that the drama isn’t as deep as it could be. The movie is pretty good overall, even though the drama, action, and horror all feel somewhat muted.

Read our full review of Forgive Us All.

A couple, Rohan and Josh, plan a family gathering with their parents at a beautiful rented house. Rohan plans to propose to Josh during the trip, but the house is haunted, and an evil presence looking for a body to possess quickly makes itself known. The Parenting is a horror-comedy with a huge emphasis on goofy humor. It’s unlikely you’ll find many people who laugh at everything the movie has to offer, but there’s enough fun to be had to make it a mildly amusing time for most fans of silliness.

A group of friends participate in a tarot card reading. Afterwards, they each die in ways predicted by the cards they are dealt. Sound familiar? Yeah, Tarot Curse is similar to Tarot (2024) in some ways, but Tarot Curse is better. The characters, though mostly thinly developed, are fun to watch, and the dedication the filmmakers have to practical gore effects adds to the charm. Some of the deaths also happen in a way reminiscent of the Final Destination franchise, which is great. From a story perspective, Tarot Curse is lacking. A lot. But from a pure genre standpoint, Tarot Curse is cheesy fun.

Read our full review of Tarot Curse.

For a mainstream slasher movie, Heart Eyes is good. The plot and the humor might be lacking, but the kills are gory and the love story is charming. It’s a crowd-pleaser. The story is set on Valentine’s Day, and it follows Ally as she has the worst day. Ally’s latest marketing campaign is a bust at work, and romance expert Jay Simmonds is brought in to help her think of something new. While they’re out on a “work dinner,” they are mistaken for a couple by the Heart Eyes killer, a masked murderer who slaughters couples on Valentine’s Day. Shenanigans ensue, and Ally and Jay fight for their lives as people around them die in horrible ways.

Read our full review of Heart Eyes.

What is your favorite part of a whodunit slasher? Is it trying to find out who the killer is? If so, then Bone Face might be for you. The first few minutes of Bone Face show us a typical slasher movie. A bunch of young people gather for a party, a masked killer sneaks up on them, and blood flies. The majority of the movie, however, takes place in a nearby diner where a sheriff and his deputy have determined that the Bone Face killer is hiding in plain sight. The officers question everyone, slowly working their way closer to the killer’s identity. Even though some of the late-story twists feel unnecessary, the murder mystery side of Bone Face is quite good.

Read our full review of Bone Face.

Pretty Boy is about half good. In the first forty minutes, it’s a solidly-made slasher movie with some fun kills, many of which appear to be homages to other notable kills in slashers and related horror movies. Practical gore effects are used, the killer is quiet and menacing, and the victims are a good mixture of sympathetic and annoying. But then, the final fifty minutes slow down considerably to deal with the backstories of the killer and his hostage. The final segments are like a completely different movie, and it probably should have been split off and made as one.

Pro-wrestling and horror go together surprisingly well. Or maybe it’s not so surprising. Both contain high drama, violence, and, occasionally, a lot of blood. Dark Match contains all of those enticing elements as well. The story grapples with coherence a lot of the time, but the basic idea is good. A group of small-time indie wrestlers are invited to put on a show in a community isolated far away from a bigger city. The performers have a bad feeling about the people they’ve agreed to entertain, and, sure enough, they find themselves having to wrestle to the death in a series of brutal matches. There’s a lot more to the convoluted story, but the best parts all involve action, violence, and blood.

Read our full review of Dark Match.

Max agrees to work as the superintendent at the Green Meadows retirement home to avoid jail time for vandalism. During his stay, Max discovers a disturbing conspiracy involving the home’s elderly residents and the off-limits fourth floor of the building. The Home is an odd movie that features a final act which will either make or break the film for most viewers.

Read our review of The Home.

Despite a goofy title (which actually makes sense after you watch the movie), I Heart Willie is a surprisingly solid micro-budget slasher. The story begins with a group of friends intent on creating a viral video about the legend of Willie the ghostly mouse-boy. But Willie isn’t a ghost, and he’s not a boy anymore. He’s a vicious killer who is also into torture. The move is gross, cheap, and kind of dumb, but it’s also fun.

Read our review of I Heart Willie.

Neeta’s coworker Rachel shows up at her house after being missing for days. Rachel has a story to tell, and as she gets further into it Neeta begins having spooky experiences of her own. It all leads to a revelation that is interesting yet surprisingly simple. Maybe too simple for a feature-length film.

Read our brief review of We’re Not Safe Here.

Nazi-zombie movies aren’t new, and it’s difficult to put a fresh spin on the subgenre. So, Zombies of the Third Reich doesn’t really try to be new or fresh. Instead, it leans into the expected tropes and delivers a nicely entertaining bit of B-grade fun. By the way, the story is about a squadron of six Allied soldiers who are sent to rescue a spy stationed at a Nazi bunker where a super-soldier experiment has taken place. The experiment, naturally, turned everyone into zombies.

Read our review of Zombies of the Third Reich.

Room Six looks great, and the lead actors are all wonderful. Unfortunately, parts of the story feel a little too contrived to be a convincingly surprising thriller. Maxx is working the overnight shift alone at a quiet motel. She gets a bad feeling about a guest and his brother, so she decides to investigate. What she finds are dysfunction and danger. The story is violent and bleak, and it has good momentum for most of its run time. Sadly, the payoff doesn’t quite match the buildup. Though, the final moments are nicely done.

Pins and Needles is a cat-and-mouse thriller about a grad student who needs to make her way through the house of a couple of killers to find her insulin. The setup might feel a bit contrived, and the villains are way too far over the top with their performances, but the thriller aspect of the movie is fun to watch.

Read our review of Pins and Needles.

Marshmallow begins as a story about an introverted boy who is sent to summer camp. While dealing with the camp’s bully, he’s also subjected to a spooky campfire story that feels real to him. There are major twists in Marshmallow that prevent any more plot descriptions, but the twists, and the obvious expectations of twists, might derail some viewers’ enjoyment.

Death of a Unicorn could have been a lot better, but it sort of just gets by with minimum effort in terms of story. It’s about Elliot (Paul Rudd) who is traveling with his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) when he hits a unicorn with his car. The creature isn’t dead though, and its unicorn parents come looking for it at Elliot’s destination, the palatial home of a family who became rich through pharmaceuticals. There’s a good amount of fun violence and gore, but the story and characters are fairly flat all the way through. The story isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just filled with stock characters and isn’t terribly exciting. If you’re like me, you’ll find your interest waning in-between the fun bouts of bloodshed.

Get Away feels very familiar in a lot of ways. That’s likely the intention though, since the movie plays with the audience’s expectations as a method of misdirection. Without going too deep into spoilers, the setup of the movie involves a family of four who travel to an isolated Swedish island for a vacation. A special cultural event is about to be held on the island, and the local population is rather upset to have four interlopers in their midst. They’re so upset that they might take drastic action to get rid of their unwanted guests. Get Away is fun enough thanks to its lead actors, but it’s more amusing than funny, and the final act gets too hammy (though there are still some fun moments to be had).

Read our extended review of Get Away.

Cosplayers battle the undead in ZombieCON Vol. 1. The premise involves an idle wish about turning the jerks of the world into zombies so they can be killed. The wish actually comes true, forcing a group of friends to eventually confront their cosplaying nemeses who have become zombies. ZombieCON Vol. 1 ends up being a fun zombie comedy with heart.

Read our review of ZombieCON Vol. 1.

In Semarang (on the island of Java in Indonesia), children are told to stay inside after dark unless they want Sumala to come and take them away. This is good advice, because the opening scene of Sumala shows us the brutal and gory result of what happens if kids ignore their parents. The rest of the movie is told as a flashback, and it shows us the origin story of Sumala, from before her birth up until the time she became a boogeyman. The story is one of abuse, revenge, and witchcraft, and it is exceedingly bloody at times. It isn’t always as effectively dramatic as it wants to be, but it’s still entertaining for its more visceral side.

Read our full review of Sumala.

Until Dawn is a good horror movie if all you want is about 100 minutes of fun death scenes. The death scenes are pretty good. If you want a story with high stakes, this isn’t it. Until Dawn uses a time loop narrative to undermine any true sense of danger, replacing that with an unnecessarily complex backstory that mostly derails the main character’s originally stated goal (which is to find her sister). It’s a shallow adaptation that also completely misses the point of its source material, but that might not bother everyone else as much as it bugs me. But the movie looks good visually, and the characters are fun to watch, so that might be enough.

Read our full review of Until Dawn.

For a movie about a cannibal who dreams of being a stand-up comedian, I was hoping for something more hilarious. As it is, Cannibal Comedian is cute and funny, but it never quite gets as zany and outlandish as it could. The story is good though. A cannibal named Charlie kidnaps a woman, but he starts to fall for her. At the same time, he decides to take a chance and perform at a local open-mic at a comedy club. When things go wrong, Charlie deals with the situation in the only way he knows how.

This Filipino found-footage movie doesn’t break any new ground in the “ghost hunters finding more than they bargained for” genre of horror, but it’s enjoyable regardless. The real fun all happens towards the end, so if you can make it through some rough setup and contrived plotting in the early parts of the movie, there’s a good reward waiting for you.

Read our review of Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital.

Screamboat is one of the more entertaining Steamboat Willie horror flicks. It’s set on the Staten Island Ferry where a genetically altered mouse murders a bunch of people. There’s not much more to the story than that, but it works well enough for a silly slasher movie where the biggest draw is watching a tiny mouse kill people in gory ways.

Read our review of Screamboat.

Three out of five of the story segments in V/H/S/Halloween worked well for me. I might be in the minority here, but I actively disliked the “Fun Size” story. The opening segment, “Coochie Choochie Coo” was just okay, though it felt like it was trying too hard to create a new memorable monster like we’ve seen in previous V/H/S movies. The other stories I enjoyed quite a lot, and they make this a strong entry in the overall franchise.

Read our full review of V/H/S/Halloween.

As the death of her father approaches, Willow becomes stuck inside her own mind. She’ll have to confront her own fears to find a way out of her self-imposed dream prison. The Dreadful Place utilizes dream logic well, crafting a good amount of depth within the story. The filmmaking needed more finesse to completely convey the emotions of the story, but it’s a very good micro-budget effort.

Read our brief review of The Dreadful Place.

Visually interesting and heavy on drama, The A-Frame raises many interesting questions. The story follows a cancer patient, Donna, who agrees to help a scientist, Sam, test an experimental theory. Sam claims that his A-Frame device can cure cancer by sending a person’s molecules on a round-trip to another dimension, and when the molecules return the cancer will be gone. The film struggles balancing plot and meaningful character moments, but there is still enough intrigue for fans of sci-fi thrillers with a splash of horror.

Read our full review of The A-Frame.

The central metaphor in The Killgrin is as obvious as the frown on your face. This is a movie about grief and trauma, and this is explained to the viewer in no uncertain terms. There is a monster in the movie, and it looks pretty awesome when we finally get a good look at it, but the metaphor overshadows the horror of the situation. It’s a Smile-esque movie about an entity that attaches itself to people and feeds on their misery. The trouble is, the entity always feels like grief, and almost never like a monster. The story is also a bit too slow, but there are some really solid performances scattered throughout the movie. So, a little good, and a little not-as-good in The Killgrin.

What Happened to Dorothy Bell uses a found-footage aesthetic well, despite not being 100% found footage all the way to the end. The story is presented as videos documenting Ozzie Gray’s attempts to contact the spirit of her deceased grandmother Dorothy Bell. It has a nicely spooky atmosphere, and the story is mostly effective despite a few overly clichéd detours.

Read our full review of What Happened to Dorothy Bell.

Are You There features a wonderfully atmospheric hook. The movie is about a young woman, Rosa, who uses a candle to speak to her dead grandmother. Rosa asks “yes” or “no” questions, and the spirit on the other side bends the candle’s flame towards the correct answer hanging from the candlestick. The resolution of Are You There feels very similar to many other movies that blend the psychological with the supernatural, but the overall story is good.

Read our full review of Are You There?

There’s a lot going on in Blood in Them Hills, but the filmmakers managed to hold it all together to make something fun. The tale, set in the Old West, begins with a bank robbery gone wrong and a gang leader tossed out by his own men. The gang leader is caught by a doctor who wants to take him back into town to face justice, and they are joined by a woman caring for a baby after a monster killed the child’s family. The monster is now on their trail, as are the bank robber’s former gang, and a group of cannibals. Blood in Them Hills is low-budget survival horror in a western setting, and it works thanks to interesting characters and a pace that never gives viewers time to think too hard about how over-the-top the plot is.

Killer Rental is a slowly-paced slasher in a found footage format. The main part of the story shows us six friends staying at a rental house where secret cameras have been installed everywhere. We watch as they get into conflicts with each other, until eventually a killer starts picking them off. It’s pretty fun for fans of micro-budget horror.

Read our brief review of Killer Rental.

Set in a world where young people are blamed for a pandemic that mostly affects adults, a group of teens are kidnapped by a woman with a dark secret. The plot for Please Don’t Feed the Children is fine. It makes enough sense to understand what’s going on. The movie just feels a bit flat overall. Not bad, just flat and far less emotional than it probably should be.

Read a brief review of Please Don’t Feed the Children.

Wind and Bone is a good mixture of low-budget gore, monster movies, and psychological-horror spookiness. Friends pick up a hitchhiker, Sierra (Julie Kashmanian), and invite her to go with them for a trip to a cabin in the woods. Sierra is quietly dealing with some tough issues, and when bad things start happening, she is at the top of some people’s suspect list. But there is also something in the woods that appears to be messing with people’s minds.

Deadly Display is a slow-burn thriller that focuses on the interactions between two people in a closed night club. Tess is the daughter of the night club’s owner, and she’s let Edward inside under the belief that he’s interested in buying the property. As their conversation twists and turns, Edward’s true intentions are revealed. It’s a well written and well acted movie that maintains its interest and suspense throughout, even though one of its bigger moments is handled oddly.

Read a brief review of Deadly Display.

A group of influencers isolate themselves on an island resort that has a ghost story attached to it. Supposedly, a witch drowned herself in the lake surrounding the island, and her spirit still haunts the water. It turns out the danger is real at this resort. Feed has a good setup and some scary moments early on, but it turns into a movie that tries to subvert so many expectations that it becomes predictable (and much less interesting) in the end.

There’s a lot going on in Scarecrow. Probably too much, really. But the basic premise of the story involving a cursed painting and a ghostly scarecrow is a lot of fun. The CGI is a bit cheesy, but the monstrous kills are entertaining, and sometimes that’s enough.

Read a brief review of Scarecrow.

The idea of following the story of Abraham Van Helsing and Mina as they raise a family years after the events of Dracula is interesting, but the execution is a bit slow and dry. By the time you get to the drama of seeing Van Helsing tell his sons about his history with vampires, you might have already given up on the story. The movie looks great visually though.

Read a brief review of Abraham’s Boys.

Sweet Meats is a horror-musical-comedy with a Troma-fied charm. It’s about Bobby Sweet, a worker at a fast food restaurant who dreams of becoming a country music star. He finds success as both a musician and restaurateur, but he has a hard time digesting the secret ingredient behind that success. The story in Sweet Meats is just okay, but the music and comedy are good fun.

Read a brief review of Sweet Meats.

A woman’s search for her missing brother leads her into a struggle for survival in the good yet confounding folk-horror mystery film, The Banished. The first half of the movie is told in an intriguingly non-linear way, but the straightforward second half leads to an ending that is too ambiguous to be satisfying.

Read a brief review of The Banished.

A couple’s awkward romance turns into something else entirely when they become trapped inside an apartment while a body-morphing virus begins spreading throughout their city. Visually, Else is fantastic. The body horror aspect is interesting conceptually and in its on-screen execution. The story, however, feels like it’s more interested in mood than emotion, which didn’t really land well for me.

Read a brief review of Else.

The patriarch of a wealthy family dies and splits his fortune evenly among his widow and children. But soon, a mysterious force begins killing the surviving family members one by one. Breed of Greed needed a bigger climax to make the story’s buildup completely worthwhile, but fans of “affluent horror” might want to check it out.

Read a brief review of Breed of Greed.

Nancy lives with her husband and son in the idealistic town of Holland, Michigan. She seems happy, but she starts to suspect that her husband Fred is cheating on her. With the help of Dave, a coworker and friend from the school where Nancy teaches, she starts to investigate Fred. What Nancy and Dave discover is much worse than they assumed. The slightly stylized visuals of Holland look great, and the mystery is intriguing when it’s still a mystery. But once the reveals start happening, this dark thriller loses its way. The finale is, unfortunately, kind of a letdown.

There’s a lot of potential in The Severed Sun. The camerawork is uniformly beautiful. The premise is set up to make strong metaphorical statements within the framework of folk horror. There are even a few brutally bloody moments. However, the staging is too still and stiff, which stifles a lot of the story’s emotion. Characters react in very subdued ways to very upsetting events. Everything feels cold in a way that doesn’t appear intentional. Also, many of the darker and more unsettling elements of the story pass by with little emphasis. The story is interesting, but the lack of emotional punch keeps viewers at a distance.

Blades in the Darkness is like multiple movie genres stacked on top of each other. It begins with a backstory of a kid who will eventually become a killer. Then it becomes a crime thriller about a guy who steals money from his friends to pay off a gangster. Then, finally, it becomes a slasher movie with an awesome killer stalking and slaying nearly everyone we’ve met so far. This last part, the slashing part, is the best. By far. The rest of the movie is rather tedious, but the killer makes Blades in the Darkness worth watching.

Read our full review of Blades in the Darkness.

With some stoner comedy, a lot of bickering, and a few zombies here and there, Zombie Strain is a pretty good zombie comedy. The movie is presented in a found footage style (which is really a pseudo-documentary), and it follows a group of coworkers trapped inside a low-budget sound stage when zombies begin attacking people outside. The humor is dumb, but it’s mostly fun, and a couple of standout characters—Zoe (Chandni Shah) and Charlie (William Mann)—make Zombie Strain as good as it is.

Read our full review of Zombie Strain.

A Game in the Woods is a decent take on the “humans hunting humans” genre. After the death of their grandfather, Ash and Ted visit his expansive land in Texas. Along with Ash’s girlfriend Sam, the three of them stumble into their grandfather’s dark secret: he rents out his land to a man who runs a “game” in which humans are prey to a bunch of owl-masked hunters. The first half of this micro-budget thriller is good, but it begins to stumble more and more as it nears the finish.

Read a brief review of A Game in the Woods.

In the Lost Lands isn’t a “good” movie, but if you’re looking for a dark-fantasy action film that feels like it came out of the late 1990s or early 2000s, then you might want to give it a chance. The CGI, acting, action, and story are all way over the top, and that’s the movie’s appeal.

A dysfunctional rock band on the verge of breaking up agrees to give their group one last shot at success. They agree to a director’s offer to shoot a music video for them for free, and they venture out to an abandoned mansion where the shoot will take place. Once there, they are weirded out by the eccentric director, and that’s before he enacts his violent plans for the video he wants to make. Director’s Cut is fun enough, but it never really feels like the setup for the story (especially concerning the background of the band which takes up a lot of screen time) is paid off in a satisfactory way.

When she is young, Farah’s biggest goal in life is to become a good wife. But after marrying Wahab, a politician running for local office, Farah finds married life a living hell. Wanita Ahli Neraka is an Indonesian horror movie that blends witchcraft and possession narratives with a story of domestic abuse. It is not a subtle movie in any way, and its messages about faith and human decency are clearly defined right from the start. There are some good scenes scattered throughout, but they may be too scattered for viewers who don’t have a lot of patience.

Dumb comedies can be hit or miss, but The Yorkie Werewolf is a dumb comedy that hits more than it misses. The setting is a small town where a feud between witches and mobsters has raged for years. Jenny (Isabella Jaimie) is the daughter of a witch, but she isn’t interested in the duties her heritage demands. Then one night during a ritual, Jenny is turned into a yorkie werewolf (well, a were-yorkie, really) when a mafia assassin kills her mother and botches the magic spell. Now Jenny, as a witch and a monster, teams up with a timid vampire to take out the city’s mob boss. It’s very stupid, but the dialogue is often clever, which makes the movie surprisingly funny for the right audience.

Read our extended review of The Yorkie Werewolf.

One year ago a string of murders rocked a high school, but the killer was never identified. Now, students in a forensics class at the same school are given an assignment to create a profile for the mysterious killer. As the profile is built, the killings begin again. The way this micro-budget whodunit slasher is presented feels a lot like Scream, just without as tight of a story. The pacing feels way off at times, and it ends up being entirely too long for the story it’s telling.

Read a brief review of Blood on the Bleachers.

Throughout Lizzie Lazarus, Lizzie’s sister Bethany and boyfriend Eli carry her dead body through a forest. They’re on their way to a spot in the woods where it is said that the dead can be brought back to life. The journey is long, so Bethany and Eli have a lot of time to talk. Which they do. Through their conversations we learn more about them and their motivations for bringing Lizzie back. So, naturally, Lizzie Lazarus is a very talky movie. The ideas are good, though the way the characters are written makes it sound like they are reciting flowery dialogue rather than speaking like normal people in a stressful situation. The emotions also never reach the level you might expect.

Read our full review of Lizzie Lazarus.

Kromoleo, set in a village on the Indonesian island of Java, is about a curse that rises up when a young woman returns to the village after being away for a decade. The woman, Zia (Safira Ratu Sofya), knows nothing about the curse. She only knows that the villagers hate her and her grandfather isn’t telling her something. As night arrives, so do numerous ghosts who kill people in very violent ways. Now Zia hopes to survive long enough to find out what her connection to the curse is, and how to stop it. The story of Kromoleo isn’t terribly original, but some of the visuals are good, and the supernatural violence is fun. Really, the death scenes are the best parts of the movie.

Read our extended review of Kromoleo.

Like its name suggests, Livestream is a screenlife movie that takes place entirely during a single livestream. We watch as a group of influencers arrive at a rental house and proceed to have the worst night of their lives. Some of the story ideas are good in the later stages of the movie, and there are a few genuine surprises. On the negative side, a few of the characters are annoying to the point of being unwatchable, and scenes earlier in the movie often feel repetitive and dragged out for time. That makes a sizable portion of Livestream frustrating to watch.

Shane and Abby make home-improvement videos for a living, and they buy a new house with the intention of documenting their work to fix it up. What they actually end up documenting is Shane’s increasingly bizarre behavior as he starts to sleepwalk every night. There’s a nicely handled haunting element in Sleep Stalker as well, but some of the dramatic moments and much of the story’s logic keep it from being a great movie. The ending is good though.

Read our full review of Sleep Stalker.

On March 31st, 2020, a group of friends gather in a video chat for a surprise party. One member of the group leaves to check her door, and she never returns. Then someone else disappears. Then another… Don’t Log Off feels a lot like Host at first, but it’s based on abductions and possible murders rather than the supernatural. The film’s finale is quite good, but the path to get there is filled with questionable decisions and lots of arguing.

Read our full review of Don’t Log Off.

Love Wants Us Dead is a good art film, but the plot might be too sparse for most movies. The story is about the growing relationship between a movie lover in a desert town and a mysterious woman who feels compelled to record the impermanence of the world with her video camera. There are also horror elements to the story, but again, it’s all understated to an extreme degree. It is, however, a visually impressive film.

Read a brief review of Love Wants Us Dead.

Presented as a pseudo-documentary, Strange Harvest tells the story of an occult serial known as Mr. Shiny. Through interviews, crime scene footage and photos, and found footage, a disturbing story of murder and a potential cosmic connection is unveiled. The movie is well-crafted, but personally, the documentary format felt like a barrier between me and the actual horror of the story.

Read a brief review of Strange Harvest.

Similar to the first movie, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 feels like you really have to be deep into the lore of the larger franchise to appreciate the story being told here. Speaking as someone who is not deeply embedded in the lore, this felt like the writing holding the plot together was loaded with too many contrivances and narrative shortcuts to feel suspenseful or even very interesting. A few of the jump scares were fun though.

Astrid is given a life-sized doll by a friend right before the friend ends her own life. In the following days the doll begins killing people near Astrid. Morgan: Killer Doll is a cheesy micro-budget slasher, but it’s also surprisingly entertaining. The ending isn’t great, but the goofiness of the premise is enough to sustain interest for most of the movie’s run time.

Read a brief review of Morgan: Killer Doll.

Die’ced: Reloaded is a Terrifier-esque slasher featuring a killer in a scarecrow costume stalking and killing on Halloween. It’s a fine homage to the Terrifier movies, but there’s not enough story for it to really set itself apart.

Read a brief review of Die’ced: Reloaded.

Amir suffers in secret from a condition that makes him feel like his left leg, from the knee down, shouldn’t be a part of his body. He makes plans to amputate his leg with the help of someone with a similar condition, but the secrets and lies he’s trying to maintain in his daily life cause his life and mind to crumble. Above the Knee is a dark psychological thriller with body-horror elements, and the execution of its central idea is just okay.

Read a brief review of Above the Knee.

The Ritual is a fairly basic possession and exorcism movie. It’s fine, but fans of the genre might get a little bored because it really doesn’t add anything we haven’t seen before.

Read our full review of The Ritual.

Mallory documents her boyfriend’s sleepwalking episodes on the advice of his doctor. His condition worsens as the nights progress, leading to an extremely dangerous situation. Dream Eater has some good moments, but the exposition is too heavy-handed, and the dialogue rarely feels natural.

Read a brief review of Dream Eater.

Friends on a Friendsgiving trip to an isolated “castle” play a game that summons the spirit of Lizzie Borden. Supernatural axe murders follow. The story is contrived in almost every way, but it’s fun enough for a cheap slasher flick.

Read a brief review of The Lizzie Borden Game.

Lilly lives alone, ten years after her only daughter died. She hasn’t been able to deal with her grief, and as we spend a night with her, we watch as her mental state rapidly deteriorates. Lilly Lives Alone feels like it’s holding something back most of the time (which it is). The ending is compelling, but the journey might feel too hollow for some viewers.

Read a brief review of Lilly Lives Alone.

Flesh of the Unforgiven is an ambitious supernatural and psychological horror movie. There is a lot of lore to digest, but the story begins with a married couple, Sienna and Jack, who are going through a rough patch. As Sienna’s outlook grows bleak, she is visited by an entity who makes her an offer. The visuals are often interesting, but the pace and story are uneven.

Read a brief review of Flesh of the Unforgiven.

Helloween contains big ideas, but the focus of the story might not be what you think based on the trailer. A serial killer named Carl Cane has inspired a legion of followers spread throughout the United Kingdom. Instead of a Purge-like story though, the focus of Helloween is on Cane’s attempt to ruin the life of the psychiatrist who has been attending to him while he’s been in prison. It’s an okay movie that could have easily been much better.

Read a brief review of Helloween.

The Twin utilizes the “fetch” of Irish folklore to craft a story about trauma. Nicholas feels responsible for his young son’s accidental death, and he begins seeing an evil double of himself while continuing to ignore his mental health. The metaphors are all very obvious, which makes the horror feel somewhat underwhelming.

Read a brief review of The Twin.

Sweeney Todd: Slice & Dice attempts to retell the classic story, but it speeds along at too quick of a pace. The result is a low-budget film adaptation that feels like it’s just an outline of a story rather than a fully fleshed-out experience.

Read a brief review of Sweeney Todd: Slice & Dice.

The Bombshell Butcher is about a journalist, Candace (Jackie Smith), in a small, boring town who is about to get fired if she can’t find a way to get more readers. After a night out with a friend ends in murder, Candace comes up with an idea that will help her keep her job and allow her to vent her frustrations on some of the town’s more unsavory elements. The movie does a good job with an obviously small budget, but the ending is way too abrupt. It just stops, without a satisfying resolution.

Mauler is enjoyable as a reverse-home-invasion slasher (where people break in, get trapped, and get killed). The teens who go into the house don’t have very deep characterizations, but they’re fun enough to watch. Plus, the religious fanatic killer is memorable. On the negative side, the story is way too convoluted. The reasons the teens have for going into the house change repeatedly, and they only barely make sense at the best of times. There’s also too much arguing, repeated exposition, and strange decisions being made over and over again. It all slows the movie down substantially.

The Haunted Apartment “Miss K” is a fairly standard curse movie. A woman encounters a couple of ghosts in an apartment, she’s cursed to die in four days, she goes on a quest to learn about the curse, and then there’s a surprise twist that helps everything fall into place. It’s not a bad movie, it just takes a long time to really get interesting.

House on Eden is a serviceable found footage movie that feels a lot like a lot of other found footage movies. It follows two influencers and their cameraman as they investigate a haunted house deep in the woods. It’s all very average, and it falls into illogical traps seen in many other average found footage horror movies.

Read a brief review of House on Eden.

The switch from found footage to traditional narrative didn’t really work. Hell House LLC: Lineage focuses on lore above all else, treating scares, character development, and pacing as less important parts of the presentation. It’s an okay movie, it’s just one that feels woefully underdeveloped as a singular experience.

Read our full review of Hell House LLC: Lineage.

Control Freak tries hard to convey a deep and powerful message through metaphors, but it ends up unraveling into a finale that is far too obvious and trite. The first two-thirds of the movie are promising. A self-help guru named Vy has unresolved family issues that are getting impossible for her to suppress. Her mental anguish takes the form of an itch on her head that she cannot stop scratching. It gets so bad that she is forced to confront her past which she had hoped to forget. Watching Vy’s journey is interesting to a point, but the final sequences miss that mark almost entirely.

Anna falls in with the wrong crowd after moving to Florida, and that leads to her being cursed by a local boogeyman that haunts dreams and snatches victims’ eyes. Eye for an Eye follows the “curse movie” formula rather closely, but the character work is left wanting.

Read a brief review of Eye for an Eye.

The Protos Experiment begins with a group of people trapped in a secret experiment where their memories are wiped and they are forced to participate in deadly tests. Once the mysteries of the experiment and the subjects’ identities are revealed (which is surprisingly early in the movie), a lot of the intrigue built into the scenario is lost.

Read a brief review of The Protos Experiment.

The premise of Gates of Flesh is interesting. Friends seek shelter in a church while outside an apocalypse is happening. People are being possessed by demons on a worldwide scale, and someone among the group in the church might also have something demonic inside them. The reveals of the movie are quite interesting, but the execution is somewhat bland. There’s a lot of talking about what to do and what’s going on, but there isn’t much action. Ever.

Cassidy’s father was killed by a shark when she was a child, and now, as an adult, she has a healthy fear of the ocean and the man-eating creatures it contains. Cassidy joins her husband on a treasure diving expedition as a way to confront her fears, but when their boat is taken by drug-running pirates, she must dive into shark-infested waters to collect their cargo and save her husband’s life. Into the Deep is fine. It’s not a great shark movie, but it’s far from the worst. The CGI shark attacks generally look awful, and the plot line of Cassidy overcoming her fears feels underdeveloped, but the overall movie is okay.

Read our full review of Into the Deep.

Tommy is a serial killer who is driven to kill every clown in the world. His stance on clown murder softens when he meets Eden, but he soon learns that Eden’s father is the king of the clowns, Giggles. Kill Giggles has some good ideas, but its lack of singular focus hurts what could be a really good story.

Read a brief review of Kill Giggles.

Waltz is about Alice, a woman who decides to do some online modeling after losing her job. This happens in the first half of the movie, and it’s surprisingly compelling. Then Alice is kidnapped by someone in a mask who confronts her with all of her misdeeds through long speeches and a bit of torture. This latter half of the movie isn’t so great.

Read a brief review of Waltz.

Against his better judgment, an ex-soldier with money problems agrees to take part in the robbery of a pawn shop. What he doesn’t know is that there are horrific experiments going on beneath the pawn shop, but he learns about them firsthand when the robbery is botched and he ends up trapped in the basement. Red Night at Skye’s needed a stronger focus on what’s important to the story, and a lot of the action isn’t conveyed well on screen, but there is fun to be had in how ridiculous the story gets.

Curse of the Seven Seas feels like a missed opportunity. The story is okay. It’s about a family who is afflicted with a curse which makes their family members sick before killing them in horrifically gory ways. As the members of his family drop one by one, young Ardi tries to discover who put the curse on them. Can he stop it before they’re all dead? There’s a decent reveal during the course of Ardi’s investigation, but one of the most interesting parts of his quest is skipped over almost entirely. This is to say, the movie has issues with what it chooses to focus on, which make it feel like a common Indonesian curse movie rather than a unique exploration of mythology.

Bystanders is rough around the edges, but it has an interesting premise. It’s a revenge movie about Abby, a woman who is assaulted and sent out into the woods to be hunted and killed. While on the run, Abby is helped by a nice-looking couple who happen to be driving by. They don’t take her to the police though. Instead, the couple, who are experts in various forms of murder, help Abby deal with her attackers through severe bodily harm. The presentation of the violence isn’t always as cathartic as intended, and it lacks in tension, but Bystanders will be of interest to fans of unique revenge movies.

Read our full review of Bystanders.

Mouseboat Massacre is, strangely, a mashup of The Ring, Steamboat Willie, and a generic slasher. The elements of The Ring come in the form of a VHS tape that a woman watches that somehow unleashes a mouse-masked killer. The generic slasher portion comes into play because the woman is being isolated to recover from a drug addiction, which is a fairly common trope. As you might expect, this isn’t a great movie. A few of the kills are good though, and the silliness of the story isn’t the worst.

The ending of The Ceremony is About to Begin is the best part of the movie. Sadly, the path to get there feels longer than it really is. The film is a pseudo-documentary about a filmmaker named Keith creating a doc about a cult whose beliefs involve Egyptian mythology. Keith attempts to interview Anubis, the leader of the cult, but his quirky nature can’t hide the fact that he is up to something. Something involving a ceremony. The pace of the movie drags after the first few minutes, but if you stick around to the end you might have a good time with it.

Read our full review of The Ceremony is About to Begin.

The Jolly Monkey was released on streaming shortly after The Monkey released in theaters, and it obviously feels like a low-budget cash-in on the bigger movie’s popularity. The Jolly Monkey is cheap and looks like it was shot quickly, but it’s not bad. The story is strangely complex (or, convoluted), but the idea of someone in a monkey costume killing people isn’t the worst plot for a fun/dumb slasher movie. There’s more to the story, including a strange supernatural element, but the slashing is the best part.

Read our full review of The Jolly Monkey.

Great White Waters is a rather standard low-budget shark movie combined with an equally standard crime thriller. It’s about a group of criminals who need to retrieve drugs from shark infested waters, and a woman who gets mixed up in the caper when she finds some of the drugs while diving. There’s a good twist that sparks some renewed interest partway through, but overall it’s rather average.

Read a brief review of Great White Waters.

Cutter’s Club is better as a historical curiosity than as a movie. It began filming in the early 2000s, but it was never finished, and the footage couldn’t be found. After Tony Todd’s death, director Charles Band finally tracked the footage down and presented the movie in an almost complete form. Sadly, the movie does feel like the never-shot footage was needed. It’s worth checking out for Tony Todd and for general Full Moon cheesiness, but otherwise Cutter’s Club isn’t great.

Read our full review of Cutter’s Club.

The premise of Fairest of Them All is simple. Take a bunch of recognizable fairy tale princesses, then pit them against each other in head-to-head deathmatches to see who survives. It sounds dumb, and it is dumb, but it has an indescribable no-budget charm that makes it unexpectedly entertaining. Not good, but entertaining.

Massacre at Femur Creek is a silly horror-comedy made in the style of a retro slasher. The story is pretty simple. A masked killer slashes his way through a forest where a groom-to-be is reluctantly having a sad bachelor party thrown for him by his friends. Not all of the comedy landed for me, but it’s not bad as a no-budget slasher.

The best parts of Never Blink are all at the end of the movie, and the trek to get there isn’t really worth it. The story involves a scientific study into an interdimensional pathway the human brain accesses whenever we blink. Even for made-up science fiction, there’s not enough explanation to make this scenario interesting. There is a cool monster, but we don’t see very much of it. The rest is a bit of a slog.

Read a brief review of Never Blink.

Though it’s marketed as a cannibal survival film, River of Blood feels more like a jungle adventure film with a strong emphasis on relationship drama. Then there’s some cannibal action thrown in later in the movie.

Read a brief review of River of Blood.

For a movie with scary-looking vampires and a story that seems to promise lots of action, Bogieville is surprisingly slow. The vampire action is extremely limited, and most of the actual violence is either obscured or done off camera. It’s also set in the American South, but the bizarre accents indicate that it definitely wasn’t made there (it was made in England). The movie is about a couple on the road who stop at a trailer park and end up getting themselves mixed up in a feud between vampire factions. It’s a movie that seems like the ambitions of the filmmakers were too big for what they could realistically accomplish.

Read our full review of Bogieville.

Four people arrive at a large house/small castle only to find that they’ve all been romantically misled by someone they met online. They’ve been gathered to play a board game called Simon Says. If they don’t play, they die. If they lose, they die. Well, it’s actually a lot more complicated than that, because a mysterious character named Simon has strange dimension-hopping powers. The character of Simon is fairly interesting, but the movie drags on way too slowly. The survival game takes a distant backseat to the players investigating everything around them, which knocks out a lot of the potential fun of the premise.

ROB1N is like two stores mashed together. As you’ve probably guessed, ROB1N is a companion robot who gets murderously possessive, somewhat similar to M3GAN. The specifics are quite different, but the influences are obvious. The other half of the story is a crime thriller with a twist (which I won’t spoil here). The two stories don’t really support each other well, and the twist muddles everything to leave the ending feeling thematically confused. Some of the kills are great though.

Many years ago, a killer was shot dead in a tavern in Dublin, Ireland. Today, a group of friends decide to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by staying in the very same tavern, despite being told that the killer’s ghost still haunts and kills within the building. You can probably guess what happens next. St. Patrick’s Day Massacre takes too long to get to the slashing. The killer looks good and creepy, but none of the story being built between the friends really matters once he arrives (except in one instance to separate two people). There’s just too much downtime for a movie like this.

Movie Theater Massacre is a comedic ode to movie theaters and the moviegoing experience. Unfortunately, the plot is strangely convoluted for how thin it is. It is set up as a slasher movie with a masked killer, but then there’s also a haunting involved, a small crime caper, and a plot thread about making a movie. It’s an unfocused film, but there are good moments throughout. The story is set inside a theater during the final days before it closes forever, and the best parts of the movie are the scenes where the employees are simply talking about their time together and how much they love movies.

Read our full review of Movie Theater Massacre.

We’re So Dead seems to be aimed primarily at anyone who has worked in a restaurant, but also fans of slasher-comedies. The staff of O’Kane’s restaurant doesn’t want to be working on Christmas Eve, and to make matters worse there’s a slasher killing them one by one. The tone of the comedy ranges from sarcastic to absurd, and it’s just okay overall.

Read a brief review of We’re So Dead.

Terror in the Woods is focused on a father’s revenge for the death of his son many years ago, but it takes way too long for the revenge plot to kick in. There’s not really any mystery for the audience, so the buildup to the good stuff feels like we’re just waiting for something to happen. But in a tedious way, not a suspenseful one.

Read a brief review of Terror in the Woods.

On Christmas Eve, a killer on the run enters a woman’s car and forces her to drive him out of the country. He Kills at Night is essentially a two-hander about a battle of wits between captor and captive, but the story withholds so much information that it becomes obvious early on there’s a twist is coming. Having an obvious twist dangling just out of reach for most of the story undercuts the drama and suspense.

Mutilator 2 takes a meta approach to a legacy sequel. The film takes place in a world where The Mutilator (1984) is just a movie, and a small crew is filming a remake. Then a killer shows up to the movie’s wrap party. Sounds fine, right? Well, the majority of the film ends up being a mildly amusing comedy (if I’m being generous), and most of the kills are all bunched up towards the end. As a bad slasher-comedy, Mutilator 2 is okay.

Read a brief review of Mutilator 2.

Into the Gravel Pit isn’t technically an anthology horror movie, but it sure does feel like one. A big reason for that is because of how disconnected its various plot threads are. One side of the story is about three friends who take a mysterious drug as a bonding experience. However, they separate from each other immediately and go through their trips in three individual experiences. The other major plot thread is about a mother and father who welcome home their dying daughter and discuss plans of joining her when she’s gone. These four plot lines do cross over a little, but in the most random ways.

In Killstreak, six streamers are pulled into an online game. However, once they begin they cannot stop. If they die in the game, or if they try to quit, they die for real. It’s a decent setup, and there are a few fun moments. Sadly, the movie’s editing undermines just about anything good that the movie attempts to do. The editing makes the movie feel awkward and weirdly quiet, and it’s an issue that never goes away.

Read a brief review of Killstreak.

A Vietnam veteran suffering from PTSD suffers intense hallucinations in this dark psychological drama. Ultimately, The Plastic Men ends up feeling like a feature-length montage rather than a fully fleshed-out movie. Scenes are often short, time skips rapidly, and much of the movie is heavily narrated. It results in a disconnect from the story’s intended emotions.

Read a brief review of The Plastic Men.

Alex is a serial killer and a cannibal, and his mother always cleans up his mess. No Tears in Hell has the potential to be an interesting serial-killer character study, but the glacial pacing and lack of tension makes the whole experience underwhelming.

Read a brief review of No Tears in Hell.

In Bait, a family of four is abducted and kept locked in a room where they are to be fed to a monster. Most of the story focuses on the family’s attempts to reason with their captor and find a way out of their predicament. There’s really not a lot going on though, and the movie ends up feeling like a short film stretched out to feature length.

Read a brief review of Bait.

The Night Time World is a horror anthology film consisting of four story segments, all of which involve a vampire of some sort (one of the stories takes the vampire theme in an unusual direction). As with many anthology films, the segments vary in quality. Two of the stories are good, and two… not so much. So, The Night Time World is 50/50 as far as entertainment goes.

Read our full review of The Night Time World.

Mouse of Horrors isn’t the first slasher movie to take advantage of Steamboat Willie being in the public domain, but as of its release, it’s the best. That bar was set pretty low in 2024, but, truthfully, Mouse of Horrors does have something to offer. The Mouse (who is credited as The Killer, but everyone just calls him The Mouse) has a fun design, and his kills are nicely brutal. But the inclusion of a certain yellow bear is distractingly goofy, and a “Bride of Frankenstein” subplot is mostly unnecessary. And don’t even get me started on the CGI. There’s a mix of practical and digital effects, but the CGI ruins every scene it’s used in. It’s really bad. The rest of the movie is fine in a “mindless slasher with questionable production values” kind of way.

Read our full review of Mouse of Horrors.

Presented as found footage, The Last Cabin puts a small location scouting crew in a cabin where masked strangers target them for harassment and death. It’s a simple story that gets to the action quickly enough, but many scenes feel like they’re being stretched for time without much in the way of fear or tension. The editing also leaves some big gaps in the viewers’ ability to believe that the events we’re watching are actually happening (there are obvious cuts in scenes that are supposed to be continuous, camera locations don’t always match where they should realistically be, etc.).

Read our full review of The Last Cabin.

Shiver Me Timbers is one of multiple Popeye-themed horror movies released in 2025, and it’s one that doesn’t use the property for much more than grabbing attention. It’s about a group of campers who are stalked and slaughtered by an old sailor who is turned into a monster by a meteorite. It’s overloaded with cheesy CGI, and it tries maybe too hard to be extreme in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way.

Read a brief review of Shiver Me Timbers.

When a teenage boy is found dead after entering a supposedly haunted house, a detective with a connection to the house is on the case. Whisper of the Witch is essentially a murder mystery with horror elements, but the mystery isn’t great, and the horror is somewhat bland.

Read a brief review of Whisper of the Witch.

A woman buys a pub, but as she’s trying to get the business going, she must also deal with a curse placed on the land by a witch. I Curse This Land is rather slow to get going, so even though the ending is fine, you might turn it off before you get there.

Read a brief review of I Curse This Land.

This is another low-budget movie where ambitions outstretched means. A Hard Place follows a group of criminals as they try to find a place to lay low, but end up in the middle of a war between armies of two types of monsters. There’s so much happening, and there are so many characters, that actual drama is almost non-existent. Staged dramatic moments feel wholly unearned. The movie might be fun for fans of super-low-budget monsters though.

Wilting Rose is about a woman, Rose, who is mourning the loss of her husband. As she listens to recordings he made, their story begins to come together like a vague memory. Wilting Rose is probably too ambiguous for its own good, which makes it difficult to summarize succinctly. What I can say is that it sets up many dark moments that dip into psychological and supernatural horror, but in the end the story is mostly just frustrating.

Unholy Song is cursed with being anticlimactic. Certain events are built up to, but then the movie cuts away and the climactic action is simply explained by a character. The final showdown with an evil spirit unleashed from an audio tape just sort of stops without an ending. Beyond the lack of excitement and closure, the dialogue is often stilted, and the occasional CGI effects can be unintentionally funny. Positives include the idea of a cursed tape. Like, it’s not a tape that recites cursed words. It’s actually a tape that is cursed, and it even creates a fun tape demon for a brief moment. Also, the movie’s priest using a skull-shaped spray bottle for holy water is amazing.

An old man taken to a nursing home begins suffering from sleep paralysis in which he sees a dark presence. Is it all in his head, or is something sinister really happening? The idea is sound, but the acting and directing are so stiff that it’s difficult to enjoy the story.

Read a brief review of Into Nightmares.

Shadows of the Past is an anthology horror film made up of three story segments and a frame story that ties everything together. The overall theme involves supernatural scares with vengeful spirits, and the stories are being told by an old man whose house is broken into by four criminal teens looking for a place to hide. The movie has a homemade feel to it that looks like it was fun to make, but will have limited appeal for most wider audiences.

From a visual standpoint, The Monster Beneath Us is excellent. The movie is set in a gorgeous historical mansion in Yorkshire, England, and it’s usually filmed beautifully. However, the story that takes place inside that mansion trudges along so slowly that many viewers will lose interest before anything interesting happens. The film is about a mother and son who move into a house where there is a literal monster in the basement. The boy develops a strange connection with the creature, but all that amounts to is a lot of talking and a lot of walking around in dark hallways. There’s just not much here.

Read our full review of The Monster Beneath Us.

Night Carnage focuses on three main characters: a vampire who feeds on women after dates, a romance blogger who is also a werewolf, and a newly recruited monster hunter. The issue is, these three characters don’t interact until extremely late in the movie, and the rest of the time feels like nothing much is happening.

Read a brief review of Night Carnage.

The Weedhacker Massacre is about a low-budget film crew making a movie about a killer on the grounds where the killer performed a mass murder years ago. This is a slasher comedy with a strong emphasis on absurd humor, and it just didn’t work for me.

Read a brief review of The Weedhacker Massacre.

Popeye’s Revenge is a derivative “cabin in the woods” slasher movie that just happens to have someone who looks like Popeye as the villain. The kills are okay, but that’s really the only thing of note in this by-the-numbers micro-budget slasher. Well, I did find the ending hilarious at least.

Revenge of the Boogeyman is a horror comedy that is neither horrific nor very funny. The plot revolves around Calvin who is half-heartedly trying to get sober with the help of his friends. While staying at a cabin in the woods, Calvin has strange experiences which eventually lead to him and his friends becoming the target of the Ridgefield Boogeyman. The story feels aimless much of the time, and even the few moments of good low-budget gore don’t help make it fun to watch.

Ben McKenzie (Gotham) stars in Bloat as Jack, a father separated from his wife and two sons while he works and they go on vacation to Tokyo. Jack keeps up with his family through video calls on his work computer, which is also where he investigates a mysterious illness that his youngest son contracts. Jack’s investigation leads him to believe that his son’s issues are supernatural, which compels him to take action. Bloat has an okay, if simplistic, basic idea, but the screenlife format does not do it justice at all. The format makes the drama and horror feel too far away and muted.

Read our full review of Bloat.

I’m not sure what I expected from a movie titled Return of the Corn Zombies, but I guess I expected more zombies. The movie follows a group of survivors in a corn-based zombie apocalypse, and it’s one of those zombie movies that focuses on how humans are the real monsters. Which means, there’s a lot of talking and not much in the way of corn-zombie action.

Read a brief review of Return of the Corn Zombies.

Desert Fiends is a horror comedy with a sense of humor that is tiresome and unfunny. Dumb comedy can be hilarious, but this is just dumb. One of the only good parts is that Bai Ling is in Desert Fiends, and it looks like the director just let her loose to do whatever she wanted to. Bai Ling is funny, the rest of the movie—which is about friends who are trying to get to a concert in the desert while mutants kill people—is not very good. Not even copious amounts of gore make it palatable.

Piglet might appear to be connected to the growing Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey universe, but it isn’t. You might think that Piglet is also one of the many recent public-domain-inspired horror movies, but, other than the name of the main character, it isn’t. So what is Piglet? It’s a cheaply made slasher movie with a story that seems to borrow heavily from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise and… Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023). Even though Piglet isn’t connected to either of those films, the plot is strikingly similar to both. Beyond that, Piglet is a by-the-numbers slasher with too much bad CGI blood, a haphazard story, and uneven production values all around.

Read our full review of Piglet.

Female friends rent a house for a party and end up getting stalked and slashed by a killer inspired by a public-domain children’s story. If this sounds a lot like Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and Piglet, then yes, you’ve got it. The plots are all extremely similar, even down to some of the same story beats. This time around, a drug addict with a hook for a hand is stalking the daughter of his former obsession, Wendy. The best part of the movie? When lines are clearly misspoken, yet they’re kept in the movie. The attention to detail here is something else.

In Buried Alive, police chase a trio of criminals into an old mine where they all become trapped. As they look for a way out, they stumble into an old military facility where they’re subjected to horrific experiments. It sounds more fun than it is though, because it mostly just feels tedious.

Read a brief review of Buried Alive.

Hippo’s Revenge needed more hippo-based revenge. It’s a crime thriller about criminals trying to steal a mother hippopotamus away from her baby in a safari park. Most of the movie focuses on the crime caper and family drama of the park’s owner and his daughter. The goofy CGI hippo attacks are few and far between.

Read a brief review of Hippo’s Revenge.

A Breed Apart is insulting in its awfulness. The action pretty much always involves some level of AI, with some shots appearing to be 100% AI generated. And it all looks terrible. Besides that, the movie doesn’t make any sense. I like most of the actors though, so there’s that.

Read our full view of A Breed Apart.

When It Rains in LA seems confused about the style of movie it wants to be. Is it a cursed-object movie? A slasher movie? A crime thriller? A whodunit mystery? A romance? It’s sort of all of those things, but none of them are done particularly well. There are some unintentionally funny moments, but even those aren’t enough to warrant a recommendation here.

Read our full review of When It Rains in LA.

Don’t Make a Sound takes way too long to get going, and once it finally starts moving, it doesn’t go anywhere terribly interesting. The plot involves a girl being chased through the woods by a killer in a hazmat suit and gas mask, and that’s about all there is to it. The girl being chased has a small backstory, but nothing really matters. Murders happen at random whenever the killer sees someone, and the finale wraps everything up in the tropiest of ways.

Read our full review of Don’t Make a Sound.