leebutler Documentary, Review

Exorcismo: The Transgressive Legacy of Clasificada ‘S’ (2025) – Magnífico

Released: 13th September
Seen: 13th September

One of my weird fascinations is with film rating systems and what can and can’t be shown to certain audiences. The entire strange history of the US’s NC-17 rating is something I will never stop being fascinated by, same with the story of the British Video Nasties and how some horror films were considered so vile that owning a copy was grounds for an arrest. The ways that these ratings have impacted what movies get made or released is something truly worthy of lengthy study so hearing about this kind of censorship from around the world is something I’m eager to learn more about, which is why I’m glad that I got a chance to see Exorcismo: The Transgressive Legacy of Clasificada ‘S’ because it turns out Spain’s history of censorship is as wild as it gets.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, LGBT, Review

Queens Of The Dead (2025) – Dance Or Die

Released: 11th September
Seen: 11th September

In 1968, the world of cinema changed forever with the release of a little underground horror film with the simple but provocative title of Night Of The Living Dead. To say it changed the world of cinema forever might be an understatement. It revolutionised the Horror genre, presenting a form of violence that hadn’t been put on the screen before. It contains one of the greatest examples of a black main character in horror, was at the start of the independent film boom of the 70s and, of course, essentially created the modern Zombie that everyone has referenced since then.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

The Long Walk (2025) – Run!

Released: 11th September
Seen: 14th September

In 1979, Stephen King released the book The Long Walk under the pseudonym Richard Bachman (a name he picked partially to avoid saturating the market with King books and partially to test if his success was based on skill). The book was well received like a lot of early King works were and has been named one of the best books for teenage readers by the American Library Association. Like a lot of King books, there have been talks about an adaptation of The Long Walk for years, way back in 1988 it was going to be made by George Romero, but that ultimately fell through. Next up was Frank Darabont, who took a shot in 2007 and then in 2019, one André Øvredal (the man behind Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) had a go, but none of these versions made it. Finally, someone looked at the content of the books and presumably went, “Hey, this feels kind of like a more fucked up Hunger Games… why don’t we just get the Hunger Games guy?” and so Francis Lawrence was gifted the chance to make The Long Walk… and made one of the best films of 2025.

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leebutler Action, Comedy, Horror, Review, Sci-Fi

The Toxic Avenger (2025) – I Love You Toxie

Released: 29th August
Seen: 30th August

In 1984, a little independent film company known as Troma released a film that would change the course of the company forever. What started as a little low-budget horror film tentatively titled Health Club Horror would be released with the more memorable name The Toxic Avenger. To say that this film became a cult hit would be a massive understatement. The Toxic Avenger was the kind of cult hit that defined Troma. Toxie would turn into their official mascot and appear in several other movies. The Toxic Avenger would also turn up in other media, video games, comic books, a hit off-Broadway musical and even a Saturday morning children’s cartoon named The Toxic Crusaders. 40 years later and a certain subsection of the world still loves this big green freak in his torn up tutu, so much so that it almost feels inevitable that Hollywood was going to remake this little underground film because that’s just what happens to these cult films, someone will always try to recreate the lightning in a bottle that the original somehow had… so imagine my shock when they actually pulled off the magic trick of making this film work!

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leebutler Horror, Mystery, Review, Thriller

Clown In A Cornfield (2025) – Friendo Loves You

Released: 8th May
Seen: 24th August

In 2020, Adam Cesare released the young adult novel Clown in a Cornfield. The novel was a big success, ending up winning the Bram Stoker Award for Best Young Adult Novel and pretty much instantly getting optioned for a film. There would end up being 2 more novels written in the Clown in a Cornfield series over the years but the film took a little while to get made (probably because 2020 was not exactly a great time to try and film a movie, what with all the COVID hanging around) but eventually a little film called Clown in a Cornfield came out and made a brief splash before getting eclipsed by Final Destination: Bloodlines… which is a shame because it’s the kind of movie that deserves a lot more love.

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leebutler Horror, Mystery, Review

Weapons (2025) – Loaded

Released: 7th August
Seen: 23rd August

In 2022, the film Barbarian was released to an unsuspecting public. No one knew what it was about and audiences kept the core details quiet so everyone could be surprised but there was one thing that was pretty universally acknowledged by those who saw it… Barbarian was one of the best horror movies of 2022. That’s saying quite a lot, because 2022 is widely considered one of the best years for horror cinema in general. Hell, when I made my best-of list for 2022, a solid half of the list was horror films, with Barbarian being the highest on the list. After that movie I was truly excited and a little nervous to see what writer/director Zach Cregger would do for an encore… turns out he would go absolutely fucking insane and for that we thank him and ask him to do it again as soon as possible.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Dangerous Animals (2025) – Bloody Good Time

Released: 12th July
Seen: 15th August

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, sometimes the simplest ideas done well make for the best movies. An elevator pitch, a single sentence concept played out to its absolute limit, is often a great way to ensure a fun, exciting film for the audience. This feels especially true regarding Horror films which can have concepts as basic as “Girl going through puberty has telekinetic powers” or “Man in mask stalks babysitters”…. Or, in the case of Dangerous Animals, “Shark obsessed serial killer goes on a spree”, and in its brutal brilliant simplicity you end up with one of the most gloriously fun horror films of the year.

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leebutler Horror, Review

The Monkey (2025) – Monkeying Around

Released: 21st February
Seen: 29th May

It is a truth universally accepted by anyone who is cool that Stephen King is the greatest horror author of the last 50 years. His stories are modern classics, transforming the way horror books are viewed in the literary world and serving as the foundation for some of the greatest films of the last several decades. He is a truly prolific author with over 65 novels and 200 short stories under his pen and by the time I’ve posted this specific review he will have undoubtedly added to that (To repeat George R.R. Martin’s question to Stephen King “How the fuck do you write so many books so fast?”). He’s also infamous for taking basic everyday things and making them terrifying. This is such a well-known thing that it served as the foundation for a pretty great cutaway gag from an early episode of Family Guy, where Stephen King tried to sell his publisher on the idea of a book about a cursed lamp. It’s a Stephen King classic, take a basic thing we’ve all seen and twist it into something terrifying. For his 1980 short story The Monkey, he did this by taking a wind-up monkey toy that would clash a pair of cymbals and made it into a mysterious force of evil that led to elaborate, brutal deaths. Now, in 2025, the director Osgood Perkins took that idea and ran with it to bring us The Monkey, a high-energy horror comedy that is one of the most exciting films of the year.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review

Screamboat (2025) – Oh Boy!

Released: 2nd April
Seen: 26th May

On the 28th of December last year, I subjected myself to the absolutely horrific piece of garbage known as The Mouse Trap which had the distinct honour of being the first horror film to take advantage of the fact that Steamboat Willie entered the public domain. That film was so god awful that it made it to the top of my worst of the year list, an honour it would’ve gotten even if last year was a normal year for me where there were 10 films on such a list. It was a truly putrid film that was the perfect example of a film made to cheaply cash in on something being public domain. No cleverness, no joy, just a shitty generic slasher with a Mickey Mouse mask on because you could legally get away with it. At the end of my review of that “film” I pointed out that the next film that was going to play with the idea of Mickey Mouse as a killer would be called Screamboat and all I wanted was for it to be somewhat better than The Mouse Trap was…well, Screamboat is the exact film I was hoping for when I heard that they were making a horror movie about Steamboat Willie.

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leebutler Horror, Mystery, Netflix, Review, Thriller

Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025) – Down With Prom

Released: 23rd May
Seen: 24th May

In 2021, a horror film event happened that really showed the potential for what could be done with a streaming platform that wanted people to notice what it was releasing. Over the course of three weeks Netflix released the Fear Street Trilogy, a set of horror films inspired by the R.L. Stine books that all took place in different time periods, played around in different eras of the horror/slasher genre, and all connected to create a grand overarching story. It was dark, twisted, queer and just a ton of fun. I even named the entire trilogy as one of the best films of 2021, which is a choice I stand by because every single entry did something truly great within the slasher genre. They were films that understood what makes the genre fun and their success as an event pretty much guaranteed that there was going to be more. When they announced that we were going to get a new entry with the subtitle Prom Queen, this reviewer was excited at the prospect… never be excited about things, it leads to disappointment.

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