Trick isn’t much of a Halloween treat, and like a sour apple stuffed with razor blades washing the bad taste of this one out of my mouth is going to be difficult to do.

Begos’ maturation as a filmmaker is undeniable, and I love that he’s centered Bliss in such an introspectively human way. He finds a kindred spirit in Dezzy, and as despicable and abhorrent as her tale might be, the young woman’s act of artistic creation is one that feels strangely universal even with all the dismemberments, rips of flesh and gushes of blood.

I Trapped the Devil isn’t going to end up on my end-of-year list of 2019’s best horror movies, but that doesn’t make it any less memorable or worthwhile. Writer/director Josh Lobo manufactures a consistently unsettling sense of building menace and dread, while actress Susan Burke delivers an outstanding performance in the middle of all of this discombobulating psychological mayhem.

Vice Squad is a product of its time. It’s an ugly film, one that digs into the muck and mire of the world it presents with almost gleeful gusto. All of which makes it easy to understand how Gary Sherman’s dramatic thriller has somehow stood the test of time.

The Wind is outstanding. Emma Tammi’s film has a delicately austere power that is poetically horrifying in its overall windswept magnitude.

Beck and Woods have made a nice little genre gem with Haunt, and I look forward to picking this one up for my personal library so I can revel in all its nifty tricks and treats again relatively soon.

“I want to please people, sure, but I also what to say to them, wake up! Look under the surface. Look how aggressive and violent our society is. It’s just so anti-life, it lacks tenderness and nuance. We literally have to talk about things like this with monster stories because it’s too delicate a topic.”
– Larry Fessenden

Fessenden has composed a mesmerizing little riff on the Frankenstein myth, and over 200 years after its first publication Depraved makes it clear there’s still plenty of electrifying life in Shelley’s classic tale, life audiences will likely keep thrilling to for untold generations to come.

“One of the things that attracted me about the script was that women just run the world in this movie. That all the men kind of take a backseat and it’s this awesome female-run coven/cult which I just felt like I hadn’t really seen before.”
– Chelsea Stardust