Domestic

Friday the 13th (1980)

In preparation for the upcoming Crystal Lake miniseries, with Linda Cardellini stepping into the role of Pamela Voorhees, the wife and I sat down to watch the very first Summer Camp slasher film.

The plot of Friday the 13th, the inexplicably optimistic reopening of cursed Camp Crystal Lake, will serve as the basis for the next several movies in a never-ending franchise that follows Jason Voorhees, the hockey masked killing machine, as he lays waste to unsuspecting segments of the population with an assortment of edged weapons.

But he’s not here yet. The original maniac at large in this series is Jason’s mad mother Pamela (Betsey Palmer), seeking revenge on camp counselors that allowed her potato-head son to drown while they were knocking boots.

We have Friday the 13th to thank for a good many of the tropes we enjoy in our daily consumption of horror entertainment, none more important than the body count.

There must be enough carnage to go around and the timing is crucial. Too much or too little and you run the risk of losing the viewer to disgust, or worse, indifference.

Makeup and effects man Tom Savini deserves a bouquet for his seminal blood-and-bladder work here. With nine murder victims and a scant $700,000 budget, Savini’s prime cuts are rendered gloriously realistic.

Annie’s (Robbi Morgan) cut throat, Marcie’s (Jeannine Taylor) ax in the face, and Jack’s (Kevin Bacon!) arrow piercing, all show up on Savini’s greatest hits reel, providing a nasty and final punctuation point unlike any that had come before, effects-wise.

The same cannot be said for Harry Manfredini’s score, which borrows liberally from the screaming strings approach pioneered by Psycho composer Bernard Herrmann decades earlier, further codifying their presence in the genre.

The terms “Dead Camper Movies” and “hack-and-stack” originate from director Sean Cunningham’s first Friday the 13th offering that showed up a mere 46 years ago.

Eight years prior, Cunningham was the producer on Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, which also gained notoriety for its shocking brutality, and perhaps planted the seed that viewers can absorb even greater levels of horror than previously thought.

What I learned about Friday the 13th is that its impact hasn’t lessened. The finale, when Alice (Adrienne King) is drifting in a row boat on and a deformed Jason springs out of the water, caused my wife to not only scream in terror, but lash out and hit me pretty hard in the jaw.

Pro tip: If you’re showing Friday the 13th to someone for the first time, wear a mouth guard. It still hits.

Lady In White (1988)

Are there any hidden treasure hunters out there?

If so, Lady In White is a contender. A wondrous small-town mystery that’s glowingly photographed, it looks and feels like a Disney YA feature, but with an undercurrent of real darkness that should be of interest to fans of Hitchcock and David Lynch alike.

Lukas Haas from Witness and Brick plays Frankie Scarlatti, an adorable tyke getting his Dracula costume in shape for Halloween 1962. The inquisitive boy lives in a Norman Rockwell-style New England community with his widower father Angelo (Alex Rocco), older brother Geno (Jason Presson), and comedy relief Italian grandparents.

We get a deep dive into Frankie’s psyche. He’s a burgeoning writer with a penchant for monsters, and also dealing with the recent death of his mother, as revealed by a macabre dream sequence.

A pair of asshole classmates lock Frankie in the school cloakroom for the night as a prank, leading to the lad witnessing the ghost of a young girl (Joelle Jacobi) being murdered ten years before!

Young Frankie now has a mystery to solve, especially after the ghost follows him home and he discovers that nine other unlucky local kids have been knocked off in recent history.

Lady In White effectively utilizes the eerie old Eddy Duchin song, “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking” as a recurring motif that provides a valuable clue to the killer’s identity.

Writer-director Frank LaLoggia received a measure of negative feedback for the overly campy and whimsical visual liberties he takes in Lady In White, but we must remember that the protagonist is a child, which is why some scenes are rendered with exaggerated magical details and others are captured through a darker lens of menacing shadows and fog.

Sheesh! Might as well send hate mail to Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam.

The film’s era references hope for the future, with President Kennedy in the White House, but it also foreshadows both the struggle for social justice, and a near-future assassination, when the school’s black janitor is circumstantially blamed for the murders, giving Frankie another compelling reason to track down the man responsible.

If he can just stay alive long enough.

Lady In White is definitely a unique specimen, an imaginative child’s vivid recollection, autumnal ghost story, murder mystery and domestic tragedy that moves with enough pace and purpose to secure everyone’s attention.

Manifest some gratitude for this humble seasonal offering.

Hokum (2026)

Looks like another winner from Irish horror auteur Damian McCarthy, as Hokum hits the same creep spots as his previous entries Caveat and Oddity, while flexing new creative muscles in a more ambitious project.

A less-than-lovable Adam Scott (Severance, Parks & Rec) portrays Ohm Bauman, a horror writer intent on scattering his parents’ ashes at a picturesque hotel somewhere in the wild Irish boondocks.

Bauman’s rudeness and sarcasm rubs the staff the wrong way, with the exception of Fiona (Florence Ordesh), a friendly bartender who informs the word famous author that the honeymoon suite is haunted by a witch.

After laughing off the tale as “hokum,” Bauman’s sensibilities take a dramatic turn after he’s over-served at the bar, reeling him, kicking and screaming, into a haunting murder mystery with multiple suspects—including a vengeful spirit that appears to be ensconced upstairs, restlessly ringing the bell for room service.

Like a mashup of A Christmas Carol and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, there is a definite story arc here, with Bauman getting a taste of humility and forgiveness that ultimately may make him a better person and writer.

Writer-director Damian McCarthy literally keeps Bauman (and us) in the dark for most of Hokum, nervously exploring the halls and tunnels that permeate the inn like paranormal prairie dog runs.

Adam Scott is pitch-perfect as an unfeeling prick in desperate need of redemption, which can only be found in the darkest corners of his soul.

And if he finds it, will he know what to do?

I recommend you find out.

Extinction (2015)

The wife and I came upon Extinction quite by accident while lost in the dense forest of Roku.

She screamed three times, so you know it’s scary.

In a frozen future, Jack (Jeffrey Donovan, Burn Notice, Fargo) and Patrick (Matthew Fox, Lost, Bone Tomahawk) are survivors of an infectious plague that reduced humanity to savage, bloodthirsty zombiedom.

Fortunately, the nuclear winter (?) that ensued, allowed Jack, Patrick, and Jack’s daughter Lu (Quinn McColgan) to build a secure compound in the tiny town of Harmony.

These are not basic cardboard characters. Jack is relentlessly protective of Lu, who’s mother died from an infected bite. He rarely acknowledges Patrick, only referring to him as “Neighbor.”

They work independently: Jack trains Lu in the art of survival, and Patrick forages on his snowmobile for supplies, broadcasts distress signals and loud rock music from his home radio station, and then drinks himself unconscious.

There is overwhelming evidence of bad blood between Patrick and Jack, and Lu can’t fathom her father’s animosity toward their reclusive provider, the only other person in existence, as far we know.

Despite Jack’s optimism that the monsters that munched mom all froze to death, a new threat arises in the form of agile, blind, albino zombies that have their own set of rules and behavior.

And they’re coming this way!

Spanish director/co-writer Miguel Angel Vivas makes the most of the Hungarian countryside location, contrasting the blinding snowy nights hiding horrid creatures that blend into the landscape, with vistas of glorious mornings worthy of inspirational postcards.

I took this as a promising omen. Perhaps all is not lost, though with a title like Extinction, one can be forgiven for expecting the worst.

The film also works as a well-intentioned metaphor for the necessity of estranged parents to put aside their issues and come together for the sake of the kid.

Or she might get eaten.

Extinction is a genuine post-apocalyptic jewel, conceived by a confident craftsman and executed by a superb cast.

Trigger warning: Dog doesn’t make it.

Horror Castle (1963)

Get used to the sight of Mary Hunter (Rossana Podesta) wandering the grounds of a gloomy castle in a blue nightgown, accompanied by a heavy handed James Bond-style jazz score that erupts whether the scene calls for embellishment or not.

Welcome to Horror Castle, aka The Virgin of Nuremberg, directed by versatile veteran Antonio Margheriti (Castle of Blood, The Long Hair of Death, Cannibal Apocalypse).

Mary, the new bride of Max Hunter (Georges Riviere), moves into his family’s ancestral estate in Germany, an imposing edifice loaded with bad juju, thanks to the legacy of Max’s maniac ancestor, The Punisher, who tortured local girls he suspected of sinful behavior.

In straight Rebecca fashion, Max has business elsewhere for much of the movie, leaving Mary in the care of Erich (Christopher Lee) a scarred and taciturn family retainer, and Martha (Laura Nucci) the morose, stoned-faced housekeeper.

If you’re one of those folks that can’t get enough gothic atmosphere and macabre accoutrements, Horror Castle is littered with skulls, secret passages, and vintage torture devices that are still kept in fine working order.

It’s a bit of a stretch, but Marheriti tries to make a case for the monster of the house, a sadistic freak skulking about in executioner garb (Mirko Valentin) being a sympathetic character, since he was himself disfigured by fiendish Nazi surgeons to resemble a skull.

However, eliciting pity for a guy that stuffs a woman into an Iron Maiden, and torments another with a hungry rat loosed on her face is a mighty tall order.

Maybe next time.

I wish Horror Castle rated a definitive restoration, because the version I saw had been heavily edited and dubbed in English to the point of absurdity. Even so, it’s a tingly tour in a creepy ass location, with the enchanting Rossana Podesta guiding us by candlelight.

Trust me, there are worse ways to spend a dark and stormy night.

If you can handle the rough edges of budget constraints and decaying filmstock, Horror Castle sustains an eerie charm, with all its roads leading straight to the torture chamber.

Watch your step!

The Barge People (2018)

London filmmaker Charlie Steeds is earning a reputation as a British Roger Corman, grinding out low budget shockers with machine-like efficiency, as we saw in Freeze, his community theater version of a doomed polar expedition.

In The Barge People, Steeds crams scraps and trimmings from Wrong Turn, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Humanoids From the Deep, and The Hills Have Eyes into a Turducken tale of hungry amphibian mutants living in the nasty waters of England’s canal boat system.

Kat (Kate Davies-Speak) and her sweetheart Mark (Mark McKirdy) rent a canal boat for a bucolic weekend with her sister Sophie (Natalie Martens) and toffy-nosed boyfriend Ben (Matt Swales).

It doesn’t take long for snobby Ben to rub everyone the wrong way, including a feral couple living on their own barge that gets sideswiped thanks to Ben’s nonexistent navigation skills.

Before we can settle into a rousing chorus of Dumb City Kids vs Rural Ruffians, a pack of scaly predators board the tiny ship and start gnawing away on everybody in sight.

This forces Kat to strike up an uneasy alliance with Jade (Makenna Guyler), one of the boat invaders, to rescue Mark from captivity, that’s undermined by their mutual distrust of each other’s social class.

“I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” Jade sneers. “You’re on your own.”

When confronted with a boatload of hostile monsters, Ben somewhat whimsically offers to buy them off with a deposit of $5,000 pounds into their bank account.

Ben didn’t get the assignment.

Once again, Steeds manages to offset his lack of funds with a commitment to create something reasonably fresh, and the timeless wonder of the English countryside helps considerably.

The Barge People features vegetarian gore, with not much meat to go with all the sauce, but serves as another reminder that no one should ever go anywhere for a relaxing weekend, other than back to bed.

Stay at home and read a book. You’ll live longer.

Undertone (2026)

Curses! Foiled again!

The debut of Canadian filmmaker Ian Tuason, Undertone is unsettling entertainment that hopefully frightens everyone into not opening anonymous attachments to their email.

As it turns out there are much worse things than viruses out there and all the Norton Utilities in the world won’t fix them.

Evy (Nina Kiri) cohosts a paranormal podcast with her friend Justin (Adam DiMarco) while looking after her comatose mother (Michele Duquet) upstairs. Thus we have the key ingredients for a very creepy and crumbly cake and newcomer Ian Tuason gets it in the oven for a torturous slow bake.

Evy and Justin play a series of audio files throughout Undertone’s 94-minute runtime that get increasingly more disturbing, detailing a young couple’s entrapment by an Old Testament demon that preys on newborn children.

Isolated and on the outs with her boyfriend, Evy, a skeptic by nature, begins hearing strange things, her home seemingly infiltrated by the evil audio.

Tuason lets his camera wander freely around the house, occasionally keeping Evy in the frame at a watchful distance. She often turns and looks around, sensing another presence, but there’s no one there.

Filmed on a measly half-million dollar budget, Undertone isn’t popping with CGI or gallons of guts. It’s a slow burner that applies steady pressure, infecting protagonist and viewer equally with a subliminal menace, and it’s well worth your time.

Pro tip: If a recording of a demonic summoning comes up on your playlist, skip that track. Do not play it out loud especially if you have a ton of unresolved guilt issues, like Evy.

Nothing good will come of it.

Over Your Dead Body (2026)

Oh, munificent bounty!

Director Jorma Taccone (Lonely Island, MacGruber) blinks into elite company with Over Your Dead Body, a graphic and gruesome thriller that methodically sequences dark domestic comedy and Home Invasion horror into something special that perhaps belongs on the same Unicorn Noir shelf as True Romance, Brick, Fargo, Something Wild, and Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, movies that squeezed out quotably absurd dialogue between explosions of breathless brutality.

Like I said, elite company.

Dan (Jason Segel) is a hack television director married to untalented Australian actress Lisa (Samara Weaving). Separately they arrive at the same conclusion, that their stupid spouse is the reason for all the matrimonial misery.

And so begins a pair of murderous conspiracies culminating in a weekend trip to Dan’s family cabin for a Death Do Us Part party.

There isn’t a lot of witty banter flying around. Dan and Lisa are trying to destroy each other with words and deeds.

“I will give you one million dollars to shoot him in the fucking face,” Lisa snarls to Henry (Jake Curran), a would-be assassin in search of meaningful employment and friendship.

Henry isn’t the only visitor to their cozy cabin. Pete (Tim Olyphant), Allegra (Juliette Lewis), and Todd (Keith Jardine), a trio of escaped prisoners literally fall through the ceiling on top of the couple as they’re wrestling for control of a shotgun.

The power dynamic abruptly shifts. These are not your garden variety criminals. Happily deranged Pete, and his lady Allegra, a sadistic prison guard, are backed up by the towering Todd, one of the scariest and most formidable goons this side of Mike Mazurky.

Based on a Norwegian language film, Over Your Dead Body gets teeth-grittingly intense, particularly when Allegra announces she’s tired of the tedium and wants to play a game she learned on the job in lockup.

“Super easy to learn,” she explains. “We just go and grab a couple of guys, and we would drag them out of their cells, down to the laundry room where it was nice and quiet, and then draw this big circle around them, and then we would see who could fuck who first.

“The winner would get a pack of cigarettes. And the loser, well, the loser would just get fucked.”

To make matters worse, Todd, their burly bodyguard, is an undefeated champ. The depth of depravity brought by the convicts is indeed disturbing, sharpening the action to a fine edge.

Over Your Dead Body makes it frightfully apparent that bitterly feuding Dan and Lisa must somehow rekindle their relationship and join forces against a twisted trio of really mean maniacs. And so they do.

The makeup effects accompanying the inevitable battle royale are executed with artful exaggeration, gleefully maxing out the emotional payloads, as Pete gets hit by a car driven by Dan’s dad (Paul Guilfoyle) and Allegra’s foot is shot to pieces.

Durable Todd continues to terrorize Dan and Lisa after being knocked out with a pool ball in a sock, shot in the ass with buckshot, and stabbed half a dozen times with an entire rack of cutlery.

This lackey takes a licking and keeps on kicking!

That’s a small sample size of the delirious carnage on tap, but ultimately, Over Your Dead Body will win you over with its high-energy twists and humor the color of onyx.

Note: Fans of Jason Segel should also check out his show Shrinking on AppleTV. Segel and Harrison Ford play psychiatrists in need of counseling, and both the writing and acting are tops.

Segel has assembled a quality body of work, beginning with the absolutely essential Freaks and Geeks, and has quietly become one of our best actors, comic or otherwise.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026)

So where’s the mummy?

I can’t help but notice that anyone attempting to resurrect the mummy monster concept avoids the subject. Oh sure, we get Egyptian set dressing, maybe a fez or two from down Cairo way, but there are a distinct lack of bandaged baddies bringing undead justice from the tomb.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (not to be confused with Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy) is an awkward mix of family drama and occult investigation with all the blood and guts you can eat thrown in at no extra charge.

The story is all over the map to the point where we can’t remember if they’re in Egypt or New Mexico. Oh well, both locales have sand and rocks aplenty.

While stationed in Cairo, TV reporter Charlie Cannon (Jack Raynor, who looks like Seth Rogan’s health-conscious cousin) loses track of his daughter Katie (Natalie Grace) after she’s spirited away by a mysterious woman (Hayat Kamille).

Eight years later, the Cannons are numbing through their shattered lives in Albuquerque, when they are notified that Katie has been found living in a basalt sarcophagus.

Kids today! Am I right?

With no fanfare or preparation, the mostly nonverbal Katie is re-homed with Charlie, his long-suffering wife, Larissa (Laia Costa), invisible son (Shylo Molina), and new daughter Maud (Billie Roy).

From a catatonic cocoon, a new Katie messily emerges, shedding layers of skin at every turn in order to reveal herself as … a possessed murderous child!

Thud.

Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin (Evil Dead Rise, The Hole in the Ground) takes way too long to tell the tale, and the occasional grisly scene or splashy murder is only a reminder that there’s still lots of movie to go, much of it painted in familiar Raimi Day colors.

It’s not all bad news, by any means. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy offers damn fine freaky details and artisan-level craft in its depiction of an ancient curse that just keeps getting grimmer and grosser.

I dare you to watch it and not say “ewww” at least once or twice.

At a running time of two hours and thirteen minutes, you’ll have ample opportunity to admire Cronin’s technique and taste level in creating a competent creature feature, even though we don’t know whether to call a cop or an exorcist.

But you know what? I still miss my Mummy.

Widow’s Bay (2026)

If you’re late to the game, Widow’s Bay has been picked up for a second season by Apple TV! Hooray!

Fright fans are flocking to Widow’s Bay and with good reason. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of small-town terrors that somehow walks the finest line between horror and comedy imaginable.

Even the choice of font used in the title (Horror Paperback?) smells authentic to my nose.

Matthew Rhys (The Americans) is inspirational as Tom Loftis, the beleaguered mayor of the titular island town that may well be the most heavily cursed real estate on the East Coast.

His job, trying to get the island’s populace to tone down the spook talk while entertaining prosperous tourists proves an impossible task, but a highly amusing one.

Loftis does his darndest to disavow and debunk the many, many legends that plague Widow’s Bay, but soon realizes he’s in over his head against witches, hags, ghosts, undead killers, haunted fog, and an entire town of charming eccentrics that seem to be better informed on occult matters than he is.

Tom’s trusty assistant Patricia (Kate O’Flynn, who steals scenes, left and right), survived a murderous rampage by local maniac the Boogeyman, while she was a teenager, but finds him back in her life as an adult.

Lonely Patricia feels guilt about the girls who died, wondering why she was spared. The learning of lessons and the potential for personal growth amidst the vivid nightmare scenarios gives Widow’s Bay an extra gear, as we cheer Patricia’s steely determination in dealing with an uncanny enemy.

The third pivotal character is Wyck (Stephen Root), a, crusty, but well-read fisherman with a head full of arcane knowledge, including harrowing details of the original curse that befell Widow’s Bay hundreds of years ago.

There are satchels of intriguing subplots in the mix, but the one that affects everyone is the matter of whether or not you were born on the island—and what happens to people who try to leave.

Widow’s Bay is a big bowl of mystery with enough ghoulish garnish to tickle the fancy of folks in search of their next quality horror hang.

Series creator Katie Dippold is a former Parks and Rec writer, and clearly has a knack for birthing oddball and outré citizens that somehow steal our hearts.

Looking forward to Season 2, but a rewatch of the first is recommended. Lots of stuff going on here.