Sense of Dread

"Well, Jeremy? Are you going to let me in?" the doctor said, looking at me, patiently waiting for me to answer him. I hesitated. There was something wrong with the way he said it, something sinister behind his words. For a split second, one of the nightmarish things I had dreamed about crossed my mind. I began sweating and wiped my palms on my pajama bottoms. He was still staring at me, waiting for an answer. Those damned eyes. "I don't know what you want from me," I said, looking back at the doctor but refusing to meet his gaze. "Well, I want you to let me in, I need to be inside your mind. You see, if you don't share what is plaguing you, what horrors you say you've seen, then how can I even begin to help you? You have to share with me, Jeremy. You do want us to make them go away don't you?" he replied, with a smile. There was something so fake about that smile, like a serpent hiding it's fangs just before it bit down on it...

It's too early. They always wake us too early. The light burns my eyes. How long has it been since I last slept? I can't tell. The doctor is coming to see me again today. He always has "nice" things to say, to try and motivate me to get up, socialize, sleep proper...they even give me pills to help. But it doesn't happen, I'm wide awake all the time. It's why I'm here, I imagine. They put me here. To help me. But it's not helping. The doctor will help me. He'll show me that everything I'm seeing is fake. That the fire and the pain and the blood...oh God, the blood...he'll show me all that is in my head, a stupid dream that I see even when I'm awake, the insomnia a side-effect of my fear of those dreams, or so they've told me. 10 AM...I can hear them in the hallway, I'm all the way at the end, in the last room. The doctor and the orderlies are visiting each patient, saying hello, asking how their mornings are. I sit up, br...

HALLOWEEN (2018) was directed by David Gordon Green, written by David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and Jeff Fradley. The film stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, and Andi Matichak as mother, daughter, and granddaughter who must come together when The Boogeyman Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital 40 years after the infamous events that happened 40 years earlier in Haddonfield on October 31st and is out to finish the job. Now, I went into this with a bit of worry. Michael Myers is one of my all-time favorite movie murderers and the original Halloween is, to me, the movie that gave us the slasher genre as we know it and love it today. But Michael hasn't been done proper since the late 70s...as the sequels have not really been that great (Halloween 3: Season of the Witch doesn't count, since that was a stand-alone and had nothing to do with The Shape). I had re-watched Halloween (in glorious 4K) to prepare for this new installment (that movie gets creepier and creepi...

So last week I featured a couple of spooky true tales from a couple of good friends of mine on Twitter. This week, I have one more from my good friend Josh, and one of my own to share. Now, please remember, this kind of phenomenon has both it's believers and skeptics. I, myself, am a true believer in life after death, demons, spirits, etc. And then there are skeptics, who label these as imagination running wild or things that could be explained using rational thought. Believe them or not, these things happen, and we can all agree that we are unable to rationalize what has happened before our very eyes. Let us now descend into madness... The Mangled Boy  - Mr. Josh (@JoshPond10) "I’d like to tell you the one paranormal experience above all that I've ever had. The one that truly messed me up. The experience that haunts me to this day and has given me full blown panic attacks when things trigger the memory late at night or in shadowy places. I call him the mangled boy...

Summer of 84 was directed by François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and written by Matt Leslie, Stephen J. Smith and stars a brilliant young cast of Graham Verchere, Judah Lewis, Caleb Emery, Cory Gruter-Andrew, Tiera Skovbye and a very very entertaining Rich Sommer, and is about a group of teenage friends who spend their summer spying on their police officer neighbor and gathering evidence on him because they suspect him of being a serial killer, but as they get closer to discovering the truth, things start to get dangerous. This is one of those films I didn't know what to expect. I had heard a lot of mixed reviews and wasn't sure if I should buy it. It got a very limited cinema release around here and always late at night in the smaller screens. I was sort of disappointed because I had seen the trailers and it looked genuinely interesting. That's when I stumbled upon it when I was browsing my Microsoft Movies & TV app on my Xbox. At a mere twelve bucks (bef...

Hello friends and family! So the other day, as I was messing around on Twitter, chitting and chatting (see what I did there?) with my friends and realized 'hey! We all have some pretty weird and unexplained stuff that's happened to us! And since it's the Halloween season...why don't we talk about it?' Well this is the culmination of those stories and the first part of a series that will definitely continue as long as people keep sharing their stories. It doesn't matter if you're a skeptic or if you're a believer, but what I do know for sure is that these people experienced something. They felt something. They saw something. It's unexplained and it's downright disturbing and scary. Without further ado....Spooky True Stories.... Phantom Highway - @KirkMcCall3 (Ms Kirk McCall) "My great uncle was driving to work one night in the early sixties, I got this confirmed by a relative. He worked the midnight shift and he's driving on this ...

Seven strangers, each with a secret to bury, meet at Lake Tahoe's El Royale, a rundown hotel with a dark past. Over the course of one fateful night, everyone will have a last shot at redemption - before everything goes to hell....ooooo spooky! Or not. This isn't a horror movie. But what it is? Well...let's get into that. Bad Times at the El Royale was written and directed by Drew Goddard (The Cabin In The Woods) and has an all-star cast that includes Jon Hamm, Dakota Johnson, Cynthia Erivo, Jeff Bridges, Chris Hemsworth, Cailee Spaeny, and Lewis Pullman. The movie centers on this group of people that end up at the El Royale for one reason or another, and then all Hell breaks loose when the truth behind their intentions begins to surface. And man, this was one helluva thrill ride! Let's start with what I absolutely hated about this movie...and it's only one small thing. I wanted way more character background for Lewis Pullman's character, the concierge M...

One of the biggest debates in film, most notably in the horror genre, is the one over remakes/reboots of some film classics. Just the other day, I noticed a series of tweets where they were debating over if the new Halloween (2018) film was a remake, a reboot, or a sequel. I can't really say anything about that, since I have yet to see it and don't have an opinion on it. What I can talk about, however, is that I recently watched a film said to be a classic, The Invisible Man, and I can say this as an absolute fact: I wished it were set in modern day, I wished it were scary, and I wished it wasn't just so god awful. Yes, I respect that the film is a classic, but the script was just so hokey and so old fashioned...that it definitely wouldn't get the audience that it once had in today's cinemas. That's where this idea came to me. What about the other horror films that have been remade or rebooted in recent years? There have been many horror movies remade in re...

A Quiet Place is a horror-thriller starring Emily Blunt and John Krasinski as parents who are trying to keep their family safe in a post-apocalyptic world where there are creatures that hunt using sound. I was able to catch this film on Tuesday night at the Alamo Drafthouse El Paso and was treated to an almost perfect film. Krasinski and Blunt are incredible in this movie. The film is beautifully shot, the score is terrifying, and the lack of dialogue or even character’s names does nothing to take away any of the thrills and chills that are delivered on screen. The majority of the character’s communications are done via sign language since any small noise could attract these creatures that are now terrorizing our world. The movie begins several months after creatures have appeared in our world and have all but decimated the human population. We follow a small family (mother, father, kids) as they attempt to survive this world, walking on sand to muffle their footsteps, eating on l...

RAMPAGE! Oh, Rampage...Where do I begin? Rampage is an action/adventure film starring Dwayne Johnson, also known as The Rock, as a primatologist (believe it or not), who is joined by a geneticist played by Naomie Harris, to stop three genetically altered animals from destroying the city of Chicago. They are also joined by Jeffery Dean Morgan as a government agent, and Malin Akerman and Jake Lacy as a brother and sister team of...uh...evil corporate people...? I dunno how else to describe the bad guys of this movie...And, oh yeah, there’s a cameo for Joe Manganiello. I say cameo because he’s in it for like...10 minutes. I was lucky enough to check this movie out on a two-for-one ticket night at my local Alamo Drafthouse with my wife and we sat down to enjoy this 1 hour and 47 minute mindless feature. I gotta say, I was a little surprised. I went in expecting it to be completely idiotic and just all around stupid. Well, it was pretty stupid and completely idiotic. It was a mindless ...

So I got “dared” (ha ha...sigh) to see this movie. I actually put up a mini poll asking for 5 of our followers to decide if I should review it since I had no plans for this week’s review. I got a response almost immediately. After much deliberation, I caved and decided to go ahead and see the movie, even after reading about how horrible it was. Luckily, I got to see it on a “buy one get one” ticket night and saw it at the local Alamo Drafthouse. Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare stars Lucy Hale of ‘Pretty Little Liars’ fame as Olivia, Tyler Posey of ‘MTV’s Teen Wolf’ as Lucas, Violett Beane as Olivia’s BFF Markie, Sophia Ali as Penelope, Nolan Gerard Funk as Tyson, Landon Liboiron as Carter, Sam Lerner as Ronnie, and Hayden Szeto as Brad. The film follows this young group of college students as they head to Mexico for their last spring break together before “real life” sets in. The opening credits show the gang partying, enjoying the beaches and clubs and bars that Monterrey has to offe...

“The brain sees what it wants to see...” Ghost Stories is a British psychological thriller/horror film starring Andy Nyman, Martin Freeman, Paul Whitehouse, and Alex Lawther and is about a professor who makes a living debunking supernatural things like psychics and ghosts and ghouls, who is given three cases to investigate that may not be as easily explained as he first thinks, and is directed by Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson. They also co-wrote the film. The film is also based on the West End play by League of Gentleman writer Jeremy Dyson, which I am told is very very spooky and very very entertaining. Now, my first reaction when I went in was that the theater was practically empty. My wife and I were lucky to even get into a screening, since the film plays either very early in the day or very late at night, and is a very limited release. I love movies like this. Sure, I’m a huge fan of blockbusters and major films (in any genre), but when a small budget indie title actually get...

The Monster Squad is a movie I had owned for a couple of years now and yet had never seen. It was one of those films that kind of fell under the radar for me as a child since my parents or any of my older family members ever showed it to me, so after buying it and hearing all the buzz surrounding it, I decided to review it for y’all. Well...buckle up...cause we’re going monster hunting! The Monster Squad stars child actors Andre Gower, Robby Kiger, Brent Chalem, and Ryan Lambert, as well as Stephen Macht as Del - Sean’s dad (that’s literally his name in the credits), Duncan Regehr as Count Dracula, and Tom Noonan as Frankenstein’s Monster. The film is about five youngsters who find themselves up against the combined might of Dracula, the Mummy, the Gill Man and Frankenstein's Monster who arrive in town in search of a magic amulet. These kids are part of a group that are huge monster movie fans. They love monsters so much, one of them is even wearing a Stephen King Rules t-shir...

I have something to admit, and I’m not proud of it...I have never seen the original Friday the 13th before this week when I was coercer into doing so for another retro review. I was not disappointed. The film is directed by Sean S. Cunningham and stars Betsy Palmer as Mrs. Voorhees, Robbi Morgan as Annie, Adrienne King as Alice, Jeannine Taylor as Marcie, Kevin Bacon (YES! THAT KEVIN BACON!!!) as Jack, Harry Crosby as Bill, Laurie Bartram as Brenda, Mark Nelson as Ned, Peter Brouwer as Steve Christy, and Willie Adams as Barry. The film is about a group of young...I’m assuming college aged kids...who are all hired by Steve Christy to help him re-open Camp Crystal Lake 2 decades after a couple of camp counselors were found brutally murdered. Sounds like a great idea, right? Well, unfortunately for our cast of characters, history tends to repeat itself in bloody fashion. For those who have never seen this movie, I won’t spoil what happens. Instead, I’ll go over certain aspects of t...

Alright...before I begin, I just couldn’t write a review for this film without including major spoilers in the plot or talk about that twist ending that made me cringe, so again...there will be spoilers. That being said...Chewie, PUNCH IT!!! Solo - A Star Wars Story was directed by the hit-or-miss Ron Howard and stars Alden Ehrenreich as a young Han Solo, Joonas Suotamo as a young Chewbacca, Woody Harrelson as Han’s mentor Beckett, Emilia Clarke as Qi’ra, Donald Glover as a young Land Calrissian, Thandie Newton as Val, Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Lando’s co-pilot droid L3-37, Paul Bettany as the antagonist Dryden Vos, and the voice of Jon Favreau as Rio Durant. So you’d think with a cast like this one, there’s no way that Ron Howard could mess this movie up or that the acting would be terrible, right? Oh, almost forgot...Sam Witwer did a voice in the movie...and Ray Park is in the movie, too...so that should tell you everything about that secret twist at the end. But let’s start simpl...

Oh man oh man....Blumhouse has been killing it lately in the entertainment department... UPGRADE stars Logan Marshall-Green as Grey Trace, a self-identified technophobe who lives in a world where technology more or less controls all aspect of life, who suffers a massive loss,  his only hope for revenge: an experimental computer chip implant called Stem that will allow him to walk again. Once he gets Stem implanted...well that’s when all Hell breaks lose and we’re treated to a massively entertaining sci-fi action flick. The film also stars Harrison Gilbertson as Eron, the man who developed Stem, Betty Gabriel as detective Cortez, a cop who is investigating Grey and what happened to him. The film is written and directed by the awesome Leigh Wannell, who is the co-creator of the SAW and INSIDIOUS franchises. I brought Mike with me to see this movie, and gotta say, we were both spellbound by how awesomely entertaining it was. The action sequences, the editing, the cinematography...

And I thought my family was messed up... Hereditary is an independent horror film by up and coming studio A24 (who have been killing it lately with some excellent films like The Witch, It Comes At Night, Lady Bird, A Ghost Story, etc.) and is directed and written by Ari Aster. The film stars Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, and newcomer Milly Shapiro. The film centers around a family as they deal with tragedy and go to extreme lengths to gain closure, ending in horrific fashion. To begin, I’d like to talk about the cinematography. The film was well shot, with some pretty damn terrifying angles and scenes. The home where the majority of the film takes place has this old, rustic feel to it. It’s also out in the middle of nowhere, which makes it feel claustrophobic. Every room has a sense of dread, never knowing what will pop out at you. That isn’t to say it’s perfect...I found at times that the lighting was a little too dark, making it hard to see what I was watching on t...