The Wicked Woods - Now Available on DVD and VOD - Horror Film News

The latest HNN Presents release is The Wicked Woods which has came to DVD and VOD from Bayview Entertainment. The film is about a married woman and her lover who have headed to a remote woodland cabin to discuss their future. Soon they find themselves under assault by forces outside the cabin. So far so The Evil Dead. This force reveals itself in the form of an old man, a nude woman, and cloaked children, and seeks to punish the couple for their actions in life.

This is a Spanish language film with English subtitles and is a HorrorNews.net presentation, it can be purchased on Amazon. It can also be found at Walmart, FYE, TCM Shop, Deep Discount, Oldies.com, Import CDs, Vintage Vinyl and more, in DVD form. VOD platforms include Amazon Prime, Vimeo, iTunes, Tubi, Roku, and MX Player.

Devil in the Woods (2020) - Horror Film Review

Devil in the Woods is a very indie English horror film written and directed by Terence Elliott (co-director of Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night). Watching this was a comedy of errors for me as I spent the whole experience convinced I knew how this would play out, but my assumptions were very incorrect. Due to those self same assumptions I struggled to take much of what I was seeing seriously.

Four college friends who drifted apart after the mum of one them died, come back together in order to complete a film studies project. The project is to make up at least 60% of their overall grade for the year and so Tess (Francesca Howe - Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night, Underland) is determined to do a good job. Julian (Daniel Wale - Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night) has a soft spot for Jess so he is on board to help out, however, stoner Chris (Alec Sleigh - Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night) refuses to take the project seriously, with his maybe girlfriend Jenny (Amy Joy - Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night) happy to follow his lead. Eventually the group decide to make a found footage horror, but their trip to the woods to record this has them meet up with a far more sinister group...

The film is 70 minutes long and features acting that while not terrible wasn't as high quality as you might see in other horrors. The performances in part led to my wrong thoughts about where the story would lead. The horror element appears in the films third act, with everything leading to this point mainly being the main story and a subplot involving two Police Officers. The filming a film within a film part of this helped show that maybe the acting isn't as bad as it initially appeared to be, as there is a very noticeable dip in quality when the characters are acting in the film they are creating. There are only a handful of locations used with the majority taking place in woodland, then an office for the officers, and rooms for two of the characters.

Two Twisted Tales (2021) - Short Horror Anthology Film Review

Two Twisted Tales is the latest short film from writer/director Nicholas Michael Jacobs (Genevieve Wreaks Havoc, Genevieve, Tales from Six Feet Under). Their are a couple of novel things going for it. Firstly, it is the first film I have received for review that is due for release in 2021, and secondly, despite being just three minutes in length this manages to cram two different stories into the run time.

This works both as a companion piece to the Genevieve short films, as well as a sequel of sorts to Tales from Six Feet Under. The Visitor (Jacobs) tells two different horror tales via an old cassette deck. The first is about the origins of a creepy doll. The second story is one about a widower (Alexis Beacher) whose online buying habits leads to her taking a chance on a mystery box.

It sounds like originally the plan was to make another entry in his killer doll series, but due to COVID-19 this wasn't possible. Still wanting to create something Jacob changed his plans into this brief anthology. He said that Two Twisted Tales was going for something with a different feel, both due to limited resources and due to wanting to try something new.

With the film relying on the narration of The Visitor the two tales felt more like ideas than fully fleshed out stories. The audio format does transform these into something more akin to a Creepy Pasta story, urban legends given form. The short length of these made for something that was very watchable, sure it would have been nice to get a lot more from these two stories, but as a taster it satisfied. It will be interesting to see if this is the start of a new series for this indie director. Two Twisted Tales is due for release on 1st January 2021 on Amazon Prime Video.

SCORE:

Beyond Hell (2019) - Horror Film Review

Beyond Hell is an indie horror that was written and directed by Alan Murray (Exposed) in his feature length directorial debut. The film follows a familiar path and as such it was never going to be an essential horror to watch, yet despite some obvious budget limitations this was still relatively fun.

After returning from a vacation to South America, high schooler Seth (Sean Rey - Hemlock Grove) brings with him a new drug he found there, and during a get together with his friends they all take it, expecting a fun time. Wholesome Maryssa (Kearsten Johansson - Exposed) finds herself transported to a Hell dimension where a demonic entity known as Belial (Gavin R. Downes - Exposed) is able to use the girl as a bridge to invade Earth. With one of the friends at the party dead due to all this, Maryssa is blamed and committed to a psychiatric ward. One by one however each of the friends who took the drug are turning up dead in brutal circumstances, Maryssa, Jake (Sebastian Deery) and another friend set out to find a way to sever the connection Belial has to the world.

The general storyline has been done to death countless times before, both better and not as well implemented as this one. Things begin oddly with a prologue that almost seemed like it was taken from a different film entirely. It shows a man (who maybe was Seth) being chased by a load of cultists, before being captured. Aside from an epilogue that took place in the end credits this intro scene didn't seem to have anything to do with anything. If Seth was meant to be brainwashed there was never any indication he was, so it felt like a bizarre inclusion when Seth could have easily just got the drugs from anywhere rather than an Indiana Jones style sequence. Regardless of similarities Beyond Hell was fun once it got going, even if it is constantly let down by sub par special effects. The worst of these is the CG used to simulate the demon world affecting the protagonists, CG tentacles straight out of 2005 are one such eye sore, as are the superimposed zombie hands that 'burst' out of the floor, and on another occasion the wall. Day of the Dead did a similar effect, but practically in 1985, and that one looked a hundred times better than what we are shown here.

A Primitive Evolution releases official music video for Ghost - Music News

Toronto, ON based dark alternative rock band A Primitive Evolution have released a music video for Ghost, taken off their latest album, Becoming. This was directed by Terra Jo McNerthney and produced by Bailey Northcott.

The video for Ghost takes place in a post apocalyptic dreamscape, two survivors follow radio waves in the hope of finding connection. The band said of the song "We'd never written an epic long piece like this before and it really helped seal the album together for us". The track is based on dreams one of the band had after losing his father at the age of 14. Becoming can be downloaded/streamed online, and a physical CD can be purchased here.

Human No More: The Feature (2020) - Horror Film Review

Oh boy, Human No More is one of the more difficult films I have been sent to review for a good while. I kind of had a sinking feeling while watching this that a lot of the themes and story here went over my head by quite a large margin. I fear this review will be as easy to write as remembering all the details of a crazed dream would be. My synopsis and likely other details provided will be the product of my interpretation, likely wrong, but is my springboard into trying to talk about this in a cohesive manner.

Human No More was written and directed by Christopher Alan Broadstone and has a slight anthology feel to it. This is fitting as it features within its two hour run time three different short films, Scream for Me (2000), My Skin! (2002), and Human No More (2004). These segments have appeared in different anthologies over the years, but here they are brought together, helped with actors from the main story also playing parts in those three stories. 
Tony Simmons mainly plays Det. Nemo, a hard boiled detective with a jaded outlook on life. He has gone to a unique club where he drinks and smokes while thinking about a strange case he had, tracking a serial killer that came to be known as the Mirror Murders Killer (Gabriel Sigal). Whether this place is real, or if Simmons has dived deep into his own 'mind palace' is never made clear, but here he encounters the killer who provides a long essay into the pointlessness of existence.

While the three short films here would indicate this to be an anthology there is so much of the rest of the movie that these felt more like little side stories. My Skin! is the first of these side stories and reminded me a lot of the TV show sequences in the Max Payne video games. In this one a man thinking he has gotten away with the perfect crime is horrified to find that someone with almost supernatural power (also Simmons) is Hell bent on dismantling the perfectness of the crime to grant a dead woman retribution from beyond the grave.
In Scream for Me two serial killers (played by Simmons and Sigal) happen to converge on the house of a young woman on the same ill fated night.
Finally, the Human No More segment featured the same detective character, I believe this one was towards the film's conclusion, it sheds more light on what made this character so bleak and jaded.

Insomniac Frightmare Killers - Horror Film News and Trailer

I don't have much details on Insomniac Frightmare Killers, but what I do have is a trailer, a synopsis, a cast, and a release window for this. This very indie horror is about a disturbed insomniac loner whose nightmares start to become reality as he becomes more and more detached from reality. 

The best thing about this is that it stars Nicholas M. Garofolo (Sweet Revenge, Deranged Foxhole) who never fails to have a real screen presence. It is also set to feature Lauren Collier, Taryn Danielle, Meredith Binder, Emmeline Prior, Megan Miles, Laura Pelliccia, Hana Leigh, Dave Sweeney, Drew Samuelsen and Steven Wishman. Insomniac Frightmare Killers is due to be released in Spring of next year.

Beasts Clawing at Straws (2020) - Thriller Film Review

A disclaimer to start with, Young-hoon Kim's Beasts Clawing at Straws is not a horror film, I do admit to being drawn in by the title, plus being a South Korean movie made me also interested in watching it. From the synopsis this sounded like a crime drama and that is mostly fitting. The varied cast of desperate and greedy characters is what sounded most interesting.

A former restaurant owner reduced to working in a sauna one day discovers a bag full of money in one of the lockers, and decides to take it home with him. Meanwhile a whole bunch of characters play out their lives, as the film progresses you find out just how this disparate people came to be involved in the series of events that led to the bag of money getting left at the sauna in the first place.

This was a well made thriller that had a great cast to it. Despite there being four or five storylines going on this never got confusing, there was a gentle placing of the pieces of the puzzle. The main cast of eight characters all end up crossing paths at one point or another. These include a local crime boss, a detective, a customs officer, a cleaner, a prostitute and more. There is quite a bit of murder here but despite that this never felt dark. You get the impression that none of these characters are innocent, and their desperation leads to a lot of the movie's events. This results in plenty of quasi-farcical moments that help keep the film's darkly comedic tone to it, moments such as when some gangsters accidentally chase their victim to death for instance. I enjoyed how threaded the different plots all where, but this was always competent in how they thread, but there wasn't any huge surprises.

Hercules Recycled 2.0 (2020) - Comedy Film News

Hercules Recycled 2.0 is described as an 'insane, redubbed hybrid comedy/adventure set in a future where the power's run out and the world has collapsed into primal chaos'. It is stated that it was put together using nine old 'sword and sandal' movies to create a semi cohesive whole. The edited films have had additional work put on them, which includes 'two teenagers in togas, Eyezilla, a mercenary mariachi band, a space puppet, the kitchen sink (literally) and over 150 CGI effects'.

This was directed and co-written by Don Moriarty in his feature length directorial debut and the crazed story tells of a man in a chaotic future, former exercise show host Burt Galaxy who must seek out a lost energy formula that can restore civilisation. 
Hercules Recycled 2.0 is out now and can be seen on Amazon Prime Video here.

The Mark of the Bell Witch (2020) - Horror Documentary Review

The Mark of the Bell Witch is a new documentary from director Seth Breedlove (Momo: The Missouri Monster, Terror in the Skies). Having seen a few of his documentaries now I would say that this one is my favourite. Previously they have been about legendary monsters and creatures, but this time it is instead focussed on the supernatural. I had heard of the Bell Witch but I hadn't ever heard any details about it and so I was interested to discover this supposedly true tale of terror.

During the first decades of the 19th Century the Bell family were terrorised by a supernatural presence that came to be known as the Bell Witch. Initially it made itself known by creating strange noises from within their property, but as time went on it began to attack family members at night, and to slowly develop a voice, calling itself 'Kate'. Over time this spirit came to be known in the area and many people would travel to the property to encounter it for themselves. Eventually there became four separate entities that were apparently haunting the family, and Kate indicated that the terror was all happening as she wished for the head of the Bell family, John Bell to die. Eventually he did die in strange circumstances and the encounters gradually faded away. All that is according to the legends about the Bell Witch.

The documentary is an hour and a half long and I did wonder how they would find enough material to fit such a time frame. Well, it turns out there is a heck of a lot to the legend, and over twelve chapters various parts of it are talked about. This isn't a documentary that sets out to prove or disprove the legend, instead it presents evidence from people of the time in a neutral fashion. The majority of this is shown via narration and recreations. The recreations are done in black and white and feature plenty of supernatural images, such as the ghostly appearance of the witch and her creepy voice. I'm glad they went this route, at its heart it's a ghost story so I'm glad it was shown this way rather than in a more dry logical sense. The biggest thing I got out of this was thinking how great this would be as a season of The Haunting on Netflix (The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor). It has so many of the classic ghost/demonic presence stories you see in such things as Paranormal Activity and Insidious. Things such as a force passing itself off as someone or something it might not actually be, and the way it increases in power the more people pay attention to it. It has all the classic tropes, but taking place so far in the past was pretty cool to hear about.

OverKill - Short Comedy Horror Film News

I remember fondly the video game Manhunt that came out on the Playstation 2. It had you going up against various despicable gangs as part of a twisted snuff film, and one of the gangs were lunatics who all wore 'smiley face' masks. While on holiday once I got the idea for a slasher film in which the killer wore one such mask, and so I was delighted to see the poster for the short comedy horror film OverKill where it sounds like someone else has used a similar idea.

This film comes from writer/director/editor, Alex Montilla (Cheat Day, Hot Tub Time Machine) and takes a fun look at the slasher genre. It is business as usual but the survivor of a college kid massacre discovers the killer literally cannot be stopped. This has been described as '80's slasher movie by way of "Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner" cartoons. OverKill was the winner of 'Best of the Fest' at Ethereal Horror Fest, and stars Amy Letcher, Mike Hall and Will Coffin.

My mask:

Devil's Prey (2020) - Horror Film Review

Devil's Prey is a supernatural horror that was written, directed and edited by Lincoln Casimir in his feature film debut for all those roles. It is a bit of a crazy film, to me it felt like an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on drugs. All the pieces are there to tell a logical and well meaning story, but it felt more overly produced than was needed, making for a dizzy and disorientating movie.

Larry (Paul C. Kelly - Driftwood) is a serial killer who targets children. A victim of sexual abuse as a child he sees himself as a victim and someone who is unable to fight against his urges. When a young girl goes missing, two detectives suspect Larry (the girl's next door neighbour) may be involved, but they have no proof. Meanwhile an angel of death, Luke (Adam Silverman) is caught up in a battle of wits with a demon, Roam (John K. Hart - Crown of Thorns), the former wanting Larry to redeem himself, the later wanting Larry to fully commit to the darkness so that he can take his soul away.

This was a crazed movie that never really pauses to take a breath. Within the first few minutes we are introduced to Luke who during a casual conversation happens to mention he is dead. We learn of a missing girl, and the detectives as well as the girl's parents immediately suspect Larry, who then casually (though making it seem like a joke) tells the detectives he molests children. We then spend the rest of the movie split between three chaotic storylines. The majority of the movie in a breath of fresh air follows Larry, who (likely) rapes and murders aside is a bit of a soft character. He has a sick mother in a nursing home, he has the abuse he suffered as a child, and he has constant dreams and visions of both Luke and Roam. He spends the movie flitting around from location to location speaking to people who act completely unsurprised that he is having visions of angels and demons.
The first subplot involves the two bumbling detectives, these swiftly end up relying on a local psychic to help them solve their case for them. Despite closely watching Larry they somehow miss him doing what he does worst, even when it is painfully obvious the man has secrets to hide.
The second subplot is where Devil's Prey is at its most bizarre. Here, Luke speaks to his superior on how best to save Larry's soul, and occasionally has a war of words with Roam.

Music Round-up for Autumn 2020

I currently have 65 emails sitting in the news section of my inbox, inundated with news at the moment. This is no bad thing, but does mean some items dating back to the middle of October are reaching their 'sell by' date. It's about time for my monthly news, so I have decided to remove the music news into its own post.

Cassetter's horror track 'Slasher' has gotten a Cyberpunk remix from Extra Terra. The song has been infused with 'grim, futuristic edge spiked with hints of Extra Terra's dubstep style. The remix is out now on all platforms, from FiXT Neon.
FiXT have recently signed Void Chapter. This project comes from Otto Cate, Adam Fielding and Brian Skeel and is said to 'deliver an exhilarating audio journey through dystopian sci-fi worlds'. They have released two full-length instrumental albums, The Sprawl and The Uprising with new vocal based material dropping in 2021.

Canadian hard rock/heavy metal band Boneyard released their new album, Oathbreaker on October 24th. The band are led by vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Pamtera and includes members from previous bands Tyrant, Septimus and Powerslave. Initially they were a cover band but have been creating original music for the past three years. For more information check out their website.

Boston, MA rock band Above Snakes have released a new single, Never Alone, and to go with it is a zombie based animated visualiser. Singer, Johnny Skulls (great name) says the song is about "living a chaotic lifestyle...and just when you're at your worst, that special force pulls you back into reality giving you a new lifeline". The music video for the track released on November 13th.

Ethereal Darkwave duo The Palace of Tears have revealed their new album, Of Ruination. This album features seven tracks 'of somber beauty and otherworldly seduction'. It contains themes of love, death and 'the search for truth in a world filled with grief and the longing for connection'. The track listing is as follows, Terra Ephemera, Thy Womb Full of Black Nectar, Masque L'Intrigue, Tears of the Moon, Cold Dead Skin, Shadows Of Whispering Phantoms, and Of Ruination. It is out now digitally, with a limited CD edition to follow.

Following on from her last single The Day I Died comes Gothic singer, Elle Noir's new song, Like A Black Doll. This is the title track from her upcoming EP. She says the song is about "a traumatic situation of my childhood, which I do not talk about but have been able to elaborate on over the years thanks to music."

Dark Rock artist Sharone has released a second song off her upcoming LP, Morbid Illusion. The track, Fade Away is described as her empowerment anthem and features a video about a wounded warrior confronting death.

Now, Dungeon Synth is a subgenre of music I have never heard of before, but US based Sombre Arcane fit into that apparently. They have recently released a video for their new track, Ancestral Seat Of The Barovian Scourge. The song was inspired by a Dungeons & Dragons module that the band have been playing together for 8 years. That is something to be respected, kinda jealous of that long game!

Another new music video, this time with Dawn of Ashes who have one for their song Sleep Paralysis. They use elements of HR Giger, Zdzislaw Bekinski and Clive Barker, with the video focusing on corruption, police brutality and human rights. This is taken off their new album The Antinomian that came out in July thanks to Artoffact Records.

I have more music news to share, but I will leave it here for the moment, happy listening and see you on the other side of the cassette tape. I say tape, as that is the best my car offers me when it comes to providing me music sources, thank God for smartphones!