I've Never Been with You: Obsession (2026) Review

Director: Curry Barker

Notable Cast: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Andy Richter

 

I have to give Curry Barker some very intense respect. Not only has his latest film, Obsession, been one of the biggest horror films of all time at the box office, but he also did it with a film that asks the age-old question, ‘What if a Gen Z romantic comedy was the most terrifying thing to exist?’ The premise of so many romantic comedies, particularly those in the 90s and 00s, prior to the genre being stripped for parts and sold wholesale to streaming and television to be exploited as year-round bubblegum movies, was based on a hook and then mined for comedic value. Barker seemingly saw that and decided to take it in the other direction. The results, box office receipts aside, are rather astoundingly effective. Obsession is pitch-black perfect in its tones, a precise blend of dark humor and crippling horror, and executed to the highest degree to deliver a generationally relevant urban-legend-style morality tale.

There was intense hype for Obsession… and the hype is real. 

 

To be fair, the hook of its premise is a well-trodden trail for horror. Bear, played by Michael Johnston in a performance that one might call ‘a half step away from dying of anxiety at any given moment,’ stumbles across a cheap ‘wish fulfillment’ tchotchke called the One Wish Willow and uses it to wish that the girl he has been pining for at work will love him more than anyone. It’s a monkey’s paw scenario: once he breaks the willow piece for his wish, after absolutely whiffing his chance to confess his feelings for her when she just blatantly asks if he likes her, she becomes obsessed with him, and it gets real fuckin’ scary from there. Not in a Lifetime movie way either. As the tagline states, be careful who you wish for. 

 

Repossessed: The Exorcist: Believer (2023) Review

Director: David Gordon Green

Notable Cast: Leslie Odom Jr, Lidya Jewett, Olivia Marcum, Ann Dowd, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Okwui Okpokwasili, Raphael Sbarge, EJ Bonilla, Ellen Burstyn

 

Although David Gordon Green's Halloween trilogy certainly had its issues, those films were at least interesting to some degree. Big swings were being taken by the end, and whether you liked it or not, it deserves some respect. To that degree, while I didn't love the latter two entries, those films are worthy of the occasional rewatch, if only for those swings and choices being made. 

 

Which is why, to some degree, The Exorcist: Believer is such a wild misfire on so many levels. At its core, it deals with some interesting ideas about world religious practices, the pairing of girls who become possessed, and two families from different backgrounds forced to come together to face a mutual evil. 

 

Yet, no matter what, The Exorcist: Believer never capitalizes on any of it. Instead of dwelling on those topics, the film is far more concerned with playing things safe within the world of The Exorcist. The callbacks to the original feel trite, the scares are mundane in a world of more interesting Exorcist knockoffs, and the overall narrative feels bland. Compared to some of the other Exorcist films, particularly the wild swings of The Heretic and Exorcist III, Believer feels more like a drab love letter to the series rather than a new and exciting continuation. It's baffling. 

 

A Little Robot Girl in a Little Horror World: M3gan (2023) Review

Director: Gerard Johnstone

Notable Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Jen Van Epps, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Ronny Chieng, Jenna Davis, Amie Donald

 

An uncanny valley is a fascinating place to be. With the right expectations, a cinematic audience can embrace it and enjoy it for what it is - the horrifying and occasionally humorous place. When it does not work, it’s truly one of the most confusing things to witness. This was the tightrope that M3gan was aiming to walk. Uncanny enough to be memorable, but not enough to lose its audience. While the overall critical reception of the film at this time has been shockingly positive, M3gan is a film that sincerely relies on its audience to be laughing within minutes to set up the expectation for its journey to the uncanny valley.

 

For some, it’s going to be one of the best surprises of the year. For others, it’s going to be a relative chore to sit through. Thus is the nature of this tightrope walk.

 

Wild Stabs and No Killing Shot: Halloween Ends (2022) Review

Director: David Gordon Green

Notable Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell, Will Patton, James Jude Courtney, Kyle Richards

 

When it comes to John Carpenter projects that are being revitalized in the modern cinema landscape, Christine was one that I was skeptical could be pulled off. With the success of Halloween (2018) and Halloween Kills (box office-wise) though, perhaps it made sense that director David Gordon Green would want to tackle the project. He had an eye for that kind of character trauma as presented within a horror landscape. It’s a good match. 

 

Oh, I’m sorry. This film is actually Halloween Ends and not a Christine remake. My bad. Someone should let Green know that too. 

 

Yet, that’s what Halloween Ends ends up being - the story of a maligned young man who is influenced by an evil presence and becomes more and more obsessed with the strength and power it gives him to stand up against all the awful people and circumstances around him. On paper, the idea is not only bold for a Halloween film but dare I say impressive. The problem that burdens the film is that it's jammed into trying to balance this new character arc with finalizing the other themes, characters, and stories of the Halloween series they started. It’s a balance that collapses in on itself, unfortunately. 

 

Please Leave a Message: The Black Phone (2022) Review

Director: Scott Derrickson

Notable Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies, E. Roger Mitchell, Troy Rudeseal, James Ransone, Miguel Cazarez Mora, Rebecca Clarke, J. Gaven Wilde, Spencer Fitzgerald

 

Walking into the theater, I had to double-check the ticket on my phone. My significant other looked at me and said, “This film is just over an hour and a half.” No way. I checked. She was right. It was a buck and 42 cents. Even though modern horror tends to pace itself faster than the cinematic bloat that has dominated the megaplexes for the last handful of years, there was a part of me that expected The Black Phone, the latest from director Scott Derrickson and Blumhouse, to be more akin to other kid-focused period horrors as of late. I.e. way too long for my enjoyment. Thanks, Stranger Things and the two It films. 

 

Quite frankly, in its own way, The Black Phone represents the stylistic antithesis of the two previously mentioned slices of intellectual property. Both of those properties succeed in feeding the nostalgia while delivering their horror stories, but there is a sense that the nostalgia is weaponized. “Remember when we were heroes on bikes? Free to learn about life and fight our demons while making friends along the way?” 

 

To an extent, those films had a gloss to them that shined the candy coating for easier consumption by the mass. There's nothing wrong with it, but it’s a very modern choice for movies that intend to ape their period for nostalgia rather than wrestle with it. 

 

This is why The Black Phone is different. Yes, it technically hits many of the same ideas or themes about empowerment for kids to tackle their own horrors while learning valuable lessons, but Scott Derrickson (and co-writer C. Robert Cargill) are not nearly as content in caking the film in Spielbergian cinematic sheen. There’s a grounded and gritty element under the skin in this one that allows it to play more in the shadows, with complicated relationships, and opaque morals that those others may toy with but never grasp. And, instead of taking a whole day to tell it, The Black Phone does it in 102 minutes. 

 

Wild Ride to Hell: Dashcam (2022) Review

Director: Rob Savage

Notable Cast: Annie Hardy, Amar Chadha-Patel, Angela Enahoro

 

After taking the horror world by storm with his Zoom séance nightmare known as Host, director Rob Savage became an overnight sensation in the genre cinema world. If he could pull off that kind of effective horror filmmaking in 60+ minutes with minimal resources in the middle of a pandemic where all of the stars were quarantined, what could he do with more? It’s the question that often gets asked of stylistic and bold indie filmmakers and many of them flounder under the expectations of larger studio pressures or other external factors. The follow-up to a blank check guarantor is always exciting.

 

With his follow-up, Dashcam, Rob Savage partnered up with Blumhouse to dig back into the “found footage” end of the genre, and, quite frankly, it’s easy to see why he would. His technical prowess in delivering some shocking visuals and moments within the confines of the style is impressively bombastic with this film. If anything, Dashcam knows that it doesn’t want to deviate too far from the style that worked in Host, but it also wants to expand on it in some immense ways. The combination, while occasionally at odds with one another, provides one of the more fascinating horror experiences of the year. 

 

The Hunt (2020)

Directed by: Craig Zobel

Notable cast: Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz, Ethan Suplee, Emma Roberts

The Most Dangerous Game, as a genre archetype has always been used as a metaphor for class divide as long as the story has existed. The bored rich hunting a downtrodden, but clever, human being makes for extremely compelling bones to any story. This has found great success in films as diverse as Surviving The Game, featuring an unforgettable Ice T performance and hairdo, to the generic but fun 90s Van Damme actioner Hard Target, to the insane and cartoonish John Leguizamo vehicle The Pest. There is something inherently compelling about the idea of hunting a thinking person, which I believe relates to motivation. Michael Meyers is scary because you never understand the motivation, the rich hunting the poor out of boredom? That’s scary because it’s so mundane. We’ve all been bored, and we’ve all imagined what we’d do with infinite resources, so there is something inherently dark about coming to the “hunting human beings” conclusion.

The Invisible Man (2020)

Directed by: Leigh Whannell

Notable cast: Elisabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Harriet Dyer, Aldis Hodge

Universal has been trying to modernize its classic monster lineup non-stop for two decades. They started strong, with The Mummy in 1999 and most recently ended very weakly, with 2017’s The Mummy. The weaker efforts in the interim have had a single consistent problem, which is that they were forward-looking, so focused on making their own Avengers that they forgot to make a single decent stand-alone film. The Invisible Man, conversely, is an exceptionally small story with a humble budget given to the rapidly emerging powerhouse duo of producer Jason Blum and writer/director Leigh Whannell, teaming here for the third time (after 2015’s Insidious Chapter 3, and the criminally underseen Upgrade from 2018).

The Gallows: Act II (2019)

Directors: Travis Cluff, Chris Lofing

Notable Cast: Ema Horvath, Chris Milligan, Brittany Falardeau

It was only back in 2015 that The Gallows solidified how much that found footage horror needed to slow down as a trend to be re-evaluated by more creative forces. It was a film that, in my humble opinion, represented essentially everything wrong with the sub-genre. It was thinly scripted and simply goes through the motions of its style and narrative. Nothing fresh. It was, worst of all, boring. Imagine my feelings when the trailer for a suddenly revealed sequel, The Gallows Act II, ended up in my feed online. Considering how The Gallows only cost $100K and ended up grossing $40 million plus, it wasn’t a reach. I’m a self-proclaimed franchise fanatic so it was only going to end up seeing the film, but I wasn’t fuckin’ happy about it. Truthfully, it could only be better, right? Where else can a franchise go but up when it starts off by hanging at the end of its own noose? It better go up. If it doesn’t, woof.

Into the Dark: Down (2019)

Director: Daniel Stamm

Notable Cast: Natalie Martinez, Matt Lauria, Arnie Pantoja, Christina Leone

After the release of The Last Exorcism I would have thought that Daniel Stamm would have been one of the big names on a short list to be horror’s next thing. However, sometimes that’s not how the industry works. It wasn’t until I was doing research for the latest episode of Hulu and Blumhouse’s Into the Dark series of films, Down, that his name popped up again. Looking through his IMDB credits shows that he’s been busy over the last few years working in a lot of horror television (something that I don’t nearly keep up with enough, truthfully) and so it’s somewhat fitting that Down would end up being the next film for him. Like most of the Into the Dark series, Down is incredibly fun and effective little low budget film. It maximizes its minimalist settings, plays on the viewers assumptions with some clever key moments, and keeps an impressive pacing as it goes. Once again, Stamm showcases he is quite the fantastic modern horror director and Down is just further evidence of such.

Happy Death Day 2U (2019)

Director: Christopher Landon

Notable Cast: Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Phi Vu, Suraj Sharma, Sarah Yarkin, Ruby Modine, Rachel Matthews, Steve Zissis, Charles Aitken, Laura Clifton, Blaine Kern III

Blumhouse has come out as, essentially, the new king of horror in the last handful of years, maximizing minimal budgets to massive box office results. Quality can be debated from film to film, but the sheer success that Blumhouse has crafted within the mainstream for horror cannot be understated. One of the biggest surprises was 2016’s slasher comedy, Happy Death Day. Horror comedies can be wildly hard to make work on a broader spectrum, but this film took the slasher concept, injected it with a ton of heart and delivered a surprisingly fun and clever cinematic vehicle. Although the film was only considered a modest success in many circles, the general word of mouth and strong legs from horror fans and critics made it an immediate modern genre classic. It’s not shocking that the film would eventually garner a sequel. What is shocking is just how impressive Happy Death Day 2U is in those regards. Trying to simply recreate the slasher version of Groundhog Day was going to be difficult, but returning director Christopher Landon takes the foundations of the idea and runs with it making a stranger and sillier film that moves the genre lens a bit and continues to find that great blend of style and substance.

Into the Dark: New Year, New You (2018)

Director: Sophia Takal

Notable Cast: Suki Waterhouse, Carly Chaikin, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Melissa Bergland, Michelle Haro, Isabella Acres, Bianca Lopez, Mia Ella Clyburn

Hulu and Blumhouse’s horror anthology series, Into the Dark, has already provided a handful of fantastic little indie/intimate horror films through the last few months, but their latest “episode” (their first of 2019 that was technically released prior to New Year’s Eve in 2018) might be one of the best thus far. New Year, New You leans into a couple of interesting directions, looking to balance out an old school style with modern messages, and the results are overly impressive. It’s not a stretch that some horror fans may find the old school and very meticulous approach to building the film is a bit of a drag and there are a few choices that may seem a tag heavy-handed, but for my money, director Sophia Takal brings her A-game to this film and delivers a memorable way to continue this series.

Into the Dark: The Body (2018)

Director: Paul Davis

Notable Cast: Tom Bateman, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Aurora Perrineau, David Hull, Ray Santiago

With the recent boom of horror that has culminated over the last handful of years, reaching strange heights when the genre started winning Academy Awards last year, it was only a matter of time before the Masters of Horror format was revitalized. This latest series of films, under the moniker Into the Dark, has nothing to with the iconic Mick Garris series that premiered on Showtime, but the idea remains the same. Instead of Showtime, it's Hulu. Instead of Mick Garris, it's Blumhouse. Into the Dark will premiere a new horror film each mouth, partnering with the horror juggernaut Blumhouse, and each film will be coordinated with a holiday within the month that it is released. Honestly, that sounds like a pretty fuckin’ good deal to me.

The first film to be released within the Into the Dark series is The Body. Fittingly, the film features a hit man who is caught in a bad situation on Halloween night and he’s left dragging a body around in a desperate attempt to get it to its destination within four hours. Craziness ensues, a body count rises, and the hit man drops multiple dry humor monologues about his dark view point on life as a strange romantic interest blooms. The Body is an odd film, but, truthfully, it’s a fantastic film to release around Halloween and a great way to kick off the series.

Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)

Director: Stephen Susco

Notable Cast: Colin Woodell, Betty Gabriel, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Andrew Lees, Connor Del Rio, Stephanie Nogueras, Savira Windyani, Chelsea Alden, Alexa Mansour, Douglas Tait

After the breakout success of 2015’s Unfriended, which was a surprise box office success, it wasn’t that hard to imagine Blumhouse pumping out a sequel or two for the film. As with so many other found footage horror films, they were cheap to make and even if it had half a decent marketing campaign it was going to be profitable. The fact that it took three years for Unfriended: Dark Web to hit theaters is something of a surprise. Particularly when it was revealed that the film would not be a direct sequel to the previous entry, but a stylistically thematic one that dealt with the hideous corners of the Dark Web versus a supernatural entity. Still, the film is out now and while it has hit the headlines by being a surprise box office letdown (it only made under $4 million opening weekend versus the original one which banked in over $15 million on its opening weekend,) Dark Web is hardly the massive let down that would indicate. It’s more of the same stylistically, but it’s a bit different in tone and approach to the style which means that there will definitely be mixed feelings about the film. Overall, Dark Web is a few shades lesser than its predecessor, but it’s still an intense little low budget horror flick worthy of a watch for fans. 

Unfriended (2015)

Director: Levan Gabriadze

Notable Cast: Shelley Hennig, Moses Jacob Storm, Renee Olstead, Will Peltz, Jacob Wysocki, Courtney Halverson, Heather Sossaman

Although the found footage genre of horror has essentially seen its 15 minutes of fame come and go, it’s a genre that will never be lost for all of the same reasons that it grew to be a juggernaut of style. It’s cheap to make and it is an easy way for an audience to put themselves in the shoes of the characters. Those are two things that horror films feed on. Now, more recently as technology advances, found footage has more opportunities to take different angles as the same style. Instead of mockumentaries or found tapes/records that are showcased in a narrative style, we have films like the Unfriended series. Sacrificing the shaky cam panic of a cameraman on the run from whatever horrors await them, Unfriended takes a slick and occasionally clever spin on the in-the-moment horror. Its narrative is told completely from the screen capture of a computer.  It’s as straight forward as that.

The First Purge (2018)

Director: Gerard McMurray

Notable Cast: Y’Lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade, Mugga, Christian Robinson, Lauren Velez, Kristen Solis, Marisa Tomei, Patch Darragh, Maria Rivera, Chyna Layne, Siya, Melonie Diaz, Mo McRae, Steve Harris

The Purge franchise, for all of its faults and flaws, remains one of the more intriguing genre series to come out in the last handful of years. It had a very silly (and quite frankly, awful) first entry, but its surprise box office success allowed writer and director James DeMonaco to embrace the outlandish socio-political commentary with a vigor that made the following two sequels, Anarchy and Election Year, genre pleasures for many fans. Love them or hate them, they made money and DeMonaco did an admirable job at delivering fun genre action while adding in a less than subtle commentary about the current state of politics in doing so. The problem that came to be is that the third film, Election Year, essentially wrapped up the series leaving a bit of room for expansion, but hardly paved the way for a full follow up. Thus, we got The First Purge, a prequel about the first ‘experiment’ on Staten Island that would allow the New Founding Fathers the information to push the Purge to the full country.

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)

Director: Mike Flanagan

Notable Cast: Annalise Basso, Ellizabeth Reaser, Lulu Wilson, Henry Thomas, Parker Mack, Doug Jones, Kate Siegel, Sam Anderson, Lin Shaye

I disliked the original Ouija enough that I refused to even write a review for it. It was critically panned across the board (I made a funny!), but that didn’t stop the film from garnering some serious box office cash and getting a sequel green lit. Normally, I wouldn’t have given this sequel the time of day based on my opinion of the first one, but when Mike Flanagan’s name was attached to it the film leaped to the top of my list to see. Flanagan is one of the iconic directorial voices in modern horror, thanks to films like Absentia and Oculus, and his inclusion in this sequel made it one of the big question marks for the year. Strike that question mark out of the equation though because Ouija: Origin of Evil is not only superior to its predecessor, but it’s one of the more stylish horror films of the year. It’s a film that embraces its limited, mainstream structures and delivers enough Halloween scares to pull in audiences this October with pizzazz.