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Last updated January 1st, 2009. New Reviews are added quarterly.
New Tributes! New Tributes to Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are up!
Here it is, my horror movie reviews. I have tried to write short, succinct reviews that don't tell the whole story or ruin the end of a movie. I basically give a brief outline of the plot and tell what I liked or didn't like about the movie. Then I give a simple to understand letter grade, just like in school! In order to qualify for review I had to have watched the movie since September of 2004. So all those great horror movies I've seen prior to that are not included. I wanted these movies to be fresh in my mind as I wrote the reviews. I actually started writing these particular reviews in October of 2004 but didn't put them in Web page form until January of 2006 due to a curse placed on my reviews by an unknown source. (I had been writing reviews for horror movies since the mid 90s but have lost most of those reviews so they aren't included here.)
Defining "Horror"... Merriam Webster's defines horror as "painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay" an "intense aversion or repugnance", or "the quality of inspiring horror: repulsive, horrible, or dismal quality or character" and "something that inspires horror". In these reviews you will find a very lose definition of The Horror Movie. Some feel Horror Movies should have some sort of supernatural component to qualify, which leaves out serial killer movies like "Psycho", "Seven" or "Saw", which seem horrific to me and only a step or two away from movies like "Halloween", which at the end of the day does have a supernatural element included. The bleed over between horror and science fiction is another area for geek debate. "Frankenstein" has long been considered horror, this is because there was no sci-fi genre at the time. If it was being made today (for the first time) it would almost certainly fall under the sci-fi tag. Movies like "Alien" blur the lines even further. To me personally (and for my reviews), anything that inspires feelings of horror or dread qualify as horror ("Art Horror" or nonfiction that is). I use a pretty broad definition, not unlike Webster's quoted above, so there may be cases you may disagree with me that a particular movie qualifies as 'horror' and more easily falls in 'sci-fi' or 'suspense thriller', etc.. So be it.
And now a word about my grading policy: I admit, I go pretty easy on most horror movies, after all I'm an easy to please fan for the most part. Opinions being what they are it is impossible to satisfy everyone (or really anyone for that matter). Of course that's part of the fun, talking, arguing, critiquing. Another thing I've noticed is sometimes, if a movie sucks real bad but I find it fun to watch because it sucks I will give it a high grade, but if it just plain sucks I won't. I try and explain why I give movies certain grades but a lot of time it's unclear even to me! If you agree or disagree email me, we'll talk about it.
And finally, on A+s and Fs: The above disclaimer holds true on all letter grades except A+ and F. If I give a movie an A+ then I feel pretty strongly that it is a really good movie. By that I mean a good story, good acting, good direction, good cinematography (which includes lighting or use of color, and camera angles and points of view), and probably fairly influential on movies that came later as well. If I give a movie an F then I seriously find NO redeeming value in the movie at all, bad, unoriginal story, terrible acting, bad directing, no thought to cinematography or creativity, and instantly forgettable.
Enjoy!
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