Alien Trilogy (1996) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation)

First off, this is going to be a slightly different review in that I never actually completed Alien Trilogy, or rather I did, but my route to the end saw me skip the last five levels leading up to the final boss. This was because I got stuck on a super hard level, but also that I felt I had seen everything the game had to offer. Alien Trilogy is a first person shooter that combines the first three films into a simple plot.

Rather than follow the story of the films this instead puts all three together. You play as Ellen Ripley who in this story is a marine, she is sent to a remote colony to investigate why it has gone silent. Arriving she discovers deadly Xenomorphs have killed everyone, it isn't long before all her squad are also killed. With Bishop providing driving duties Ellen goes on a mission to stop this alien threat. Starting off at the colony itself (Aliens), she then heads to the nearby prison (Alien 3), before finally investigating a crashed alien spaceship that seems to be the cause of the outbreak (Alien).

Satan's Coming For You (2015) - Short Horror Film Review

Last December I mentioned upcoming short horror My Master Satan which is coming out sometime this spring, and in exciting news is going to be a full length anthology now. That film is actually a sequel to Satan's Coming For You which was released 2015 and so I felt a review of that was in order.

Satan's Coming For You shows a day in the life of two psychos; Bubba (Matt Marshall) and his friend Alister (Dakota Bailey who also wrote and directed this short). Starting off with a visit to a cemetery to dig up Bubba's deceased wife the duo then take some acid and during their trip see Satan and so decide to go out and kill in his name.

Spring (2014) - Horror Film Review

Phew, so Spring is the final film I needed to watch for the 2015 Fright Meter Awards (that I literally never shut up about), now that's done I can finally concentrate on stuff I have been sent for review! Spring is up for nomination in the Best Horror Film, Best Leading Actor, Best Leading Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, and Best Director categories, so quite a darn lot.

Lou Taylor Pucci stars as Evan; an American who decides to go on holiday to Italy after a series of bad events (including losing his job, and his mother dying of cancer). While there he befriends a local girl; Louise (Nadia Hilker) and begins a whirlwind romance. However the girl hides a dark secret that may just be too much to deal with...

Stung (2015) - Horror Film Review

As is often my saying; another day another film up for nomination in the 2015 Fright Meter Awards. Stung is up for best special effects and is a creature feature film. I never like insects in films, they gross me out rather than make me fearful but here the insects are so large as to become un-gross.

Paul (Matt O'Leary) and Julia (Jessica Cook) are two caterers who have been hired to help out at the garden party of a rich lady at her remote countryside house. Things are going fine until later on in the evening when suddenly a swarm of giant wasps burst out a nest in the ground and start attacking the guests. The victims of the wasp stings immediately get turned into carriers of even larger wasps; ones that get to be as big as ponies, and rip out of the victims body. Soon Paul and Julia and a couple of other survivors (including Lance Henriksen as Mayor Caruthers) have barricaded themselves in the basement and must come up with a plan to escape the mutants.

The Voices (2014) - Horror Film Review

The Voices is a bizarre black comedy that mixes elements of Psycho with Dr. Doolittle. Ryan Reynolds who stars in it is up for nomination in the 2015 Fright Meter Awards and so was yet another film I had to see for that process.

Reynolds plays Jerry; a friendly loner who has suffered with severe mental health problems in the past. He sees a psychotherapist but unknown to her he has stopped taking his medication and so hears voices, mostly that of his evil cat Mr Whiskers (voiced by Reynolds), and his good natured dog Bosco (again Reynolds). After accidentally killing co-worker Fiona (Gemma Arterton) Jerry starts to question if he should give into his instincts and kill again, or if he should strive to be normal.

We Are Still Here (2015) - Horror Film Review

We Are Still Here is a horror film that is up for a variety of nominations for the 2015 Fright Meter Awards (yup, I'm still banging on about that). It is a ghost story with a slight twist to it that takes place in the 1970's.

Anne (Barbara Crampton) and Paul Sacchetti (Andrew Sensenig) are a grieving couple who recently lost their teenage son in a car accident and have moved out to the countryside to start a new life. Anne starts to witness unexplainable events in her new home and comes to believe their son Bobby's spirit is with them, and so invites her psychic hippy friend and her husband Jacob (Larry Fessenden) to come check out the property. However it soon becomes clear that an evil presence resides in the house, one that wants to kill all who enter...

The Adventures of Shuggy (2011) - Horror Themed Video Game Review (X-Box Live Arcade)

The Adventures of Shuggy is not a horror game, one look at the cutesy graphics will be enough to tell you that. However it is indeed a horror themed game and the inclusion of zombies clinched the deal on me reviewing it. This is a mostly single screen puzzle platformer, to do each of the 100 levels you have to collect all of the green gems contained within them.

Shuggy is a vampire bat who inherits a spooky old mansion. Upon arriving at the house he discovers it is full of evil ghosts and creatures and so before he can move in proper he must travel around to all corners of the place to evict them.

Night Kaleidoscope - Horror Film News and Trailer

Night Kaleidoscope is award winning director Grant McPhee's third feature film and the first to be in the horror genre. The Scottish film was shot in just one week and mostly at night at that, which is fitting seeing as this is a film about vampires. The press release states 'Night Kaleidoscope transforms Edinburgh's cobbled backstreets into a dark dreamscape brimming with supernatural menace, where reality fuses with the surreal in a psychedelic haze.'

Written by Chris Purnell and Megan P.Gretchen Night Kaleidoscope is a story about a jaded psychic investigator named Fion (Patrick O'Brien) who is called upon by the police to help solve a series of brutal murders. He soon discovers that a vampiric couple are the ones responsible and with the help of a girlfriend of one of the victims he sets out to stop them...

Filmed on a micro budget and using punk sensibilities this indie film is said to be 'a truly original and unusually beautiful horror film'. The trailer (included below) is well edited together, reminded me more of a music video than a trailer but it didn't repel me. If the movie itself has this same strong use of editing and cinematography then Night Kaleidoscope could be one to look out for.

Headless (2015) - Horror Film Review

Headless has been designed to look like a lost exploitation film of the 1970's, it has low quality camera work which constantly rips and crackles while the special effects and acting quality is also of the type expected for a lost film. Keeping with the tone of the time it even begins with a trailer for a fake film; Wolf Baby. Headless itself started off as a fake movie within the film Found (2012)

Set in America during the 1970's a skull mask wearing serial killer (Shane Beasley) goes around kidnapping young woman to torture and then kill them by cutting off their heads. He then keeps the heads in order to perform necrophilic acts on them as well as eat the eyeballs. As he goes about his daily routine there are frequent flashbacks that show just how he came to be the way he is.

Septic Man (2013) - Horror Film Review

Septic Man comes from Tony Burgess; the writer behind the interesting zombie flick Pontypool (the star of that; Stephen McHattie appears here in a bit part). From the description I thought I would get something very entrenched in the B-Movie stable, I expected poor acting, bad effects and a load of literal toilet humour, instead I got something the polar opposite, but with so much going for it could the potential of Septic Man be flushed away?

An issue with contaminated water has gotten so disastrous in the city of Collingwood that the government have called for the evacuation of the town due to the amount of people dying and getting sick. Jason David Brown (Exit Humanity) stars as Jack; a highly skilled sewage worker who is hired by a shady man named Phil Prosser (Julian Richings) who claims to be part of a secret group who run the city from behind the scenes. All Jack has to do is stay behind when the city is evacuated and use his skills to fix the catastrophic problem. He soon finds the root cause of the contamination at the water processing plant but ends up trapped in a huge septic tank. As if this wasn't bad enough Jack finds himself at the mercy of two psychotic brothers, as well as the toxic water itself which is slowly mutating him into something else...

Bone Tomahawk (2015) - Horror Film Review

After a year illness free I've been struck down with the flu and so not in the best shape to be doing much. Still it had been too long since my last blog post and so I decided to watch the Western horror Bone Tomahawk. This shall be the first review I have written from bed, and one in which I sneezed all over the laptop screen at one point!

Set in the late 1800's a small American frontier town is attacked and several people taken captive by a tribe of cannibalistic feral humans referred to as troglodytes by the local Native Americans. Among the three captured is the wife of Arthur; (Patrick Wilson of Insidious and The Conjuring) who is currently bed ridden with a broken ankle, and the Deputy Sheriff. After discovering this Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell) sets out with his assistant; Chicory (Richard Jenkins), a local gunsmith named Brooder (Matthew Fox), and the injured Arthur in order to stage a rescue...

The Editor (2014) - Comedy Horror Film Review

The Editor has been nominated for best score for the 2015 Fright Meter Awards and so I thought I would check it out. To start with I had thought I was accidentally watching the wrong film as what I had began to watch looked like it was from the 1970's, I even went as far as to pause the film and check IMDB. The Editor is a pastiche of Italian Giallo films from the 1970's and 80's and as such has a very old vibe to it.

Adam Brooks stars as Rey Ciso; a once legendary film editor who is now editing trashy films after a horrific accident left him fingerless on one hand. The lead actors for the latest film he is working on start to get brutally murdered one by one and so incompetent detective Peter Porfiry (Matthew Kennedy) gets assigned to the case. The killers calling card is to chop off the fingers of his victims which makes Ciso the main suspect. Meanwhile Ciso finds himself increasingly suffering strange hallucinations that make him wonder just what is real...

Deathgasm (2015) - Comedy Horror Film Review

And here I thought I was all done with watching films for the Fright Meter Awards, it turns out there are around seven or eight films that have made it to the nomination stage that I haven't actually seen yet, and with it being the months end as the cut off point for putting in my vote I have time to try and see them. Deathgasm is a New Zealand film that revolves around heavy metal.

Milo Cawthorne stars as Brodie; a metal obsessed teen who winds up in a sleepy New Zealand town living with his God obsessed Uncle and Auntie and their bully son David after family troubles. He soon becomes friends with the school losers Dion and Giles, and a local rebel named Zakk (James Blake) as well as catching the eye of attractive Medina (Kimberley Crossman) who just so happens to be David's girlfriend. Zakk and Brodie manage to end up with a bizarre music manuscript which they decide to use as a song for their metal band Deathgasm. After a day from hell and discovering the music is alleged to be able to grant magical powers from Satan Brodie plays the song and unwittingly brings demonic apocalypse to the town. Now he and his friends have till 3am to find a way to stop a powerful demon from being summoned to Earth to destroy humanity...

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (2015) - Horror Video Game Review

I never reviewed Wolfenstein: The New Order which The Old Blood is a standalone expansion pack to. This was because it wasn't really horror orientated despite showing a nightmarish world in which the Nazis won World War II. I guess you could say it is a mild spoiler, I certainly never expected it but this expansion has a lot of proper horror going down the supernatural route that previous games in the series have delved into. This is a lot more horror focussed than either Wolfenstein 3D, or Wolfenstein that I have reviewed here previously.

The game is set up as a prequel to The New Order and has you playing as American O.S.A agent B.J Blazkowicz who is on a mission to infiltrate castle Wolfenstein in order to find a file that contains the location of top Nazi leader Deathshead's secret fortress (the assault on the fortress is how The New Order started). Things don't go to plan however and you end up chained up in the dungeons. From here you must escape the fortress and travel to Wulfburg where you discover the important files actually are located, but here you get caught up in a horrific supernatural event...

Ash vs Evil Dead (2015) - Comedy Horror TV Show Review

I was both excited and wary when I heard that a TV series based on the classic Evil Dead films was to be released. Of course it was beyond amazing that horror icon Bruce Campbell was to be starring, reprising his role as Ash, yet being so many years later I wondered if the show could be up to scratch and if the script would be right, let alone how gory it would be allowed to be.

Ash vs Evil Dead takes place thirty years after the events of the Evil Dead films with Ash having become a bit of a waster. He still works at the same supermarket and lives just to pick up women and have a good time, trying his best to forget the horror of his past. One evening while drunk he reads some passages from the Necronomicon (the evil book that causes untold misfortune) to impress a girl and accidentally unleashes the Deadite curse onto the world once again. With no option but to try to right his wrongs and armed with his trusty chainsaw and boomstick he teams up with co-worker Pablo (Ray Santiago) and his friend Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) in order to destroy the dreaded book once and for all. Hot on their heels is disgraced detective Amanda (Jill Marie-Jones) and a mysterious woman named Ruby (Lucy Lawless) who both believe Ash to be the real enemy...

Fright Meter Awards 2015 - Nominations Announced

Yesterday the Fright Meter Awards nominations were announced. These awards have been presented annually since 2007 and for the first time I have been on the committee deciding what gets put forward for consideration. The Fright Meter Awards is a registered non profit organisation dedicated to honouring the years best in horror made up of around fifty bloggers, actors, directors, producers and others from around the world. So here are the nominations, not all of which I personally agree with but a chunk of what I voted for did make it through so is all good. So here are the nominations...