It was a valiant effort from Mark Tonderai, but ultimately fell short (Image courtesy of impawards.com) Mark Tonderai's one of those directors that flies under the radar with lukewarm shows and colder movies (aside from Twelve Monkeys). Generally emerging once every few years with a studio-backed movie, Tonderai manages to just barely keep his head above the water with many of his projects. Add Spell to his wiki list of movies that fail to deliver and you've got a spiderweb-lined cupboard full of disappointment.  Spell is about Marquis, a prominent lawyer in the big city that flies his family to Kansas for the wake of his late father. While traveling there, their plane is caught in a thunderstorm and crashes. When he wakes up, he's in the home of a family of black hillbillies that practice hoodoo (voodoo is the religion, hoodoo is the magic). Unbeknownst to him, they're keeping him there for nefarious reasons to benefit themselves.  Spell is just a jumble of confusion...

  Too short for a riveting movie, too fast-paced for a television series. So where does that leave it? (Image courtesy of imdb.com) As fans of comics and horror, when Marvel announced that its latest movie, "The New Mutants", would be a horror genre, we couldn't quite believe it. A live-action Marvel comic adaptation AND a horror movie to boot? It sounded too good to be true... and so it was.  Waiting for The New Mutants to be released was like completing a five thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle that was missing a few pieces. It was disappointing, aggravating, annoying and honestly, tiring.  We were excited at first, but as the jigsaw puzzle slowly proved to be too tedious to complete, paired with the missing pieces, we just lost all interest in it altogether. Finally, when the manufacturers mailed the missing pieces and we were finally able to complete it, the full image it produced didn't exactly fit the picture on the box, resulting in buckets of disappointment.  For u...

  The Wolf of Snow Hollow merely donned the mantle of a horror movie, but in actuality, strayed disappointingly far from it. (Image courtesy of irishfilmcritic.com) We've been waiting a very long time for an honest-to-god werewolf flick. Long have we been served with plates upon plates of gourmet deception from various television shows like Bitten, Hemlock Grove, The Order and The Originals where their version of werewolves were either in the form of trained dogs or real life wolves with disappointing transformation sequences to boot. When The Wolf of Snow Hollow was announced and marketing released stills of their version of the monster, we were honestly excited. That is, until we sat through the entire movie.  The Wolf of Snow Hollow is directed by Jim Cummings, who also stars as the lead actor in this movie. Labeled a comedy horror, The Wolf of Snow Hollow tells the story of Officer John Marshall, a sheriff's deputy in the small town of Snow Hollow, Utah, who is a recoverin...

  (Image courtesy of heavenofhorror.com) In the current age of technology, there have been a lot of horror movies in recent years that bank on the premise of tech addiction like Unfriended and Truth or Dare. Come Play is one of them. However, where others have succeeded, Come Play falls slightly short of a cautionary tale and more of a comedic footnote in the fight to educate us on the dangers of screen addiction. Come Play is directed by Jacob Chase and stars Gillian Jacobs (Community), John Gallagher Jr. (The Newsroom) and Azhy Robertson (Marriage Story) and tells the story of an autistic child played by Robertson who is targeted by a demonic presence through the screens of digital devices.  The demon introduces itself to Robertson's character, Oliver, via a storybook app on his phone. Calling itself "Larry", the demon persuades Oliver that it wants to befriend the child, in an attempt to open a portal to its world and pull Oliver through it.  (Image courtesy of indiewi...

  (Image courtesy of heavenofhorror.com) Asian Does Horror has always been intrigued and mystified by Middle Eastern horror content. Our most recent foray into such was via the tv series Jinn, a story about a group of private school students in Amman who join a school trip to Petra and wind up unwittingly summoning a demon. It was modern, evenly paced, cleverly written and it made us hungry for more supernatural content from the region.   Enter Paranormal, a television series that muddies the waters between religious belief and regional culture. It's based off of Ahmed Khaled Tawfik's " Ma Waraa Al Tabiaa"  series of books .  Paranormal tells the story of Refaat (Ahmad Amin), an Egyptian doctor that quit his career in medicine to teach medical students at the local university in Cairo. Refaat is a pessimistic man that has given up on life and on top of that, he's a strong sceptic. However, despite being a sceptic, Refaat is constantly haunted by visions of a you...

  Up-and-coming director Thomas Robert Lee sets high expectations for future projects (image courtesy of youtube.com) The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw, or its original title, The Ballad of Audrey Earnshaw, is Thomas Robert Lee's second movie. The Canadian both wrote and directed this artistic pleasure and has fundamentally set the bar high for his career moving forward in the film industry. His first proper foray into movie-making comes in the form of Empyrean, an independently financed, black and white, science fiction drama about a man waking up from a near-death experience who experiences strange happenings resulting from that awakening.  Asian Does Horror rarely gives an extended profile of a movie's director, but we were impressed by the storyline, production quality and art direction for The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw.  (Image courtesy of nerdist.com) The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw opens up with a short introduction of the events following the movie. " In 1873, a group of f...

  Takut ke Tak fails to command our attention even before the half hour mark (Image courtesy of Finas) Watching Takut ke Tak is like a slow and painful spiral into boredom. It's a winding descent into mind-numbing disinterest, bordering on thoughts of a quick and painless death. Takut ke Tak fails to entertain, humor or even capture our attention long enough to be even considered a movie, much less a good movie. Takut ke Tak was to us, a mindless, droning educational documentary on what not to do when making a film, writing a script, editing scenes or even setting foot onto a set. Our mind was so bored with the pace, plot, scenes, acting and music that it sought to entertain itself by providing a running commentary throughout the hour and twenty minutes.  Before the end of the movie, we prayed for death. A quick, easy, no-frills death, just so we could pry our eyes away from the monstrosity that was greenlit and funded and made into a movie.  We begged to be released from...

  "Who's house?" "Run's house!" (Image courtesy of Netflix.com) Asian Does Horror has been eagerly waiting for His House to drop on Netflix and we can honestly say that it's not a disappointment and we completely enjoyed watching this.  His House revolves around Bol and Rial Majur, a Dinka husband and wife refugee couple fleeing war-torn South Sudan seeking asylum in Britain. Detained in London, they were fortunate enough to be given asylum status by the government along with 74 British pounds a week and accommodations. As Bol and Rial start settling into their government provided home, the couple starts to experience supernatural phenomena within the house itself.  The flow of the movie is extremely satisfying. It's slow when necessary and fast paced when needed, but the director, producer and post-production did a terrific job controlling the pace of the movie.  The movie doesn't waste time perpetuating the existence of the supernatural in the ...

  (Image courtesy of The Sun Daily) Charmed is an American supernatural fantasy drama series starring Alyssa Milano, Holly Marie Combs and Shannon Doherty... oh, wait, we're NOT reviewing Charmed? Hmm... for the life of me, I thought I just watched Charmed, the 1998 series about the Halliwell sisters, who happen to be witches and who fight warlocks. Mercy me.    The Craft: Legacy was an absolute poor attempt to honor the 1996 original movie. Even if they did want to make something completely different, they shouldn't have wasted money on buying the rights and just create something original in the first place.  There were only two scenes that paid homage to the original movie; the four corners and Fairuza Balk. Other than that, it was completely different and not in a good way.  The Craft: Legacy starts off with three teenage girls in a summoning circle performing a spell. They recite a version of the "Invocation of the Spirit", but without a fourth corner, it fa...

  (Image courtesy of VideoTapeNews) For a well produced, well directed, well acted movie, it was too good to be true as Evil Eye stumbled, face planted and lay spread eagle just inches away from the finish line to be considered a horror movie at all.  We were highly disappointed with the reveal at the end as it showcased no reason for it to be called a horror movie and was just a well imagined thriller.  Evil Eye is directed by Elan and Rajeev Dassani and executive produced by Jason Blum and Priyanka Chopra Jonas.  It tells the story of Pallavi, played by Sunita Mani (GLOW), an Indian girl pressured to get married by her controlling mother, Usha, played by Sarita Choudhury (The Hunger Games). When Pallavi eventually meets the man of her dreams, her mother has reservations about this man's background, agenda and identity.  The production value of the movie is good. It was shot well, the cut scenes were nice, the location scouts did a good job and the acting was s...

  The eighth installment of the Tremors franchise (Image courtesy of Amazon.com) We've been fans of the Tremors franchise since the first movie in 1990 starring Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward and we've been following it ever since, yes, even the series. However, Tremors: Shrieker Island just feels like they've finally beat that horse to a pulp.  There was so much potential for the graboids franchise, with the introduction of new creatures, plots and characters, but this movie just feels like they played it safe while at the same time tried to introduce something new which were two totally conflicting strategies (in our opinion).  Tremors: Shrieker Island tells the story of two groups of people on two separate islands somewhere in Thailand. One is a biotech magnate running a trophy hunting business for the rich while the other is a wildlife conservation group researching the local fauna.  I'm not sure, because it wasn't explained properly in the movie, but I think the wil...

  (Image courtesy of digitalspy.com) Do you believe that there's a biasness when you watch a movie that's directed or produced by some of your favorite names in movies? We do.  The Witches is a 2020 remake of the 1990 movie with the same name adapted from the children's book written by Roald Dahl. This remake stars Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Octavia Spencer, Jahzir Kadeem Bruno and features voices by Chris Rock and Kristin Chenoweth.  It tells the story of an orphaned boy played by Jahzir Kadeem Bruno who has been sent to live with his grandmother (Octavia Spencer). One day at a grocery store, he's offered candy by a witch. He later regales the incident to his grandmother who opens up about her own encounter with a witch when she was a little girl. They then pack their bags and stay the night at a hotel in the city where they happen to have booked their stay at the same time the convention of witches was holding their annual meeting at the hotel.  We enjoyed the o...

  Clancy Brown being amazing (Image courtesy of imdb.com) The Mortuary Collection states that it was released in 2019, but Asian Does Horror was only able to view it this year.  The Mortuary Collection is an anthology of short horror stories thrown in between a larger storyline. Directed by Ryan Spindell, the main arc tells the story of Sam ( Caitlin Custer ) who comes to Raven's End Mortuary looking for a job. There, she meets Montgomery Dark ( Clancy Brown) who begins the interview process and brings her on a tour of the mortuary. While there, Sam takes the opportunity to ask Montgomery what chilling stories he's gathered over the years of being a mortician. With each tale told, Sam is dissatisfied with the delivery, the plot twists and the narration of each story and offers her own. This is where the plot thickens and the main storyline of The Mortuary Collection unfolds.  We love how this movie begins. The color palate is dark and pastel, giving off the feel that it's...

  A guy risking his life to get laid (Image courtesy of Wikipedia) We believe monster movies are the stepchildren of the horror sub-genres. Monster movies are frequently overshadowed by their easier-to-deliver, surefire success sub-genre siblings like haunted houses, possessions and even their special needs cousin, the found footage. Monster movies are easily overlooked, glossed over and rarely given much love. However, like all stepchildren, they have a desire to be given the attention they deserve.  Love and Monsters is one such movie.  Love and Monsters is the story of Joel (Dylan O'Brien) who lives in a post apocalyptic version of our world currently inhabited by mutated animals. How did these mutated animals come to be, you ask? Well, an asteroid was plummeting towards the earth and our governments banded together to nuke it. Radiation from the nuclear debris then spilled back down to earth affecting mostly insects, amphibians, crustaceans and reptiles, causing them ...