Category: Horror

Copy provided for review

In 2023, Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain. Thanks to how stupidly copyright law has been written, the bear of very little brain was finally free to be used by anyone a mere 97 years after he first appeared in the book Winnie The Pooh. Naturally, the first thing that was done with him is the same thing that’s often done when well-known family-friendly characters are free for anyone to use, someone made a horror movie out of it. Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey came out to be a surprising box office hit, making over 5 million dollars on a $100,000 budget… it was also god awful, it ranked third on my list of the worst films of 2023, it swept the ever-controversial Razzies where it took home 5 of the 9 awards and was a joke to everyone who thought about cinema of 2023. The idea that it earned enough to get a sequel was laughable and there was no doubt that any sequel was going to be an inevitable horrible piece of shit… so why the hell do I like this film?

Released: 4th January
Seen: 16th January

A big discussion that’s been going on lately concerns film length, how films nowadays seem unable to be under 2 hours and how a lot of films that go for 3 hours or more don’t really need to waste that amount of audience time. What this whole issue comes down to is the idea that certain stories only really need a certain amount of time to tell them properly, Some films need 3 hours to explore every little crevice of their story, others can handle the story in 90 minutes. Then there are short films that often prove how effective they can be with only a couple of minutes, there’s even an entire channel dedicated to films that only last for 5 seconds long because that’s all they need to get the job done… Night Swim is one of those films that probably should’ve stuck to being a short 4-minute film instead of trying to take its general idea and stretch it forcibly into 100 minutes.

Released: 27th October
Seen: 24th December

In 2020 we lost the great Stuart Gordon, one of the gods of 80s horror. The man gave us such glorious works as Re-Animator, From Beyond and Castle Freak along with having a hand in classics like Honey I Shrunk The Kids. A lot of the work that made him an undeniable icon of the genre was his adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft stories and a lot of those films were written by Dennis Paoli who has screenwriting credit on five of Gordon’s films, those being Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dagon, Castle Freak and The Pit And The Pendulum. It’s safe to say that a large number of the early films that gave us an idea of what a Stuart Gordon film could be wouldn’t exist in the same way without Dennis Paoli’s writing. So, the question is what would happen if you paid tribute to Stuart Gordon by getting Dennis to write another adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft film and let the director of Wrong Turn 2 handle the direction? Turns out, you get something that’s pretty fucking fun.