Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

      The internet has a habit, usually useful, of reminding me of birthdays and anniversaries, which is usually my mom or my sister’s job, but they don’t care about the birthdays of movie stars or the anniversaries of film releases. Today, I saw that the soundtrack to BATMAN…

    There’s something you don’t know about me… For almost as long as I’ve been writing at Daily Grindhouse, I have been working on something very special. It’s not entirely unique, but it is as comprehensive an accounting on a subject as I’ve personally ever seen anyone do in…

  by Jon Abrams     Certain chords always work on me. There’s said to be a science behind it, but damned if I can understand exactly how it works. My sister was a music major in school. She says what I respond to is a type of chord progression…

The rumor mill of living in a small town is nightmarish at the best of times. Everyone knows everyone else, and they all think they know everything there is to know. Secrets aren’t safe in an environment like this—not because they’ll be found out, but because they can be twisted…

Fame is an intoxicating, fickle façade. The one thing most people seem to long for until they have it. By the time you realize it’s a virtually no-win situation where every move you make is scrutinized and controlled, the beast you’ve so ardently hungered for has already eaten you whole….

Film festival season is one of my favorite times of year. They’re always a perfect capsule to showcase some of the best talent of the moment, and some of film’s most unique and diverse voices. 2026’s Panic Film Festival delivers on both fronts in spades. One standout example is writer-director…

  Video game adaptations seem like they’d be easy pickings for film, right? All the elements are there, after all, and even a more or less straightforward copy is destined for success when done right, even more so than an adaptation of a written work. Indeed, the aughts trend of…

  A young transgender woman flees her small town for a life in the big city in search of acceptance and opportunity. While she may find these things, she also discovers a fear of a hidden part of herself, and a monster born out of the insecurities shared between her…

    Welcome back to Daily Grindhouse’s mostly-annual feature where we celebrate lots of stuff that goes overlooked by the normal-people Oscars. We like a lot of the same things they do, but we also like a whole lot of stuff that go unmentioned over there. You’ll see us mentioning…

    Well guys, I’ve been working on this since before 2026 started. As you’ll see, a few of these movies already came and went. Like say… two months’ worth. I left them in because I either recommend them to you or still hope to see them for myself. Several…

    When SCREAM established itself as the old guard with 2011’s fourth entry, the series effectively inverted its position in the slasher pantheon: no longer the young kid on the block with its knives out for the genre’s sacred cows, it instead took a stab at the spate of…

      Please note: this review contains some spoilers.   I have long been a proponent of bringing the horror genre to the theatre, so when I heard that the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise was being adapted into a new story for the stage, I jumped on the chance to…

      For the final Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, there were several legacy screenings of some of the most important and influential films to come out of the festival over its tenure. One of these films was the 2004 indie-horror masterwork, SAW. Before the screening, I…

          “SEND HELP.” Okay, but who’s asking? There are really only two characters in this movie. Could both of them be asking for help? Or is it only one of them? And is it the one we’re expecting it to be? This is mainstream Hollywood filmmaking,…

    God only knows what I’d be without you. That’s a line from a song cowritten by one of the very many talented people we lost in 2025. It’s also something I could say to the very many people I lost in 2025. God only knows what I’d be…

      Rob Reiner was the son of a legendary and legendarily beloved comedian, which was very good luck, but he quickly earned his own credits, first as a deft comic actor who starred on one of the greatest American TV series of all time, and then, even more…

    I was lucky enough to see Zach Cregger’s WEAPONS in the third row of a sold-out room, elbow to elbow with the most random group of people imaginable all buzzing with excitement over one of the most anticipated movies of the year… on a Wednesday. Such is the…

    I took on the mammoth task of compiling the 500 Best Horror Movies of All Time. During the summer, The New York Times posted its list of 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century – and caused quite a kerfuffle. Countless critics, writers, and general film fans, myself…

“A home invasion occurs every 30 seconds in America.” So opens Mickey Keating’s latest, which just landed on Shudder this month. Keating has proven to be one of my favorite creators working in horror over the last several years, thanks in no small part to his twisting narratives that often…

    On February 13th, 2009, I left my local multiplex mostly satisfied with Platinum Dunes’s rendition of FRIDAY THE 13th. I had some qualms with the forgettable score (this series just hits different without Harry Manfredini’s iconic themes and motifs), but it was an otherwise strong effort that did…

    Under the family’s dining room table are three buckets of blood labelled like measuring cups: “Going. Going. Gone.” A cryptic triangle marked by three distinct points has been painted in blood on the ceiling above them. I didn’t realize how badly STRANGE HARVEST had shaken me until I…

  A bloody and dirty homage to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE HILLS HAVE EYES was all the information I needed on BRUTE 1976 to instantly add it to my watchlist. The original TCM is a personal favorite of mine, and I’m even one of the rare few who enjoys the Netflix…

    Note: There are spoilers for the film below   I haven’t stopped thinking about Stephen Dunn’s CLOSET MONSTER since I first saw it last summer. The elemental body horror, which turns 10 this year, bills itself as a drama/fantasy/mystery, but those genre labels do it a disservice for…

          I need to set the stage by talking about two recent Westerns. Ari Aster’s EDDINGTON is a film about the lack of sense the filmmaker could make of the United States’ response to the relentless horror of 2020. Like all Westerns, it’s about the collapse…