The Scariest Things

It has become a Summer tradition: The Scariest Things joins forces with our Podcasting sisters from the East Coast, The Jersey Ghouls, to do some summer school homework. This year's assignment from Liz was to spin the Wheel of Misfortune and receive a Horror Movie Studio. We then were to report back on their history and legacy, along with some recommendations. It was an education for us, and we're passing it along to you!

When considering foreign language horror, do not sleep on Spanish productions. It's not usually the first stop in horror, with French Extremism, Italian Giallo, and J-Horror often getting the most notoriety. There are some legendary titles from Latin America that you should consider. In Episode 186, the Scariest Things gives you nine titles worthy of a watch.

Oddity is the scariest horror movie of 2024. It crushed the film festival circuit, drawing acclaim at SXSW, Overlook, BiFan, and Fantasia Fest. The director, Damian McCarthy, took some time to talk with The Scariest Things to tell us about how he crafted the surprise horror hit of the year.

The 2024 Thingy Awards! It is time for the Mid-Year Scariest Things grand celebration: Once again, we surveyed and received votes from our favorite fans and industry contacts to determine the best horror movies of last year. If there were a couple of themes from last year: Possession and Australia. We got a lot of both in 2023, and it was GOOD. It was one of the best years for horror in the past ten years!

★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 In Ghost Game, a trio of mischief-makers stakes out an old manor with a dark legend surrounding it. Their goal: stay in the house without the new residents discovering them. Internal relationship conflicts, a disturbed resident family, and the potential of a supernatural haunt upend their Ghost Game efforts. A solid cat-and-mouse thriller with fun haunted house tropes propels this film, which was the centerpiece of the Portland Horror Film Festival.

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Intensity: 🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸, with sexual assault trigger warnings. DID I?, the winner of the Portland Horror Film Festival's Goule D'Or (Best Feature in Festival) Award, takes an honest approach to the cruelty and ramifications of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The psychological thriller invests its time with Genevieve, a bookish junior editor at a publishing company who struggles with her alter ego, Stevie, who is a bit of a wild child. Her traumas are buried deep, and it puts several new wrinkles into the good/evil dichotomy that films that used what used to be called multiple personality disorder under the microscope.

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for copious comic gore The Invisible Raptor is a crowd-pleaser, plain and simple. This spoof of Jurassic Park flips the script on the behemoth tentpole franchise by not trying to do digital dinosaurs at all. Instead, The team behind The Invisible Raptor did the monster movie without the monster, and it worked brilliantly. This is a meta-movie for the Easter Egg enthusiasts, but be warned, there is so much blood and shit in this movie that it isn't for the squeamish or the kiddos! (Though the twelve-year-old me would LOVE this movie.)

It was a dark and stormy night! Prepare to enter the foggy moor with The Scariest Things as we discuss the genre's roots in Gothic Horror, the ornate and narratively complex origins of horror film.

It has become something of a Hollywood crutch. The cynical amongst us consider prequels, sequels, and reboots to be lazy storytelling. Franchise horror comes in all forms. When obvious profits are predicted, big-budget studio films and straight-to-streaming B-movies fall into the same formula. Rinse, repeat, and rinse again. We think we can do this a little better.

At the Overlook Film Festival, The Scariest Things caught up with up-and-coming director John Rosman, who was on hand to present his debut feature film New Life. This thriller was a sleeper surprise at the festival. A political thriller that morphs into a toe-curling body horror show halfway through. The film is in limited theatrical release and can be streamed online now!

Spooky Time Episode 27: The Wheel of Misfortune is back, and so are The Jersey Ghouls!

Here, there be dragons! The deep ocean conjures up deep-seated fears. They call that Thalassophobia. It's real, and it translates to the movies. The Scariest Things enters the life raft and examines ocean-born horror in Episode 182!

As we’ve said before, pulling off a horror comedy is one of the most precarious feats a director can attempt. The feat is made all the more difficult when it’s done on a micro-budget with limited to no resources. Easter Bloody Easter manages to walk this tight rope with aplomb, while pulling in one of the coolest Black Sabbath horror references since the semi-eponymous Black Sabbath in 1963. Easter Bloody Easter is the new horror film from first time director, Diane Foster.

Oh God, please don't let the world end like this! The Scariest Things looks to the future of a dystopian world of the few surviving humans facing grim realities. Whether it's our fault, or the zombie's fault, or an alien incursion, or perhaps the Earth is just tired of us, this existential dread is the stuff that will keep you up at night.

You have our apologies in advance. Mike challenged us to record a podcast where we discuss movies with "Haunting" or "Haunted" in the title. If you search "Haunting" in IMdB, there are well over 4000 films with that word in the title. Sadly, only a few of them are any good. Or, at least from what we've been able to determine so far. There are only so many "Haunting of" movies that a critic can stomach in a month.

True Detective Season 4: Night Country has just completed its run on MAX, and it is totally worth stealing your neighbor's MAX... I mean, BUYING a month of MAX... to binge the series. As satisfying as it can be to binge a series, having this as a weekly water cooler show was a great way to build anticipation and chatter. Chatter like our Spooky Time 26!

The Scariest Things eagerly awaits the slate of films for 2024. We are thrilled to cast our eyes forward to the scary films to come. Sadly, if years prior are any indicator, our ability to spot the best of what is to come is unfortunately spotty. That isn't to say that we won't make the attempt to predict horror movies that we think we will enjoy!

The Worst Horror Movies of 2023. It's an unfortunate but needed exposure of what was awful in 2023. What is more unfortunate is that we had to watch these movies last year. You may consider this a warning. A red flag. But admit it, many of you like to kick a bad movie when it's down. Our advice? Kick away! You love this. We know you do.

The Scariest Things writing team didn't have a consensus #1 film, but all four of the films that reached the top spot are likely to become instant classics, remembered for decades to come. If you want a sampler platter of tasty tasty horror, then listen to the FIVE top ten lists in our roundtable discussion in Podcast Episode 177: The Best Horror Movies of 2023.

Just How did a bunch of reprobates like the hosts of The Scariest Things become horror junkies? For Episode 176, we gathered to discuss our experiences watching movies to determine why we got into scary films. Gateway horror movies a plenty!