Wish Upon (2017)

A dumpster-diving father (Ryan Phillipe) finds an ornate Chinese box and gives it to his daughter, Clare (Joey King), as a gift. Little does she know, the box grants its owner seven wishes in exchange for a blood price. In other words, with every wish, someone dies. It's kind of a Wishmaster meets Final Destination movie, and it somehow works out even though the movie is a…

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The 9th Annual 31 Days of Blood and Gore

It's crazy that this is the 9th year of doing 31 horror movie reviews in October. At one point, a couple of years ago, I thought I'd run out of horror movies, but not only are there thousands I've never seen, there are at least 30 coming out new each year. I have an enormous spreadsheet of possible horror movies and it keeps growing.…

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Mandy (2018)

From the director of Beyond the Black Rainbow, comes a wild cinematic journey of love and vengeance. On the surface, it is pretty thin on plot, but what makes the film shine is an incredible aesthetic where every frame is like a painted canvas. The attention to detail is pretty rare these days, or at least the uncompromising vision along with the attention to detail.…

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Arizona (2018)

This kinda came out of nowhere and intrigued me, because the premise, tone, and cast sounded fresh. Danny McBride plays a deranged homeowner who is in financial dire straits after the crash of the housing market in 2008. After an unfortunate turn of events, he takes real estate agent Rosemarie DeWitt hostage and things get worse from there. It's a very dark comedy with…

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Rough Night (2018)

In some ways, this is like The Hangover with ladies. Scarlett Johansson plays the main lady, Jess, who is being thrown a massive bachelorette party in Miami with 4 college friends. Things go a little off the rails when a male stripper is accidentally killed in front of the girls. Sometimes, these kinds of raunchy comedies can be a lot of fun. Other times, the…

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The Purge: Election Year (2016)

This is the third in the Purge movie series, which depicts a horrific "future" America where an annual holiday known as The Purge is used to "cleanse" the people for the rest of the year. Basically, on Purge day, all laws are suspended for 12 hours and people just go around killing each other. Funny thing is, no one mentions anything about insider trading or tax…

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The Bay (2012)

Told through found footage, this horror movie shows a Maryland seaside community's deadly July 4th outbreak of a mutant parasite in the water supply. The host of the footage is a fresh-faced news reporter (Kether Donahue) who witnessed the events firsthand and managed to survive without being infected. The gore is definitely top-notch, but the "story" is rather lacking. It's literally just a series…

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