Frightening Strikes

Black Phone 2 shifts the focus away from Finn and places Gwen at the centre of the story, leaning further into the supernatural elements hinted at in the first film. The sequel explores how both siblings continue to deal with the aftermath of their ordeal while introducing a renewed threat as The Grabber returns for revenge — forcing them to confront the killer once more and revealing deeper, darker connections to their family’s past. Life After Survival The story resumes four years after the original. Finn and Gwen are older and changed by what happened to them. Finn has become a rather angry young man, clearly still struggling to process his trauma. Gwen, on the other hand, is moving into adolescence and beginning to look outward — including a growing interest in Ernesto, the brother of Robin and one of The Grabber’s victims. The siblings are as close as ever, but Finn is trapped in the prison of his trauma, unable to talk about his experiences. As Gwen tries to help him through it,...

High-Stakes Robbery and a Risky Escape The film centres on estranged siblings Joe and Sid, who reunite after years apart to pull off a high-stakes robbery. The crime is intended to clear their debts, secure a future, and provide a better life for Sid and her young daughter. With the police closing in, they flee to an isolated farmhouse that Joe has secretly prepared as a hideout. Once inside, Joe guides Sid through a precise sequence of actions involving a hidden cupboard, clocks, and a strange notebook filled with time-travel instructions. The ritual opens a time loop, shifting them into an unspecified period in the history of the house. Joe explains the rules: they must remain there for fourteen days before they can return home. Sid is uneasy and anxious about the separation from her daughter but Joe manages to reassure her and the siblings settle in to wait. The plan, however, quickly unravels. When the fourteen days pass, they are unable to return to their own time and realise they...

Bring Her Back is a dark psychological horror that peers into the abyss of grief and the dangerous lengths we might go to in order to ease it. What begins as an intense study of loss gradually morphs into something far more disturbing, unfolding with a confidence that set it apart from more formula-driven genre entries. An Unconventional Presence Andy and Piper are step-siblings reeling from the sudden death of their father at home. With Andy just three months shy of legal adulthood, the pair are placed into foster care rather than being allowed to remain together independently. Their new guardian is Laura, an experienced social worker and counsellor who initially only wants to take in the younger, visually impaired Piper. She reluctantly agrees to accept Andy as well, on the condition that he maintains good behaviour. At first, Laura appears to be an unconventional but caring presence. Her eccentricities are easy to dismiss as quirky, and her background suggests she is equipped to sup...

Good Boy begins with a quietly unsettling image: Indy, the titular good boy, watching over his owner Todd, who lies unconscious with blood trickling from his mouth. Flickering lights and static from the TV unsettle Indy, who senses that something isn’t quite right. Todd’s sister, Vera, arrives just in time to call an ambulance, but the strangeness of the moment lingers. The Foundation of the Film The film then shifts into a montage of Indy growing up alongside Todd—a warm glimpse into their bond that lays the foundation for everything that follows. It’s this connection, communicated almost entirely through behaviour rather than dialogue, that becomes the emotional core of the film. Once Todd is discharged from hospital, he insists on retreating to their late grandfather’s isolated countryside home, hoping the change of scenery will restore some sense of normality. Vera warns him against it, worried about his health and uneasy about the house, which she describes as “creepy” and possib...

Strange Harvest is a mockumentary-style found-footage film that follows a police investigation into a series of brutal murders in a San Bernardino suburb. The story is presented through interviews, recovered footage and TV news clips, beginning with the discovery of a local family killed and arranged in a manner that confounds the police and horrifies the community. As detectives look into the case, they uncover links to earlier murders carried out by an unidentified killer known as “Mr Shiny.” Mr Shiny Returns Progress is slow and the police hit a series of frustrating dead-ends, while Mr Shiny continues his reign of terror and taunts them with cryptic notes filled with obscure phrases and references to “Kaliban” and other cult-like curiosities. Interviews with two former detective partners — Lexi Taylor and Joe Kirby — help shape the film’s account of how the investigation unfolded. Their perspectives gradually introduce hints of something more ritualistic beneath the surface and su...

Before I Wake opens with a tense, unsettling scene that immediately establishes the stakes. A distraught man enters a child’s bedroom with a gun, seemingly moments away from shooting the sleeping boy, only to be interrupted at the last moment. It’s an arresting start that sets up the film’s blend of mystery and emotional unease. Rebuilding Lives We then shift to Jess and Mark, a married couple dealing with unimaginable grief after the accidental death of their young son. Hoping to rebuild their lives, they decide to foster a child. Their first placement is Cody, an eight-year-old boy whose background is patchy at best: his mother died when he was three, and both of his previous foster placements ended with the unexplained disappearance of one or both guardians. Jess attends a support group in an effort to work through her grief, while Mark prefers to manage his privately, but the couple seem united in their desire to provide Cody with stability and regain a sense of normality for all ...

After waking up in the basement of an unfamiliar apartment building, Joni begins searching for her missing sister, Emily. Along the way, various tenants warn her that she isn’t supposed to be there, and she’s pursued by a menacing, shadowy figure. Her curious arrival — and the search that follows — takes her through the building floor by floor, with each level introducing a new tenant and a new horror. As she ascends, she’s exposed to the frailties, fears, and insecurities of its inhabitants . A Wraparound Journey Tenants is a horror anthology that uses Joni’s journey as a wraparound narrative, linking seven stories about people undone by their personal demons. The segments vary in tone, mixing emotional drama, dark comedy, and supernatural elements. Among them are “Acting Rash,” in which a struggling actress’s vanity takes a grotesque turn; “Hoarder,” centred on grief and self-imprisonment; “Do You Need Something,” a twisted, funny tale of domestic irritation between roommates tha...

Part mockumentary, part found footage, and part traditional horror, Shelby Oaks follows Mia, whose sister Riley went missing twelve years earlier while investigating an alleged haunting with her vlogging team. The film opens with clips from Riley’s YouTube channel, The Paranormal Paranoids, where she and her team explore derelict locations, including the now-infamous town of Shelby Oaks. When they vanish during one of their investigations, the footage sets off a disturbing and increasingly frantic search for the truth. A Shocking Event Mia has never stopped searching for her sister, and when she’s interviewed for a new documentary on the subject, the renewed attention reignites her determination to get to the root of the mystery once and for all. After a stranger arrives at her home, a shocking incident leads to the discovery of a Shelby Oaks tape, featuring the last recordings of the Paranormal Paranoids. Mia decides to withhold this from the police (plausibly, in my view) and starts...

Directed and co-written by real-life content creator Kris Collins (KallMeKris) and co-starring her frequent collaborator Celina Myers (CelinaSpookyBoo), House on Eden follows a group of paranormal vloggers chasing the next big scare — only to find themselves in the middle of one. Mixing humour, tension, and creeping dread, the film uses its found-footage format to explore that uneasy space between performance and genuine fear. An Unexpected Detour We meet the team en route to film new content at a cemetery. Unknown to Celina and Jay, Kris has discovered a supposedly haunted house nearby and, since she’s behind the wheel, they realise too late that she’s made a detour. The property’s allure lies in its obscurity — few have heard of it, let alone visited. A quick call to real-life paranormal investigators Sam and Colby confirms that even they don’t know the place, which seals the group’s decision to explore. When they arrive, the house is immaculate yet inexplicably unlocked. They begin...

Until Dawn (2025) brings the popular horror game to the big screen, and like most game-to-film adaptations, it arrives with plenty of expectations. The story follows a group of friends trapped in a remote mountain lodge, where bad decisions and buried secrets turn deadly. It’s a mix of slasher tension and supernatural chills that tries to recreate the sense of unease and consequence that made the original game so memorable. The question is whether it succeeds — or if something gets lost in translation along the way. A Promising Setup Clover and her four friends set off on a road trip to retrace the steps of Clover’s sister, Mel, who disappeared a year earlier. Along the way, they learn of a remote area where several people have gone missing over the years, and curiosity drives them to investigate. Caught in a brutal storm, they stumble upon an abandoned house and begin to explore. Evidence suggests Mel had been there before — and it’s not long before a masked killer strikes, murdering ...

’Tis the season for horror anthologies, and this year the long-running  V/H/S  franchise grabs the blood-drenched Halloween baton with relish and and sprints screaming toward the finish line. The wrap-around story centres on the testing of a sinister new soda, “Diet Phantasma,” which quickly sets a dangerous tone before we’re plunged into a selection of Halloween-themed shorts. From haunted houses and urban legends to trick-or-treating gone horribly wrong, the anthology blends grotesque imagery, gallows humour, and a particularly disturbing entry involving disappearing children.  Tape by Tape “Coochie Coochie Coo” follows two high-school girls who go trick-or-treating one last time and experience increasingly bizarre and grotesque horrors when lured into a house by a local urban-legend figure. “Ut Supra Sic Infra” delivers a Spanish take steeped in Iberian horror atmosphere, centring on the sole survivor of a massacre at a Halloween party in an abandoned mansion...

Trick ’r Treat is a 2007 Halloween horror anthology that interlinks four ghoulish tales, each carrying the same moral at its heart: never disrespect the rules of Halloween . Didn’t know there were any? You will by the time the credits roll. On Halloween night, young couple Emma and Henry return home from the festivities. Emma, clearly not a fan of the season, can’t wait to pack it all away. Ignoring her husband’s half-hearted warning, she extinguishes the jack-o’-lantern and starts dismantling their decorations. Unbeknownst to them, someone—or something—is watching. Emma soon learns that cutting Halloween short comes with dire consequences. The Warren Valley Carnival The action then switches to earlier that evening, during the Warren Valley Halloween carnival, following the town’s residents as their stories intertwine. There’s the local school principal whose lesson in gluttony takes a nasty, darkly comic turn; a surly neighbour whose disdain for Halloween doesn’t go unpunished...

Night of the Reaper is an ’80s-style slasher from director Brandon Christensen that pays homage to the horror staples of that decade, lovingly recreating the era’s look and feel. The retro-styled opening titles only heighten the anticipation but does it work? The Unsolved Murder The film opens in familiar territory: Emily Golding, a babysitter on Halloween night, is alone in the house, being increasingly threatened by an unseen intruder. At first, she assumes it’s the kids playing around, until the tension goes through the gears and the game turns deadly. It's an eerie, unsettling opener that delivers genuine menace. A few years later, Emily's murder remains unsolved, casting a pall over the town. The house where the killing occurred stands empty and unsellable. Rodney Arnold is the local sheriff who is still grieving the loss of his wife in a car crash and struggling to raise his young son, Max — consumed by guilt and obsession with finding the killer. Deena Comes Home Enter...

Having seen no small measure of praise for Personal Shopper, I went in not sure what to expect in the way of a relationship between haute couture and the afterlife. In any event, I was expecting more than I found - there's slow burn with simmering tension and then there's just slow - and this was the latter. An American in Paris We meet Maureen (Kristen Stewart), a young American living in Paris and working as a personal shopper for Kyra, a demanding supermodel, in a job she clearly hates. She’s grieving for her twin brother, Lewis and her boyfriend is away in Oman, leaving her in sorrowful isolation. Maureen is also a psychic medium who visits her childhood home in the hope of contacting Lewis and fulfilling the pledge they made to each other - that when one dies, they will try to contact the other from beyond. This mission doubles as a job: she’s tasked with determining if the house has a “presence” by the potential buyers, though the rationale for why she was asked to undert...

The Monkey sets out its stall early with a memorable opening. Petey Shelburn is desperate to offload a strange clockwork monkey in a junk shop, realising too late that this isn’t the harmless toy he thought it was. His attempt to be rid of it ends badly, establishing both the power and intent of the monkey right from the outset. A Turn of The Key Fast forward a few years and Petey is now absent from the lives of his twin sons, Hal and Bill. Trying to gain some sense of the man he was, the boys rummage through their father’s belongings and stumble upon the sinister wind-up monkey. In spite of cryptic warnings on the box, natural curiosity gets the better of them, and with a single turn of the key they soon discover that outlandish death follows after the monkey plays its drum. Having unleashed a chain of calamitous events, the twins band together and attempt to prevent further destruction but find that the monkey won't be sidelined that easily. The film is narrated by Hal, whose ...

The Woman in the Yard  is a psychological horror film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra ( House of Wax, Orphan ) that explores grief, guilt, and PTSD in the wake of sudden loss, reminding us that the deepest horror often lies within. Ramona is left physically and emotionally shattered after a car accident that killed her husband. The couple had recently started a new life on a farm, but now she’s alone - trying to care for her two children, 13-year-old Taylor and six-year-old Annie, while struggling to keep the household running. From the opening scenes, Ramona’s grief is palpable. She spends her mornings unable to get out of bed, while Taylor scrapes together breakfast for the family and their dog, Charlie. Bills pile up, the power fails, and Ramona’s injuries make even walking a challenge. The children do their best to pull her out of this spiral of despair, though the effort is a strain on them all. The Woman Arrives One morning, their routine is broken when Taylor spots a mysterio...

The Presence is a supernatural horror film that flips the haunted house genre on its head by telling the story from the ghost’s perspective. Shot in a style that flirts with found-footage , without the unruly camera-work, the film invites viewers into the world of the Payne family - up close, uncomfortable, and increasingly eerie. Simmering Tensions The Paynes have just moved into a new house, hopeful for a fresh start. But simmering tensions soon bubble to the surface. Rebecca, the driven matriarch and a high-powered legal professional, is facing undisclosed legal trouble. She seems closest to her golden-boy son Tyler, a cocky high school athlete, while her relationship with her daughter Chloe is more strained. Chloe, still grieving the mysterious death of her best friend Nadia, is fragile and isolated - further alienated by her brother’s bullying and her mother’s emotional distance. Meanwhile, Chris, the father, tries to both support the family and contain its worst excesses, juggl...