The Scariest Things

Horror Musicals! Just in time for the holidays: Anna and the Apocalypse (2017) Horror Musicals: When they work they are next-level works of art. It’s some of the worst material ever created when they don’t work. Eric cajoled/dragged Liz and Mike to participate in evaluating one of his favorite sub-genres, the Horror Musical. (Like it or not, Eric WILL break into song!) Horror movies ar...

Karen Black and a Zuni Warrior Doll in Trilogy of Terror (1975) Once upon a time, the major broadcast television networks used to produce feature films for their movies of the week. Many of the great made-for-tv horror movies have found new audiences with restored Blu-Ray issuances and streaming options, giving some long-lost classics a new lease on viewing life. The movie of the week was a staple...

Cinephiles and physical media collectors, this episode is for you! The Criterion Collection has been the premiere distributor of cinematic excellence for decades. Did they find room for horror? Yes, they did! It is a very select group of films, but you might be surprised at some of the inclusions. Here are our picks from their horror library. Criterion’s Mission Statement: Since 1984, the Cr...

Shane Simmons in The Letter (2024) Intensity 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 Directed by Vincent Shade The Letter sumptuously recreates the era of H.P. Lovecraft’s 1930’s New England. This languidly paced mystery feels like a Call of Cthulhu adventure, set in an elaborate mansion, and stocked with scheming characters with old grudges. This little indie film has big aspirations and ambitions but c...

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead in The Endless (2017) Aaron Moorhead is one half of the prolific writing/acting/directing duo of Moorhead and Benson. The acclaimed duo produced some of the past decade’s most mind-bending cosmic horror movies. It was only appropriate that he would serve as the keynote speaker at this year’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival , and he took some time out of hi...

Alex Lee Williams goes sleepwalking… ominously… in Dream Eater (2024) Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 Directed by Jay Drakulic, Mallory Drumm, and Alex Lee Williams Cosmic Horror meets found footage in the parasomnia-infused Dream Eater. Documentarian Mallory and her boyfriend Alex retreat to a snowy cabin, celebrating Alex’s 30th birthday. There, they hope to relax and get reli...

The Daemon (2024) Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 Directed by Matt Devino & David Yohe The Daemon was a perfect vessel to be unleashed at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. The debut feature from Devino and Yohe taps into all of the key tropes of Cosmic Horror: coping with inner demons, battling psychoses and grief, dreams from the underworld, and elder gods rising from the deep. Add in som...

Christopher Walken is a headed (for now) Horseman in Sleepy Hollow (1999) Let’s turn back the clock to revisit an underrated year in horror movies: 1999. It’s certainly a good time to put 1999 in perspective for its silver anniversary. In hindsight, this was a hinge year. Many old horror themes were getting swept away as new genre tropes emerged. The nineties were a semi-desert for the...

It has become a Summer tradition: The Scariest Things joins forces with our Podcasting sisters from the East Coast, The Jersey Ghouls , to do some summer school homework. This year’s assignment from Liz was to spin the Wheel of Misfortune and receive a Horror Movie Studio. We then were to report back on their history and legacy, along with some recommendations. It was an education for us, an...

Witching and Bitching (2013) When considering foreign language horror, do not sleep on Spanish productions. It’s not usually the first stop in horror, with French Extremism, Italian Giallo, and J-Horror often getting the most notoriety. There are some legendary titles from Latin America that you should consider. In Episode 186, the Scariest Things gives you nine titles worthy of a watch. The...

Caroline Menton, Carolyn Bracken, and the Wooden Man from Oddity (2024) Oddity is the scariest horror movie of 2024. It crushed the film festival circuit, drawing acclaim at SXSW, Overlook, BiFan, and Fantasia Fest. The director, Damian McCarthy, took some time to talk with The Scariest Things to tell us about how he crafted the surprise horror hit of the year. Pay attention, horror fans. Oddity s...

The 2024 Thingy Awards! The 2024 Thingy Awards! It is time for the Mid-Year Scariest Things grand celebration: Once again, we surveyed and received votes from our favorite fans and industry contacts to determine the best horror movies of last year. If there were a couple of themes from last year: Possession and Australia. We got a lot of both in 2023, and it was GOOD. It was one of the best years...

Kia Dorsey in Ghost Game (2024) Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 Directed by Jill Gevargizian Written by Adam Cesare In Ghost Game , a trio of mischief-makers stakes out an old manor with a dark legend surrounding it. Their goal: stay in the house without the new residents discovering them. Internal relationship conflicts, a disturbed resident family, and the potential of a supernatural haunt upen...

Alexandra Pica plays both Genevieve and Stevie in a dual role in Did I? (2024) Look carefully: this is a VERY clever image. Intensity: 🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸, with sexual assault trigger warnings. Directed by Sarah Tice Written by Sarah Tice and Zachary Beckler DID I? , the winner of the Portland Horror Film Festival’s Goule D’Or (Best Feature in Festival) Award, takes an honest approac...

Mike Capes and David Shackleford (in the Dino Suit) star in The Invisible Raptor (2024) Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for copious comic gore Directed by Mike Hermosa Written by Johnny Wickham and Mike Capes The Invisible Raptor is a crowd-pleaser, plain and simple. This spoof of Jurassic Park flips the script on the behemoth tentpole franchise by not trying to do digital dinosaurs at all. Ins...

Barbara Steele in Black Sunday (1960) It was a dark and stormy night! Prepare to enter the foggy moor with The Scariest Things as we discuss the genre’s roots in Gothic Horror, the ornate and narratively complex origins of horror film. The roots of horror films go straight to Gothic Horror. The adaptations of 1930s films used the literature of the 19th century for their horror references. Go...

Prequel, Sequel, and Reboot – The Omen has them all! It has become something of a Hollywood crutch. The cynical amongst us consider prequels, sequels, and reboots to be lazy storytelling. Franchise horror comes in all forms. When obvious profits are predicted, big-budget studio films and straight-to-streaming B-movies fall into the same formula. Rinse, repeat, and rinse again. We think we ca...

At the Overlook Film Festival, The Scariest Things caught up with up-and-coming director John Rosman, who was on hand to present his debut feature film New Life. This thriller was a sleeper surprise at the festival. A political thriller that morphs into a toe-curling body horror show halfway through. The film is in limited theatrical release and can be streamed online now! When you go to a Horror...

April means going to New Orleans for one of the best genre film festivals in the world and one of our favorites: The Overlook Film Festival . This year was a challenge for the festival as the 2023 SGA and WGA strikes had a diminishing effect on studio releases, the fest managed to pull in some terrific foreign films, and the short films shined too. Overlook isn’t the biggest festival. By com...

Way back in June of 2023, The Scariest Things asked The Jersey Ghouls , Jackie and Marissa to play a game and spin the Wheel of Misfortune on Spooky Time Episode 18 . Foolishly, they said yes and we all discussed our misfortunate franchise results on Podcast Episodes 173 and 174. We asked them to come back again to spin the wheel and…they said yes! This time it’s a Wheel of FORTUNE as...

Horror on the High Seas: Blake Lively surfs among sharks in The Shallows (2016) Here, there be dragons! The deep ocean conjures up deep-seated fears. They call that Thalassophobia. It’s real, and it translates to the movies. The Scariest Things enters the life raft and examines ocean-born horror in Episode 182! Humans need the oceans, but we do not belong in them (unless you come from Micron...

The Scariest Things Podcast sat down with Diane to talk about her new film, horror comedy, Glenn Danzig, and her future horror projects!

Rick Grimes enters Atlanta in Season One of The Walking Dead (2010) Oh God, please don’t let the world end like this! The Scariest Things looks to the future of a dystopian world of the few surviving humans facing grim realities. Whether it’s our fault, or the zombie’s fault, or an alien incursion, or perhaps the Earth is just tired of us, this existential dread is the stuff that...

This is the greatest of the movies with “haunt” in the title… but we had to exclude The Haunting (1963) from our considerations. You have our apologies in advance. Mike challenged us to record a podcast discussing movies with “Haunting” or “Haunted” in the title. If you search “Haunting” in IMdB, there are well over 4000 films with that word in...

True Detective Season 4: Night Country – Review, evaluation, and easter eggs! True Detective Season 4: Night Country has just completed its run on MAX, and it is totally worth stealing your neighbor’s MAX… I mean, BUYING a month of MAX… to binge the series. As satisfying as it can be to binge a series, having this as a weekly water cooler show was a great way to build antic...