Horror Films Part 2 – The Near Perfect
September 11, 2026
The second tier of the horror ranking. Romero, Polanski, Friedkin, Carpenter and Kubrick, plus the films that invented the conventions everything since has used.
Tag: Horror
Horror in fiction and film. What frightens a reader and why, the difference between dread and shock, and the craft that makes one land while the other wears off in a page.
1970sThe Pyx (1973) Review
September 11, 2026
The Pyx (1973) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A Canadian film in which a woman falls from a Montreal balcony and the investigation runs backward through her last days, intercut, with Karen Black singing her own…
1980sThe New York Ripper (1982) Review
September 11, 2026
The New York Ripper (1982) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Lucio Fulci made a giallo about a killer who murders women and quacks like a duck on the telephone. It was seized in Britain, refused certification…
2010sHannibal – “Apéritif” (S1E1, 2013) Review
September 11, 2026
Hannibal's pilot rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Bryan Fuller made a network procedural about a man who reconstructs murders in his head and put it on NBC at ten o'clock, where it lasted three seasons and…
1980sHenry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) Review
September 11, 2026
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Made for around a hundred thousand dollars, shelved for four years over its rating, and still the film that other films about this subject…
2020sMorbius (2022) Review
September 11, 2026
Morbius (2022) rates 2 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A film assembled from a contractual obligation, released, mocked into a meme, re-released on the strength of the mockery, and rejected a second time. The most instructive failure of…
1990sThe X-Files – “Squeeze” (S1E3, 1993) Review
September 11, 2026
The X-Files' third episode rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A man who hibernates for thirty years, wakes, kills five people for their livers, and goes back to sleep. It invented the monster of the week and…
2000sZombieland (2009) Review
September 11, 2026
Zombieland (2009) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A road movie with four people, a list of survival rules rendered on screen, and Woody Harrelson looking for a Twinkie. It is very funny for eighty minutes and…
2010sWarm Bodies (2013) Review
September 11, 2026
Warm Bodies (2013) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A zombie romance narrated by the zombie, which is a better idea than it sounds and is executed with more wit than the premise deserves. It is also…
1970sZombie (1979) / Flesh Eaters Review
September 11, 2026
Zombie (1979) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Lucio Fulci was hired to make an unauthorized sequel to Dawn of the Dead and made something older instead, closer to Caribbean voodoo horror than to Romero. It contains…
2000sShaun of the Dead (2004) Review
September 11, 2026
Shaun of the Dead (2004) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A comedy that works as an actual zombie film, which almost no parody manages, because Edgar Wright shot the horror straight and let the jokes come…
1980sThe Return of the Living Dead (1985) Review
September 11, 2026
The Return of the Living Dead (1985) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Dan O'Bannon invented the brain-eating zombie, the running zombie and the talking zombie in one film, and every one of those is now so…