We Love Horror Movies

Back in 2018, filmmaker Ricky Umberger released his anthology horror film The Fear Footage, a found-footage horror film that blew away almost every other film of its type. Last year, he followed it up with The Fear Footage 2: Curse of the Tape, an extremely meta single-narrative film that took everything great and scary about the first film and amped it up ten notches. This year, Umberger is set to release the final chapter in his series,  The Fear Footage 3 AM,  closing out a horrific story and series of events that only got more terrifying with each installment. 

Filthy and funny, sick and sexy. The gore is good, and the girls are better. Sean Donohue adds another slick and sleezy entry to his filmography with Naked Cannibal Campers, a 60 minute romp through the woods with bros and babes, but with a twist...

Sleep eating is a real phenomenon, and it's one you probably don't hear of very often. Just like sleep walking, sleep eating is a parasomnia - which is any sort of "unwanted event" that happens when you're asleep.  In Shane Grant's Sleep Eaters, the full-length followup to his short film Sleep Eater, the entire concept of eating while you're asleep is taken to a cannibalistic extreme. Sleep Eaters picks up almost exactly where the short film left off, but Grant does a perfect job of making sure that you never have to have seen Eater just to enjoy this sequel.  The main story revolves around Rachel, who is filming a documentary about the grizzly murders from the first film. The opening of this film is actually the opening of the documentary in the film, which takes us through the events of Eater to catch viewers up on the tale of "Cannibal Kelly," who has been on the run for over a year, desperately trying to keep himself from falling asleep...

The Fear Footage writer and director, Ricky Umberger, might be one of the new masters of marketing. This movie came out of nowhere - as of this writing, it has very little to no press, and seemingly just...appeared. This is probably exactly as intended, as the movie, like many of the found footage genre, purports to be "real."

I went into this movie knowing pretty much nothing about it, other than the fact that it was a follow up to the 2008 original about a group of killers who are terrorizing a family for absolutely no reason other than the fact that, well, they can. This sequel is more of the same, but also a whole hell of a lot less. We have what seems to be far too long of an opening story about a girl, Kinsie (Bailee Madison, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark ) who we know automatically is a rebel. She's wearing a cutoff Ramones tee that's always falling off her shoulders, and she's sarcastic and calls her brother a queef. Plus, she fake smokes cigarettes, so you know she's troubled. Her parents are shipping her off to boarding school because she's "skipping class and getting bad grades." Ugh. We're starting with the cliche's already. Throughout the entire hour and a half of this movie, I felt absolutely nothing for any of the characters. I don't think th...

After finally getting around to watching Chuck Conry's first film, Morbid , I was kicking myself. I've been sitting on a screener copy of the movie for months, and as it is, the film came out years ago. I was such a huge fan of his movie Door 1 of the 5 Doors to Hell that I even persuaded Chuck to let me new label, PSFilms Video, put that film out on blu-ray. I should have known I'd be in for a treat watching Morbid.  You'd not know it from the cover or the synopsis, but anyone familiar with Chuck's work will not at all be surprised to learn that the film is a laugh riot. I'm not 100% sure that he sets out to write and create comedy films, but that's how it ends up working out, and for my money, they're perfect. In the case of Morbid, we follow a group of teens in a small town who are being massacred by a killer in a business suit. Despite the film starting off with a double murder, everyone in town is too busy worrying about The Big Game and the a...

The guys over at Rock Bottom Video are some of the most talented filmmakers in the indie scene today, and I don't think enough people know it. I have long touted that their film Fangboner was the best underground comedy I had ever seen - and that coming from someone who poured their heart, blood, soul, and hard-earned cash into making an underground comedy. Then, you know what happened? Nathan Rumler went and made Gay For Pray: The Erotic Adventures of Jesus Christ, and my entire life has changed for the better. Okay, so you're probably reading this right now, after seeing the title for the movie, and you likely had one of two reactions. Either you were immediately turned off at the idea of a movie with obvious sacrilegious themes, and you have no desire to ever see the film no matter what I say...or, also just as likely, you're hankering to get your hands on a copy to see what all the fuss is about. Well, let me tell you what all the fuss is about: Jesus Christ...

Kuso is being touted as the "grossest film ever made," but I don't know if I'd personally go that far. What is gross, anyway? Is puss and jizz gross? Are open, oozing sores and feces in the face gross? I suppose it's all about the viewer. I, for one, just thought it was a laugh riot. Kuso means "shit" in Japanese vernacular, but it is also used to describe items of a "poor quality," and I'm sure this title was chosen specifically for that reason. The movie is certainly full of shit, as there's plenty of feces throughout. There's also lots of ooze, puss, spit, and semen, too. If it comes out of a body, it probably makes an appearance here. The movie is a series of slightly interconnected stories, told through random televisions in what is, apparently, a futuristic Los Angeles after a devastating earthquake. To be fair, the only reason I know that is because that's what the description says on Shudder, where the film is cur...

This one is a little different for me, because technically speaking, One Last Time is not a movie at all, but a web series. It's also not really horror, it's actually a superhero film...but with a bit of a twist. This one comes straight out of Pennsylvania, the home of West 2nd Productions and writer/director Luke Ramer, who actually is normally a horror filmmaker, and is currently in production on his feature The Taxidermist. But before that film went to lens, Ramer and his crew went to work on One Last Time, which he release episodically to YouTube last year. The story follows Brian (Brian DiBonaventure), a once superhero who has settled down to live a normal life in rural Pennsylvania. He has a home, a wife, and a baby on the way, and life seems pretty great...until one day he is driving through town and spots an enemy from a life he's tried to put behind him. That ensuing battle ends in a bloody mess courtesy of a speeding train, and the events of the series es...

Fox Trot Productions makes features faster than any company I have ever seen. Emir Skalonja, writer and director, is constantly putting out new projects, and the thing about the movies that sets them apart from a lot of people cranking things out is that these films are all actually good .

Putting together a really good anthology is hard. I’ve done it myself, and it’s a daunting task. No matter what kind you’re making, no matter how long it is or how many segments or episodes, you’re always going to have hits and misses. Even the greatest anthology series and movies of all time have their bad moments. So when you’re sitting down to enjoy a new anthology film, you never know what you’re going to get; Then you put in Chuck Conry’s Door 1 of the 5 Doors to Hell , and the ride begins… After an extended period staring at the shelves in an independent video store, two couples are given an old VHS tape by the proprietor. They’ve seen practically every damn horror movie in the place, but this one is different. It’s a shot-on-video style horror, he tells them. You know they’ve never seen anything like it. So they take it home, and the nightmare begins. I’ll stop right there though, because it’s not just a nightmare. It’s also a damn hilarious, meta piss-take on horr...

Although we definitely love horror movies here, we also really like comedy films. And when you combine the two, and do it well, you are really tickling our fancy.

Cemetery Theater is a small outfit out of Northern Maine, but despite their size, they’re creating some incredible shorts and features – and in record time, no less. Currently following up their 30-minute short Sleep Eater with a feature-length titled Sleep Eaters, director Shane Grant had time to slip in the making of another short – shot over only a few days – called Blind Date. A man named Matthew shows up for his blind date, finding that the woman, Claire, is literally blind. After a night out to dinner at a local diner and to a movie – where Claire talks about loving horror movies (and the pair watch Sleep Eater on the big screen, because what else would horror fans watch?) Claire seems to have entranced Matthew after a crystal necklace she wears begins to glow – he can’t look away. He starts to have visions of his childhood, and the violent and disturbing end that his Father meets…but was it all a dream? Matthew drops Clair...

I always wished that I was old enough to have lived through all the Atomic Age horror and sci-fi films, so that I could have spent my Saturday afternoons seeing creatures morphed with animals, insects, or other beings thanks to radiation or nuclear powers, terrorizing people and cities on the screen while I nervously ate my bag of fifteen-cent popcorn and nickel soda pop. Thankfully, I am not the only one who has a love for these Golden Age horror-fests, because it is only with such a deep appreciation for those movies could someone have made Inhumanwich!, a film in which an astronaut is accidentally merged with his Sloppy Joe sandwich while in space, and crashes back to earth…hungry for flesh….as he slowly moves like a saucy Jabba the Hutt over the town, eating people and leaving their bones behind. The movie is one of the funniest films I’ve watched in a long while. It is exactly like what I imagine a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 movie would be like if instead of watching...

They say confession is good for the soul, but what about all those souls the confessor has taken along the way? Writer and Director Emir Skolonja has released a crazy new film, Confessions of a Homicidal Prostitute, a gore-fest with one of the most literal titles I’ve seen since Big-Ass Spider. The film follows Lilith, the prostitute and title character, who is sitting down with a man to explain her violent lifestyle. You see, Lilith is a killer. She’s murdered her pimp, who she explains beats her and rapes her constantly. She murders Johns, because they’re married and they’re scum, and they talk about women like they’re nothing. What started out as an act of (almost) self-defense from a customer who liked it a little too rough, Lilith explains how she delved into killing. She’s remorseless and her conscience is guilt-free; after a while, the bloodlust becomes a turn-on. I whole-heartedly enjoyed this movie. While being a bit rough around the edges...

Writer and director Emir Skalonja puts out movies so fast that this site is rapidly becoming a FoxTrot Productions review page. The fact of the matter is, though, that Skalonja can put out films at a rapid-fire rate, and still produce some of the best movies the underground has to offer today. His latest, a 13-minute short called Ave Satanas, is probably his most ambitious in terms of visual style. It’s so great as a viewer to watch a filmmaker to have several films, all fall into the same genre, yet all have such unique voices, looks, and styles. It’s actually refreshing that not only does Skalonja make films extremely fast and for extremely cheap money, but they come out fantastic. Ave Satanas starts with a woman, Mary (Nicole Skalonja) in the woods. She is meeting with a Satan worshipping witch, Evanora (the stand-out Krystal Shenk) and explains that she has been raped by two men. She is asking for help. She seeks vengeance and, even though she may have to ...

Sometimes even in a good indie flick, it’s easy for a filmmaker to lose focus or for the film to drag. That’s the best thing about the micro-shorts that are often put out by filmmakers between films. A Twisted Fate is the latest from Brandon Prewitt of Studio 605, the company behind The Campground and the upcoming The Wicked One. The film is only ten minutes long, but uses every second perfectly. After coincidentally each receiving a panicked phone call from a family member about an emergency, a man and a woman are rushing to leave their office building when the elevator they are in shuts down. Left without cell service and with no hope of getting out, we are given their full stories, and wondering where the story will go. I don’t think it’s much of a shock to say the film has a nifty twist – as soon as it began I realized there was one coming, but I was very surprised to find that it was not the one I had guessed. For that, I give the story an A+ off the...

There is nothing I like more than being surprised by a new film. It’s extremely hard to be surprised by most mainstream films, because by the time you’re sitting down to watch one, you’ve probably been completely inundated by commercials, ads, trailers, and everything else big studios spend massive money on to get you in the theatre. That’s one of the best things about extremely independent cinema, and underground horror movies in particular – I go into nearly every single one completely blind. When I sat down to watch the short film The Chunkblow, co-directed by Ben Shutts and Jamie Chimino, I had no idea what I was getting into, but what it turned out to be was pure gold. The film runs at only 16 minutes, and takes place in two rooms of a house. Downstairs in the kitchen, mom is making a cherry pie. Upstairs, two head-banging teens are listening to loud music, waving a gun around, and moshing. When one of them breaks out a bag of (what they think) is cocaine, the real...

The Plague is the second film in the last few days that I’ve watched from indie filmmaker Emir Skalonja, the first being Confessions of a Homicidal Prostitute. While the latter was a dirty, violent look at the life of a murderous hooker, The Plague is less gore and more drama, following the story of a pair of killers-for-hire who team up with another couple to escape a small town in New York after an outbreak. While the storyline isn’t groundbreaking, the movie is still a great watch. Beautifully shot in an off-color, slightly sepia tone, the actors all play their parts well, with special highlight to Emir’s wife, Nicole Skalonja, one of the lead characters and the stand-out of the bunch. The best thing about this film, when watching back-to-back with Confessions, was how different it was. For me, it showed off exactly how great of a filmmaker Skalonja really is. Whereas many indie and and even Hollywood filmmakers make, essentially, t...

This is the third film that I’ve reviewed for filmmaker Dakota Bailey, with his last film, My Master Satan being the first feature. His latest, American Scumbags, rings very much like the last, in that it features sketchy people doing sketchy things involving drugs and murder in what amounts to Anytown, USA. The thing about Bailey’s films is that there as raw as you could possibly imagine. They have a heavy SOV feel, but are apparently shot digitally on a mini-cam. This might explain some of the technical issues, such as trouble with audio leveling and some shaking of the picture, although to be fair, the audio was much better crafted in this film than in his last, and the music that had a tendency to be off-putting in Satan has switched – from a dark metal to a more punk feel. Aside from those improvements, the movie feels very much like a spiritual sequel to his past products. It’s hard to discern a real plot to the movie; Individuals who are pointed ou...