This was the easiest list to make. These are the images and jump-scares I think of first thing each night at two or three in the morning when I wake up. Take last night for example: I’m gonesville when I hear something crash downstairs. Or, I hear the end of it. So of course I have to investigate. By degrees. And, instead of anything understandable, what it is that fell is this skeleton hand we keep perched on an antique typewriter. Why it would fall at three in the morning, I hav…

When Katie from Paranormal Activity moves in across the street, it’s a pretty sure bet things are going to get demon-y, and fast. And, we’ve seen the other three, so we know all the rules:

• demons love to move furniture
• adults never notice anything
• there’s always some reason to have a camera rolling 24/7
• something in the background will move, if you watch long enough
• witches aren’t scary.

What this fourth installment adds is:

• nobody closes laptops
• a c

We all live in Stephen King’s house. I mean, all of us who hope to write the scary stuff. Case in point: Sinister. Is there any way to move a writer into a new house and not conjure Jack Torrance? And, going back a touch farther—as King, I assume (going by Danse Macabre) would do himself—what’s Jack Torrance if not a more dangerous Eleanor, from The Haunting of Hill House? I mean, what you’ve got is somebody made vulnerable by their character flaws and/or past, and you’re plugging th…

Life in a slasher film is easy. You just have to know when to die.

Aerial View: A suburban town in Texas. Everyone’s got an automatic garage door opener. All the kids jump off a perilous cliff into a shallow river as a rite of passage. The sheriff is a local celebrity. You know this town. You’re from this town.

Zoom In: Homecoming princess, Lindsay. She’s just barely escaped death at the hands of a brutal, sadistic murderer in a Michael Jackson mask. Up on the cliff, she …

Some movies give me hope. Just, generally. I mean, that you can still mix a movie up from just fast, bad cars and a bunch of happy-go-lucky characters who can’t really ever die. But maybe I should preface this by saying I’m  much more of a Cannonball Run/Smokey and the Bandit/Deathproof kind of fan than I am of all the Fast and the Furiouses. Just because those cute little cars in F&tF, I’m sure they’re fast and somehow desirable, but they’re just not bad. Want to know one …

I’ve usually got my tongue di-rectly on the pulse of anything slasher, but somehow — two months of book tour? — Detention slipped past. In April, yes, when Growing Up Dead in Texas was just advance copies. And just a couple of days ago I was having a big talk with a good friend about slashers that are probing the edges of the genre, feeling out the limits, poking the necessary fun: Cabin Fever, Leslie Vernon, Tucker & Dale, Scream, Severance. The Killage. T…

Man, I know: last week I hit Prometheus, and just did a status update somewhere saying it was decent, it was cool, and now here I am with a non-review of a movie fourteen years old already. Still. This one I want to talk about it for a short bit: 1998. Dan Rosen’s Dead Man’s Curve (on Netflix Instant as The Curve). This is two years after Scream changed the horror scene once and forever. One year after Scream 2 made the sequel legit again. One year after I Know What You Did L…

My review of Cabin in the Woods is up at LitReactor: “How to Tell a True Horror Story.” Was lucky enough to catch an early screening last week, with Drew Goddard and Amy Acker there to talk, after. T-shirt, poster, all pretty cool. But the movie’s the real. Haven’t been this excited for a horror movie since Feast, I don’t think. Or All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, whichever of those two came last. Soon as this one’s on DVD, though, it’s go…

I really really want to review it, but . . . anybody noticed that I only tend to do write-ups for books that are either problematic (or offensive to my delicate sensibilities) or that I can use a step to get up on my soapbox? And King’s 11/22/63, it’s just a solid, well-told, strongly-written book. And, if we’re to believe the sign-off at the end, a book written in, what, six weeks? I mean, I’m usually not intimidated by how fast somebody else can kick a boo…

or, ‘Five Horror (Movie) Anthologies,’ but that doesn’t look so cool as a title. nor does ‘Five Horror-Antho Movies.’ really, I couldn’t find anything properly cool. and I’m far from the first dude to make a list like this — though I might be the first to limit it to just five? — and mine’s not nearly so wonderful and exhaustive as some, but still and anyway, here’s five I happen to especially dig:

Scream