Oops! All Horror - Day 21 - Ravenous (1996)

  Content warning: blood, cannibalism, some gore, animal death (horses)

Captain Boyd (Guy Pearce) is a reluctant Spanish-American war hero who is exiled to Fort Spencer, California, a decrepit bastion holding one of the Sierra Nevada passes.  On a snowy night, a stranger stumbles into the fort bearing a tale of desperation.  Father Calqhoun (Robert Carlyle) was traveling with a wagon train when they were led astray and forced to winter in a cave.  Hunger beset them and they turned to murder and cannibalism.  Colqhoun tearfully recounts his flight, certain that he would have been the next victim.  The fort commander, Colonel Hart (Jeffrey Jones), immediately puts together a rescue party but the local guide, George (Joshua Running Fox), warns Boyd of the legend of the Wendigo, a man with an insatiable desire for human flesh.

This is one of those movies that is just so fun to watch it makes up for any flaws.  Pearce and Carlyle have incredible chemistry together, although Carlyle alone could carry this movie.  The soundtrack is so bouncy and jovial, you'll forget you're watching people flee for their lives.  If the tone doesn't work for you, I get it.  I love horror comedies and it's by far the funniest cannibalism movie I've ever seen.  The folklore elements are pretty spot-on and it actually casts Native actors in Native roles, which is better than a lot of its 90s peers.  

I saw this a long time ago, about a year after it premiered, and I've kept my copy ever since then.  It's absolutely worth the money, but if you just want to stream it, it's also available on Amazon Prime.

Oops! All Horror - Day 20 - Stranger Things season 5 (2025)

  Content warning:  blood, child endangerment, some gore, eldritch monstrosities, mangled limbs

The town of Hawkins, Indiana is under martial law, quarantined after the confrontation with Vecna/Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower) split the town into four sections.  A resistance network has formed, with Hopper (David Harbour) and the boys leading crawls into the tunnel network under the town, connecting with the Upside Down in an attempt to locate Henry, while Eleven/Jane (Millie Bobby Brown) trains her psychic powers for a final confrontation.

We are ending a lot of things this year.  I didn't get into the fandom around this show but I enjoyed it for what it was.  I know the finale got a lot of flack from people but I think any ending is going to be divisive.  It went pretty much the way I expected.  A two-hour run time is crazy, though.  

There are probably easier ways to get kids to play Dungeons & Dragons, but it's streaming on Netflix.

Oops! All Horror - Day 19 - Buffet Infinity (2026)

  Content Warning:  mild gore

Buffet Infinity has opened in the town of Westbridge, Alberta, Canada.  It's got everything.  Just ignore the sinkhole out back.  And the weird, pervasive noise.  And the lack of staff.  And the constant expansion.  

The entire movie is a series of local commercials and news alerts that somehow tells a coherent narrative.  It's possibly the most original film I've ever seen and certainly the most original this year.  And I feel like it'll come and go and no one will have ever heard of this outside film festivals and gorehounds like me.  It is 100% not for everyone.  If someone channel-surfing sets your teeth on edge, for example.  If you've never been up late and flipped through all the infomercials in a kind of mindless haze, best to skip this.  But if you have a weird nostalgia for the shitty used cars ads that were kind of like mini-serials, or the box collections of CDs for people you've never heard on a radio, please watch this.  Please reward this kind of ingenuity.  I promise you it's worth it.

It's streaming on Shudder/AMC+.  It's got the sauce.

Oops! All Horror - Day 18 - I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

  Content warning:  dead animal (sheep), passive racism, suicide (drowning)

Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is a young Canadian nurse who accepts a position in the West Indies to care for the wife of a sugar plantation owner.  Jessica (Christine Gordon) had a severe fever that left her mind impaired.  She can eat and walk unaided, and follow simple commands, but cannot talk or have any real agency.  Betsy finds herself drawn to Paul (Tom Conway), Jessica's sullen husband but is warned off by his half-brother, Wesley (James Ellison), who claims Paul drove Jessica mad before her illness.  Desperate to restore Jessica's mind, Betsy turns to a houngan, a Vodou priest, for a cure.

Why, yes, it is a more racist Jane Eyre.  Apparently by design.  It was based on a magazine article about Haitian plantation workers' drug use destroying their minds but obviously, that wasn't sexy enough for RKO.  Creative liberties aside, the movie is beautifully shot.  It is also edited down to the bones, clocking in at a speedy 68 minutes.

Gordon is a vacant-eyed doll but dressed impeccably.  Even her voodoo doll looked great.  The men kind of suck but I typically don't care about men's fashion.  Women looked great though.  Conway is the only one in the cast with an English accent which I would probably not have cared about if the movie hadn't tried to explain it as "uh, he and his brother went to different boarding schools."  

If you're looking for vibes without gore or jump scares, here's one for you but you're going to have to whip out the VPN or pay real money to rent or buy.  

Oops! All Horror - Day 17 - Misery (1990)

  Content warning:  some blood, mild body horror

Novelist Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is excited to start a new era.  He has finally killed off his previous bestselling character, Misery Chastain, and is starting a brand new series.  He is on his way to deliver his manuscript to his editor (Lauren Bacall) when his car goes off the road during a blizzard.  Fortunately, Paul is rescued by a nurse, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), who just so happens to be a fan.  His number one fan, you could say.  As Paul begins to recover, Annie gets more demanding, more controlling.  The only way to pacify her is to write a new Misery Chastain novel.

There's something being said in the film about the parasocial demands of fandom that feels very prescient, given the well-publicized outcries about popular media, like the series finale of Stranger Things or the recent-ish Disney Star Wars sequels.  Apparently, the kid who plays Percy Jackson in the Disney+ show had to ask fans online to stop sending death-threats to his potential prom dates.  So there's a lot of angry, entitled people out there who only want to consume very specific things and when they don't get them, they take it personally.  

But also, there's something very ick about the villain in this movie being a woman who physically dominates a man.  It's infuriating because the way Paul walks on eggshells around Annie is just daily life for a lot of women in abusive relationships.  So is this an entry in Women's Horror, my pet category of Only Horror Because It's Happening to a Man?  I'm going to say no.  I think it's just garden-variety misogyny that the scariest thing a man can imagine is a woman having power over him and treating him the way he would treat her if their roles were reversed.  

Obligatory feminist rant out of the way, this is a very well-done film.  Caan and Bates are performing their asses off, and the banter between the sheriff (Richard Farnsworth) and his wife (Frances Sternhagen) feels very vintage William Goldman/Rob Reiner.  Barry Sonnenfeld was the Director of Photography and I had forgotten how good he was at capturing movement without feeling like you were going to hurl.  And no shaky-cam!  All in all, you could do much worse if this is your favorite horror movie.  It's a solid thriller that holds up even 35 years later.  It's streaming on HBO Max but only until the end of the month.

Oops! All Horror - Day 16 - In the Tall Grass (2019)

  Content warning:  blood, mild gore, animal death (crow, dog)

Becky (Laysla De Oliveira) and her brother, Cal (Avery Whitted), are on a cross-country trip to San Diego.  They stop by a field of tall grass so pregnant Becky can throw up and hear a boy (Will Blue, Jr.) calling for help inside.  Cal rushes in and Becky reluctantly follows.  The siblings soon discover that the field is seemingly endless, able to shift distances and sound, even time itself.

A good chunk of this movie is characters yelling each others' names, which very quickly got boring, but then Patrick Wilson showed up and improved it immensely.  It's kind of like Children of the Corn, if there wasn't even anything to eat.  Like, sure, you have a murderous cult but at least you weren't going to starve.  Wilson is obviously the standout here.  I love him in everything, but he is never better than when he is unhinged.  Fans of the show Lioness will recognize De Oliveira but the film doesn't really give her a lot to do other than be pregnant and yell.

It's fine.  There's some decent horror imagery, some straight out of a Renaissance triptych.  Vicenzo Natali is a solid director.  I just think the material is a little weak and relies too heavily on religious symbolism.  But it checks the box for Environmental Horror and it's streaming on Netflix, so at least it's convenient.  

Oops! All Horror - Day 15 - The Transfiguration (2017)

  Content warning:  blood, animal death (cow)

Teenaged Milo (Eric Ruffin) goes to school, tries to avoid the bullies and the gangbangers, and then goes out on the full moon to hunt strangers and drink their blood.  And then throws up, because he's not actually a vampire, just a serial killer.  But when Sophie (Chloe Levine) moves into his building, Milo begins to realize that there might be more to life than undeath.

I have...complicated...feelings about this movie.  I love vampires so I am disappointed this is not actually a vampire movie.  It is definitely horror, though.  The ending feels slightly too hopeful (?) and yet also correct.  Like, I approve, but I also find it a bit of an unrealistic note.  But I'm not an expert on serial killers, so what do I know.  

This is one of those movies that critics liked and audiences didn't and I get it.  If you're just trying to enjoy a horror movie, this is slow, too sad, and too much like real life.  If you're trying to critique a horror movie, this is "deliberately paced," "emotional," and a gritty, realistic take on vampire lore.  So bear that in mind when you're making your choices this spooky season.  It's currently streaming on Tubi with ads.