Hello, dear subscriber!

You are reading the twenty-fifth edition of Field Notes From Hell, a weekly horror column from Deep Cuts.

Each week, I send out an email with three-pack horror film recs, along with a hand-picked curation of news clips and upcoming horror releases. I recommend three horror films: one recently released, one classic horror, and one that I feel is unjustly overlooked. I send these emails — or I try to, anyway — every Sunday.

This week’s featured horror rec is Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, an excellent follow-up to Danny Boyle’s already-supreme film.

If you’re enjoying Deep Cuts, consider subscribing to support the newsletter.

REMEMBER, YOU MUST DIE. Memento mori. That has been the good doctor’s advice in last year’s 28 Years Later, a uniquely ruminative horror film about reconciling with one’s mortality. “There are many different kinds of death,” Dr. Kelson says. “Some are better than others.” In The Bone Temple, we see this explored in greater, rather indulgent ways as the film revisits the doctor’s eponymous ossuary.

I’ve heard somewhere that “true love is to love that which is unlovable,” and maybe Dr. Kelson will agree. Played with exacting grace and compassion by Ralph Fiennes, his character is arguably what makes both 28 Years and this film work. His biggest act of kindness is the temple, a loving archive of lives fully lived. It is where he rendezvouses with an infected “alpha” named Samson, who — thanks to the doctor’s morphine concoction — momentarily unseizes from the infection’s blinding rage.

Dr. Kelson is the mirrored opposite of Jimmy (Jack O’Connell), a deluded and self-mythologizing Satanist who ritualistically murders strangers and factions across the mainland. He claims to be able to commune with a demon named Old Nick, an ability he holds above his Fingers, a ragtag pack of young children seemingly wired to obey his every whim.

There’s a nauseating sequence wherein Jimmy and his Fingers enact a gruesome ritual they obnoxiously call “charity.” It’s absolutely horrid, but a necessary extreme that builds on the previous film’s themes. What happens when decades of trauma and isolation were left unchecked? What new breeds of monsters will expel their vicious wrath? Though perhaps, inevitably, what will healing look like?

ABOUT THE FILM

☠️ 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple | 2026
dir. Nia DaCosta | Horror, Thriller, Drama | 🇬🇧

Dr. Kelson finds himself in a shocking new relationship - with consequences that could change the world as they know it - and Spike’s encounter with Jimmy Crystal becomes a nightmare he can’t escape.

Horror recs this week

Every FIELD NOTES FROM HELL dispatch includes a three-pack of horror recs: 1.) a featured horror rec we share at the top of the newsletter, 2.) a horror classic, and 3.) an overlooked or underrated horror.

Here are the rest of this week’s recommendations.

🎞️ Classic Horror: Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982, dir. John Carpenter)

Long before its overdue reappraisal, I have been a staunch defender of Halloween III, or as franchise purists like to call it, Season of the Witch, a sad attempt at othering this Michael Myers-free sequel from its own franchise. I think it’s apt to view it as a horror classic now, in that the three masks has reached peak status not just with horror fans as rabid as this writer. It does stick out, but for good reason. The vibe feels positively sci-fi radio-drama, following an evil Irish corporation who aims to literally melt children’s brains down.

👀 Overlooked Horror: Hostel: Part II (2007, dir. Eli Roth)

To my knowledge, no other filmmaker has immediately made a gender-swap sequel of their own film than Eli Roth with Hostel: Part II. Yes, this is a straight-up rec, and I’m prepared to bear the brunt of your most glaring side-eye. Roth made a very solid sequel, which is to say, in the context of a post-Weinstein, post-Epstein world, is very topical. To argue, however, that this is a wholly feminist piece has always been absurd to me. But a sickening, anti-neoliberal capitalist PSA, sure.

What’s new in horror

In addition to weekly horror recs, I’m also curating notable horror headlines and sharing them here in quick, TL;DR bullet lists so you can get (mostly) up-to-date with your horror news.

Plus, I’m calling attention to any upcoming horror film and TV releases both in theaters and streaming platforms. Here’s what’s new in horror this week.

🩸 If It Bleeds…: Weekly horror news roundup

• Mike Flanagan’s reboot of Carrie is set to release in October this year — The Direct

• Daniel Kaluuya joins the cast of the new sci-fi film, Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel, directed by Michael Shanks (Together) — Deadline

• John Waters joins Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Angela Bassett, Evan Peters and the rest of the cast of the thirteenth season of American Horror Story —Baltimore Fishbowl

• New trailers this week:

  • Samara Weaving and Jason Siegel star in a wickedly funny serial killer horror-com called Over Your Dead Body. Watch the full trailer.

  • Slanted is a new film pegged as a mix between The Substance and Mean Girls. Watch the trailer!

  • Lee Cronin’s The Mummy has you witness the unraveling in a new few-seconds’ long teaser.

  • Something Very Bad is Going to Happen — from the Duffer Brothers’ production company, created by Brand New Cherry Flavor creator Hailey Z Boston.

🎟️ Marquee of the Macabre: Upcoming horror films & TV

• 🔪 Scream 7 is coming out in theaters this Friday, February 27th

• 💉 FX’s The Beauty is ramping up. The show has got a few more episodes left before the finale.

• 🐡 Markiplier’s Iron Lung is getting good reviews and is currently in theaters

That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through.

ABOUT FIELD NOTES FROM HELL

FIELD NOTES FROM HELL is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every Sunday, with handpicked capsule reviews, news updates, and horror recommendations.

Cheers to you, my ghoulies.

—Armand

Hello, dear subscriber!

You are reading the twenty-fifth edition of Field Notes From Hell, a weekly horror column from Deep Cuts.

Each week, I send out an email with three-pack horror film recs, along with a hand-picked curation of news clips and upcoming horror releases. I recommend three horror films: one recently released, one classic horror, and one that I feel is unjustly overlooked. I send these emails — or I try to, anyway — every Sunday.

This week’s featured horror rec is Sam Raimi’s Send Help, an uproarious, campy thriller about getting stranded on an island with a horrible boss.

If you’re enjoying Deep Cuts, consider subscribing to support the newsletter.

JEFF PROBST WOULDN’T KNOW what to do with Linda Liddle. She’s wide-eyed yet scrappy, highly capable and a workhorse, and like the rest of the world, is a Deshawn stan. Her gangly exterior suggests she’d fit in with the David tribe, but she’s got Herculean strengths fit for a Goliath. There’s a netherworld of violence and cruelty inside her, dormant, just waiting for the right mix of nepo-douchery and haughtiness to poke it out of sleep.

Probst wouldn’t know this just from watching Linda’s audition tape, which the film cleverly uses for marketing. Bradley Preston, a trust fund kid taking over the reigns of an American conglomerate, doesn’t know it either, or he wouldn’t have cackled at Linda’s tape mere moments from his private jet crash-landing in the Gulf of Thailand. When he wakes, he sees Linda, a bona fide survivalist, literally decapitating a wild boar. There in the office, she’s the constantly stepped-over assistant; here in the island, she’s the boss. Abigail from Triangle of Sadness would be proud.

Send Help is a supremely enjoyable thriller that depicts — in often gruesome and funny ways — the natural order of things. It’s survival of the fittest in a world seemingly fit only for the deranged. Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, who plays Linda and Bradley, respectively, get to have fun with this a lot (McAdams, especially!), and the film kind of hinges on their live wire but nuanced performances.

Then there’s the Sam Raimi of things. Few filmmakers will make movies like this today, where their love for cinema almost perspires through the screen and audio system. The film feels positively Y2K in its audiovisual flourishes (and the jump scares? *chef’s kiss*, just…brings me back!), and it’s truly a gift to see a Raimi film getting this much love in the big ‘26. The denouement can kinda feel like ‘huh?’ but the film brings it back at the end.

ABOUT THE FILM

🏝️ Send Help | 2026
dir. Sam Raimi | Horror, Thriller, Comedy | 🇺🇸

Two colleagues become stranded on a deserted island, the only survivors of a plane crash. On the island, they must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, but ultimately, it’s a battle of wills and wits to make it out alive.

Horror recs this week

Every FIELD NOTES FROM HELL dispatch includes a three-pack of horror recs: 1.) a featured horror rec we share at the top of the newsletter, 2.) a horror classic, and 3.) an overlooked or underrated horror.

Here are the rest of this week’s recommendations.

🎞️ Classic Horror: The Fog (1980, dir. John Carpenter)

Stashed somewhere between John Carpenter’s more accomplished work — I’m thinking Halloween and The Thing — is the underrated ‘80s classic, The Fog, a brooding ghost story set during the centennial anniversary of the founding of a coastal town. The Carpenter staples are here: the pulsating synths and the gorgeous, atmospheric visuals. More than a mood piece, The Fog’s eerie sense emits not solely its eponymous mist, but the violence, corruption, and material excess that defined the era.

👀 Overlooked Horror: Triangle (2009, dir. Christopher Smith)

Christopher Smith’s Triangle occupies this strange, largely uncharted pocket of late-aughts’ genre cinema. These films are grounded, cerebral, and often nihilist. Unless you’re actively looking for films like it, you’ll miss it. The film follows young woman trapped in a time loop inside a desolate ocean liner. Melissa George’s performance is key here; her knowledge of what actually goes down unravels in lockstep with the film’s recursive structure, and it’s one of the first films I’ve seen that truly whipped my head so hard into a doozy.

What’s new in horror

In addition to weekly horror recs, I’m also curating notable horror headlines and sharing them here in quick, TL;DR bullet lists so you can get (mostly) up-to-date with your horror news.

Plus, I’m calling attention to any upcoming horror film and TV releases both in theaters and streaming platforms. Here’s what’s new in horror this week.

🩸 If It Bleeds…: Weekly horror news roundup

• James Wan and Leigh Whannell want to make another Saw film, one that captures the spirit of the 2004 original — Letterboxd

• Eli Roth is remaking the ‘90s cult classic, Ice Cream Man, and it’s going to be crazier than all his previous films — Geek Vibes Nation

• Oscar-nominated actress Amy Madigan, a.k.a. Aunt Gladys, is joining Netflix’s serial killer series, All the Sinners Bleed — Variety

• Neon acquires Alex Ullom’s second feature, 4x4: The Event, following the purchase of his debut feature, It Ends, which comes out later this year — Deadline

• New trailers this week:

  • 🔥 Lenskeeper — Gorgeous-looking sci-fi horror described as Lovecraft meets Fulci

  • 🧠 Psychonaut — Stylistic sci-fi starring Fiona Dourif

  • 🪺 The Arborist — Folk-gothic horror about a haunting seemingly triggered by deforestation. Intriguing, to say the least.

  • 👶 Dolly — ‘70s horror pastiche about possessed dolls. Need I say more?

  • Bloody-Disgusting reported on the new Faces of Death trailer being out, but obviously to anyone who knows about the ‘80s original, that video got removed due to YouTube’s ToS. Read the article here.

🎟️ Marquee of the Macabre: Upcoming horror films & TV

• 🧽 Paul Fieg’s The Housemaid is releasing on DVD and Blu-Ray next week, February 3rd.

• 🎭 The Strangers: Chapter 3, the third film in the new Strangers trilogy, is hitting theaters this coming Friday, February 6th.

• 🪺 Andrew Mudge’s The Arborist hits VOD (and limited theaters in the US) on February 6th.

That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through.

ABOUT FIELD NOTES FROM HELL

FIELD NOTES FROM HELL is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every Sunday, with handpicked capsule reviews, news updates, and horror recommendations.

Cheers to you, my ghoulies.

—Armand

Hello, dear subscriber!

You are reading the twenty-fourth edition of Field Notes From Hell, a weekly horror column from Deep Cuts.

Each week, I send out an email with three-pack horror film recs, along with a hand-picked curation of news clips and upcoming horror releases. I recommend three horror films: one recently released, one classic horror, and one that I feel is unjustly overlooked. I send these emails — or I try to, anyway — every Sunday.

This week’s featured horror rec is Johannes Roberts’ Primate, a bonkers ‘80s creature feature throwback that sees a rabid chimpanzee maul through a CW-looking cast of nothing characters.

If you’re enjoying Deep Cuts, consider subscribing to support the newsletter.

SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH BEN. And that is, I suspect, because he’s a direct descendent of the primates that were cruelly vivisected upon in Frederick Wiseman’s same-name 1974 documentary. Johannes Roberts’ new film, Primate, is not a direct sequel, but being transfixed still by Olga Tokarczuk’s kooky protagonist, Janina Duszejko, my mind thinks it might as well be. There is a point where animals would bang their beastly paws on their chests and start mangling their cruel oppressors, right?

But here’s the thing: Roberts’ film decidedly calls rabies, not animal abuse. (Even though it laid enough groundwork to show aggression triggered by mounting grief, but then again, Ben — who the film points out was a puppet, not a real chimpanzee — grew up with a loving Hawaiian family.) That wrangles us closer to Cujo territory with a dripped-out primate standing in for a Saint Bernard. Plus, Primate feels very of-the-’80s, from the horned-out characters down to the synth-laden soundtrack (probably the best part about the film, apart from the puppetry).

It’s a silly animal attack movie, and that silliness rises to its peak during a scene where one of its CW-looking teens manages to snag the car keys, only to end up in the wrong jeep. Like a few of Roberts’ features, Primate is best enjoyed on dimmed minds, and let the gruesome thrills — and trust, there’s plenty — push you to the edge of your seat.

ABOUT THE FILM

🐵 Primate | 2026
dir. Johannes Roberts | Horror, Thriller | 🇺🇸

Home from college, Lucy reunites with family including pet chimp Ben. Ben contracts rabies during a pool party and turns aggressive. Lucy and friends barricade in pool, devising ways to survive the vicious chimp.

Horror recs this week

Every FIELD NOTES FROM HELL dispatch includes a three-pack of horror recs: 1.) a featured horror rec we share at the top of the newsletter, 2.) a horror classic, and 3.) an overlooked or underrated horror.

Here are the rest of this week’s recommendations.

🎞️ Classic Horror: The Birds (1963, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Random animal attacks have been depicted in film for many decades, but none as indelibly as Hitchcock’s seminal ‘60s feature, The Birds. Unlike Ben, the avian killers in this film weren’t triggered by hydrophobia or rabies; it’s left undetermined. There are theories, but the one that tickles me so is that the birds' keen ability to interpret anxiety, and the collective social tumult just screwed with birdbrains. Regardless, the film gets scary and it wholly cemented Hitchcock’s reputation as the master of suspense.

👀 Overlooked Horror: The Bay (2012, dir. Barry Levinson)

Another film set in a waterfront town, Levinson’s found-footage horror depicts what a small-town outbreak looks like when late-stage-capitalist greed gets so rampant people feel it’s totally fine to dump literal chicken shit in natural reserves. Pandemonium ensues in well-strewn footage oscillating between news reports, surveillance cameras, and home footage of townspeople who are unaware that a parasitic isopod outbreak is about to gnaw their insides out. It’s a grim and an uneasy watch that I don’t always recommend, but I figured it matched this week’s theme.

What’s new in horror

In addition to weekly horror recs, I’m also curating notable horror headlines and sharing them here in quick, TL;DR bullet lists so you can get (mostly) up-to-date with your horror news.

Plus, I’m calling attention to any upcoming horror film and TV releases both in theaters and streaming platforms. Here’s what’s new in horror this week.

🩸 If It Bleeds…: Weekly horror news roundup

• It brings me infinite joy to say that there’s a wealth of Oscar-nominated horrors this year, including Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, with a whopping 16 nominations, Zach Creggers’ Weapons, and Bugonia — Bloody-Disgusting

• Francis Galluppi’s new Evil Dead film is well underway, with Charlotte Hope, Jessica McNamee, and Zach Gilford joining the cast, due out 2027; it follows the 2026 film, Evil Dead Burns, directed by Sébastien Vaniček — Deadline

• IT: Welcome to Derry Season 2 is now in the works! — The Hollywood Reporter

• New trailers this week:

  • Heel — Stephen Graham endeavors to reform (in violent and unsavory ways) a young druggie

  • Noseeums — Southern supernatural gothic by way of Get Out and Candyman

  • Ghost in a Cell — Seemingly ACAB supernatural horror-comedy from Indonesian filmmaker, Joko Anwar

🎟️ Marquee of the Macabre: Upcoming horror films & TV

• 💉 Christopher Gans’ Return to Silent Hill is out now in theaters!

• 💦 Ryan Murphy returns to original horror television with The Beauty, a psychosexual Cronenbergian speculative thriller starring Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall. Hulu just released the first three episodes this week.

• 🧳 Send Help, the new film directed by Sam Raimi, starring Dylan O’Brien and Rachel McAdams, is hitting theaters next week.

• 🎅 Silent Night, Deadly Night, the remake from Mike P. Nelson, is coming to VOD on January 27th.

• 🐻 Grizzly Night is coming to VOD on January 30th.

That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through.

ABOUT FIELD NOTES FROM HELL

FIELD NOTES FROM HELL is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every Sunday, with handpicked capsule reviews, news updates, and horror recommendations.

Cheers to you, my ghoulies.

—Armand

Hello, dear subscriber!

You are reading the twenty-third edition of Field Notes From Hell, a weekly horror column from Deep Cuts.

Every Sunday, I send out an email with a four-pack of horror film recommendations, along with a hand-picked curation of news clips and horror collectibles. I send these — or I try to, anyway — every Sunday.

This week’s featured horror is Michael Shanks’ Together, a (hopefully not plagiarized, tee-hee!) dark comedy about the horrors of romantic (and theological) codependence.

If you’re enjoying Deep Cuts, consider subscribing to support the newsletter.

IT WAS IN PLATO’S SYMPOSIUM that Aristophanes spelt what loving meant or where it came from. It was, of all things, a punishment — a relentless and unfathomable yearning for someone besides yourself. More than a feeling, the playwright tells us, loving is straddling an unearthly need to fill a void in someone’s life, a compulsion from which no one seems able to part. “For love is the desire of the whole, and the pursuit of the whole is called love.”

Michael Shanks’ debut feature, Together, is a gruesome retelling of that speech, following thirtysomethings going through the motions of a rocky relationship. She believes the quiescence of country life will mitigate untended issues; he thinks the move too big a change, especially after witnessing a horrific accident involving his parents. Still, Millie and Tim U-hauls to the backwoods, hoping a restart will strengthen will their bond…erm, together. Little did they know.

The horror of Together is the horror of codependence. When romance is its own kind of devotion, at which point does intimacy becomes erasure? It’s that pointy end where you feel confronted by horrid ideas: how much of your relationship is real love and how much of it is capitulation, like you’re living someone else’s life? It’s tough terrain that all long-term couples face, but never has it been grotesquely depicted as it is in this film: two people fused together, their flesh enmeshed in one another.

Alison Brie and Dave Franco (who serve as producers in the film and star as Millie and Tim, respectively), sell the body horror and their character’s romantic turmoil pretty well, even if there isn’t nearly enough detail on what, exactly, makes their partnership so miserable, outside of some nasty spats. The rest you kind of have to detect on your own: the depressed-avoidant boyfriend, secular unions (that would otherwise be viewed taboo), and the loin-girding desire for love — or the idea of it, anyway.

ABOUT THE FILM

👁️ Together | 2025
dir. Michael Shanks | Horror, Drama | 🇺🇸

Years into their relationship, Tim and Millie find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country. With tensions already flaring, an encounter with an unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love and their flesh.

Horror recs this week

Every FIELD NOTES FROM HELL dispatch includes a three-pack of horror recs: 1.) recent horror, 2.) horror classic, and 3.) overlooked or underrated horror.

Here are this week’s recommendations.

1️⃣ New Horror: Birthrite (2025, dir. Ross Partridge)

Rosemary’s Baby meets The VVitch. It’s a fair reduction of a movie that’s literally titled Birthrite, just in case you need the reminder of which horror subgenre you’re watching (spoiler: you’re on preg-folk-horror!). Built almost solely on the backs of the two leads’ stellar performances, Alice Kremelberg and Juani Feliz, the film taps into the horrors of reproductive autonomy and queer family-making in a society that’s constantly invalidating their experience.

Birthrite is available to stream on VOD platforms.

2️⃣ Classic Horror: Misery (1990, dir. Rob Reiner)

I’ve procured a Scribner paperback of Stephen King’s novel recently and — helplessly! — have been wanting to detach the indelible image of Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes in Rob Reiner’s ‘90s classic, and just appreciate King’s text. And what do I do? Rewatch the film. The hobbling scene is still rather tame compared to the gruesome descriptions in the novel, but by God, do Bates make the whole thing horrifying.

Misery is available on VOD platforms; if you’re in the Philippines, it’s included in your Prime Video membership.

3️⃣ Underrated/Overlooked: Okaruto (2009, dir. Koji Shiraichi)

When you hear Koji Shiraishi, you don’t instantly think Okaruto (English title: Occult). You think Noroi: The Curse, a spooky mocku/found-footage horror that (rightly) nestles atop best-of lists. This similarly lo-fi mocku “investigates” a strange, mass-stabbing incident that leaves an indigent man marked with a possibly ancient curse. It isn’t as terrifying as Noroi, but it’s the closest among all of Shiraishi’s wildly prolific filmography. Fun cameo from Kiyoshi Kurosawa, too.

Okaruto, like many of Shiraishi’s films, aren’t widely available in the U.S. Luckily, it’s available to stream on the Internet Archive. BONUS: Check out Ura Horror (also on Archive.org), and watch the segment “A Woman Waving Her Hand.” Creepy stuff.

What’s new in horror

In addition to weekly horror recs, I’m also curating notable horror headlines and sharing here in quick, TL;DR bullet lists so you can get (mostly) up-to-date with your horror news.

Plus, I’m calling attention to upcoming horror film and TV releases both in theaters and streaming platforms. Here’s what’s new in horror this week.

If It Bleeds: Horror news roundup

• New Line confirms that Final Destination 7 is in development — The Hollywood Reporter

• Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil remake “won’t tell Leon’s story” — Inverse

• New trailers this week!

  • Him — Jordan Peele-produced horror film about sports machismo

  • Shelby Oaks — Chris Stuckmann’s debut feature, backed by great filmmaking talents like Mike Flanagan who’s also producing the film

  • BULK — Ben Wheatley’s new film; looks like a return to his weird, free-spirited roots (see: Sightseers and A Field in England)

  • The Rage — Dmitriy Dyachenko’s film follows a group of hunters fending off rabid wolves and grizzly bears in the Russian tundra

Marquee Macabre: Upcoming horror films & TV

• 👾 Alien: Earth is coming to Hulu on August 12th — finally!

• 🕯️ Witchboard, the new horror from Chuck Russell (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors), is coming out in U.S. theaters this week.

• 💔 Samuel Van Grinsven’s Went Up the Hill is hitting theaters this Friday, August 15th. The film stars Stranger Things’ Dacre Montgomery.

• 🛸 From the producers of The Endless comes Peter Cilella’s The Descendent, a sci-fi thriller about an “abducted” man. Out in VOD Friday, August 15th.

• 🤠 Ari Aster’s Eddington is out in VOD this Wednesday, August 12th.

That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through.

ABOUT FIELD NOTES FROM HELL

FIELD NOTES FROM HELL is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked capsule reviews, news updates, and horror recommendations.

Cheers to you, ghoulies.

—Armand

Hello, dear subscriber!

You are reading the twenty-second edition of Field Notes From Hell, a weekly horror column from Deep Cuts.

Each week, I’ll send an email with a four-pack of horror film recs, along with a hand-picked curation of news clips and horror collectibles. I send these — or I try to, anyway — every Sunday.

This week’s featured rec is Emilie Blichfeldt’s darkly satiric fable, The Ugly Stepsister, wherein beauty is nothing more than learned pain, not inherent grace.

If you’re enjoying Deep Cuts, consider subscribing to support the newsletter.

IN DREAMS, ELVIRA LOSES her heartaches. Drowsing after her crush’s poetry — the modern times equivalent, no doubt, of a performative matcha boy’s self-published zine — she sees him there, radiant, the charming prince that he is. He’d carry her with his princely arms and languidly caress her princessly, frost-bitten cheeks. Then so quickly, she’d be shot awake back to reality. She sees her widowed mother, Rebekka (Ane Dahl Thorp), marrying a decrepit old man for money with a daughter whose beauty she can’t rival. She doesn’t have the tiny nose, the touched-by-God features, nor the upright posture befitting a princess. No, she is the ugly stepsister, an unavoidable fact that her mother reminds her without relent.

But here’s the thing: they can’t order Elvira (Lea Myren) to stop dreaming. And in her sorry state of delusion, a monstress eventually rears her head, one that turns her passive victimhood into active self-destruction against the backdrop of a cruel, patriarchal society. It’s a tragic reframing of a story we’re all acquainted with, one that — in writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt’s hands — deftly surfaces harrowing truths (and lies!) about beauty and womanhood.

By happy chance, Blichfieldt’s vision seems in perfect step with Coralie Fargeat’s The Subtance, another film that’s somewhat of a literalization of “beauty is pain.” Here, the call doesn’t just come from inside the house; the phone rings abuzz from everywhere — from Elvira’s emotionally abusive mother, the gentry gargoyles gawking at her pre-teen peers, to the very institute that vows to look out for young women’s welfare. If it’s not surveillance by body shaming, it’s predacious manipulation veiled as empowerment (see: the fucking tapeworm).

It’s unknowably bleak, especially for this writer who can’t say he’s lived the same sordid circumstances. But I know there isn’t much humor in seeing the self-mutilation, the inward rerouting of aggressions, and the deeply rooted pains that afflict women, no matter how amusing they may telegraph on-screen. In what feels like a twisting of the knife, the film’s denouement reminds us that we’re watching a Cinderella story. There’s no consolation of pulpy violence at the end, just the bitter, sobering taste of defeat, and a solemn resignation to the fact not everyone gets a fairy tale ending.

ABOUT THE FILM

👠 The Ugly Stepsister
dir. Emilie Blichfeldt | Horror, Thriller, Comedy | 🇳🇴 🇵🇱 🇸🇪

Elvira dreams of the weak-kneed virgin, Prince Julian, and is willing to go to great lengths to conform to the kingdom's ideals of beauty. A surprising and raw twist on the fairy tale `Cinderella', seen from her stepsister's point of view.

Horror recs this week

Every FIELD NOTES FROM HELL dispatch includes a three-pack of horror recs: 1.) recent horror, 2.) horror classic, and 3.) overlooked or underrated horror.

Here are this week’s recommendations.

1️⃣ New Horror: Looky-Loo (2024, dir. Jason Zink)

To call this voyeuristic found-footage film snuff fetish wouldn’t be an unfair estimation. The whole 83-minute runtime is strictly allotted to following a frustrated filmmaker enact horrendous transgressions across a nondescript suburban town. It’s a committed exercise to the film’s base intentions — to sicken and unnerve. Think In A Violent Nature without the surprisingly beautiful aesthetic; The Poughkeepsie Tapes without the showmanship and flair. Watching it on a laptop feels vile, like I myself feel complicit to the faceless creep’s crimes. I don’t think it’s a good film at all, but it disturbed me deeply.

Looky-Loo is free to stream on Found TV (with ads).

2️⃣ Classic Horror: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, dir. Peter Weir)

Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock is possibly the most beautiful film I’ve ever seen. The painterly lensing, the hypnotic scoring, and the masterful editing altogether just tickles me pink. It reaches a point (almost!) of forgetting that the story is actually quite scary: a couple of pupils from an all-girls boarding school after traipsing a notoriously perilous geological terrain. Every character speaks in pithy, lyrical one-liners, like each one is their own harbinger. I love it. It’s mesmeric, unnerving, and at times nightmarish. Sure, it’s not a horror film. But surely a classic, yes? (I think so, it’s already in my Four Favorites on Letterboxd)

Picnic at Hanging Rock is available to stream on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel.

3️⃣ Underrated/Overlooked: R-Point (2004, dir. Su-Chang Kong)

This grossly overlooked South Korean horror is as topical now as it was in the early aughts. The incessant, self-repeating violence of global warfare blurs into ghostly encounters, and the paranoia curdles into red-eyed interrogation. Who wins in the purgatory-like limbo that is war?

R-Point is available to stream for free on Kanopy.

Upcoming horrors this week

Every week, we’re listing down upcoming horror films and television series. We’re also throwing in some notable horror news to keep you all looped in.

Here’s what’s new in horror this week.

• 📹 Out October 3rd, Chris Stuckmann’s debut feature, Shelby Oaks, dropped the above cryptic posters ahead of tomorrow’s trailer relaease — Bloody Disgusting

• 🛎️ The first (and only?) season of Hell Motel has just wrapped. I might review it soon, should I’ve the energy to muster. Watch on Shudder.

• 🧟‍♂️ 28 Years Later finally hit PVOD the past week. If you missed it in theaters, now’s your chance to catch it.

• 👽 Perhaps because news about the fourth Cloverfield is radio silent, John Krasinski is blessing us with a fourth A Quiet Place film (the third one, not counting the prequel with Lupita Nyong’o). He’s directing the film — FANGORIA

• 🫣 The first official teaser for Corin Hardy’s Whistle is here — and it’s spooky.

• 📿 The Conjuring: Last Rites sets the stage for what looks like a dark and dreadful finale. Watch the trailer.

• 🌲 And finally, Netflix’s Wayward looks just fine (watch the trailer here), but as a Toni Collette completist, I feel obliged to share.

Terror trinkets & threadfuls

O.K., so I’ve decided this is going to be a weekly thing. This week, let me put you on some cool trinkets, merch items, and collectibles.

From left to right, here are the products featured :

• The Thing multi-layered acrylic 27x40” poster — $65 at Vice Press

• Nanny Criterion Collection Blu-ray — $32 at The Criterion Collection

• Misery 90’s T-shirt — $35 at Cult of Cult

• The Substance Glow Green Activator Water Bottle — $45 at MUBI

• Terrifier Art the Clown Pocket Pop! Vinyl Keychain — $8 at Hot Topic

That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through.

ABOUT FIELD NOTES FROM HELL

FIELD NOTES FROM HELL is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked capsule reviews, news updates, and horror recommendations.

Cheers to you, ghoulies.

—Armand

Hey, hey!

I come bearing a new dispatch from a week of watching horror movies and TV. This week, I rewatched Shunji Iwai’s 1996 [categorically] horror film about Japan’s often-forsaken outcasts.

Enjoy, friends!

GRATEFULLY, I’VE BEEN REMINDED by a YouTube video of my love for Shunji Iwai’s Pikunikku, a singularly disturbing fable about the horrors that plague the minds of Japan’s youth from the late nineties to the early aughts. This is my favorite era of J-horror: fears predicated by existential dread, a tragic yearning for kinship or connection, and socioeconomic anxieties. I’ve produced quite a long list of those sorts of films I like over the years, but there’s plenty to talk about this one, which, in true Iwai fashion, fixes these heavy themes in such a frenetic and vibrant package. Watching it quite literally feels like trying to cup livewire with your bare hands.

The film follows three young mental institution patients on their excursions slipping outside their asylum. Coco, a young woman who has just been admitted to the facility, inadvertently leads two boys, Tsumuji and Satoru, to a Christian church who gifts them a bible. Reading the colophon date incorrectly as Day of Reckoning, the three journey on walls and fences hoping to find the best spot to watch the apocalypse happen, as if the end of days were any other hanabi.

Though not “horror” in the traditional sense, the events that transpire in this ostensibly kooky coming-of-age film are bleak and heart-rending. As noted by @NightmareMovies’ video essay, Tsumuji’s hallucinations about his deceased (and heavily implied to be abusive) teacher is an episode doused in Lynchian dread. The use of animatronic dread is made more uncanny on the HD remaster; it presented the abuse in viciously clear detail, both the act and its escalation from manipulation to full molestation. Tsumuji is played ably by a young Tadanobu Asano five years before he takes on Ichi the Killer.

Coco (Chara), meanwhile, is this self-mythologizing character ripped right out of a magical realist novel. The world, she notes, begins and ends with her — a solipsistic thing to say, sure, but the film frames it as a way to give outcasts on the fringes of society (read: the institutionalized) some semblance of agency when theirs have been stripped away by the very social units that have sworn to protect it. Their families, their church, and their country.

ABOUT THE FILM

🤖 Pikunikku
dir. Shunji Iwai | Drama, Horror | 🇯🇵

Believing that the world will end that very day, three mental patients Coco, Tsumuji, and Satoru set out upon a journey. Walking upon the tops of the walls of the city, they seek to find a picnic spot with the best vantage point to view the final event.

Horror recs this week

Every FIELD NOTES FROM HELL dispatch includes a three-pack of horror recs: 1.) recent horror, 2.) horror classic, and 3.) guilty pleasure/underrated horror.

Here are this week’s recommendations.

1️⃣ New Horror: Best Wishes To All (2023, dir. Yûta Shimotsu)

Viewers will struggle stomaching the horrors in Yuta Shimotsu’s absurdist nightmare, Best Wishes To All, an unnerving fable about the social indifference cultivated under a zero-sum, late-stage capitalist society. It insists that it’s a dark comedy, but there’s really no humor in having to inflict suffering to achieve true happiness. It’s a nihilistic fever dream that, on first watch, will come enshrouded behind the ooky-spooky J-horror antics. But the longer this movie sits in your head, the harder it screws with it. I still haven’t been able to get it out of mine.

Best Wishes To All is a recent import to Shudder. Watch it here.

2️⃣ Classic Horror: Martin (1977, dir. George A. Romero)

When I think George A. Romero, I don’t always think zombies. Recently, my mind goes to his 1997 film, Martin, a disarmingly intimate and sickening portrait of social isolation through the lens of vampirism. It’s such a rich character study that you catch yourself almost sympathizing on the titular killer’s side. Easy recommend to anyone who’s looking to be unnerved.

Martin is streaming on Shudder. If you’re outside their serviced countries, there are dubious copies uploaded all over YouTube — but you didn’t hear that from me *wink!

3️⃣ Underrated Horror: I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997, dir. Jim Gillespie)

With Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s requel finally in theaters, I figured this week is ripe timing to shout out the 1997 original, directed by Jim Gillespie and written, perhaps more notably, by Kevin Williamson. I say that because I Know What You Did Last Summer has always felt so akin to Williamson’s other major project, Scream. And in some ways, it has cast a big shadow over this perfectly worth-to-revisit teen slasher that, like Scream, has plenty of wits, thrills, and indelible movie moments (look: Jennifer Love-Hewitt screaming “what are you waiting for” is elite meme-ry).

I Know What You Did Last Summer is streaming on Netflix and Prime Video.

Upcoming horrors this week

Every week, we’re listing down upcoming horror films and television series. We’re also throwing in some notable horror news to keep you all looped in.

Here’s what’s new in horror this week.

• 🪝 The new I Know What You Did Last Summer requel is out now in theaters. For my Filipino readers, it’s out next week!

• 👁️ Michael Shanks’ Together, starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco, is premiering in theaters next week.

• 🔪 Dexter: Resurrection isn’t so terrible as so many have feared. The cast is stacked, with Uma Thurman playing a right-hand woman to a kind of Jude Coyne character, played by Peter Dinklage. Watch it on Paramount+.

• 👾 Predator: Badlands has dropped an official trailer — and they’re not hiding its ties to the Alien franchise.

• 👽 Speaking of aliens, Alien: Earth is just a few weeks away. Just thought I’d remind you. Oh, they also released a four-minute preview.

• 🦖 There’s a new horror movie that can only be described as Jurassic Park set in the Vietnam War. It’s called Primitive War, and the first trailer just dropped via Bloody Disgusting.

Terror trinkets & threadfuls

O.K., so I’ve decided this is going to be a weekly thing. This week, let me put you on some cool trinkets, merch items, and collectibles. Mainly, I want the Alex G vinyl of the I Saw The TV Glow soundtrack, but here’s the rest my weekly reco.

From left to right, here are the products featured:

• Jaws 50th Anniversary Resin Dunny Art Figure — I loooove the poster recreated in this dunny silhouette, though at $150, I’m not too sure if I’m loving the price. But hey, if you have the dough to knead on this kind of thang, get it!

• Macabre Spirits: ‘Hell is not mocked’ Bourbon Whiskey — Horror-inspired booze by Matthew Lillard. Goes out for $85 with a free copy of the same-name short story.

• LEGO Mike, Dustin, Lucas and Will Figures — $40

• I Saw the TV Glow Original Score: Alex G Anniversary Release — $30

• Leatherface / Michael Myers Keychain — $12

That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through.

ABOUT FIELD NOTES FROM HELL

FIELD NOTES FROM HELL is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked capsule reviews, news updates, and horror recommendations.

Cheers to you, ghoulies.

—Armand

Surprise — here’s a new edition of Field Notes From Hell.

This week, we’re looking into Gerard Johnstone’s follow-up to her robo-killer doll, M3GAN. Plus, we’ve got our three-pack horror recos.

Enjoy, and sorry for being M.I.A., but we’re so backkk!

HORROR CINEMA’S SASSIEST killer robot got an unfortunate patch in M3GAN 2.0, a soulless do-over that seems content in becoming a cheap parody of what made the original an instant classic.

To be that isn’t new either. Outside of horror, original films have long been riddled with insipid sequels. Film bros from Woodsboro would call this the “film but it’s [blank]” sequel epidemic, but would also fondly cite outliers: Aliens is obviously a poster film for this, and it’s that sort of sequel that M3GAN 2.0 tries to be — but fails.

Some time after the events of the original, the titular killer robot has been shut down by its creator, Gemma (Allison Williams), a robotics tech whiz and reluctant guardian to her niece, Cady (Violet McGraw). She’s become some sort of anti-singularity sherpa, protesting against anything that might keep the door ajar for A.I. sentience and eventual singularity. But when a deadlier tech-threat emerges, Gemma is forced to reboot her Shelleyan monster (literally).

There’s an intriguing plot somewhere in 2.0, especially one about the A.I. arms race, but any semblance of that is lost in the shuffle of messy screenwriting and haphazard direction. There’s barely any cohesion in the themes it tries to tackle, and you get the sense that these themes can be somewhat interesting if unspooled in a better film.

Plus, whatever happened to Scream 2’s rules on sequels? Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate. This new film criminally nerfs the appeal from which M3GAN sprung as a household name. When your villain literally kills off an elementary kid off-rip, it’s tough selling her as an anti-heroine, robotic voguing (roboguing?) or not.

The film scatters reminders of what made the original great. I think, maybe, to convince viewers that the “yess-gawd-camp-slay-mawma” of it all is somehow still intact. Yet, when the titular droid clad in preppy Victorian outfit tells us to hold onto our collective vaginas, the thrill just isn’t there anymore.

ABOUT THE FILM

🤖 M3GAN 2.0
dir. Gerard Johnstone | Action, Thriller | 🇺🇸

Two years after M3GAN's rampage, her creator, Gemma, resorts to resurrecting her infamous creation in order to take down Amelia, the military-grade weapon who was built by a defense contractor who stole M3GAN's underlying tech.

Horror recs this week

Every FIELD NOTES FROM HELL dispatch includes a three-pack of horror recs: 1.) recent horror, 2.) horror classic, and 3.) guilty pleasure/underrated horror.

Here are this week’s recommendations.

1️⃣ New Horror: Missing Child Videotape (2024, dir. Ryota Kondo)

Borrowing plenty from early-aughts J-horror, Ryota Kondo’s debut feature is engulfed in the same beguiling atmosphere that enshrouded audiences in Takashi Shimizu’s Ringu and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo. The film follows a young man plagued with feelings of guilt when he receives a strange VCR tape showing his little brother’s final moments before his disappearance. Kondo’s flourishes here peg him to be a deft student of early-Kurosawa sensibilities. The intense yet understated sense of dread is such a thrill. Easy recommend.

Missing Child Videotape premieres at last year’s TIFF. No word yet on PVOD or streaming, but seeing the hype it’s having, I’m sure it will have a proper release soon.

2️⃣ Classic Horror: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986, dir. Tobe Hooper)

A lesson on making a 180-turn sequel (and making it work), Tobe Hooper’s follow-up to one of if not the most horrific films is…well, a darkly comedic take on it. But what makes this ‘80s cult classic work despite the drastic tonal shift is its insistence on refusing to give its baddies any redemptive shots, regardless of how amusing they are to watch (Chap-Top Sawyer says hi!). Purists will hate the tonal whiplash from the original, but it will go down — in my book, at least — as one of the better horror sequels of all time.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is available to stream for free on Hoopla.

3️⃣ Underrated Horror: Demon Seed (1977, dir. Donald Cammell)

Rosemary’s Baby by S4T4N-T3CH. I’ve oscillated on the decision to feature this technophobic chiller from the ‘70s. Personally, proto-feminist horrors rarely go the necessary distance to warrant their inclusion in discussion, at least in my book. Plus, the promotion for this film seems skewed in a way as unnerving as the themes it depicts: “Julie Christie carries the Demon Seed” is plastered on every film poster. Yet, its fifty-year-old fears about male-coded obsessions about control and legacy encroaching female bodily autonomy feel uncannily relevant and topical today. Plus, Christie delivers such a nuanced performance that the film feels like her own creation. It’s a film that doesn’t sit right sometimes, but I’d say it’s worth delving into, especially for people who just can’t see the damn obvious.

Demon Seed is available on PVOD and streaming in the U.S.

Upcoming horrors this week

Every week, we’re listing down upcoming horror films and television series. We’re also throwing in some notable horror news to keep you all looped in.

Here’s what’s new in horror this week.

• Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s long-awaited requel, I Know What You Did Last Summer, is in theaters this week.

• Aussie shark-week serial killer romp, Dangerous Animals, is hitting PVOD on Tuesday, July 22nd. Directed by Sean Byrne and starring Jai Courtney.

• Fresh off the box office success of Superman, James Gunn confirms that DC’s upcoming Clayface movie is a proper horror film directed by James Watkins and written by Mike Flanagan — Source: CBS

• Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth series dropped its official trailer, and uh…I will be tuning in. Thanks, Timothy Olyphant — Source: FX

• The trailer for Mortal Kombat II has been unCaged — Source: WARNER BROS

Terror trinkets & threadfuls

This week on #TerrorTrinkets: Not that I’ll buy it with my own money, but we have JWA’s kitsch-iest contribution to Dior so far (I mean this positively, if that’s even possible). Plus, new merch for pre-order from A24 and Neon.

I’ll do this once a month, but let me know if you want this to be a weekly thing!

From left to right, here are the products featured:

• Dior Book Tote (Dracula) — technically just a preview and not for sale (for now); typical Dior Book Totes go out for $3-4K.

• Bring Her Back Blu-ray — $35

• The Monkey Official Figurine Toy — $125

• Univers Good Guys Chucky Keychain — Got this for cheaper at Universal Studios Japan, but eBay sellers list it for $30.

• Midsommar Flo Scream Pin — $10

That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through.

ABOUT FIELD NOTES FROM HELL

FIELD NOTES FROM HELL is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked capsule reviews, news updates, and horror recommendations.

Cheers to you, ghoulies.

—Armand

Salutations, horror fans! And hello, 2025!

This is the first FIELD NOTES FROM HELL I’ve sent in months. It feels like unearthing demons I’ve cast down their wistful slumber. It’s scary. Terrifying. And that’s why I’m doing it. This is an iteration of the format I used to run with — a main review, three capsules, and a notable ‘updates’ section.

I’ll be sending these again every week. The goal is to send all 52 dispatches (without fail), every week. If you keep on reading, maybe I’ll hit that goal.

Enjoy!

SOME TIME AFTER MAKING Ju-On: The Grudge (and shortly after remaking it for Western audiences), filmmaker Takashi Shimizu seemed beholden, still, to the idea of cycles, violence, and both. Ju-On centered around a curse that corroded those afflicted with gruesome misery, and it sprawled to others like a virus — a concept that, today, films like Smile put on. Maybe lesser known is his 2005 work, Rinne, a film that, like Ju-On, seems fixated on the horrors of perpetuating violence across various generations and mediums.

Rinne follows a film production about a horrendous real-life murder that happened in the ‘70s at a seedy hotel. The murderer — a professor obsessed with the idea of reincarnation, or ‘samsara,’ the Hinduist belief in the cycle between life and death — offs a total of eleven people, including his two young children. Eerily, there’s a snuff footage of it, although lost. And so, filmmaker Ikuo Matsumura, decides he will depict the spree himself on film, the scarier part being that he seems to know that professor Norihasa Omori’s theory has legs, and has unwittingly cast the reincarnations of those involved in the murder. Suspiciously, he overturns production plans (his production manager already made an intricate floor plan for the sets to be built on a soundstage) and decides to shoot the film at the same hotel, a derelict bed-and-breakfast destination in Kansai. And we know Oso Kanko hotel’s hella haunted; it’s got Kubrickian zoom-ins and everything.

Though riddled with Hollywood sensibilities, Rinne feels J-horror to the core: the droning hums of the city, entities lurking at the frames’ periphery, the fucking red ball bouncing creepily across a hallway — it’s all there. It’s part of Takahashi Ichise’s J-Horror Theater series after all, preceding Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s (also) excellent Retribution. And the doll is downright creepy, in a way that Annabelle will never be. That one scene was far too disturbing and (genuinely) scared me.

I quite like the meta aspect, too. The discourse on the role of film and television in perpetuating violence and exploitation of real-world crimes is topical — even twenty years later — in a post-Monster world. Nihilistically, the film tells us that gruesome horrors both on-screen and IRL are doomed to have a do-over… and over… and over. And that’s truly the scary part.

ABOUT THE FILM

✝️ Rinne
dir. Takashi Shimizu | Horror | 🇯🇵

A Japanese actress begins having strange visions and experiences after landing a role in a horror film about a real-life murder spree that took place over forty years ago.

Horror recs this week

Every FIELD NOTES FROM HELL dispatch includes a three-pack of horror rec: 1.) recent horror, 2.) horror classic, and 3.) guilty pleasure/underrated horror.

Here are this week’s recommendations.

Recent horror — Heretic (2024, dir. Scott Beck, Bryan Woods)

I’M NOT SURE IF it’s just me approaching my thirties, but the past year put me in a most spiritual headspace. Not to the point of feeling hounded by religious curiosity per se, but surely there were moments that had me clung to my own belief system (an ever-evolving journey for me, as I’m sure is the same for anyone). So it was annoyingly good timing that Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ new film, Heretic, stir questions about faith and belief within me.

It’s gorgeously lensed, wonderfully acted (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East as a pair of strong-willed Mormon missionaries and Hugh Grant as the neurotic know-it-all degen with evil designs), and genuinely provocative, without doing it at the expense of outward expression and intellectualizing of one’s beliefs. Along with The First Omen, it’s up there in my horror faves of the year.

Heretic is available to stream on Apple TV+.

Horror classic — Itim (eng. The Rites of May, 1976, dir. Mike De Leon)

THERE HAVE BEEN close to twenty Field Notes dispatches and I still haven’t recommended something from the Philippines, where I’m from. There’s no better film to start that off than with Mike De Leon’s Itim (eng. The Rites of May), a supernatural thriller set in a rural town where a city-based photographer (Tommy Abuel) engages in a summer fling with a clairvoyant (Charo Santos) who sees ominous visions of a brutal crime. There’s a scene where Abuel’s character gets a rather spooky visitation from religious saints. (If you’ve watched the film you’ll know exactly which scene I’m talking about — yeah, that scene is burned at the fore of my brain. Scary stuff.)

Itim isn’t available to stream on major platforms (as of writing). Somebody uploaded the full film restoration on YouTube, though.

Guilty pleasure — Maximum Overdrive (1986, dir. Stephen King)

I’ve watched Kyle Mooney’s Y2K late last year. An okay film, but nowhere near as bonkers as Stephen King’s sole directorial effort like it needed to be. Singularity horrors are as relevant as ever, and I feel like there’s smaller and smaller space to make ridiculous “moron movies” like Maximum Overdrive (King’s words, not mine). I mean, where else can you see everyday persons tote military-grade bazookas (AMERICAAAA!) to blow up sentient semi-trucks? Is it a good film? Definitively not. Is it a good time? Yes it is.

Maximum Overdrive is available to stream on Prime Video US (AMERICAAA!).

Upcoming horrors this week

Every week, we’re listing down upcoming horror films and television. We’re also throwing in some notable horror news to keep you all looped in.

Here’s what’s new in horror this week.

• Thordur Palsson’s English period horror The Damned hits VOD January 3rd.

• Sophie Osbourne’s The Monster Beneath Us — also a period horror film — premieres on VOD platforms January 3rd.

• The second season of Mayfair Witches is premiering via AMC+ on January 5th.

• Nosferatu, Robert Eggers’ take on the classic vampire tale, is **likely, my fingers are crossed!** hitting Philippine theaters January 8th.

• Oz Perkins and NEON just dropped a teaser clip for The Monkey, and it looks bonkers — steer clear if you don’t want spoilers, though! The film opens sometime in February. (Source: FANGORIA)

• Twenty-two years after its first release, David Fincher’s thriller Panic Room is getting a Brazilian remake. (Source: BLOODY DISGUSTING).

Terror trinkets & finds

This week on TERROR TRINKETS, let me put you on Puma’s line of Squid Game-inspired garments. The collab covers all major grounds, from backpacks to apparel to sneakers. But what’s gotten my eyes’ shine are the sneakers.

There are three designs in total: Puma’s classic suede shoe in pale chestnut colorway (inspired by the show’s now-iconic intricate staircase); the Easy Rider sneakers in deep green and tomato colorway (inspired by the players’ tracksuits); and finally, a unique take on the Palermo, featuring a pumpkin-colored stripe, with interesting detailing on the branding flap and woven pattern on the collar lining.

Here’s a look at all three sneakers. It’s all available for purchase on the Puma website (as of this writing). A pair will set you back approximately USD 100.

That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through.

ABOUT FIELD NOTES FROM HELL

FIELD NOTES FROM HELL is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked capsule reviews, news updates, and horror recommendations.

Cheers to you, ghoulies…and have a very happy New Year!

—Armand

Salutations, horror fans! 

You’re getting this Holy Week edition of the newsletter. Jesus Christ hath died and three days later hath again risen. Dost thou want a fresh dispatch…from Hell?!

It’s a perfect coincidence that this week, we’re looking into Michael Mohan’s Immaculate, a Catholic horror that slides Sydney Sweeney into the habit as a nun seemingly going through immaculate conception. Plus, this week’s horror recs!

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This week’s email is brought to you by Amazon Prime Video — watch thousands of horror films, including Amazon Original titles like Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 Suspiria remake. 

Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

YOU’D BE FORGIVEN if you mindlessly dismissed Michael Mohan’s Immaculate as yet another run-of-the-mill Catholic horror film. It’s not. Or at least, it’s not just a film about clericalist horrors in the Catholic church (even if it isn’t afraid to mangle the ugly faces of religious fanaticism).

The film is more interested in the horrors of losing one’s corporeal agency through the lens of blind reverence. Do questions about one’s claim to one’s body vanish when it’s told to be divine intervention? That’s the can of worms Immaculate is opening. And honestly? Good on Sydney Sweeney for championing this project for years.

Speaking of Sweeney, she’s stellar in this. She plays a devout nun named Sister Cecilia who mysteriously conceived a child (without pillowing with a man) after moving to a convent in Italy. She sells the whole relinquished nun storyline fully, with an intense last scene that builds on Dolly De Leon’s iconic Triangle of Sadness moment.

Immaculate has few sharp turns and even fewer novel ideas in the way of story (there’s a weird Jurassic World-esque plot point, too—totally odd, I know), but it makes up for its being so resolute about its ideas—rip-your-own-umbilical-cord-type of resolute.

Mohan already mentioned that Immaculate wasn’t written as commentary, but it’s hard to hold him to that when a character pulls out lines like “Of course, I do [believe in God]. Life is so cruel only a man could be responsible.” Recommend.

ABOUT THE FILM

✝️ Immaculate
dir. Michael Mohan | Horror, Thriller | 🇺🇸

Cecilia, an American nun of devout faith, embarks on a new journey in a remote convent in the picturesque Italian countryside. Cecilia’s warm welcome quickly devolves into a nightmare as it becomes clear her new home harbors a sinister secret and unspeakable horrors.

Every week in Field Notes (From Hell!), I recommend three horror films: one recent title, one classic horror, and one guilty pleasure.

Here are this week’s recommendations.

Recent horror — You’ll Never Find Me (2023, dir. Josiah Allen, Indianna Bell)

Loved it. Tension-filled and anxiety-inducing, this Aussie psychological thriller is a chess match between two dubious characters—a lonely old man and a tourist who lies about her accommodation. Deffo recommendo. 

Classic horror — The Omen (1976, dir. Richard Donner)

Watched in preparation for The First Omen, which comes out next week. The story follows a diplomat played by Gregory Peck who unwittingly adopts the antichrist and gives him a birthday party. Big on atmosphere, something that gets clear in the first few minutes. It’s lush, austere, and horrific. Not sure if it ages a-O.K. in today’s standards, but it’s rightfully touted as a horror classic. 

Guilty pleasure — The Midnight Meat Train (2008, dir. Ryûhei Kitamura)

True to it being written by Clive Barker, this film is amply horny and very, very, very bloody. Bradley Cooper stars as a photographer who becomes obsessed with a string of subway disappearances—basically, the torture porn-ification of De Palma’s Blow Out.

That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through. 

About Field Notes (From Hell!):

Field Notes (From Hell!) is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked capsule reviews and horror recommendations.

Again, this week’s email is brought to you by Amazon Prime Video — watch thousands of horror films, including Amazon Original titles like Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 Suspiria remake. 

Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

Cheers to you, ghoulies!

—Armand

Hello, horror hounds! 

New week, new dispatch…from hell! This week, we’re tackling Robert Morgan’s Stopmotion, a British chiller following a stop-motion artist in the throes of hysteria as she crafts her first film.

—

This week’s email is brought to you by Amazon Prime Video — watch thousands of horror films, including Amazon Original titles like Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 Suspiria remake. 

Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

I’M QUITE THE SUCKER for the costly horrors of creative genius. There’s no gut-knotting pain worse than knowing you lack the artistry and point-of-view required to make something new in your chosen craft. 

I especially like stories that hover within the genre. You’ve got your prestige Oscar-bait films, but horror refuses to put these tortured geniuses on a pedestal. They draw blood (buckets!). Get mutilated. Chewed. Spat out. Born anew with unusually red corners in their eyes.

After hearing a few good things about Robert Morgan’s Stopmotion, I knew it’d be my cup of tea. For one, it spotlights the art of stop-motion animation, a style that lends itself well to my favorite genre. For another, it’s about yet another tortured artist who codes their life around the art they love (sounds like someone I know, ahem!) and what chaos might ensue when things fall apart.

The film follows a woman named Ella, an artistically repressed nepo-baby living in the shadow of her arthritic mom, who herself is a stop-motion artist (a storied one, at that). Ella seems grimly aware that she lacks an artistic voice, so much so that she puts up with her mom’s doting and bullish ways (which mother calls her kid a puppet?). 

The horror of Stopmotion picks up with Ella (played by Aisling Franciosi, as great here as she was in Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale) creating her own stop-motion film. She meets a strange little girl who offers a story idea about a disfigured entity called the Ashman.

I see what Morgan is trying to say, and I observe many of the things the film wants to say about artistry. Where it loses me is the story, which feels, at best, like a patchwork of potentially good ideas about childhood trauma and negative states of mind translating into creative work.

I like the blurring of reality and fiction and the eventual colliding of two mediums. The effect feels akin to something like Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor, a finer film about repressed trauma and rage and also video nasties of yesteryears. 

Morgan’s film is finely crafted, yes. The stop-motion elements are fascinating, and even more so is the sound design. But the film is ultimately bogged down by a middling script and quite two-dimensional characters.

ABOUT THE FILM

🎥 Stopmotion
dir. Robert Morgan | Horror, Thriller, Animation | 🇬🇧

Ella Blake, a stop-motion animator struggling to control her demons after the loss of her overbearing mother, embarks upon the creation of a film that becomes the battleground for her sanity. As Ella’s mind starts to fracture, the characters in her project take on a life of their own.

Every week in Field Notes (From Hell!), I recommend three horror films: one recent title, one classic horror, and one guilty pleasure.

Here are this week’s recommendations.

Recent horror — The Royal Hotel (2023, dir. Kitty Green)

Nowhere near the strength or impact of The Assistant, obviously. This tense, anxiety-inducing thriller from the same director (Kitty Green) is a serviceable side-step. Again, it thrusts Julia Garner into a punishing workplace. This time, she plays a backpacking expat forced to take on a barkeeping job with her bestie (played by Jessica Henwick) out in the bar creep epicenter of the Australian wildback.

Classic horror — Aliens (1986, dir. James Cameron)

Watched this in immediate reaction to the new teaser for Alien: Romulus. If you haven’t watched it, do yourself a favor and watch all sixty glorious seconds of it here. And I’m just happy that we’re getting all shades of Alien now, with Romulus shaping up to be somewhat Alien: Isolation-esque, and this James Cameron sequel being the terror-filled setpiece-driven romp that put the franchise on the map. It sprawls out the story outside of Nostromo, with Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) leading a group of Marines into a planetoid full of Xenomorphs. As sequel rules go, the body count stands taller. Great film.

Guilty pleasure — Alligator (1980, dir. Steve Beck)

O.K., so I’m not even sure if I’m admitting any guilt in picking this. I unironically LOVE this film. It’s Jaws but on land. Robert Forster is such a gem playing a charismatic cop leading this procedural with a grossly mutated sewer alligator as the big baddie. It’s not fucking around with the kills, either. The pool scene traumatized me as a kid.

That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through. 

About Field Notes (From Hell!):

Field Notes (From Hell!) is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked capsule reviews and horror recommendations.

Again, this week’s email is brought to you by Amazon Prime Video — watch thousands of horror films, including Amazon Original titles like Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 Suspiria remake. 

Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

Cheers to you, ghoulies!

—Armand

Salutations, fellow horror fans!

New week. New dispatch…from hell! This week, I’m trying out the new format/structure for Field Notes (From Hell!) I was talking about last week.

—

This week’s email is brought to you by Amazon Prime Video — watch thousands of horror films, including Amazon Original titles like Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 Suspiria remake. 

Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

THERE’S A DEGREE OF SELF-AWARENESS required for films like Anthony Cousins’ Frogman to work. It’s a fine balance. Too much or too little of it can turn an otherwise fun cryptid romp into a gross and painful slog. 

I think it’s there, somewhere, in Frogman. Otherwise, the film would have felt like it totally croaked in arrival. It didn’t, despite a wooden script and its trio of cardboard-thin characters. At least one-third of the main cast works in a funny quip. “Frogman fucks,” he asks dryly. I like that.

Everything else feels somewhat off. Like the film doesn’t buy into its own ridiculousness. We follow a down-on-his-luck thirtysomething named Dallas. Subjected to unfunny ridicule from a cringy sleuth-tuber, Dallas’ persisting motivation is to prove that the half-frog, half-person creature he spotted as a kid in the ‘90s is, in fact, real. So, he coaxes his filmmaking friends Scotty and Amy, to scour the woods and uncover the truth about Frogman.

A big chunk of the film follows the trio around Loveland, the town that amphibian cryptids built. There are huge Willow Creek vibes here, particularly in the scenes where Dallas & co. interviews the locals about the eponymous creature, even if the actors show up with nary half the conviction of those in Goldthwait’s film. 

About halfway through, we switch gears as the film goes full-on Blair Witch Frog-ject (sorry!) and introduces a bunch of spooky setpieces, made somewhat effective by the film’s lovingly distressed visuals, complete with fake aberrations and digital scratches. The frozen still images of Frogman, though ridiculous in nature, telegraph as creepy. I kinda dig it.

I wish there were more action, though. The finale is tense and grotesque, a final set piece that kind of depletes its own thrills by reminding us that “oh, I don’t really care about much of these characters.” It’s giving ribbits, yes. Riveting, no. 

Every week in Field Notes (From Hell!), I give you three horror film recommendations: one recent title, one classic horror, and one guilty pleasure.

Here are this week’s recommendations.

Recent horror — Moon Garden (2024, dir. Ryan Stevens Harris)

It's surprising how only a few people have started talking about Ryan Stevens Harris’ Moon Garden. The film exists, it seems, inside of a young girl’s mind while in a state of coma. There are lots of great ideas in play here, and an exhibit of the filmmakers’ craft, each bringing their own stroke of genius (the production looks amazing) in a beautiful story about a kid processing life.

Classic horror — Onibaba (1964, dir. Kaneto Shindō)

Astounded by the wizardry of some of the shots here (and the fact that they were once mislabeled as bad cinematography). A searing, sensual take on the old hag folklore, Onibaba is one of the most fascinating horror films in Japan. It

Oh, and it made our list of underrated supernatural horror films. I called it a “menacing post-war horror that beautifully unfurls in a violent clash of rage, envy, and possession.” There goes the barrage of superlatives.

Guilty pleasure — Ghost Ship (2002, dir. Steve Beck)

By all accounts a bad movie, but a fun one. It’s known for that one scene (iyknyk), but honestly, there’s plenty to enjoy here. And I’m showing my biases here: Julianna Margulies is amazing, per usual.

That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through. 

About Field Notes (From Hell!):

Field Notes (From Hell!) is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked capsule reviews and horror recommendations.

Again, this week’s email is brought to you by Amazon Prime Video — watch thousands of horror films, including Amazon Original titles like Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 Suspiria remake. 

Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

Cheers to you, ghoulies!

—Armand

SO MUCH OF WHAT HAPPENED in 2023 helped illuminate my 2024.

I opened the year by reading that humans only get to live about four thousand weeks, and I alerted myself to the fact that I’ve already lived a fourth of that. I’ve since spun down a spiral of rethinking how I might allocate the very finite resources of life.

One of my commitments this year is to be more active with this newsletter. And as I’m sure a lot of you who subscribed (I’m very appreciative, you won’t believe how much), I can definitely do more.

Which brings us to today’s email — a kind of late ‘Field Notes From Hell’ dispatch-cum-long-due newsletter update.

Let’s dig into what’s new.

• I’m changing the format of the newsletter. I will no longer curate news stories and trailers. You guys are already too plugged in. Instead, I’ll focus on sharing capsule reviews of the horror films I’ve watched that week.

• I’m effectively turning this into a weekly review and recommendations newsletter. I’ll do my best to cover what’s playing in theaters, streaming, and VOD, but I do not claim this to be the most comprehensive digest.

• I’m shifting focus to making YouTube videos. You’ll still get exclusive things here, and as OG subscribers, you’ll get first dibs on video premieres, but yep, I’m allocating more energy into finally making long-form videos, which was my original goal, anyway.

Now that that’s done, let’s move on to this week’s reviews. There’s plenty.

Monolith ★★★★☆

2024, dir. Matt Vesely

~

Enjoyed this thoroughly. I immediately caught the vibe it was going for. Less The War of the Worlds and more Pontypool, where inevitable self-destruction is all but assured through the hapless proliferation of language in media. Here, a monolithic black brick becomes the curious subject of a disgraced journalist-turned-podcaster played by Lily Sullivan (Evil Dead Rise).

The film uses the brick as a visual metaphor for repressed trauma and depression — an ugly thing that one just one day "receives" and that one would prefer not to discuss. Not sure if I like the ending too much, though.

The Seeding ★★☆☆☆

2023, dir. Barnaby Clay

~

Usually love me an atmospheric slow-burner (especially when it's seemingly designed to make men wince), but I just couldn't buy into the bulk of what happens in The Seeding.

The film follows an explorer (Scott Haze) who finds himself stranded inside a pit and at the mercy of a litter of sadistic children. There, he finds a fellow "hostage," a woman (Kate Lyn Sheil) who seems to have situated herself well despite the situation. He feels compelled to rescue her, but she seems indifferent. This weird dynamic quickly unravels as days, weeks, and months pass.

The visuals are great, even when they kind of belabor the film's already belabored ideas (e.g. the sperm visual of the title card, the "microcosm" birds-eye view shots, the film rotting in various moon phases) spoken in words.

True Detective: Night Country ★★★★½

2024, dir. Issa Lopez

~

The wave of catharsis I felt — me, a Filipino, belonging to a group of people no stranger to the notion of banding together and saying no to systemic injustice — with how the season finale unfolded. What a rush. Issa Lopez, Jodie Foster, Kali Reis, and everyone involved outdid themselves and have (finally) crafted a season of crime TV that refuses to exploit its subjects. My favorite season of television so far this year.

Possum ★★★½☆

2018, dir. Matthew Holness

~

Kind of tough to sit through, even if the filmmaking is obviously competent. The film teeters in misery porn for most of it, though one could argue that's entirely the point — to sink you deep into the darkest reaches of childhood trauma. It has some truly scary moments, too, thanks to the gorgeous expressionist visuals, Sean Harris' great performance as an awkward socially disgraced puppeteer, and the instantly iconic arachnid puppet-head.

The Zone Of Interest ★★★★★

2023, dir. Jonathan Glazer

~

People are right to call this film a masterpiece, albeit a grueling one, and one which I don't see myself ever watching again. The 'non-story' about the idyllic life of a Nazi family situated right next to a concentration camp in Auschwitz is a sort of mirage, a cruel haze that director Glazer (Under the Skin) uses to rip our eyes wide open and our ears perceiving of the horrors that transpired during the occupation. The truth of the violence unfolds only when you really look and really listen to the events on-screen — the routine delivery of provisions, the constant chugging of the trains, the faint screams of terror. It is you who builds the dreadful image you will carry well after the credits roll. The night vision scenes and the fourth-wall-breaking bit at the end were fascinating, too.

Double Blind ★★½✩✩

2024, dir. Ian Hunt-Duffy

~

Little trouble at Big Pharma. This Irish thriller about a dubious double-blind human trial for an unknown drug is as derivative as it gets but makes up for its arresting visuals and technical flair. The acting is a bit wooden (apart from the lead) with thinly realized characters to match. No groundbreaking ideas nor any nuanced criticisms about the sickening (uh...literally) machinery of pharmaceutical corporations that other, more competent horrors before it hadn't yet made.

Deliver Us ★★½✩✩

2023, dir. Cru Ennis, Lee Roy Kunz

~

Proficient occult flick that feels like a spiritual prequel to Donner's The Omen, about a nun conceiving both the messiah and the antichrist. All the tension built by the film's amazing first twenty minutes atrophies into an unsure mess, though. It honestly feels like a big hunk of narrative appended — filled with unnecessary subplots and side quests — to an otherwise very strong twenty-minute short film. But the filmmakers exhibit great promise and have a great eye for creepy visuals. The crucifix-shaped ice hole is pretty iconic.

Field Notes From Hell is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked capsule reviews and horror recommendations.

IT FEELS SURREAL to see Hollywood take a page off the tattered book of Regal Films, a major film outfit from the Philippines. Every remotely unnerving thing seems to have been given its schlocky horror film already under Regal’s umbrella, from haunted fridges to haunted wedding dresses to haunted Christmas trees. Bryce McGuire’s Night Swim feels remarkably Shake, Rattle & Roll-esque in that the silliness of its premise feels integral to its charm, but also serves as its own mischievous saboteur, always seemingly at odds with its more serious antics. Suffice it to say, if you’re hoping for a zany, fully self-aware outing not too different from recent hits like M3GAN and Malignant, you can take a plunge elsewhere.

That isn’t to say it didn’t have profound ideas. There are pellets of thought-starters tossed in there, however murky. The film’s cereal packet family is led by Ray and Eve (played by Wyatt Russell and Kerry Candon, respectively), a young couple hoping for a reset in the suburbs when Ray, a rising baseball star, becomes afflicted with multiple sclerosis. At their physician's recommendation, Ray is urged to do water therapy — an ideal prospect because their brand-new home (which they bought at a fraction-cost) comes with a pool. A lot is visibly resting on the move, and that weight is distributed mainly on Eve’s shoulders, taking on a smaller job at the school while her spouse tries to recover at home. The film pokes its head inside the rabbit hole of gender dynamics but never fully — *ahem* — dives in (a mistake that recurs throughout the film).

So, they have a haunted swimming pool. And Ray has taken a shine on it when it promised a future of full recovery and return to his sport. Of course, this is all but a clever ploy for him to bring the pool of unwitting victims to either seize or merely taunt (the latter happens more often). The pool sometimes takes over him, like some Ron DeFeo from The Amityville Horror if voices from under chlorine pool water possessed him. Mysteriously, he recovers his strength and becomes newly nimble. And it seems like he’s doing the haunted pool’s bidding when he suddenly asks Eve to host a pool party, inviting all their neighbors.

All of this unfolds as one contrivance leads to the next. There are subplots concerning Ray and Eve’s children, but nothing too exciting or relevant to the finale. The dialogue is pretty tough to sit through, too.

That’s all fine. If I’m watching a horror movie about a haunted swimming pool, most of my anticipation goes to the lengths the filmmakers will go to milk every moment in this particularly liminal place in suburbia, and make it capital-S scary. To some extent, McGuire succeeded. Every setpiece imaginable they tried to execute. The eponymous dip in the pool happens midway through, and it’s pretty scary, especially when it shows the abyssal depths that the haunted pool can sprawl down below, triggering not only the subnechanaphobics but the thalassophobics as well (like this writer).

The idea of a literal underwater-world is fascinating. Alas, the film laps around its history with cryptic expositions cut short with Russell’s Ray finally driven by the pool’s Overlook-like curse to madness. It isn’t something we haven’t seen before, though: the bloodlust with which he used the Captain America shield in that scene in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is so horrific (even without showing the gore) Stephen King’s haunted washing machine almost gave up its title of The Mangler. And that’s just what stunts Night Swim; the scares are moderate, the story largely inconsequential. I wish it embraced the silliness of its conceit if it wasn’t going to go balls-to-the-wall with the horror.

Stream it? Yes, but dive in with caution. ❌

ABOUT THE FILM

🏊‍♂️ Night Swim
dir. Bryan McGuire | Horror, Thriller | 🇺🇸

Forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, former baseball player Ray Waller moves into a new house with his wife and two children. He hopes that the backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for himself. However, a dark secret from the home’s past soon unleashes a malevolent force that drags the family into the depths of inescapable terror.

Other horrors I've watched this month:

Here are the rest of my horror viewings this January. For real-time reviews and quick takeaways, follow my Letterboxd 🟠🔵🟢!

😈 The Wailing

dir. Na Hong-jin | Horror, Drama | 🇰🇷 🇯🇵

One of my favorite Korean occult horrors. The way that folk horror melds with police procedural aspects just feels fresh, even eight years after I’ve first seen it. I’m sure I’m missing a few things about what it’s trying to say about South Korean identity, but even in broad strokes, you get a vividly nightmarish picture of the demons that haunt Korea — death, deceit, and oblivion.

⛪ Mallari

dir. Roderick Cabrido | Horror, Thriller, History | 🇵🇭 🇺🇸

Can’t redeem this film in my head. Taking plenty of creative licenses, it still managed to partake in transphobic and classist rhetoric, exploiting the real-life horrors of transwomen and the impoverished to craft an alarmingly sympathetic portrait of an astral-projecting serial killer. Worse, it isn’t even all that scary.

🌾 The Wicker Man

dir. Robin Hardy | Horror, Thriller | 🇬🇧

Worth revisiting for the final shot alone. A clear precursor to Ari Aster’s Midsommar. The discussion on faith and religion gets tiresome in parts, but the environmental slant is especially resonant given the context of what’s happening now.

🔪 The Blackcoat’s Daughter

dir. Oz Perkins | Horror, Thriller | 🇺🇸

Watched in anticipation of Longlegs. Aged well, I think, given how recent times have magnified the importance of mental health. The nonlinear approach works, though I wish it were used less as a narrative conceit than a cinematic representation of the protagonist(?)’s fractured psyche. The use of the occult stuff is great; presented less as its own affliction, but more of a symptom of one’s loneliness.

Horrors to watch this week

A list of noteworthy horror releases coming to theaters, VOD, and streaming.

• 🪓 Ti West’s X is coming to Netflix on February 2nd.

• ⚡ Zelda Williams’ Lisa Frankenstein is opening in theaters on February 9th.

• 💊 Irish pharma-thriller Double Blind drops in VOD on February 9th. The film is the directorial debut of Ian Hunt-Duffy.

• 🌨 Issa Lopez’s excellent True Detective: Night Country is nearing its finale, just two weeks from now.

• New horror trailers worth sharing:

  • 🩸 Longlegs — Oz Perkins’ latest looks incredible.

  • ✝️ Immaculate — New Sydney Sweeney joint as a nun thought to conceive the messiah. Directed by Michael Mohan.

  • 🃏 Tarot — Final Destination meets astro-obsessives. Take what resonates, mangle what doesn’t.

  • 👻 Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire — Running on capital-N nostalgia.

  • 👼 Aggro Dr1ft — Harmony Korine’s surreal new thriller shot using infrared cameras.

  • 🪔 You’ll Never Find Me — Suspenseful Aussie thriller. Looks fun.

  • 🕸 Infested — French spider-attack flick.

Field Notes From Hell is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked horror news, capsule reviews, and outlook on upcoming titles you can watch.

THOUGH OTHERS BEFORE HAVE TRIED, William Friedkin’s 1976 cultural touchstone, The Exorcist, has remained largely untouched. No filmmaker of sound reason thinks to themself able to make something as indelible as the original without living strictly in its shadow. David Gordon Green — once crazy enough to reimagine a sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 slasher, Halloween — tosses his hat into that ring, his hands locked cockily akimbo.

Like his Haddonfield-set ‘requel,’ his new film, The Exorcist: Believer, continues the story of the original film, retconning the events of The Heretic, The Exorcist III, and the franchise’s subsequent prequels (The Beginning and Dominion).

The title, Believer, seems predicated on the intersectionality of faith. From Vodou priestesses to Protestants, the film gathers one faithful and all to excise the demon afflicting two young girls, Angela and Katherine. Which demon that is is never made clear, but a momentary encounter with Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn, a much-much needed force here) reveals it to be a familiar evil. Is it Pazuzu? Or is it an entirely new demon? The film does not care to determine.

And therein lies the issue. The story feels like nothing more than a succession of painfully opaque events. The film shifts its focus across the film’s stable of determined ‘believers’ — the scorned apostate, the good-doing neighbor, the mother seeking reparations with her estranged daughter — that there is no clear hero to the story, no definitive ‘exorcist’ in an Exorcist film.

Outside of oldfangled politics, Friedkin’s film knew to anchor its story solely on crises of faith. Sure, there are ancillary topics like parental neglect. Still, the original Exorcist centered itself around the titular man of the cloth ruminating on his daunting relationship with God, and more so with Christianity. Jeremy Slater’s 2016 series ventured to explore similar themes and expanded the original story with a more firmly anti-church point of view.

And that is what it is, really. What makes Believer such a waste is its lack of point of view. An event horror requel with such great onscreen and offscreen talent that sadly dwindles into nothing more than a superfluous mess.

Watch it in theaters? Nope. ❌

ABOUT THE FILM

🧣 The Exorcist: Believer
dir. David Gordon Green | Horror, Thriller | 🇺🇸

Since the death of his wife 12 years ago, Victor Fielding has raised their daughter, Angela on his own. But when Angela and her friend Katherine disappear in the woods, only to return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, it unleashes a chain of events that will force Victor to confront the nadir of evil and, in his terror and desperation, seek out the only person alive who has witnessed anything like it before: Chris MacNeil.

Other horrors I've watched this week:

Here are the rest of my horror viewings this week. For real-time reviews and quick takeaways, follow my Letterboxd 🟠🔵🟢!

🩸 Spontaneous

dir. Brian Duffield | Romance, Horror | 🇺🇸

Watched as part of my research for my No One Will Save You video (due out this month!). Brian Duffield’s directorial debut is an endearing romance and coming-of-age story about a group of high school students forced to confront harsh truths about one’s mortality. There is plenty of blood and guts — there are geysers of it here! — but there is just as much heart, too.

📼 V/H/S/85

dir. Scott Derickson, et al | Horror, Anthology | 🇺🇸

The gripe people have with V/H/S films is their lack of coherence, each episode strewn haplessly like an untidy pile of Betamax stapes. That is not the case for V/H/S/85. Perhaps the franchise’s first entry to editorialize (with ample thought and care), this new collection hovers over a frightful consciousness that is distinctly ‘80s. No episode sticks out sorely, but Scott Derickson’s segment — a metaphysical whodunit slasher that employs found footage’s gorgeous tape crackles and CRT aberrations beyond mere texture — definitely stands out.

🦇 Castlevania: Nocturne

crt. Clive Bradley | Horror, Fantasy, Animation | 🇺🇸

Netflix’s second Castlevania anime (is it right to call this series that?) is a beguiling horror adventure that is not afraid to carve in ugly detail the real impish ne’er-do-wells. Spoiler alert: it’s not always the vampires! The stage is set for a second season and I, for one, cannot wait for it.

What to watch this week

A list of noteworthy horror releases coming to theaters, VOD, and streaming.

• 🙏 Kenneth Dagatan’s In My Mother’s Skin, probably my most anticipated horror film of the year, is set to premiere on Prime Video this Thursday, October 12th.

• 🏠 Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher drops on Netflix on the same date, Thursday, October 12th.

• 🔪 John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams will premiere on Peacock on Friday the 13th.

• 🩸 The third season of Chucky just premiered its first episode. I like it. I like, too, Gen V, a smaller-scale story set in the world of The Boys. The latest season of American Horror Story, though, I do not.

• A handful of exciting trailers were released this week, including:

  • 🏊‍♂️ Night Swim

  • 🎄 It’s a Wonderful Knife

  • ⛄ Silent Night

  • ☢ The Toxic Avenger

  • 🍗 Thanksgiving

Field Notes From Hell is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked horror news, capsule reviews, and outlook on upcoming titles you can watch.

EMBLAZONED WITH A LICK of the supernatural pyre, Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice finds the Christie-inspired whodunit film series at its most sullen, with the handsomely crinigerous detective, Hercule Poirot (played by Branagh himself), opting for a life of recluse in Italy. Though no mention of the events in last year’s Death in the Nile is made, it’s abundantly clear that the deathly schemes he had helped to unravel also unfurl a sense of deep-seated guilt. As one character tells Poirot: “Wherever you go, death follows.”

That nugget of catastrophic belief is planted firmly within Poirot; manifesting them as ghostly apparitions doesn’t feel out of place. That’s precisely what happens here. Reticent and wanting to elude murderous mysteries, he reluctantly agrees to be roped into a private séance inside a haunted mansion. The invite is extended from the renowned fictionist and his long-time friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey, in a role that feels like a ‘40s incarnation of Only Murders in the Building’s Cinda Canning).

After the seance, the film eventually sheds its skin, slinking back within the trappings and conventions of a Poirot mystery. A murder happens, Poirot chases the clues, and twists and knots unspool. Before it reaches that, though, Branagh makes sure to add interesting texture to the film: intriguing ancillary characters, stark visuals, and well-crafted suspense. Altogether, it brings a complete supernatural horror experience, even if the mystery bits feel dull.

Watch it in theaters? The best in the series so far (though that isn’t really saying a whole lot), it’s well worth a shot! ✔️

ABOUT THE FILM

🛶 A Haunting in Venice
dir. Kenneth Branagh | Horror, Mystery, Thriller | 🇺🇸

Celebrated sleuth Hercule Poirot, now retired and living in self-imposed exile in Venice, reluctantly attends a Halloween séance at a decaying, haunted palazzo. When one of the guests is murdered, the detective is thrust into a sinister world of shadows and secrets.

Other horrors I've watched this week:

Here are the rest of my horror viewings this week. For real-time reviews and quick takeaways, follow my Letterboxd 🟠🔵🟢!

☢️ Shin Godzilla

dir. Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi | Horror, Science Fiction | 🇯🇵

Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s Shin Godzilla is a different beast. Though it delivers kaiju setpieces in spades, its blunt indictment of backward diplomacies and outlandish bureaucratic processes seems to sit on top of its mind. It’s finely crafted, with a clear vision of what it tries to achieve: to show the horrors of institutional indecision and complacency, a concept that, in a post-COVID world, hits too close to home.

I’ve watched this in honor of an action figure my partner got me. I’ve taken the executive decision to (creatively) name him Goji. Here, you’ll find Goji at the red carpet premiere of his first movie night.

🌑 My Animal

dir. Jacqueline Castel | Horror, Thriller | 🇨🇦

Queerness as a monstrous anomaly isn’t a new metaphor, one that Jacqueline Castel ensures doesn’t go unnoticed in her lycanthropic coming-of-age thriller, My Animal. The story centers around Heather (Bobbi Salvör Menuez), a young queer kid struggling to find her place in a town that actively excludes her kind. Under the helm of a less ardent filmmaker, the film might telegraph as nothing more than a mouthpiece for queer issues we’re already aware of. But in Castel’s hands, the film is an honest, sensual, and stirring exploration of sexual identity and politics.

🌲 Wilderness

dir. So Yong Kim | Thriller, Romance, TV | 🇬🇧

Teetering on a similar plane of amorality as Gone Girl if Amy Dunne lacked any follow-through, So-Yong Kim’s Wilderness is the pumpkin spice latte of vengeful lover stories. It’s not like the protagonist (Jenna Coleman) didn’t have the conviction to make her cheating husband (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) pay. The writing doesn’t let her take the bite, making for an altogether unsatisfying watch.

🎻 Don’t Go Where I Can’t Find You

dir. Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair | Horror, Drama, Short | 🇮🇪

A beguiling Irish ghost story about a grieving film composer. The easy punchline is to call it “Tár, but it’s an A24 post-horror film,” which wouldn’t be untrue. It leans heavily on aesthetics and atmosphere, but it’s Marie Ruane and Juliette Crosbie’s performances that send it for me. Exquisite work by those two.

What to watch this week

A list of noteworthy horror releases coming to theaters, VOD, and streaming.

• 🫙 Bishal Dutta’s anticipated horror film, It Lives Inside, hits theaters this Friday, September 22nd. Watch the trailer.

• 👽 No One Will Save You, a new extraterrestrial thriller from writer-director Brian Duffield, drops on Hulu on the same day, Friday, September 22nd. Watch it on Hulu.

• 🗡️ Ben Wheatley’s 2011 modern classic, Kill List, is now available on Shudder. Watch the full movie here.

• 🇫🇷 The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is two episodes into the spinoff series, with a pretty gnarly outbreak sequence set in Paris, France. Watch it on AMC+.

• A handful of exciting trailers released this week, including:

  • 🎃 John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams

  • 🧵 Goosebumps

  • 🥞 Last Straw

  • ⛺️ KillHer

  • 🛏️ The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra

Field Notes From Hell is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked horror news, capsule reviews, and outlook on upcoming titles you can watch.

THE NASCENT YEARS of The Conjuring franchise told horror stories loosely based on real-life supernatural events. Though primarily centered around the outings of paranormal investigators called the Warrens (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), the films became better known for the spate of fiendish ghouls and demonic entities they prominently feature. Chief among them is a demon named Valak, a creation liberally altered for the films, taking the appearance of a possessed nun — habit and all.

Based on the scant number of grimoires that make mention of said demon, the franchise turned Valak into the instantly recognizable horror villain that it is, spawning a film series of its own. Directed by Michael Chaves, The Nun II is a sophomore entry to the series, and it takes, as Chaves had in his previous Conjuring films (2021’s The Devil Made Me Do It), a few liberties to help cast itself in a different light, quite literally.

For one, it’s actually well-lensed and lends the series some unique visual interest: a mix of starkly contrasting hues that mimic the stained glass windows adorning the churches and abbeys of ‘40s Tarascon, France. For another, the screenplay actively tries to detach it from the realism that previous Conjuring films laboriously attempt to ground themselves in. To illustrate what I mean more clearly, picture the cold open scene and how it suspends a victim midair and lights him afire to a mere char. It’s flashy. It’s Alejandro-Gaga. Teetering camp.

Narratively, though, it’s still quite bereft. The boilerplate occult horror-mystery template undermines the intensity of Taissa Farmiga playing Sister Irene, a widely better-equipped, headstrong, and wryly humorous woman of the habit who feels like she’d make a fine duo with Gerard Butler’s eponymous The Pope Exorcist. Unlike that film, though, Farmiga’s Sister Irene doesn’t get to have her full-fledged heroine moment in The Nun II, not with a version of the demon that — somehow, in some way — feels nerfed to the unholy ground.

Watch it in theaters? A handful of moments are visually interesting, but other than those, you wouldn’t miss much if you watched it on the streamers. ❌

ABOUT THE FILM

💒 The Nun II
dir. Michael Chaves | Horror, Thriller | 🇺🇸

Four years after the events at the Abbey of St. Carta, Sister Irene returns once again and comes face to face with the demonic force Valak, the Nun.

Other horrors I've watched this week:

Here are the rest of my horror viewings this week. For real-time reviews and quick takeaways, follow my Letterboxd 🟠🔵🟢!

🛳 The Last Voyage of the Demeter

dir. André Øvredal | Horror | 🇺🇸

André Øvredal’s The Last Voyage of the Demeter is partly based on a pocket story in Bram Stoker’s Dracula that chronicles the days leading to the wreckage of the eponymous vessel chartered for England. As things go in stories like that of Demeter, things go awry when the crew realizes that they have a vicious creature on board. It’s O.K., boasting some thrilling moments, but those and other compelling bits are so few and far between; I’m not sure if it merits a wholehearted reco.

☔ Acide

dir. Just Philippot | Horror, Fantasy, Short | 🇫🇷 🇧🇪

An acid rain rumbles over a scenic French countryside. That’s it. That’s the short film. Just Philippot’s Acide is one of those films predicated entirely on the filmmakers’ deft execution — it’s perfect. A feature-length expansion of the story premiered at Cannes earlier this year to rave reviews. I look forward to seeing it.

📺 The Ring

dir. Gore Verbinski | Horror | 🇺🇸

Gore Verbinski’s The Ring is among the few J-horror remakes that translate perfectly for Western audiences: a cold, terrifying ghost story straddled on the backs of a creepypasta precursor (read: urban legends, remember those?). Verbinski’s take follows the story beat for beat and coats the film with some added texture. Naomi Watts, per ush, is amazing as a foul-mouthed journalist trying to uncover the real score about a mysterious snuff tape.

🔴 Deadstream

dir. Joseph Winter, Vanessa Winter | Horror | 🇺🇸

More amusing than scary, Deadstream is anchored wholly on the obnoxious vlogger-influencer at its center. More provocative (Rob Zombie’s Dashcam) or more nuanced (Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Frenzy) examples exist, but there’s a unique charm to Joseph and Vanessa Winter’s film that makes it worth watching.

What to watch this week

A list of noteworthy horror releases coming to theaters, VOD, and streaming.

• 🔍 A Haunting in Venice opens in theaters this week.

• 👋 Danny and Michael Philippou’s Talk To Me is out now on Premium VOD. Read my review — click here.

• 🔘 Elevator Game drops on Shudder this Friday, September 15th.

• 💥 Godzilla: Minus One dropped its teaser trailer last week.

• 🔔 The Fall of House Usher also dropped its trailer. It’s coming out on Netflix October 12th.

Field Notes From Hell is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every weekend, with handpicked horror news, capsule reviews, and outlook on upcoming titles you can watch.

IN THE SCATTER OF IDEAS in Jennifer Reeder’s peculiar horror-mystery lies an interesting thought: gender identity begins in one’s understanding of their body. The film, speaking about womanhood in particular, poses that it goes beyond the physical, using blood as a motif that depicts women’s kinship with one another — an empathic, almost mystical link that makes all women familiar with each other’s troubles and pains.

The film follows a young woman named Jonny (Kiah McKirnan), a wayward high schooler who moves in with her strange aunt named Hildie (Alicia Silverstone, in a brief but spellbinding turn). Approaching her eighteenth birthday, Jonny starts to experience mysterious changes within her body. In a raspy, whisper-y tone, her aunt explains: “You are one in a long line. Ferocious. Repulsive. Magnificent.”

Viewers who resign to the unfathomable narrative swings and idiosyncratic writing might find the film actually entertaining, with plenty of smart things to say about the chemical, spiritual, and emotional makeup we all have as humans. Though it isn’t unfair to say that the film would better serve its message with a bit of a sharper focus. And possibly a few passes of rewrites to tighten things.

Stream it? If you can exercise some patience and keep an open mind, yes. ✔️

ABOUT THE FILM

🩸 Perpetrator
dir. Jennifer Reeder | Horror, Thriller | 🇺🇸

Jonny Baptiste is a reckless teen sent to live with her estranged Aunt Hildie. On the event of her eighteenth birthday, she experiences a radical metamorphosis: a family spell that redefines her called Forevering. When several teen girls go missing at her new school, a mythically feral Jonny goes after the Perpetrator.

Other horrors I've watched this week:

Here are the rest of my horror viewings this week. For real-time reviews and quick takeaways, follow my Letterboxd 🟠🔵🟢!

📓 Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan

dir. Chito S. Roño | Horror, Thriller | 🇵🇭

Not a fan. The elements that made Bob Ong’s novella such an effective horror story about institutional neglect are lost in Chito S. Roño’s adaptation, Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan.

Read my full review on Unreel. ↗

📺 Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes

dir. Junta Yamaguchi | Sci-Fi, Comedy, Thriller | 🇯🇵

Kind of cheating by including a categorically non-horror title here, but Junta Yamaguchi’s instant cult classic, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, is too good not to share. The unease and tension built in between a guy randomly discovering a time wormhole and a chance encounter with a yakuza are reminiscent of another one-shot sci-fi-thriller called Timecrimes but with the same infectious charm of One Cut of the Dead.

🕯️ The Others

dir. Alejandro Amenábar | Horror, Drama | 🇪🇸 🇬🇧

At this point, everyone and their aunts know the twist at the end of Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others. What no one prepares you for is how strongly it rests on the shoulders of Nicole Kidman. Loosely based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, the film’s more interesting parts also come from its themes of class and gender, pressed against the background of post-war Britain.

What to watch this week

A list of noteworthy horror releases coming to theaters, VOD, and streaming.

• 📿 All Fun and Games is out now on VOD.

• ⛪️ The Nun 2 is hitting theaters on Friday, September 8th.

• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The Changeling, a limited horror series starring Lakeith Stanfield, premieres on Apple TV+ this Friday, September 8th.

• 🔪 Chucky dropped a teaser-trailer for its third season — Chucky’s going presidential!

• 🏃 David Fincher’s The Killer, starring Michael Fassbender, also dropped its trailer — watch it here!

Field Notes From Hell is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every Sunday, with handpicked horror news, capsule reviews, and outlook on upcoming titles you can watch.

WOMEN DO BAD THINGS AT the Comley Suites, an off-road, three-story day inn that witnessed a handful of bizarre murders throughout the years. If the setting — a sullen, visibly unkempt lodging (only vaguely haunted by ghosts but most definitely by liminal decor) — feels like it echoes The Shining, it’s because it does. Stewart Thorndike doesn’t hide this. Her film Bad Things is all but advertised as an ambitious gender flip on Kubrick’s film, offering a female texture to the psychological downfall that Jack Torrance plunged into that winter of 1975. And where all work and no play made Jack a dull boy, Gayle Rankin’s Ruthie carries baggage that’s much more familiar: deep-seated childhood trauma.

Whatever that trauma was, Thorndike only paints with wide strokes. We don’t know much about the events that transpired in Ruthie’s childhood, but we get a fair estimate of the damage: Rankin, whose gaunt physique and sunken eyes seem always on the verge of collapse, brings such unease to her character. We discover anecdotally that Ruthie is a victim of parental neglect, but beyond that, the film doesn’t bother to color in. That’s a real shame, I think, with the type of stories that the film can pull from, especially with such a talented, queer, (mostly) all-female cast.

Stream it? Your mileage will vary, and the second half kind of derails everything, but if you don’t mind getting lost in a smaller, gayer Overlook (Over-lewk?), then ding the bell and check right in. 🤔

ABOUT THE FILM

🛎️ Bad Things
dir. Stewart Thorndike | Horror, Thriller | 🇺🇸

A weekend getaway for a few girlfriends at a snowy hotel becomes a psychological tailspin and bloody nightmare.

Other horrors I've watched this week:

Here are the rest of my horror viewings this week. For real-time reviews and quick takeaways, follow my Letterboxd 🟠🔵🟢!

• 🗯️ Akira Nagai’s Character is such a trip. Shocking, visceral, twisty. Strong recommend!

• 🌳 The Fall is a five-minute jolt of dystopian dread. Short, true, but the creepy visuals lingered on for days. Can’t expect anything less from the guy who did Under the Skin.

• 📹 Found Footage is modern Man Bites Dog but without the curt socio-commentary. What’s left? Senseless violence enacted on women. Not it!

• 🙏 The Enfield Haunting is pretty good. Had more space for ancillary characters than the franchise-minded The Conjuring 2.

Upcoming horror films & TV

This week’s horror films you might want to add to your to-watch queue.

• 🫣 Rob Savage’s The Boogeyman is coming to PVOD this upcoming Tuesday, August 29th — read my review here.

• 😈 All Fun and Games hits VOD this Friday, September 1st.

Plus, some interesting trailers.

• 🔪 Chucky is back, baby!!! Season 3. Watch the announcement video.

• 🙀 Cat Person dropped its first trailer. Looks fun.

• 📼 V/H/S/85 is coming to Shudder, with a stacked lineup of filmmakers, including Scott Derrickson and David Bruckner. Here’s the teaser- trailer.

Field Notes From Hell is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every Sunday, with handpicked horror news, capsule reviews, and outlook on upcoming titles you can watch.

A DISEMBODIED, HARPY-LIKE VOICE whispers within Peter’s walls. Anyone who's read Poe would resist the idea of keeping an open line with whatever's inside. But Peter's nightly terrors project a horrifically probable truth: his parents are harboring secrets so sinister they're willing to go to insidious lengths to keep them from being exposed. The voice, in effect, becomes Peter's ostensible respite in a world riddled with nasty tormentors, young and old.

This week's spotlight is Samuel Bodin's Cobweb, a derivative things-bump-in-the-night chiller with an interesting fairytale-like texture. Plus, we get petrifying performances from both Antony Starr (The Boys) and Lizzie Caplan (Castle Rock). The first half is genuinely unnerving, but not unusual in other films of its ilk, it falls short in sustaining the tension and terror and fails to craft a second half that matches the nuance of the first one.

Stream it? For Starr and Caplan's performances, yes. ✔

Other films I've watched this week:

I’ve dived into a heady mix of horrors and thrillers this week. For real-time reviews and quick takeaways, follow my Letterboxd 🟠🔵🟢!

• 🦈 Meg 2: The Trench is the type of trash that has a special place in history.

• 🚗 The Passenger is pretty good. I like it. It felt like whipping through a literary novelette. Brisk, impermanent, but a complete experience.

• 👯‍♀️ Kotoko is wild. It's my first Shinya Tsukamoto. Consider me a fan.

• 🛞 Dashcam isn't Rob Savage's best. I get the intention of the experiment. But it feels, ultimately, unproductive. Loved The Boogeyman, though.

New trailers dropped this week:

From Sung Kang’s ridiculous werewolf horror comedy, Karim Ouelhaj’s latest shocker set in ‘90s Belgium, to Melina Matsoukas’ new limited horror series about parenthood — here are this week’s new trailers.

• 🐺 Shaky Shivers (dir. Sung Kang)

• 😈 Megalomaniac (dir. Karim Ouelhaj)

• 🌑 My Animal (dir. Karim Ouelhaj)

• 🍼 The Changeling (dir. Melina Matsoukas)

What's playing this week:

This week, Stewart Thorndike’s fascinating isolation horror, Bad Things, has hit Shudder. In it, a “weekend getaway for a few girlfriends at a snowy hotel becomes a psychological tailspin and bloody nightmare.” It stars Gayle Rankin, Hari Nef, Annabelle Dexter-Jones, and Molly Ringwald.

Take a peek at the official one-sheet for the film after the bump.

Field Notes From Hell is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every Sunday, with handpicked horror news, capsule reviews, and outlook on upcoming titles you can watch.

Editor’s Note: This newsletter was originally sent and published March 2023.

SOMETHING'S AMISS ABOUT CHRISTINE. Unusually gaunt in appearance and remarkably distraught in mind, she seems unable to determine what sickness afflicts her. Somewhere, buried in the recesses of her mind, lies the answer. It gnaws inside her. A tick is drilling viciously from within, a parasite she catches from a half-burnt canine she encounters, crimson-eyed and hellish looking. She knows what's making her sick, but she doesn't want to remember.

This lends the backbone for Nocebo's horrors. From the outset, director Lorcan Finnegan makes his vision clear: To craft a vivid, red-eyed, and nightmarish fable about the foulness of Western greed and ignorance. Gone are the ambiguities of Vivarium, his previous film. Instead, the horror roots from something unmistakable and plain...good ol' revenge: To inflict the brunt of the burns the oppressed have had to bear.

It's a film as unsettling as it is cathartic, anchored, no doubt, by Chai Fonacier's magnetic performance as Diana, a true overseas Filipino mangkukulam, out to exact vengeance on Christine, a children's apparel mogul whose manufacturing practices rest a few notches below H&M Kids. Christine is played by Eva Green, who, in this film, becomes a subhuman shell of anxiety and fraught, yet strangely unaware of the backs that her red stilettos walk on.

Nocebo shares space with other thrillers criticizing class and capitalism. Where his contemporaries opt to poke fun (and, in the case of Robert Ostlünd in Triangle of Sadness, literally defecate) on the filthy rich, Finnegan takes a grim and determined position: to unmask the real parasites for who they are and take great delight in watching them burn.

Each month, I compile quick reviews of horror (and horror-adjacent) films I’ve watched. They’re a mix of new and old releases. If you want to catch them in real-time, feel free to follow my Letterboxd.

Here are this month’s reviews.

I'm not too displeased with Sissy. The horror builds up quite well and the gore racks up pretty quickly. I just feel like the influencer bit plays out too zeitgeisty and — honestly — unnecessary. It brings an unhealthy amount of noise to an otherwise nuanced take on performative kindness.

Sparse, grounded, and disquieting, Alice, Darling hits on something that will resonate with anyone who's had to endure emotional trauma, thanks mostly to Anna Kendrick's realistic portrayal of abuse, along with great performances from Kaniehtiio Horn and Wunmi Mosaku. It doesn't offer any sort of catharsis, which, for me, is fine. No significant amount of trauma can be uprooted in one single maul swing. You duck inside the tight bind of your friends, and for a long time, you will need to stay in it. And in a long time, it should be enough.

Baby Ruby is aesthetically beautiful — both true as it pertains to the film's retrofitted look and to the main actors Noémie Merlant and Kit Harington, playing anxious and ill-equipped young parents struggling to hush their incessantly wimpy newborn. Doesn't ever quite reach the level of dread it strives to and kind of just fizzes out after the first-hour mark.

Re/Member is a dire pun. It’s an even direr movie, populated strictly, it seems, with insipid and uninteresting characters. The worst one is the protagonist, a doe-eyed loner who’s seemingly written to stare helplessly at the gruesome demise of her schoolmates — the epitome of “go gurl, give us nothing.”

On board for a good chunk of Sharper, a visually impressive thriller about conscientiously minded con artists. It quickly derails into an unintelligible mess, with a denouement twistier than a pretzel knot and no edges (pardon me) sharp enough to make it at least interesting.

First encounter with Borgli's work. And honestly? Instant follower right here. Sick of Myself lives in a realm that exists between Cronenbergian body horror and sardonic dark comedies about naturally funny and awful things. The main character's hilariously self-destructive narcissism feels grounded in the fundamental truth that nags acerbic narcissists: sick of themselves.

Between the deliberate '80s kitsch, the generous gore, and the constant presence of the ever-reliable Barbara Crampton, I simply couldn't bring myself to love this. The film gets kind of uninteresting halfway through, proving that some 'what if' scenarios need proper follow-through. In Beyond the Gates' case, it needed more than just the prospect of making a Jumanji with blood geysers and head explosions.

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