Tag: Horror Comedy

2019, Movies

The Dead Don’t Die (2019,Jim Jarmusch)

This is a deliberately-paced, usually mildly amusing but occasionally laugh-out-loud funny zombie movie tribute film. To call it something other than a tribute film feels weird to me, because it feels like Jarmusch is more concerned with layering references – and possibly making some vague statement about consumption and climate change – than he is …

1984, Movies

Ghoulies (1984, Luca Bercovici)

It’s been a long time since I’ve been this disappointed in a bad horror movie. It should be called Chokies or Undead Warlockies or something like that, not Ghoulies. The cover of this movie terrified me as a child in the video store and it turns out that the ghoulies barely do anything, they’re utterly …

2021, Movies

Dashcam (2021, Rob Savage)

The people who made this movie are extremely enamoured with Annie Hardy. I didn’t know anything about her though she’s actually only a few months older than me. If I had encountered her music when I first encountered Anal Cunt or when I was, say, 22, I can imagine also being enamoured by her music. …

1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, TV

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997)

When I was younger and had recently fallen in love with serialized TV dramas, I had this idea that I was going to write a book about the antecedents of the Golden Age of Television. (At first this was going to be about the Golden Age of Television, but that book already exists.) This book …

2018, Movies

Slay Belles (2018, Dan Walker)

Slay Belles, not to be confused with the Ru Paul album of the same name, is a no-budget Christmas “horror comedy” that is not remotely scary, though it made me laugh. Twice. (I think it was twice. It might have been three times.) Like so many of these movies, there is more wrong with it …

2019, Movies

Ready or Not (2019, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett)

This is one of those movies where the premise sounds really great – a rich family plays a game to welcome new members of that family, but when that game is Hide and Seek, things turn deadly – but where the execution is just not up to snuff. There are moments that are pretty great, …

2009, Books, Fiction

John Dies at the End (2009) by David Wong

Full disclosure: I didn’t read this when it was on the web, before it was published. But I saw the film at Midnight Madness TIFF in 2012. I don’t really remember the movie much any more but my review suggested I enjoyed it except for two things: 1) the CGI (which I remember being awful) …

2013, Movies

Hell Baby (2013, Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon)

This is a really dumb spin on The Exorcist crossed with The Amityville Horror – or some kind of possessed house movie, I haven’t seen that one in a while – but which manages to be pretty funny, all the while being fairly obvious. If you’ve seen Reno 911, it’s basically the same kind of comedy – it’s made …

2015, Movies

TIFF 2015: Demon (2015, Marcin Wrona)

This is the most unique horror comedy I’ve seen in some time. Whereas most horror comedies are ready to notify their intention to get you to laugh early on (and usually to laugh instead of scream or to laugh and only occasionally scream) this movie’s humour is rooted in the absurd dramedy of a cast …

2013, Movies

Warm Bodies (2013, Jonathan Levine)

From the very beginning, this movie – and presumably its source, the novel – violates many if not most genre conventions. So maybe it shouldn’t judged on the terms of those conventions. Because if it is judged on the conventions of the genre, it is bad. But I guess if it willfully violates the genre’s …

2013, Movies

This is the End (2013, directed by Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen)

I knew nothing about this movie going in, save for that it was starring some famous comedic actors as themselves and that it was about the end of the world. I saw it because the ex-girlfriend wanted to. I had never seen – or really heard of – the short and I think I may …