Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

      Most characters don’t make it out alive in horror movies. Some survive until the final reel if they’re lucky, while others become bodies on the slab before the titles have even run! They are sacrifices for us bloodthirsty fans, but there’s more to them than that. They…

  Crime action films today can often, despite what the genre might suggest, leave the viewer inexplicably searching for more. Overused actors, villains with vague intensions, and overplayed tropes often result in films with predictable twists and forgettable plots. Ma Dong-seok (TRAIN TO BUSAN, ETERNALS, ASHFALL) returns for another knockout…

  It’s not just death that comes for us; it’s every version of the future which subsists on a diet of our devoured past. Bertrand Mandico turns his Incoherence Manifesto toward Robert E. Howard, queer iconography and the nature of aging in his new film, SHE IS CONANN.  For those…

  Found footage is, to my mind, one of the richest and most playful settings for film there is. It lends itself to the indie side of filmmaking, creating a space of intimacy and innovation that thrives best in the hands of people who clearly love the craft. It has…

  Any form of artistic creation is an inherently immersive and sacrificial act. Particularly when creating something wholly new, we must dig deep to find the seeds of the world within ourselves and bring to light some dark and squirming realities we may not have faced before. To create is…

I always happen to find a sort of throughline in films when it comes time to bulk up on watching by way of festival season, and one of the most common is usually a kind of redemption arc by way of feminine rage. While those films are still here this…

  The 8 SPIDER-MAN movies are playing in theaters nationwide this week. I’m not entirely clear on the reasons for why or why now, but it is surely a welcome occasion. The now-classic SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004) is back in theaters, just for today.   by Jon Abrams     On…

  In the wake of numerous horror reboots and sequels — from THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER to the newly-announced THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT — it’s easy to become exasperated by lack of new material in the genre.   In 2019, directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett took on the challenge…

    Step back into a time when your local video store was the best place to go. Think about how expensive buying a movie was, how cheap a rental was, and how the internet was not a thing you could easily use. Enter WE KILL FOR LOVE, the documentary…

  On the heels of his review of the film DAD & STEP-DAD, Daily Grindhouse new blood and cohost of Butcher Bordello of Blood podcast, Zach Butcher, sat down with director Tynan DeLong, and the titular Dad (Colin Burgess) and Step-Dad (Anthony Oberbeck) to talk about their creative friendship, the…

    Maybe it’s fitting that the GHOSTBUSTERS 3 I always dreamed of in my youth remained spectral, nothing but a Class 5 full-roaming vapor that haunted my imagination for years. After all, I don’t know if any movie could have lived up to my lofty expectations for a sequel…

  Australia has long been one of my go-to areas for horror that holds no punches. It’s one of my most obvious touchpoints for notable differences in permissibility and tolerance between American filmmaking and that from other countries. As it stands, Australia and Korea are my two most commonly referenced…

  DAD & STEP-DAD is the first full form version of director Tynan DeLong’s three shorts that have been in the works since 2018. The story of a father, Jim, trying to enjoy a weekend trip in a cabin with his son, Branson, ex-wife, Suzie, and the stepfather, Dave. Jim…

  Hyperbole can be difficult to avoid when writing movie reviews, especially during the rush and excitement of a film festival, so it’s important to stay grounded and keep a sense of perspective. Not everything is a masterpiece. Unless you only watched one movie, every film can’t be the best…

  Inspired by the childhood trauma of his father’s cancer, director Benjamin Finkel spent half his life channeling his real-life horror experience to make the movie FAMILY. Making its world premiere at SXSW, this film follows the young Johanna (Cameron Dawson Gray) as she struggles to make sense of her…

  The idea of putting life on pause can be an appealing one. Living in a world that is so fast paced, where we are subjected to everyone’s thoughts all the time, escapism is a fantasy of sorts for many people. In THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT, director Michael Felker examines…

  In 2010, reigning horror maven Jason Blum was still a fledgling producer in the genre. While his microbudget approach certainly made some waves with the massive success of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY the previous year, his presence in the genre realm wasn’t firmly entrenched until he ushered James Wan’s INSIDIOUS onto…

  In the modern age, many folks feel the absence of a “third place.” Somewhere that is not your home, is not your workplace, but rather a third space, somewhere you can hang out, relax, and socialize. For a lot of people, malls were that now elusive third place, somewhere…

  Manipulation. Gaslighting. Love-bombing. Isolation. All of these terms exist in the popular vernacular as buzzwords to describe toxic relationships. As observers, we can easily see when romance and love lead to abuse, but when experiencing the situation firsthand, the target of the gaslighting might not realize the actual extent…

  A man is abducted from his home, dragged into the desert, and tortured, culminating in his captors severing his penis and dousing him in bleach. It’s quite the hook, and the stylish documentary feature DICKWEED, directed by Jonathan Ignatius Green, throws its audience right into the heart of the…

  When was the last time you checked that linen closet? What about the spare bedroom? Can you be sure you’re alone in your home right now? After watching Joy Wilkinson’s feature debut, 7 KEYS, these questions are sure to be top of mind. The idea of being somewhere you…

      A certain thickness of skin comes with the territory for people who exist immersed in the genres of horror and true crime. Particularly in extremist horror circles, tolerance to the utmost depravity is compared like war wounds and for those of us that voyaged the wild west…

    Welcome back to Daily Grindhouse’s mostly-annual feature where we celebrate lots of stuff that goes overlooked by the normal-people Oscars. We like a lot of the same things they do, but we also like a whole lot of stuff that will go unmentioned tonight. You’ll see us mentioning…

  Every year (sort of), Daily Grindhouse’s Bizarro Oscars have been our way of celebrating less conventional aspects of popular films, and even better, to spotlight those films we love that most definitely won’t be recognized at the “real” Academy Awards on Sunday night. Here, genre films of every kind…