This Movie Deserves Better

This week we're covering Stir of Echoes (1999) — David Koepp's criminally underrated supernatural horror film starring Kevin Bacon in one of the best performances of his career. We dig into why this film got completely overshadowed on release (hint: it came out the same summer as The Sixth Sense), what makes its hypnosis sequence one of the most effective in horror, where the film stumbles, and wh...

This week we're going to the pictures. Popcorn (1991) — a horror film set during an all night horror marathon in a cinema, made by people who genuinely loved the genre, released in February when nobody was looking, and forgotten almost immediately. This is probably the most This Movie Deserves Better episode I've made yet. No franchise name. No recognisable face on the poster. Just a reall...

The highest grossing film in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Robert Englund's personal favourite entry in the series. Praised by Wes Craven himself. And somehow it still gets dismissed as the point where everything went wrong. This week I'm making the case that The Dream Master is a visually extraordinary horror film with one of the best protagonists in the entire franchise, dream s...

The box. You opened it. We answered. This week I'm making the case that Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth is a genuinely effective horror film that has spent thirty years being unfairly dismissed as franchise decay. Doug Bradley gives one of the greatest horror villain performances of the decade and nobody talks about it. The nightclub sequence is one of the great horror set pieces of the 1990s and...

This week we're going underground. Creep (2004) — not the found footage one. The other one. The really good one. A British horror film set entirely in the London Underground at night that has been buried under a name collision and not enough people have gone looking for it. This is not a so bad it's good episode. This is not a guilty pleasure defence. Creep 2004 is a genuinely good horror film wit...

This episode exists because I saw a review online that was so wrong about this film I had to do something about it. No names. No drama. Just a podcast episode defending Jason Voorhees in space for forty five minutes. This week I'm making the case that Jason X is not the embarrassment the Friday the 13th fanbase has been pretending it is for twenty four years. It knew exactly what it was. It co...

Club Dread (2004) got buried because it wasn't Super Troopers. That's it. That's the whole reason. This week I'm making the case that Broken Lizard's horror comedy is a genuinely effective slasher with a mystery that holds up, a killer reveal that lands, and a Bill Paxton performance that deserves far more recognition than it ever got. Full breakdown, full defence, deeply unserious awards. For Bil...

You voted, the Djinn answered, and this week I'm making the case that Wishmaster (1997) is one of the most underrated horror films of the 1990s. Andrew Divoff's Djinn had everything required to be a franchise icon. Nobody noticed. We're fixing that. Full scene by scene breakdown, franchise context, the greatest horror cameo line-up ever assembled on a single budget, and the full defenc...

This week on This Movie Deserves Better, Col's making the case for Leprechaun in the Hood (2000) — the straight-to-video entry everyone wrote off and nobody defended. Until now. But is it really the bottom of the barrel... or the most complete film in the franchise? Warwick Davis in full hip-hop mode, Ice-T as a music mogul with a finger deficit, and a ending that reveals the Leprechaun has ha...

This week on This Movie Deserves Better, Col's revisiting Scream 3 (2000) — the most divisive entry in the franchise and the one fans love to rank last. But is it really the weak link… or just misunderstood? Directed by Wes Craven and set against the backdrop of Hollywood and the filming of Stab 3, the third chapter takes Sidney, Gale, and Dewey into a meta murder mystery about sequels, trilogies,...

This week on This Movie Deserves Better, we revisit Valentine (2001) — the early-2000s post-Scream slasher starring Denise Richards, David Boreanaz, and Katherine Heigl. Was it just another glossy teen horror… or did studio edits bury a smarter twist? We break down the full plot (Spoilers!), the history and context, where it stumbles, including my theory that there was originally a second killer —...

Here's what to expect from This Movie Deserves Better.

This week on This Movie Deserves Better, Col revisits House on Haunted Hill (1999) — the loud, gothic, late-90s Dark Castle remake that critics dismissed but horror fans never quite let go. Directed by William Malone and starring Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, and Peter Gallagher, the film follows a group of strangers invited to survive the night in a notorious haunted asylu...

In this episode of This Movie Deserves Better, Col revisits Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 to unpack what really went wrong — and why the film deserves a serious reappraisal. We dig into the troubled production history, studio interference, and how director Joe Berlinger originally intended the sequel to be a meta-horror film about fandom, obsession, and media manipulation — not another found-foot...

This week on This Movie Deserves Better, we’re revisiting the overlooked 1980 slasher New Year's Evil — a cult horror oddity built around one killer idea: murders timed to midnight across every U.S. time zone. Set during a live New Year’s Eve telethon, New Year’s Evil mixes punk energy, sleazy ’80s vibes, and a genuinely clever slasher premise that deserved far more attention than it got. In t...

This episode, Col reopens the case file on Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning — the most chaotic, divisive, and secretly brilliant entry in the Friday the 13th franchise. We break down Tommy Jarvis, the copycat killer twist, the halfway house mayhem, every wild kill, and why this misunderstood slasher deserves better than its reputation. A celebration of the weird, messy, back-to-front charm...

This week we dive into Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers, the chaotic 90s horror movie filled with shape-shifters, killer cats, practical effects, and some of the wildest moments in any Stephen King adaptation. We cover: Sleepwalkers history + King’s original screenplay. Full plot breakdown. The infamous CGI morphing. Why Sleepwalkers is an underrated cult classic and where it stumbles. Internet critic...

Col takes a deep dive into The Initiation (1984) — a slasher dismissed on release but filled with heart, strong performances, psychological ambition, and one of the 80s’ most underrated twists. We explore the plot (spoiler-warning) the dreamlike opening, the unforgettable twist, and why critics misfiled this film entirely. Awards included. Come hear why The Initiation truly deserves better. Follow...

This is episode one of This Movie Deserves Better — raw, curious, and still finding its feet. I’m Col: and I'm fully committed to rescuing underrated genre films from the bargain bin. For our shaky-but-earnest debut I dig into John Ottman’s underrated slasher, Urban Legend 2: Final Cut. What I do in this episode: walk the plot, perform scene surgery on Simon’s death, hand out a Best Death Award, a...