As evidenced by this review, Sharai knows the value of a good lede.

What a perfect time to cancel your subscription if you haven't already done so!

TIE MAN In the style of a 1990s gothic/art deco superhero film (Batman, The Phantom, The Crow), a man with a handful of ties fused to his face upholds the law in a dystopian French city. Gets very old very quickly, but maybe francophone fans of this year’s TOXIC AVENGER will find something to enjoy.

[bad cuban accent] Say hello to my speeshal interest!

Ladies and gentlemen… we got them.

Skinamarink (2022) Heck (2020) short both d. Kyle Edward Ball Creepy stuff! Can't wait to hear what @andrewpope.bsky.social has to say about Skinamarink in their presentation on 'shoegaze horror' @miskatonicihs.bsky.social next week. Tickets still available. billetto.co.uk/e/shoegaze-h...

The best Dupieux since Mandibles: an acidly absurdist satire of influencer culture, delivered deadpan as it builds into horror. Perhaps if you gaze long enough into the abyss, it might ask you to like and subscribe. THE PIANO ACCIDENT ★★★★ @ Fantastic Fest

How your email finds me.

Shout out to Tom Holland, who has apparently broken his hand and suffered a concussion on the set of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Hopefully he’ll be dancing around the ward to Rihanna’s Umbrella in no time. Get well soon, Tom!

The jaw-dropping DOLLY delivers grimy 16mm grindhouse style & visceral gore in a folk-horror nightmare of grotesquerie. Raw, loud & scuffed at the edges, it’s built for midnight audiences to gasp, scream & laugh together. My usual credo is to “protect the dolls.” BUT NOT HER!! ★★★★ @ Fantastic Fest

Chris Marrs Piliero’s debut stitches together a handful of deepfake revenge tales with pulp energy and lurid carnage – but while stars Aaron Holliday and Paige Searcy shine, indulgence, contrivance and pacing keep it from greatness. APPOFENIACS - ★★★ at Fantastic Fest

For me, Majid Al Ansari’s sinister-second-wife chiller is the standout of Fantastic Fest: a slow burn of paranoid tension and supernatural dread; a fierce feminist nightmare told with cultural precision. THE VILE ★★★★

I passed 7000 and didn’t notice. No cake for me. 🎂

I ought to play this more often than I do… Vulture Cinematrix No. 544: Sep 21, 2025 I got 9/9 Correct Score: 2597 🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩 Play at: vulture.com/vulturecinem...

Randolph Zaini’s Indonesian horror A WOMAN CALLED MOTHER (Dia Bukan Ibu) adapts a viral horror thread to play with broken homes and ritual menaces. It slows in the middle yet the set-pieces hit with lasting force and some its images stake their claim in Indonesian horror canon. From Fantastic Fest:

Colin Minihan’s creature feature turns animal panic into a siege horror, but it never bites as hard as it promises. What starts as a raucous beer-and-pizza movie winds down to a mug of cocoa; where it should have been wildly over the top, it’s merely in-under-the-wire. COYOTES:★★★ at Fantastic Fest

Ugana’s digital-age ghost story rarely rises above routine horror craft, but its grisly flashes and brazen finale leave a stronger aftertaste than its flat middle stretch suggests. Even a routine J-horror, it transpires, can find a way to go out with a curse worth waiting for. ★★★ at Fantastic Fest

Kyle Misak’s feature debut turns a teen humiliation into a grotesque barbershop comedy-horror that’s sharp, funny, and unsettling in equal measure. Powered by Spencer H. Levin’s vulnerability and Frankie Ray’s mania, BAD HAIRCUT is the comic-horror highlight of this year’s Fantastic Fest. ★★★★

Lucile Hadžihalilović delivers a transportive, seductive dream of ice and illusion, where enchantment holds fast even as narrative thins like Alpine air. THE ICE TOWER played at Fantastic Fest ★★★★

Influence and Littleface look like Fred and Mary Trump.

DEATHSTALKER (2025) @ Fantastic Fest Copious gore and goofy rubber beasts hit the mark in Steven Kostanski’s reboot of Roger Corman’s 1983 original, but the awkwardly juvenile semi-parodic tone keeps it from becoming either truly funny or truly mythic. A curiosity rather than a resurrection.

Bartosz M. Kowalski’s home-invasion slasher 13 DAYS TILL SUMMER has the freakiest mask of the year and an icy chill that makes it play like Michael Haneke remaking Scream. Its cool precision and brutal clarity secure its place as one of the year’s sharpest discoveries. Review from Fantastic Fest:

Randolph Zaini’s Indonesian horror A WOMAN CALLED MOTHER (Dia Bukan Ibu) adapts a viral horror thread to play with broken homes and ritual menaces. It slows in the middle yet the set-pieces hit with lasting force and some its images stake their claim in Indonesian horror canon. From Fantastic Fest:

Colin Minihan’s creature feature turns animal panic into a siege horror, but it never bites as hard as it promises. What starts as a raucous beer-and-pizza movie winds down to a mug of cocoa; where it should have been wildly over the top, it’s merely in-under-the-wire. COYOTES:★★★ at Fantastic Fest

Ugana’s digital-age ghost story rarely rises above routine horror craft, but its grisly flashes and brazen finale leave a stronger aftertaste than its flat middle stretch suggests. Even a routine J-horror, it transpires, can find a way to go out with a curse worth waiting for. ★★★ at Fantastic Fest

Disney has lost $4.2 BILLION in market value in just 2 days. With subs are slipping, investors are increasingly nervous; the Jimmy Kimmel suspension has sparked a backlash with calls to Cancel Disney, and now the company faces a crisis that looks less like a simple stumble than an existential test.

Farewell, Disney+.

Kyle Misak’s feature debut turns a teen humiliation into a grotesque barbershop comedy-horror that’s sharp, funny, and unsettling in equal measure. Powered by Spencer H. Levin’s vulnerability and Frankie Ray’s mania, BAD HAIRCUT is the comic-horror highlight of this year’s Fantastic Fest. ★★★★

Lucile Hadžihalilović delivers a transportive, seductive dream of ice and illusion, where enchantment holds fast even as narrative thins like Alpine air. THE ICE TOWER played at Fantastic Fest ★★★★

Nobody wonders how I keep from going under anymore, and that’s sad.

I’m starting to think Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has been put into turnaround.

PEARL LE 4K UHD?? Featuring a booklet containing. new writing on Pearl from @momoshaty.bsky.social?? Shut up and take my 💰. Excellent announcement from @secondsightfilms.bsky.social.

A shipment of pure cinematic crack has arrived in the form of Paul Thomas Anderson’s biggest hit yet: a phenomenal fusion of paranoid thrills, propulsive action, and dark comedy. Gloriously funny, breathlessly exciting, and deeply moving, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is the film of the year, no contest.

🚨 FIVE VOLUMES OF HORROR FACTS 🚨 Couldn’t be prouder of my amazing wife, and her cool-as-all-hell cultural analyses and explorations of the darker side of human civilisation! 💀💕 Get’em on your shelves!

🚨3 weeks to go! Oct 4–5: THE HORROR OF BECOMING, #NightTideMag's first Virtual Horror Symposium. Folk. Body. Cosmic. Psychological. Two days of horror academia: critical talks, roundtables & revelations. 🎟️ £25 tickets get you a full weekend of horror: tinyurl.com/3fcmnauw 👻📽️

Who wore it better?

One Battle After Another ★★★★★ PTA deserves the biggest hit of his career with this, his phenomenal mashup of paranoid political thrillers, William Friedkin, & the Coens, in this loose, propulsive adult action comedy. Gloriously funny, endlessly exciting, easily the film of the year. Review to come!

Troubling news for the people who get Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho muddled up.

Thank you everyone who has retweeted my @miskatonicihs.bsky.social talk on Sept 30th!💕 Come & hear about Shoegaze Horror: the past is lost, the future’s dead & the present is eating itself. From We’re All Going To The World’s Fair to The Backrooms, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Skinamarink, It Follows…

London is the most multicultural city in the world, and that is and always will be its greatest strength. ❤️‍🔥

In decreasing order of “freshness”, but I LOVE THEM ALL. ❤️‍🔥 🍿

"Can they truly be so ignorant to the words of a man they have so rushed to memorialize? I don’t know. But the most telling detail in Klein’s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself." Ta-Nehisi Coates, with receipts.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) d. Panos Cosmatos Re-watch in prep for an upcoming presentation @miskatonicihs.bsky.social by @andrewpope.bsky.social on 'Shoegaze Horror'... can't wait. miskatonicinstitute.com/events/shoeg...

RIP to a real one.

What a lovely eulogy through which to find out that Robert Redford was dead. 😔

An LFF horror movie tip for anyone buying tickets tomorrow: strongly consider grabbing one for the Arabic sinister-second-wife chiller THE VILE. 👀 (Bonus: it’s shot on 16mm)

LFF pre-festival press screenings of Sound of Falling, Exit 8, Sitât, Twinless and The Secret Agent? Yes please.

Is this a remake of the 1960 Kim Ki-young movie?

wrote on charlie kirk for the newsletter this weekend