Weird Reviews
Calgary Underground 2025 Review: REVERIES: THE MIND PRISON, One Story Ends, Another Story Must Begin
You know that dream where you are running, to nowhere in particular, for no reason, and you trip, fall, and wake up? Reveries: The Mind Prison is the movie version of that dream. Only here, you are walking, and thus...
INVENTION Review: Grief, Legacy, and Myth Collide in Hybrid Dramedy
Courtney Stephens and Callie Hernandez created a film that intricately blends personal history, archival footage, and fictional narrative to explore themes of grief, memory, and the fine line between reality and fantasy.
SCREAMBOAT Review: A Small Mouse Makes for Big Kills and Laughs
Riders on the Staten Island ferry run afoul a pint-sized terror on the last ride home, or, the last ride of their lives.
Panic Fest 2025 Review: IT FEEDS, Face Your Trauma, Fight The Demon
Shawn Ashmore, Ashley Greene, and Ellie O'Brien star in Chad Archibald's new horror thriller.
SXSW 2025 Review: GLORIOUS SUMMER, Three Women Seek Freedom From Their Gilded Cage
Three women exist in an abandoned castle, bound by rules and rituals disseminated by disembodied voices, unburdened by want, but trapped in a dystopian wonderland they cannot leave in directors Helena Ganjalyan and Bartosz Szpak’s Glorious Summer. An ennui laden...
SXSW 2025 Review: NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE, Matt & Jay Go Back to the Future!
A pair of lovable losers come up with a series of ridiculous schemes to get their band a gig at Toronto’s legendary nightclub, The Rivoli in Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol’s Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie. A feature...
SXSW 2025 Review: FRIENDSHIP, It's Hard Out Here For Dudes
Cringe comedy master Tim Robinson makes his feature lead debut alongside an always dependable Paul Rudd in Andrew DeYoung’s hilarious bromantic-comedy, Friendship. Craig Betterman (Robinson) is a man in a rut. He lives his life in an unending triangle between...
SXSW 2025 Review: MERMAID, A Florida Meth-Head Finds Love in this Absurd Comedy
Doug’s life sucks. He’s broke, strung out on meth, his ex-wife hates him, he owes money to some very dangerous people, and he doesn’t really see a way out. He’s at the end of his rope when he stumbles across...
SXSW 2025 Review: ASH, Flying Lotus Delivers Gory Space Horror
Riya Ortiz wakes up in a desolate space station. Red warning lights flash, ominous automated messages call out from the station’s computer. Then the bodies. Bodies everywhere. These were friends, co-workers, maybe lovers. Now they are silent, covered in blood,...
Berlinale 2025 Review: REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND Dissects the Eurospy Genre
Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani continue their deconstruction of genre cinema in a visual rollercoaster, consisting of formal pyrotechnics and a disorienting narrative.
SXSW 2025 Review: NEW JACK FURY, A Hilarious Lo-Fi Blaxploitation Side Scroller
Times are tough in New Jack City. The nefarious Styles Syndicate has a grip on the city, and by-the-book cop Dylan Gamble (Andre Hall) is determined to take down its leader, Silkwaan Styles (Page Kennedy). However, before he can, he...
SXSW 2025 Review: THE TRUE BEAUTY OF BEING BITTEN BY A TICK, Sinister Chill Vibes All Around
Yvonne (Zoë Chao) needs to get out of the city and she needs to do it fast. A tragic accident has brought down on her the kind of crushing trauma response that can only be resolved by removing herself from...
Rotterdam 2025 Review: TRANSCENDING DIMENSIONS Sees Toshiaki Toyoda Play the Hits
In the Q&A after Transcending Dimensions, Toyoda mentioned that this might be his last feature film, as he felt like he transcended himself with this film. What does a transcendent Toyoda-film look like? As usually loud, violent and surreal,...
ARMAND Review: Dissecting Power Plays and Distorted Realities in Mercurial, Claustrophobic Satire
Renate Reinsve stars in Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel's dramatic thriller from Norway.
Now Streaming: HORROR'S GREATEST on Shudder, Season 2 Smashes Our Nostalgia Button
The second season of Shudder’s survey series, Horror’s Greatest, starts streaming today, a continuation of the series that debuted at the end of Summer on the platform. Once again we head back into the fray, surveying subgenres and themes that...
THE END Review: A Song For the Discordant Last
Perhaps because we feel, more so than ever, at the edge of a possible fall of civilzation as we know it, the destruction of the environment to the point of unsustainability, but likely many of us have thought about (either...
HEAVIER TRIP Review: Impaled Rektum's Sophomore Odyssey Is Worth The Trip
Impaled Rektum, the world’s foremost symphonic postapocalyptic reindeer-grinding Christ-abusing extreme war pagan Fennoscandian metal band is back with a headbang in Heavier Trip, Juuso Laatio and Jukka Vidgren’s follow up to their 2018 underdog cult classic Heavy Trip. This time...
London Fantastic 2024 Review: THE KILLER GOLDFISH
This last week London International Fantastic Film Festival kicked off its inaugural edition with Tsutsumi Yukihiko genre mashup extravaganza, The Kiler Goldfish. The filmmaker, perhaps best known for his intense tale of neighborly discord 2LDK, has expanded his scope with...
DRAG ME TO HELL 4K Review: Mad, Visceral Storytelling
Sam Raimi’s 2009 return to horror after the 1992 Army of Darkness, Drag Me to Hell, is from a more innocent time. Just like ye old E.C. Comics and Tales From the Darkside, Drag Me to Hell is a morality...
DREAM TEAM Review: Analogue Aesthetics and Conspiring Coral
Imagine it's the 90s, in the early days of wide home computer use, with dial-up models, compact discs as the main mode of music listening, and you've fallen asleep in front of your television. You wake up in a dark...
