leebutler Comedy, Horror, Mystery, Review

Heart Eyes (2025) – Love

Released: 13th February
Seen: 13th May

The Holiday Slasher is an idea that basically defined the boom period of the slasher genre back in the 80s, the idea being that a producer could just pick any random holiday and make a movie around it. This simple idea led us down the rabbit hole of My Bloody Valentine, Leprechaun, Silent Night Deadly Night, Thanksgiving and about a hundred other horror films of varying quality. Of course, lately there’s been a lot less of this kind of film, mostly because every holiday was already handled by a film from the 80s, so there’s not much new territory to tread on here. If you can’t do something new though, at least do something fun, and Heart Eyes is doing something very fun.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Horror, Review

The Ugly Stepsister (2025) – Cinder-hell-a

Released: 9th May
Seen: 11th May

The story of Cinderella is one that’s been told more times than anyone would be insane enough to count. It’s been animated, it’s been turned into multiple musicals, it’s been parodied and referenced and put in every position that the insane creative mind can consider. It’s even been the subject of many horror films over the years, which makes sense considering the Brothers Grimm iteration of the story is particularly brutal. Indeed several major versions of the story lean into some pretty violent imagery, the Into The Woods version of the story has the stepsisters cutting off their heels in a direct reference to the Brothers Grimm while the Revolting Rhymes version by Roald Dahl had the prince lopping off heads, so this is a story that’s perfect for a horror retelling. The Ugly Stepsister tackles the story from the genre of Body Horror and does a beautiful job at it.

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leebutler Action, Drama, Horror, Review, Thriller

Sinners (2025) – Hellishly Great

Released: 17th April
Seen: 10th May

Ryan Coogler is one of the most surprising directors in recent years. After breaking onto the scene with Fruitvale Station, Ryan was handed the keys to two important pieces of cinematic IP. The first was Creed, a spin-off from the Rocky franchise that absolutely made him into a mainstream figure, which he then was able to use to helm Black Panther and Wakanda Forever, cementing him as a masterful blockbuster director that should not be underestimated. Of course most of his work is in known IP, in franchises people previously knew but hadn’t yet been able to actually go for broke with something original… until now, thanks to his absolute barn burner of a horror film Sinners which should cement Ryan Coogler as one of the best directors of this generation.

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leebutler Horror, Review

Wolf Man (2025) – Hairy

Released: 16th January
Seen: 25th April

On May 22nd 2017, Universal announced that it was launching a new franchise that would feature all of their legendary movie monsters in a shared universe. It was intended to culminate in a grand team-up, The Avengers of horror to be combined into a little franchise known as the Dark Universe. Their inaugural movie was 2017’s The Mummy starring Tom Cruise, and it bombed so hard that the Dark Universe as a concept was dead by June 10th (the day after the release). No one wanted to touch this franchise, it had so royally fucked itself that the entire concept of these legendary horror creatures was gone… right up until someone thought to try again but without the gimmick of a team up, just make some good films with these characters.

The first one off the line was The Invisible Man in 2020, which is still one of the best horror films of the last decade. Its writer/director, Leigh Whannell, had managed to modernise the horror legend and make it something special so when the announcement came out that Leigh was going to try it again with Wolf Man, it was hard not to be excited. Now, this isn’t a failure on the level of The Mummy, but it’s not an undeniable legend like Invisible Man either.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Companion (2025) – Hearty

Released: 30th January
Seen: 21st April

One of the best things in a good horror film is a twist, a moment when the narrative takes a sharp left-hand turn out of seemingly nowhere and takes the audience on a thrill ride. There’s been a few recent horror films that have been spectacular at this, things like Barbarian where it set itself up as a film about two people stuck in an Airbnb overnight and ended up being one of the most demented films of the year or The Perfection which took the concept of a ‘twist” and dialled it up to 11 to see just how many twists it could fit into 90 minutes without the audience losing its mind. Today’s film, Companion, is a terrifically twisted take on the romance film that takes a few big swings and mostly makes them work.

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leebutler Horror, Review

Popeye The Slayer Man (2025) – It Is What It Is

Released: 21st March
Seen: 20th April

Over the last few years, a trend has been getting more common, namely that major well well-known works are entering the public domain, meaning that anyone can use them without a problem. For a long time, nothing was entering the public domain thanks to a certain set of laws being adjusted, but now major characters are turning up in the communal toy chest that we can all reach into at any time. What has also become something of a tradition is that people making low-budget horror films have been grabbing these new toys, slathering them with blood and using them to fill digital shelves with their low-budget fare. Most of these haven’t been great (Blood & Honey and The Mouse Trap both ended up on my worst film lists for their respective years) and there’s been some that show improvement (Blood & Honey 2 is still a genuinely fun time) but we’ve yet to have one that just got the joke right off the bat and made something that was enjoyable… until someone ate their spinach and presented us with Popeye The Slayer Man.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Alien: Romulus (2024) – Shocker

Released: 16th August 2024
Seen: 9th February 2025

Alien Romulus Info

2017 is the last year that we had a new instalment of the Alien franchise, a film that made about 250 million worldwide but didn’t get the best critical reception. It still made money and still had its fans (I counted myself among them at the time of its release) so it was almost inevitable that we would get another sequel where another group of people would happen upon a xenomorph colony and get their shit fucked up by the iconic acid-blooded creatures. Sure enough last year we got such a film with Alien: Romulus, the 7th entry in the long-running franchise which dared to ask the question “What if a bunch of people found the original ship from Alien and there were still aliens on it who would like to face fuck them all to death?”.., an important question that the film deftly answers.

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leebutler Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Review

Nosferatu (2025) – A Symphony Of Brilliance

Released: 1st January
Seen: 3rd February

The 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror feels like some kind of miracle, namely that we still have access to the film at all. Made in Germany as an unofficial adaptation of the Dracula novel, the original film was the subject of a copyright lawsuit brought on by Bram Stroker’s widow and all copies were supposed to be destroyed by fire. Somehow, a few copies of the film managed to survive and would soon be circulated around the world where it would become not only a cinematic classic but one of the most influential horror films of all time. People have referenced Nosferatu for almost a century now, the infamous shot of Count Orlock’s shadow against the wall with his fingers stretched out alone has been copied by more films than one would dare count and so many vampire films have copied the visual appearance of Count Orlok to some degree. It’s a film that has influenced many and even been the subject of a few remakes, including this remake by Robert Eggers which manages to take the classic material and elevate it in a way only Eggers can.

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leebutler Editorial

Best Performances of 2024

Every year it’s remarkable how much a good performance can salvage a film. Your film can be a boring waste of time but a single great performance can make it worth watching. Every year film nerds love guessing who is going to be given the awards for Acting, those of us into horror are often left disappointed because our faves don’t win, but lists like this let us throw a tiny bit of praise out into the void and so that’s what we’re going to do here.

In normal years this list would be 20 entries long but this isn’t a normal year, I didn’t see my normal amount of films so this is only going to be 10 entries long but god damn are these some memorable entries. 1 entry per film, no honourable mentions this time, here we go.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review, Thriller

The Mouse Trap (2024) – ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGH

Released: 31st October
Seen: 28th December

This year, the leader of the club that’s made for you and me entered into the public domain. That’s right, Mickey Mouse is now officially available for use by anyone for any reason that they want as long as they only use things associated with the version of Mickey Mouse that can be found in the Steamboat Willie short (or in the two other shorts that came out that year, but the version you know is the Steamboat Willie version). This is a huge deal in terms of copyright laws, the reason that the public domain has been so empty for so many years can pretty much be explained by the reality that Disney never wanted Mickey to be in the public domain so they fought hard to keep him out of it but eventually, it had to happen, Mickey can now be put into any film or video game that you would dare to put him. As is tradition when big things like this enter the public domain, someone has to take it and turn it into a horror film as a symbolic gesture to show that no one owns this toy anymore, no one can stop you… someone should’ve stopped this, what the fuck did I just sit through?

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