GUIDES

What to watch from the beginnings of horror to the present-day
GUIDE | UNEARTHED

(Walon Green & Ed Spiegel, USA, 1971)

BY TOM PHELAN  |  February 26, 2024

Insects are the worst kind of people. With all the venom-pumping, eye-gouging, and cannibalism, it’s a wonder they get around to maintaining our delicate ecosystem. 

GUIDE | SUBCATEGORY

Arrebato (Rapture)

(Iván Zulueta, Spain, 1979)

Birthed during the cultural thaw that immediately followed the end of the Franco dictatorship, Basque writer-director and designer Iván Zulueta's 1979 feature Arrebato erupts like a massive discharge of so much repressed anxiety and despair.

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BY  LAURA KERN  |  Month 00, 2021

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS

Beast

(Michael Pearce, UK, 2017)

Beast is a lot of movies in one package - fractured fairy tale, belated-coming-of-age story, psychological drama, regional horror film - but above all it's a calling card for its leading lady, Jessie Buckley.

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BY  STEVEN MEARS  |  Month 00, 2021

GUIDE | SUBCATEGORY

Humongous

(Paul Lynch, USA, 1982)

In what could be the fastest-resulting rape revenge movie, a drunken lout brutally forces himself on Ida, the young woman who doesn't return his affections, during a party over Labor Day.

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BY  LAURA KERN  |  Month 00, 2021

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS

Beast

(Michael Pearce, UK, 2017)

Beast is a lot of movies in one package - fractured fairy tale, belated-coming-of-age story, psychological drama, regional horror film - but above all it's a calling card for its leading lady, Jessie Buckley.

READ MORE >

BY  STEVEN MEARS  |  Month 00, 2021

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Jen & Sylvia Soska, Canada, 2012)

Audiences and filmmakers alike can’t seem to get enough of body horror. The Soskas went for it full-throttle with their 2019 remake of Cronenberg’s Rabid...

BY LAURA KERN  |  April 19, 2022

GUIDE | UNEARTHED
(Gakuryu Ishii, Japan, 1994)

Angel Dust (1994) is an energetically bleak film about the terrific ease with which we surrender our minds. Anyone who has been on the Yamanote loop...

BY TOM PHELAN  |  November 30, 2023

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Michael Pearce, UK, 2017)

Beast is a lot of movies in one package—fractured fairy tale, belated-coming-of-age story, psychological drama, regional horror film—but above all...

BY STEVEN MEARS  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Tim Burton, USA, 1988)

Even after the financial success of Tim Burton’s 1985 feature debut, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Warner Bros. rejected his vision for Batman and he was left...

BY ANN OLSSON  |  March 17, 2023

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Jonathan Glazer, USA/UK, 2004)

The camera floats just a little behind and a little above the figure of a man running through Central Park. In this, Birth’s overture, we seem to observe...

BY JOSÉ TEODORO  |  October 31, 2022

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(Edgar G. Ulmer, USA, 1934)

A paragon of queer perversity, Edgar G. Ulmer’s unfathomable Universal horror hit gave major stars Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff two of their greatest roles.

BY MICHAEL KORESKY  |  June 13, 2022

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Brian De Palma, USA, 1976)

Four years after he put aside the satirical, political experiments that defined his early career to make his first true thriller, the macabre and meticulously...

BY MICHAEL KORESKY  |  June 14, 2022

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Peter Medak, Canada, 1980)

For all the freaky poltergeist activity and vivid visions of murder to come, The Changeling (1980) dispatches its most abysmal horrors in its opening minutes, when...

BY JOSÉ TEODORO  |  January 24, 2024

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 1997)

Not just a key figure in the emergence of the J-horror movement, Kiyoshi Kurosawa is also a contender for the most important filmmaker in all of...

BY LAURA KERN  |  July 15, 2022

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(Gunther von Fritsch & Robert Wise, USA, 1944)

At this crazy moment, when film history is caught in the grip of multiple clichés that grind on...

BY KENT JONES  |  September 10, 2023

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Álex de la Iglesia, Spain/Italy, 1995)

A rare case of a film striking the perfect horror-comedy balance, The Day of the Beast is also an extremely rare example of...

BY LAURA KERN  |  December 30, 2023

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden & Robert Hamer, UK, 1945)

Legendary Amicus anthologies like Freddie Francis’s Tales from the Crypt (not to mention TV shows like The Twilight Zone...

BY LAURA KERN  |  October 31, 2022

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Marcin Wrona, Poland, 2015)

With its theatrical origins—Piotr Rowicki’s play AdherenceDemon might be stagey in its limited setting, but there’s so much festering within that you’re hardly aware...

BY LAURA KERN  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | UNEARTHED
(Andrzej Żuławski, Poland, 1972)

Andrzej Żuławski will be your guide through hell, giddy as Virgil his first day on the job. He conceived his second theatrical feature, 1972’s The Devil...

BY TOM PHELAN  |  December 30, 2023

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(Michael Curtiz, USA, 1932)

A peculiar pre-Code concoction of horror, sci-fi, murder mystery, and slapstick romantic comedy, Doctor X was filmed simultaneously in two-color Technicolor and...

BY ANN OLSSON  |  March 17, 2022

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Sam Raimi, USA, 2009)

In 2009, Sam Raimi, the beloved cult-horror auteur of the Evil Dead films turned idiosyncratic mainstream genre director, unexpectedly released his best...

BY MICHAEL KORESKY  |  June 14, 2022

GUIDE | UNEARTHED
(J. Lee Thompson, UK, 1966)

Much folk horror pivots on the sacrifices that must be made for sacred, usually cursed land. And in the case of J. Lee Thompson’s wildly neglected Eye of the Devil...

BY LAURA KERN  |  November 30, 2023

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(David Cronenberg, USA, 1986)

It’s an unfortunate fact of life: even super-smart women sometimes end up with terrible boyfriends. This, along with a very different tragic, universal reality—everyone’s...

BY VIOLET LUCCA  |  October 31, 2022

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Fatih Akin, Germany/France, 2019)

It’s been regularly cautioned that The Golden Glove isn’t for the faint of heart, and while that might be a fair assessment, such warnings may needlessly scare off...

BY LAURA KERN  |  November 23, 2023

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Robert Wise, UK, 1963)

The question of possession looms over The Haunting (1963), with regards to both Hill House, the labyrinthine Victorian mansion in which most of the action...

BY JOSÉ TEODORO  |  September 10, 2023

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(Benjamin Christensen, Sweden/Denmark, 1922)

There is a particular allure to the silent horror movie—the sense that, as a viewer, you haven’t merely stumbled upon something but... 

BY MICHAEL KORESKY  |  November 30, 2023

GUIDE | UNEARTHED
(Mark Robson, USA, 1943)

While 1981’s My Bloody Valentine may rightfully be the go-to Valentine’s Day slasher for anti-romantics who prefer their gooeyness blood-soaked...

BY LAURA KERN  |  February 14, 2022

GUIDE | UNEARTHED
(Paul Lynch, Canada, 1982)

In what could be the fastest-resulting rape-revenge scenario in horror-movie history, a drunken lout brutally forces himself on a young woman, Ida (Shay Garner...

BY LAURA KERN  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Jack Clayton, UK, 1961)

Jack Clayton’s masterpiece of narrative ambiguity The Innocents begins with a time-honored tableau: Deborah Kerr, hands clasped devoutly, imploring a higher...

BY STEVEN MEARS  |  October 31, 2022

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Jacques Tourneur, USA, 1943)

A nurse leads a catatonic through an expanse of moonlit cane. They pass displays of sacrificed animals before encountering the towering...

BY JOSÉ TEODORO  |  March 17, 2023

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Steven Spielberg, USA, 1975)

No other horror movie has ever matched the elemental perfection of Jaws. There are the avowed summits of the genre, for sure, but even such cornerstones of...

BY MICHAEL KORESKY  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | UNEARTHED
(Pen Densham, Canada/USA, 1988)

Suckers for crazy-ass voodoo curses that travel down female family bloodlines should delight in The Kiss, a film that got lost among the wealth of 1988 horror gems...

BY LAURA KERN  |  October 31, 2022

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Ken Russell, UK, 1988)

Item 1 on my list of demands to be met before returning to regular Mass on Sundays is the canonization of Ken Russell. 

BY TOM PHELAN  |  January 5, 2024

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Joel Anderson, Australia, 2008)

It’s both a mystery and a shame that Joel Anderson has directed only one feature, emerging out of nowhere to unleash a film that has slowly gained cult status...

BY RUFUS DE RHAM  |  October 31, 2022

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Larry Fessenden, USA/Iceland, 2006)

There is a deep sense of overwhelming sadness that pervades Larry Fessenden’s The Last Winter. Oil workers for...

BY RUFUS DE RHAM  |  December 30, 2023

GUIDE | UNEARTHED
(Robert Sigl, W. Germany/Hungary, 1989)

Like the best fairy tales, which often portray darkness through the lens of childhood innocence, Laurín tells a dreamily surreal...

BY LAURA KERN  |  March 17, 2022

GUIDE | UNEARTHED
(Michael Anderson, Canada, 1982)

This rarity by the director of Logan’s Run and Orca may be one of the silliest slasher films ever made, but it’s also irresistible fun, both...

BY LAURA KERN  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(A. Edward Sutherland, USA, 1933)

After a curiously cutesy opening-credits sequence featuring Murders in the Zoo’s cast members mirrored with similarly posed animals, a quick tonal shift occurs...

BY LAURA KERN  |  April 19, 2022

GUIDE | UNEARTHED
(James Justice & Umberto Lenzi, Italy, 1989)

The close of the ’80s brought a consummate entry in that decade’s trash-horror cinema. Nightmare Beach takes a sex-comedy setting...

BY LAURA KERN  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | UNEARTHED
(Terry Bourke, Australia, 1972)

An interesting piece of Australian horror history is that one of the first examples of the genre wasn’t meant to be a feature film at all. Night of Fear was originally intended as...

BY LAURA KERN  |  November 23, 2023

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1946)

Uniting his powers of visual storytelling and his understanding of human foibles, Hitchcock served up a top-notch melodrama and spy thriller with Notorious.

BY ANN OLSSON  |  June 13, 2022

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Alejandro Amenábar, Spain/USA, 2001)

One of the few great, truly original ghost stories of the 21st century, Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others somehow manages to combine...

BY MICHAEL KORESKY  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Bernard Rose, UK, 1988)

Paperhouse has many frightening scenes, but one stands out as particularly scary for its brevity and almost inexplicable terror. The film’s young protagonist, Anna...

BY MICHAEL KORESKY  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Bruce McDonald, Canada, 2008)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was: “What?” This syllable, spoken by Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), shock jock in decline, is in response to...

BY TOM PHELAN  |  January 3, 2023

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Mark Herrier, Canada/USA, 1991)

When we were in our late teens, my best friend had a random VHS collection consisting of just three titles: Night of the Living DeadCreepers, and Popcorn.

BY LAURA KERN  |  January 19, 2023

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Sébastien Marnier, France, 2018)

Sébastien Marnier’s second feature may be cursed with a generic English title, but the film immediately dispels any semblance of the ordinary...

BY LAURA KERN  |  October 8, 2023

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(Mark Robson, USA, 1943)

Though it’s not as widely known as some of the other B-horror films that Val Lewton produced for RKO between 1942 and 1946, The Seventh Victim is...

BY MICHAEL KORESKY  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Daniel Attias, USA, 1985)

There’s so much to love about ’80s horror, especially for those of us raised on the films of that era. They routinely feature endearingly predictable plot twists, spooky...

BY HANS SMITH  |  April 19, 2022

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Jack Clayton, USA, 1983)

Beware the autumn people. You know who you are. Curled up under a blanket each October rereading...

BY TOM PHELAN  |  October 31, 2023

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Richard Fleischer, USA, 1973)

There’s no crueler fate for an inventive, well-crafted film than being remembered solely for its twist ending, especially with said twist divulged through a line... 

BY STEVEN MEARS  |  March 1, 2022

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(David Koepp, USA, 1999)

Writer/director David Koepp paid the ultimate tribute to an author he reveres, the oft-adapted Richard Matheson, with a top-notch screen version of...

BY LAURA KERN  |  January 24, 2024

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Conor McMahon, Ireland, 2012)

Coulrophobia—the fear of clowns—is no joke. Pennywise, that damn clown hiding under the bed in Poltergeist, and just good old trips to the local...

BY LAURA KERN  |  April 19, 2022

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(Victor Halperin, USA, 1933)

This pre-Code offering packs a lot of story into its typically brisk running time, with several plot threads weaving together a (not always successful)...

BY ANN OLSSON  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(John Carpenter, USA/Canada, 1982)

The horrible miracle of John Carpenter’s The Thing is that it manages to absolutely terrify the viewer while also being patently, grotesquely absurd.

BY MICHAEL KORESKY  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(George Archainbaud, USA, 1932)

Behold the power of Myrna Loy! In Thirteen Women, she propels a man to throw himself in front of a moving subway train using only her intense gaze.

BY ANN OLSSON  |  November 30, 2023

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(Lewis Allen, USA, 1944)

One of the most beloved horror movies of the 1940s that didn’t have the name Val Lewton attached to it, Paramount’s The Uninvited is a classy, atmospheric chiller...

BY MICHAEL KORESKY  |  October 31, 2021

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(Tod Browning, USA, 1927)

Unfairly remembered more for his staggering innovations with makeup than for his equally staggering dramatic skills, Lon Chaney is the absent father of horror cinema.

BY STEVEN MEARS  |  July 15, 2022

GUIDE | UNEARTHED
(Stephanie Rothman, USA, 1971)

It was Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957) that inspired Stephanie Rothman to make movies. She studied filmmaking at the University of Southern California…

BY JOSÉ TEODORO  |  February 12, 2024

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Robert Aldrich, USA, 1962)

When Bette Davis as Jane served Joan Crawford’s Blanche her pet...

BY STEVEN MEARS  |  April 19, 2022

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Robert Zemeckis, USA, 2000)

A woman’s experience of empty-nest syndrome manifests as a supernatural return of the repressed in Robert Zemeckis’s cathartic ghost story...

BY MICHAEL KORESKY  |  January 24, 2024

GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(Hiroshi Teshigahara, Japan, 1964)

The tale of an amateur entomologist (Eiji Okada) lured by seemingly amiable rural folk into a sand pit from which he is unable to escape...

BY JOSÉ TEODORO  |  October 31, 2022

GUIDE | CORE HORROR

(Hiroshi Teshigahara, Japan, 1964)

BY JOSÉ TEODORO  |  October 31, 2022

The tale of an amateur entomologist (Eiji Okada) lured by seemingly amiable rural folk into a sand pit from which he is unable to escape, Woman in the Dunes would seem to generate its particular strain of terror from our primal fear of sequestration and austerity.