Recent Reviews: Horror Movies and Documentaries 2025
That's all I have been watching this year. Okay, I admit it, that's all I usually watch. Horror and true, almost always dark, stories of human behavior. Gloomy input for my Emily the Strange sensibilities. One of the several reasons I obtained psychology and counseling degrees, and post-graduate work in forensic anthropology and sex crimes.
The technical term is I am an odd duck. But that's probably why you like me.
So here's some of the dank titles that I have watched and reviewed this calendar year so far, sharing on my birthday.
January 5, The Deeper You Dig, horror movie by The Adams Family
I am now obsessed with The Adams Family's films. The creativity behind this is astounding--overexposure, underexposure, completely dark and completely bright backgrounds used to amazing effect. It has its own gorgeous and haunting color scheme. It looks like nothing else, and feels like Twin Peaks in that you'd swear you've had this nightmare.
January 10: Aaron Hernandez and the Untold Murders of Bristol, true crime/psychology documentary--CTE and violence
We need to teach our boys and young men how to say This hurts physically. This hurts emotionally. I need assistance. I can’t continue doing x right now. and give them the space and tools for that to happen.
January 11: Jeruzalem: found footage horror movie
Personally, I feel an opportunity was lost to call it Day of Atonement…
January 13: Swallow: horror drama/domestic horror movie
I have no idea how I feel about this movie, given the jarring tonal shift of the over-credits music and scene. I was feeling seen and heard as a masking autistic, as someone with past trauma, as someone with a former eating disorder…and then its feminist fists flung in the air, and everything's pink, with buoyant music, you can’t touch us in the ladies’ room!
Excuse my eloquence, but
Da fuck.
January 14: Vernon, Florida: slice of (the darker side of life) documentary
I needed more of this.
Christopher Guest definitely was inspired by this. I expected the turkey hunter to start naming nuts at any moment.
January 15: King on Screen: documentary about Stephen King novels that have been filmed
Not a single woman interviewed. Not even Mary Lambert. Nor Kathy Bates. Not one.
January 17: Hell Hole: another horror movie by the Adams family
“Life perpetuates itself. It creates intricate wanderers and brutal things.”
January 19: Sissy: horror movie
I am loved.
I am enough.
I am doing my best.
We all are.
Words have power; be careful who you say them to.
Dopamine addiction is dangerous.
Masking can be dangerous (I see what you did there).
I am not the main character in life.
My being soothed is not the most important thing at any moment.
Balloon letters are a waste of money.
Fake friends really are extremely hurtful.
Adults’ wearing BFF jewelry is a 🚩.
Love you all! ♥️💖💕❤️
January 19: True Crime Story: Look Into My Eyes: documentary about an abusive high school principal--not for everyone, involves humilation and control
⚠️This review may contain spoilers.⚠️
A must watch.
Note how and when George Kenny shows emotion, and for whom (hint: only himself).
A truly eerie moment occurs near the end, where Kenny gives a speech about the first child that died, a speech with “sound and fury, signifying nothing”. The documentarians show that at the time of the teen’s death, and years later, he said the same load of nothing word for word and with the same inflection at least three times.
I do not have children, but watching this footage, I had this instinctive Momma Bear “Get your hands off my child!” response over and over. I am so angry.
Another frightening moment:
note when one subject thinks the hypnosis is over, and Kenny puts him back under. That’s lack of consent.
I really appreciated the point where the producers let Kenny show his narcissism by asking him what he is doing in his life now, and just letting him talk. And talk. And talk. He couldn’t help but brag about his full pension and all the fabulous things he thinks he is doing, and have them get footage of his driving around in his classic car, and on and on.
January 19: The Disappearance of Shere Hite: documentary
I am deeply moved, thinking about how many Sheres we have crushed and silenced before they ever even had a chance, thinking about how much we value conformity because we fear difference so very much.
The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality by Shere Hite
The Hite Report on the Family: Growing Up Under Patriarchy by Shere Hite
The Shere Hite Reader: New and Selected Writings on Sex, Globalism, and Private Life
February 7: The Substance: body horror movie
Jules from St. Elmo’s Fire did not end up in therapy.
Seriously, as someone who became disabled and whose body continues to deteriorate, this hits different. I’ve had that very feeling of my own body being foreign to me.
Excellent visual callbacks to Stephen King, both The Shining and Carrie. The spatial issues—impossibly long hallways and roads, impossibly large rooms—were unsettling and off putting in the best way and added to the horror.
February 8: Goodnight, Sugar Babe: The Killing of Vera Jo Reigle: true crime documentary
⚠️This review may contain spoilers.⚠️
Pay attention to how many people had first-hand knowledge. How many people interviewed were actually witnesses to horrific abuse, to the night of the murder, to the conspiracy of the murder, to the rapes, to all of it. If you watch this while playing on your phone, it may pass you by as a low-rent episode of Dateline. But if you pay attention, you’ll realize everyone is an eyewitness. An eyewitness that sounds all appalled but in reality either colluded through action or through inaction. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it, and it’s terrifying. It’s everyone, including that little old lady and that girl that looks like she wasn’t out of eighth grade yet. Everyone.
Does Vera Jo deserve a higher budget production? Yes. But something about this made-on-an-early-Mac doc feels appropriate for these folks, who talk about incestual breeding and murder as if either is just something you do. The lower quality illustrates how deeply Vera Jo was let down, how trapped she felt, how she never had a chance. Even the folks in the Salvation Army soup kitchen across the street noticed her injuries and did nothing. She was deep in a hole and she knew it. A found footage feel, so to speak, is just right. A glossy, Hollywood approach to her story would almost feel disrespectful once you see those haunted and haunting photographs of her.
February 12: Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris: documentary
Amateur music and narration; such a waste for such a genius—and so short! The camera should have just been turned on Baldwin. Coded racism from the interviewer, referring several times in as many minutes to Baldwin’s disagreeing with him as hostility.
Still giving it five stars because it’s footage of James Baldwin being brilliant, and smiling that smile, and because he said this:
I’ve had a hard life. But my dear, no really, I know it sounds a terrible thing to say—
I would not be a white American for all the tea in China, for all the oil in Texas. I really wouldn’t like to have to live with all those lies.
This is what is irreducible and awful, you the English, you the French, you the West, you the Christians—you can’t help but feel that there is something you can do for me, that you can save me. And you don’t get “no”. That I have endured your salvation so long I can’t afford it any more. Not another moment of your salvation.
And that I, I, I can save you. I know something about you, and you know nothing about me.
And that is where it really is. It is almost a division of…how can I put it?…a division of labor. He can do some things that you can’t do. You can do some things that he can’t do. I can do some things that neither of you can do. I know I can’t drive a truck, and I can’t run a bank. And I can’t count. And I can’t lead a movement. But I can fuck up your mind.
It’s Black History Month. No one is erasing that. And that is where it really is. May I suggest The Fire Next Time or Giovanni’s Room, two of my favorites?
The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs
Click here to get 30 days of Mubi free and watch this short yourself, just to see him on film.
February 12: Knives and Skin: see review
I expected something dark and spooky.
What I got was an 80’s jukebox musical.
February 14: A Quiet Place: Day One: horror movie
Incredible exploration of grief (nothing does it better than the genre of horror), arguably through the lens of 9/11. You can’t look at these wandering, dazed, frightened faces and the falling ash and not remember that day, that time.
The only person who could remake Guilietta Masina’s La Strada would be Lupita Nyong’o. I could watch her endlessly expressive face for hours. She could make me cry just by looking at me.
⚠️ Minor spoiler wrt an animal to ease your mind:
You might worry about the presence of a cat. Don’t.
Let me know what you have been enjoying. If you are on Letterboxd, please feel free to follow me. I maintain a list there of every movie I've mentioned on the podcast. If you haven't noticed by now, I love lists.
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