Talk to Me: Horror Movie Review

 

🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓 out of 🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓

If I could've given this one six hatchets, I would've. Everything was perfect in this film: the plot, the pacing, the ending. It's rare to find horror flawlessness. This Aussie gem stars Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen, Mirada Otto, and Zoe Terakes.

In this creeper, teens don't need weed and booze anymore. They use what's either the severed-and-embalmed hand of a medium or a Satanist. Neither is fully defined.

At a party in Adelaide, Cole is looking for his brother, Duckett, two cool-looking longhairs. When he finds him, he stabs Cole, then fatally stabs himself in the head. Duckett had been playing that nasty party game.

Mia, 17, misses her mother heart wrenchingly, who died of an accidental sleeping-pill overdose. Mia, her bestie, Jade, and her little brother, Riley, sneak out to a party--of which they know full well what kind of party it is, as they've been checking out cell-phone videos of possessed teens playing a conjuring game that they all think is fun (?????). At the gathering, the teens take turns grabbing the hand and saying "Talk to Me," which makes them see the ghost. Then they say "I let you in," which makes them briefly possessed, until the timer goes off and another teen pulls them away from the hand. But when Mia's taken over, she tells Riley creepily that the spirits want him bad.

Riley's too young to play, as he had to blackmail the girls to bring him along, but when Jade briefly exits the room, the other teens nastily let him. Of course, he gets possessed, but to the nth power, and he bashes his head onto the table so vehemently he ends up heavily-injured and in the hospital. 

Seeking help from Cole is fruitless. He doesn't want anything to do with it, too traumatized to bother.

Mia has long-term effects and starts seeing her mother everywhere. Then a ghost of a gnarly old lady shows her that a huge mob of spirits are all over Riley, torturing the crap out of him in the other realm. When trying to aid him, this time the ghosts make him bash the back of his head into shower tiles, injuring him even worse.

 Jade and her mother find out Mia has (accidentally) stabbed her father to death (as she was dealing with these spirits and was tricked), and strive to keep her out of Riley's room, for she's dangerous. Mia won't heed and sets out with the ghosts to free Riley by any means necessary. But is that what the spirits really want?

I was riveted from start-to-finish by this prize. If you haven't seen it, it's definitely a must-see!

The Exorcist: Believer Review

 

🪓🪓🪓🪓 out of 🪓🪓🪓🪓🪓

The Exorcist franchise must be pulling a Halloween with late sequels, as this incarnation has promised a trilogy. Unlike the Halloween latebe's, these are worthy. So far.

I'm this installment, photographer Victor Fielding's pregnant wife, Sorenne, gets caught in an earthquake and falls injured in Haiti. The doctor tells Vic he can only save one of them. 

Thirteen years later, in Georgia, we find Vic living with his young daughter, Angela, about middle-school age, and we assume he chose the baby, though the obvious choice was his wife. Think about it: the child dies and goes straight to heaven, not having to worry about going to hell for being human. 

But there lurks a void. Wanting to know her mother so much, the sister heads out to the woods with her white bestie, Catherine, who proposes they try to contact her dead mother by lighting a candle and conjuring her.

They go missing for three days.

When found, the children swear it was only three hours, and are tandemly possessed by the demon Pazuzu, the one who really answered them. 

The church doesn't approve the exorcism, so the community takes up the charge, including Chris McNeil from The Exorcist, reprising Ellen Burstyn's role. Terrifying, gory attacks follow, and it's revealed by Pazuzu that Vic indeed chose his wife to live, but she died, and the doc cut the baby out of her. Then, Pazuzu--the demon from the first Exorcist film, though he's never mentioned--reveals that only one of the children will survive the exorcism, and they must choose.

The shocks were creepily done, dirty and nasty with no disappointments. Thus I look highly on this film, but of course it's not as good as The Exorcist or The Exorcist III, maybe as good as Exorcist II: The Heretic. Linda Blair performs a cameo as Regan, who was estranged from her mother after the latter wrote a book about the exorcism.

If you haven't checked it out, it's a must-see!

Best Metal and Horror of 2023

I always have a blast doing this, letting you know what I thought were the best albums and horror of the year, so let's go! 

Best Horror Film: M3GAN

Best Horror Novel: Holly by Stephen King

Best Metal albums of the Year (in order):

1. As Gomorrah Burns - Cryptopsy

2. Age of the Offended - Cadaver

3. Make Them Beg for Death - Dying Fetus

4. Momento Mori - Marduk

5. Chaos Horrific - Cannibal Corpse

Honorable Mentions: Last of a Kind - Panzerchrist, Beyond the Dead - Exhumed 

What are yours?

My New Novel, Book of Shadows, Out on Halloween to Haunt!

 

I'm so excited about this release on Amazon in eBook and paperback! Here is the first novel in a four-book series that features Kaiti Rogers and Lily-the-Cat from the long short story, "Beyond Death," which actually picks up after Book of Shadows and before the first sequel. "Beyond Death" appears in my fourth short-story book, Phantom World. Here, in a novel over 300 pages, we have the circumstances of their lives and how they died. When an Apostolic Pentecostal girl falls into witchery with mind powers, no one is safe and nothing is sacred. Kaiti won't be satisfied until she rules the world with witchcraft, telekinesis, psychokinesis, pyrokinesis and teleporting!  

You can bet my favorite horror movie is The Spell, which uses Satanism and telekinesis!

Enjoy, and happy Halloween!

My 101 Scariest Moments: I Finally Have It Right

 I’ve finally revised this enough times so that it makes sense. The right horror movies are listed in the right order. This should give you a great guide on what to watch on movie night.

MY 101 SCARIEST MOMENTS: 

(In Order)

 

1.     The Spell

2.     The Shining (original version)

3.     The Exorcist 

4.     All Hallow’s Eve

5.     Hereditary

6.     The Night Flier

7.     The Beyond 

8.     The Ring

9.     Jaws

10.  The Evil Dead (original version)

11.  Carrie (first version)

12.  The Exorcist III

13.  The Innkeepers 

14.  The Devil’s Advocate

15.  Midsommar 

16.  The Lost

17.  Inside

18.  Ginger Snaps

19.  Megan Is Missing

20.  The VVitch

21.  Triangle

22.  Day of the Dead

23.  Night of the Living Dead (first version)

24.  The Last House on the Left (original version)

25.  The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum version)

26.  Omen III: Final Conflict

27.  The Serpent and the Rainbow

28.  Phantasm

29.  An American Werewolf In London

30.  The Howling

31.  One Dark Night

32.  Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed

33.  Pet Sematary

34.  Let the Right One In (Swedish version, not Let Me In)

35.  Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola’s version)

36.  The Wicker Man (first version)

37.  Lake Mungo

38.  ‘Salem’s Lot

39.  Alien

40.  Doctor Sleep

41.  The Last Horror Movie

42.  Dawn of the Dead (either version)

43.  The Silence of the Lambs

44.  Faces of Death IV

45.  Tales From the Hood

46.  The Omen (either version)

47.  From Dusk Till Dawn

48.  Scanners

49.  The Craft

50.  I Spit On Your Grave (original version)

51.  Alice Sweet Alice

52.  Mother’s Day (original version)

53.  The Descent

54.  Warlock

55.  The Thing (John Carpenter’s version)

56.  My Best Friend’s Exorcism

57.  The Unseen

58.  Halloween (both versions)

59.  Sleepaway Camp

60.  Friday the 13^th (first version)

61.  Amber Alert

62.  The Poughkeepsie Tapes

63.  Jeepers Creepers

64.  Jeepers Creepers II

65.  Wrong Turn

66.  The Amityville Horror (both versions)

67.  Zombie

68.  Evilspeak

69.  Grave Encounters

70.  It (either version)

71.  Cujo

72.  Firestarter

73.  House of 1000 Corpses

74.  The Dead Zone

75.  Desperation

76.  Audition

77.  Hostel

78.  Hostel 2

79.  The Dark Half

80.  The Mist

81.  The Servants of Twilight

82.  Phantoms

83.  Dark House

84.  Slither

85.  The Rapture

86.  Sliver

87.  Rosemary’s Baby (first version)

88.  A Nightmare on Elm Street (both versions)

89.  Fright Night (both versions)

90.  Dracula 2000

91.  They Live

92.  Re-animator

93.  Dagon

94.  The Sentinel

95.  Burnt Offerings

96.  Trilogy of Terror

97.  Dead Alive

98.  Frailty

99.  976-EVIL

100.     976-EVIL II

101.     Dead and Buried