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A Halloweekend Movie Marathon: The Home Entertainment Guide

25 Saturday Oct 2025

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Halloween rarely stays confined to a single night. The ritual of the Halloweekend—a three-day communion of darkness, nostalgia, and popcorn—has become an annual rite for horror fans. It’s a time when the barriers between the cinema and the living room dissolve, and the flicker of the television once again becomes our campfire glow. This year, as October 31st falls on a Friday, it’s the perfect excuse to transform your home into a theatre of the uncanny.

From franchise resurrections and genre experiments to reanimated cult icons and family-friendly frights, this year’s home entertainment line-up offers a spectrum of screams for every taste. Whether you crave dread-laden mythology, subversive satire, or a gentle chill that still lets the kids sleep at night, here’s your guide to building a Halloweekend Movie Marathon worthy of the season.

The Franchises Return: Evil Never Dies, It Just Streams Differently

Sequels are the lifeblood of the horror ecosystem, and 2024–2025 has delivered them with unholy enthusiasm. The Conjuring: Last Rites has become the highest-grossing entry in the franchise—proof that James Wan’s universe of haunted faith still has audiences under its spell. The film closes the Ed and Lorraine Warren saga with ritualistic grandeur, blending theological terror with operatic spectacle. It’s horror as folklore, deeply Catholic yet oddly romantic, and best watched with the lights off and the volume indecently high.

Hot on its spectral heels comes I Know What You Did Last Summer, the long-awaited sequel that trades the 1990s teen slasher sheen for something darker and more mournful. Age has crept into its survivors, and the sins of the past feel heavier, more human. Together, these two films form the perfect one-two punch for a Friday night of ghosts and guilt—two hauntings from opposite ends of the horror spectrum.

If you still have stamina after that, revisit The Black Phone. Scott Derrickson’s original remains a masterclass in slow-burn suspense, and Ethan Hawke’s masked performance feels destined to be rediscovered each Halloween.

Weapons of Fear: The New Face of Prestige Horror

For those who prefer their terror thoughtful, Weapons stands as this year’s dark horse—a meticulously constructed nightmare that unfolds with existential precision. Director Zach Cregger’s follow-up to Barbarian dissects masculinity and violence through a lens of cosmic dread, proving once again that the most terrifying monsters are often human. It’s not just horror; it’s arthouse apocalypse.

And just beyond the horizon lurks HIM—available to pre-order now and set to release in early November. Word from festival circuits teases something Lovecraftian, something deeply unsettling. If Weapons is about human violence, HIM promises to explore the unfathomable violence of the universe itself. For the serious horror aesthete, these two titles belong at the heart of your Halloweekend viewing.

Horror Meets Humour: The Body Horrific

Sometimes the only way to survive the darkness is to laugh through the blood. Together, starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco, does exactly that—fusing body horror with relationship disintegration in a way that’s both hilarious and grotesque. It’s Cronenberg by way of couple’s therapy, proof that the boundaries between love and revulsion remain dangerously thin.

Then there’s The Toxic Avenger (2025), the riotous revival of Troma’s most beloved mutant. Director Macon Blair reimagines the cult classic for a new age of environmental anxiety and pop-cultural absurdity. With Peter Dinklage and Kevin Bacon leading the chaos, it’s a delirious love letter to 1980s splatter cinema—messy, magnificent, and defiantly unclean. Expect a full-length exploration of this one soon on Surgeons of Horror, because The Toxic Avenger deserves more than a mere mention; it’s a mutation worth celebrating.

Family Frights: When the Night Belongs to Everyone

For those who prefer their ghosts gentle and their monsters misunderstood, Halloween can still be a shared experience. Freakier Friday offers body-swap comedy with a spectral twist—perfect for a family-friendly movie night that nods toward the macabre without the nightmares. Meanwhile, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride remains a perennial classic, a gothic romance that continues to delight and haunt with its delicate stop-motion melancholy.

Pair these two for Sunday evening—an epilogue of warmth after the chaos, proof that the spirit of Halloween can be cosy, not just cold.

Classics Reawakened: Blood and Memory

No Halloween is complete without returning to the foundations. The Evil Dead (1981), Sam Raimi’s kinetic debut, remains one of the most visceral horror experiences ever committed to film. Its mixture of slapstick terror and relentless energy forged the DNA of modern horror filmmaking. Forty years later, its influence is still bleeding into the genre’s veins. Watching it today is like summoning the raw essence of what makes horror eternal: audacity, invention, and the thrill of transgression.

Curtain Call: The Comfort of Fear

Halloween on screen has evolved beyond simple scares—it’s a shared ritual, a space for collective catharsis. The modern horror fan might binge on supernatural sequels, dissect social allegories, or seek comfort in gothic animation. Yet the result is the same: we gather in the dark to feel alive.

This Halloweekend, the ghosts aren’t outside—they’re waiting in your queue. So dim the lights, queue up your terror of choice, and let the screen glow like a candle in the night.

  • Saul Muerte

Beyond the Crime Scene: Stuart Ortiz and the Cosmic Anatomy of Fear

20 Monday Oct 2025

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In Strange Harvest, Ortiz reshapes the language of true-crime horror, transforming the procedural form into a conduit for cosmic unease — a subtle evolution from his Grave Encounters origins.

In Strange Harvest, Stuart Ortiz — one half of the duo behind Grave Encounters — returns to the found footage-adjacent horror landscape with a surprising degree of control and maturity. Where Grave Encounters (2011) revelled in its haunted asylum chaos and digital distortion, Strange Harvest feels leaner and more deliberate, channelling that same eerie energy into a faux true-crime format that plays like Zodiac meets The Fourth Kind.

The film opens with what seems like a procedural—detectives responding to a welfare check in suburban San Bernardino—but quickly descends into something far darker. A murdered family, strange symbols written in blood, and the re-emergence of a serial killer known as “Mr. Shiny” set the stage for a horror narrative that thrives on implication and dread. Each new crime scene pushes the story further into cosmic territory, hinting at malevolent forces that exist well beyond the scope of human comprehension.

Ortiz demonstrates that he’s learned from over a decade in the horror trenches. His handling of the faux documentary format feels both grounded and authentic, using interviews, news footage, and handheld police recordings to build a layered mythology around the murders. The pacing is steady but tense, and the editing keeps the viewer in that unnerving space between realism and the supernatural — a sweet spot Ortiz has always excelled at.

While the premise is simple, that’s part of its strength. Strange Harvest doesn’t overcomplicate its narrative or chase high-concept spectacle; instead, it leans into its lo-fi authenticity, letting the horror emerge through atmosphere and suggestion. There are shades of procedural TV mixed with cosmic unease, but Ortiz ties it together with a firm grasp of tone and an eye for unsettling imagery.

It’s a testament to Ortiz’s craft that what could have been another run-of-the-mill mockumentary instead feels genuinely unnerving. Strange Harvest proves that the Grave Encounters legacy wasn’t a one-off fluke — Ortiz remains a filmmaker who understands how to weaponise form, texture, and the illusion of truth to make horror hit a little too close to home.

The Prognosis:

A deceptively simple yet chilling faux true-crime horror that tightens the screws through atmosphere and implication. Ortiz’s strongest solo work to date.

  • Saul Muerte

Black Phone 2 — Derrickson Dials Back the Horror, But the Line’s Gone Cold

16 Thursday Oct 2025

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Scott Derrickson returns to familiar ground with Black Phone 2 (2025), a sequel that stretches the eerie premise of his 2022 hit into icier, more supernatural territory — but the call doesn’t quite connect this time.

Set four years after Finney Blake’s (Mason Thames) narrow escape from The Grabber, the film finds the once-traumatised boy struggling to rebuild his life under the weight of memory and unresolved fear. His sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) remains gifted — or cursed — with psychic visions, and when she begins dreaming of three missing boys at a winter camp, the black phone begins to ring again. Only this time, the voice on the other end isn’t just calling from the past — it’s pulling them back into it.

Derrickson, who cut his teeth on Sinister and Deliver Us from Evil, once again demonstrates a clear mastery of atmosphere. His use of light and shadow is chillingly deliberate, and the wintry backdrop gives the sequel a haunting, desaturated beauty that recalls the nightmare logic of A Nightmare on Elm Street crossed with the isolation of Friday the 13th. The cinematography by Brett Jutkiewicz captures frost-bitten textures and dreamlike corridors of fear, keeping the mood taut even when the story falters.

And falter it does. Despite a promising setup, Black Phone 2 struggles to escape the confines of its own mythology. What once felt mysterious and emotionally grounded now feels repetitive and muddled. The attempts to expand The Grabber’s lore — turning him into a supernatural force rather than a disturbed man — rob the story of its primal fear. The original thrived on ambiguity; this sequel over-explains.

Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw both deliver earnest performances, grounding their characters in shared trauma, but they’re hampered by dialogue that’s often clunky and exposition-heavy. Even the film’s pacing, once one of Derrickson’s strong suits, slips into uneven rhythms — long stretches of ghostly visions interrupted by bursts of predictable violence.

Still, credit where it’s due: Derrickson’s visual language remains potent. Echoes of Sinister resonate throughout, from the use of distorted sound design to the flicker of analogue textures, suggesting a filmmaker who still knows how to craft a mood. The Grabber, though used sparingly, continues to terrify — his mask, redesigned with subtle variations, remains one of modern horror’s most unsettling icons.

But for all its chills, Black Phone 2 can’t shake the feeling of déjà vu. It’s a sequel haunted not only by its ghostly antagonist but by the shadow of a stronger predecessor. Derrickson’s talent for visual dread is undeniable — he just needs a story worth listening to again.

The Prognosis:

Black Phone 2 has the atmosphere, tension, and menace you’d expect from Scott Derrickson, but not the clarity or emotional pull that made the original so striking. Despite its best efforts to evolve into a supernatural slasher, this follow-up never quite finds its signal.

In the end, Black Phone 2 just doesn’t have time to thaw out properly — it rings, but the line’s gone cold.

  • Saul Muerte

V/H/S/Halloween (2025): Analog Nightmares, Digital Fatigue

08 Wednesday Oct 2025

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Eight films in, and the V/H/S franchise has reached that strange liminal space between reinvention and redundancy. V/H/S/Halloween promises another grab bag of analog nightmares, but what it ultimately offers is a reminder that this format — and perhaps found footage itself — is struggling to justify its continued revival.

Segmented through Bryan M. Ferguson’s Diet Phantasma, a frame narrative about a possessed soft drink, the film pulses between absurdist body horror and tongue-in-cheek satire. It’s gory, chaotic, and knowingly silly — a kind of VHS-era Cronenberg-lite filtered through Slimehouse aesthetics. It’s amusing enough, but its placement between each short becomes little more than a sugar rush: a filler designed to jolt, not haunt.

Anna Zlokovic’s Coochie Coochie Coo aims for Barbarian-esque weirdness but collapses under its own shaky-cam chaos. It’s conceptually interesting — exploring the monstrous side of motherhood and lost innocence — yet the execution feels forced, desperate to shock rather than unsettle.

Paco Plaza’s Ut Supra Sic Infra is easily the standout. The [REC] director flexes his mastery of dread with a metaphysical descent into ritual horror and the supernatural. It’s slick, moody, and genuinely disorienting, proving that when the right filmmaker takes the reins, the V/H/S anthology format can still bite.

Casper Kelly’s Fun Size, however, is a regression — an infantile splatter piece that mistakes noise for novelty. Whether its deliberately bad performances are meant to parody ‘80s horror cheese or are just poorly handled is anyone’s guess, but it grates either way.

Alex Ross Perry’s Kidprint ends things on a troubling note, tackling child abduction and snuff imagery with an uneasy hand. The idea — a man unwittingly complicit in a ring of video-taped killings — could have been chilling, but the tone wobbles between exploitative and hollow. It’s a grim finish that leaves you numb rather than disturbed.

And that’s the core issue here: V/H/S/Halloween feels like it’s circling the drain of its own nostalgia. The analog grime, the static, the jittery cuts — once the aesthetic of underground menace — now play like ritualised pastiche. There are sparks of invention, but they’re buried under too many loud edits and too few genuine scares.

The Prognosis:

Maybe it’s time to admit what’s been lurking behind the flicker for years: the found footage format — once raw, immediate, and terrifying — is finally running out of tape.

  • Saul Muerte

The Drowned: A Mythic Thriller That Never Quite Breaks the Surface

08 Wednesday Oct 2025

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Greek myths meet murky waters in a low-budget thriller that almost makes it to shore.

Samuel Clemens’ The Drowned attempts to merge myth and morality within a low-budget psychological thriller, dipping into the murky waters of Greek legend to find something ancient beneath the surface. The results, however, are mixed—an ambitious premise buoyed by striking influences but ultimately weighed down by pacing and atmosphere that never fully submerge the viewer.

Drawing on the myth of Hylas and the nymphs—immortalised in John William Waterhouse’s 1896 oil painting—Clemens reimagines the seductive call of the sea as a modern-day reckoning for guilt and greed. Three thieves hole up in a seaside safehouse after stealing a priceless painting, only to find their fourth member missing and an ominous presence rising from the tide. The film’s mythological undercurrents give it a literary backbone, but they’re never quite fleshed out enough to transform into something transcendent.

There’s a palpable sense of ambition here: The Drowned tries to swim in deep waters, blending folklore, crime, and psychological tension. Yet much like the doomed figures in its inspiration, it finds itself lured by its own reflection—entranced by imagery but unable to escape the shallows of its limited scope.

Performances by Alan Calton, Lara Lemon, and Lily Catalifo lend the feature some stability, grounding its mythic aspirations in believable tension. The cinematography occasionally captures the desolate beauty of the coast with painterly intent, echoing Waterhouse’s haunting stillness. But the low budget is keenly felt, particularly in its uneven pacing and abrupt tonal shifts.

The Prognosis:

The Drowned deserves some credit for attempting to do more than most thrillers in its range—it’s an atmospheric, if uneven, meditation on temptation and consequence. Yet, despite its mythic intentions, it never quite earns its place among the more evocative modern fables. The sirens sing, but their song doesn’t linger.

  • Saul Muerte

House on Eden – Where Found Footage Finally Flatlines

03 Friday Oct 2025

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Kris Collins’ House on Eden feels like a film caught between admiration and imitation. On one hand, there’s a clear love for the stripped-down mechanics of low-budget horror — a small cast, a single creepy location, a reliance on atmosphere over spectacle. On the other, its DNA is so heavily indebted to The Blair Witch Project that it struggles to escape that long shadow, never quite finding its own voice in a subgenre that has already been mined for all it’s worth.

The setup is textbook found footage: paranormal investigators Kris, Celina, and their videographer Jay stumble into an abandoned house in the woods, where unsettling sounds, missing crew members, and unnerving presences steadily erode their sanity. To Collins’ credit, the film knows how to milk tension out of a flickering flashlight and a half-glimpsed shadow. There’s a genuine appreciation for the lo-fi aesthetic, which at times gives the film a scrappy, grassroots charm.

But charm isn’t enough when the beats feel so familiar. Every missing person, every static-laden frame, every anguished scream into the darkness calls back to 1999 — but without the raw novelty or cultural punch that made Blair Witch revolutionary. Instead of reinventing the formula, House on Eden seems content to echo it, and in doing so highlights just how stale the found footage format can feel in 2025.

The biggest frustration is that there are hints of potential. The lore surrounding the house suggests something ancient and malevolent, but the film barely scratches at it before retreating into shaky cam hysteria. A stronger commitment to its own mythology might have given it some distinction. Instead, what lingers is the sense of a genre on its last legs — a reminder that what once felt like the future of horror may finally be ready for burial.

The Prognosis:

House on Eden isn’t unwatchable, and diehard found footage fans may appreciate its sincerity. But for most, it lands as a pale reflection of a classic, underscoring that sometimes the scariest thing a horror movie can show us is that the format itself might be dead.

  • Saul Muerte

House on Eden is currently streaming on Shudder.

No Finish Line: The Long Walk Turns Minimalism into Masterpiece

22 Monday Sep 2025

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Sometimes when we get caught up reviewing all these films, it’s easy – all too easy – to forget that
as with a painter staring at a blank canvas; a director, when given their brief, is staring at a multitude
of choices in which to tell the story they have written (or in the case of The Long Walk; been given) .
And this particular story is the brainchild of writing grand master Stephen King. So, no presh.
Also throw in the fact that it involves walking, a ton of it, and you might think this is a film for a
novice (too inexperienced to know that this is an extremely tough assignment) or a black belt
filmmaker. Someone who knows enough to know that a movie that’s about walking in the open air
gives you nowhere to go. No immediate cutaways, no car chases, no love scenes to dictate changes
in pace etc.
Heck even your coverage choices are limited by how stylised (or not) you want to go about filming
men walking. And walking. And walking.
So what do you do? Well, there are a few things this pic leans on, and we’ll talk about those in a bit.
But first – some much-needed context for the 0.08% of you who have clicked on this article not
knowing what this movie is about.
Set in a dystopian alternative reality (around 1970’s ish – although the exact time period is never
stated, so I’m going off the novel, which was written in 1979) you soon realise that The Hunger
Games (and King’s own The Running Man) owe a lot to this idea.
Which is, you get people to WILLINGLY go through a trial of fire to get some nebulous sense of
financial freedom, and freedom from bondage.
In this particular case, you walk. As in you collate at a starting line, get assigned a number and you
walk. There is no finish line. Last man standing (and it is all men in this story. Young men, one from
each State of the U.S. – so 50 in total) wins. And wins big. Both in terms of $ and a wish…
The rule is you DO NOT stop. Evah. If you do for more than a few seconds you are given a warning.
If you fall below 3 miles an hour you are given a warning. More than 3 warnings in an hour and you
are executed there and then by one of the volley of military personnel keeping pace with you.
Water and rudimentary rations are given to the walkers, which prolongs their agony if anything.
Because stopping to relieve yourself or sleeping is counted as a warning/shootable offence. Taking a
pebble out of your shoe, bad weather, incredibly steep inclines…. you’d be surprised just how many
things can impede a good walk when halting is not an option.
And that’s what this review will do right now to get the always insightful Chris Dawes to give his take
on the movie. Over to you Chris!

Ok. So. In my view there are two types of Stephen King adaptations – The genre defining classic (The
Shining, Green Mile, Shawshank) and Dreamcatcher.

The Long Walk is the former.
It’s incredible – they have managed to make a minimalist, mid budget film about a bunch of people
walking through middle America deeply engaging.
Even the moments that you can see coming hit you, and hit you hard.
Everyone in this film is acting the shit out of it in the best possible way – I reckon this will be the
breakout movie for a bunch of the next generations’ Oscar winners.
It’s the kind of film that sits with you when it is over.
And boy howdy, do I love a Mark Hamill heel turn – I genuinely hated his character in a way I have
not often hated a film bad guy. Fucker managed to out-Darth Darth.
Glorious. No notes.
See this movie.

So, as you can see – mixed emotions from Chris there.
I kid.
As he touched upon, the best weapon this movie had at its disposal was casting. One way to get
around a story that has limitations in terms of setting is to make sure your actors are world class for
the roles they have been chosen to play. And for this trek, the filmmakers have nailed it.
When all you have is dialogue interspersed with ratcheting tension with each death, it helps that the
baseline words come from Stephen King. But when those words are delivered by young actors who
themselves are clearly gifted craftsmen, then you have the luxury of letting this movie do all the
heavy lifting for you.
And the tone from the outset is thrown down by the only real female member of the cast – Judy
Greer.
Now well and truly in the mother character phase of her career, her heartbreak as she bids farewell
to her son at the starting line hits a perfect balance. Not over-wrought to put you off the film before
it’s even started, but 100% grounded in a reality you can buy into. Because at this point of the
movie you don’t know the rules of The Walk, but in a great example of show don’t tell, you know it
can’t be good. So from the get-go you are intrigued and a little bit tense – the exact sort of tone you
want at the start of a flick like this.
So. Writing and acting. That’s how you make a dangerously simple premise work. [Allow time for
the world’s biggest d’uh].
But another thing that played in favour of this film was its unapologetic refusal to look away. The
way these men die is graphic, and that’s the point. A bullet does horrendous damage to a human
body. Powered metal explodes through bone and tissue and it doesn’t care how you look
when it does, and this film makes sure you SEE that, in all its factually visceral detail.

And it’s not gratuitous either. But rather, the point. Because why would these men sign up for
something that has a 49 in 50 chance of killing you in a physically painful and undignified way?
Well – why would 12 districts send 2 young people each year to fight to the death for the
amusement of the rich masses?
And by extension… why would SO MANY people in a real-life election vote AGAINST their own best
interest?
Because the illusion those in power sell to those without is tantalising and intoxicating. It’s framed
in rules that THEY set, but if you play the game, you can be ONE OF THEM. One of US!
In this case, chances are 49 to 50 against, but the result is binary. It’s either yes, or it’s no. And most
of us think and feel – deep down – we are the lead character of our own story. And rules don’t apply
to lead characters! Lead characters stand out by going against the mainstream and beating the
odds. Lead characters are special and so are YOU! Despite something immutable as math saying
you’re not.
Plus changing an unfair status quo through revolution seems like a lot of hard work. Work that
mostly benefits those who come after you, as revolts usually kill a lot of instigators. Even successful
ones.
So why not choose a path that could immediately benefit YOU instead? Countless money AND a
wish?
So what if the odds are not in favour? If you want anything in life, anything that’s worth it, you gotta
work for it. Bleed for it.
Walk for it. Die for it.

The Prognosis:

Power is an illusion, but it doesn’t make it not real. And this film makes you feel that every step of
the way.
5 stars.

  • Antony Yee & Chris Dawes

Christensen Sharpens His Blade with Night of the Reaper

15 Monday Sep 2025

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Brandon Christensen’s Night of the Reaper wears its genre lineage proudly, a film whose scaffolding is unmistakably indebted to the slasher cycle of the late 1970s and early ’80s. Yet what distinguishes it from mere pastiche is Christensen’s attempt to infuse the familiar architecture of suburban dread with a contemporary reflexivity. The result is a work that gestures toward both homage and reinvention, though it occasionally falters under the weight of its own ambition.

At its core, the narrative is bifurcated: Deena, a college student reluctantly drawn into the liminal domestic space of babysitting, embodies the archetypal “final girl,” while the sheriff’s scavenger-hunt pursuit of a killer injects a procedural dimension that broadens the scope beyond the living-room crucible. This duality lends the film a structural intrigue, complicating the linear inevitability characteristic of earlier slashers. Christensen’s gambit is to stretch the genre’s grammar toward a more fragmented, almost puzzle-box form, and while not always seamless, it sustains an atmosphere of unease.

Thematically, Night of the Reaper interrogates surveillance, communication, and the transmission of violence—whether through mailed evidence or the uncanny ritual of watching over another’s child. The “babysitter” trope here functions less as a mere setup than as a cultural cipher: the guardian of innocence, rendered vulnerable not only by external threat but by the epistemic instability of what she sees, hears, and knows.

Performances, particularly from Clement, anchor the film in an emotional realism that offsets its occasional excesses of plotting. If the twists sometimes feel calibrated for shock rather than inevitability, they nonetheless affirm Christensen’s willingness to deny the audience easy comfort. The film’s refusal to collapse into nostalgia, even while nodding to Carpenter and Craven, positions it as both homage and critique.

The Prognosis:

Night of the Reaper is less about transcending the slasher than about testing its elasticity—stretching a well-worn form to see what new resonances might emerge. Christensen may reach a little too high, but in doing so he ensures that the film, like its protagonists, never entirely succumbs to the shadow of its predecessors.

  • Saul Muerte

Night of the Reaper is streaming on Shudder from Friday 19th Sept

The Case That Ended It All… and the Love That Carried It.

11 Thursday Sep 2025

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There’s a line I keep coming back to when watching The Conjuring: Last Rites: “The case that ended it all.” Not just for Ed and Lorraine Warren, whose final chapter this is meant to be, but for the sprawling universe their names have conjured into existence. Like every haunting, it’s less about the cold spots and whispers in the dark than it is about the people who believed enough to chase them. And at the heart of all this chasing, for over a decade now, have been Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga.

If the devil lives in the details, then the soul of this franchise lives in their eyes. Wilson’s steady but haunted Ed, Farmiga’s luminous and fierce Lorraine—they’ve carried us through nun sightings, cursed dolls, crooked men, and endless houses rattling at 3 a.m. What’s remarkable is not that they convinced us to be afraid, but that they convinced us to believe in love. Their bond has been the true connective tissue of the Conjuring Universe, more powerful than holy water or a crucifix.

Michael Chaves, who has already carved his name into the annals of this cinematic scripture (The Curse of La Llorona, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, The Nun II), is tasked with the ultimate rite: closing the circle. He doesn’t swing for jump-scares or gore this time. Instead, he stages something quieter, almost tender. Yes, there are entities in shadowy corners, and the Warrens must confront forces that seem beyond human comprehension. But the real confrontation is with time, mortality, and the question of what we leave behind.

Watching Last Rites feels less like entering a haunted house and more like attending a vigil. Each scene reminds us that the Conjuring films were never really about demons—it was about the Warrens looking into the abyss together, hand in hand. And while the scares are muted, the harmony between Wilson and Farmiga remains intact, their chemistry now weathered but stronger, a testament to why audiences kept returning long after the first clap in the dark.

For longtime followers, this is less exorcism and more benediction. Chaves doesn’t so much slam the door shut as pass the candlelight forward. Whether the torch will ignite future stories in this universe, or flicker out with a final prayer, remains unknown. But there’s a sense of closure—like the last page of a well-worn case file, annotated not just with facts and evidence, but with love letters written in the margins.

The Prognosis:

If you came looking for terror, you may leave unsatisfied. But if you came looking for a farewell—an elegy for the haunted hearts who dared to investigate the impossible—then The Conjuring: Last Rites offers exactly that. A requiem, not for the dead, but for a love that kept the darkness at bay.

  • Saul Muerte

Embrace the Darkness: Dark Nights Film Fest Vol. 2

10 Wednesday Sep 2025

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The shadows are calling again. The screen is no longer a safe window to peer through but a chasm, hungry and alive, waiting to swallow you whole. Strap in, Sydney — Dark Nights Film Fest Vol. 2 has crawled out of the grave and into the Ritz, and this time it’s not here to play nice.

This isn’t cinema for the faint, the casual, or the polite. This is cinema that stalks you through the back alleys of your subconscious, cinema that rips the floorboards off your cozy illusions and drags you headfirst into a pit of worms. Just when you thought the blood had dried and the screams had faded, festival director Bryn Tilly has cranked open the gates again, ushering in a delirious parade of maniacs, monsters, and midnight visions.

Nine Australian premieres. One unholy cult resurrection. Twenty-two short, sharp shocks from across the globe. It’s a full-course banquet of nightmares, each dish steaming with dread and dripping with the strange juices of cinema’s dark heart.

Opening night doesn’t just raise a curtain — it tears open the roof with Hell House LLC: Lineage, an unhinged carnival of terror where haunted basements and clown-faced demons set the tone for what’s to come: fear without safety nets. From there the fest descends into Germany’s tangled woods with Bark, drags you through the neon purgatory of America in A Desert, and burns you alive with the Serbian one-two punch of A Serbian Documentary and Karmadonna — films that don’t just push buttons, they rip them out and swallow them whole.

But the crown jewel of delirium? Peter Jackson’s Braindead in screaming 4K glory. Thirty years since its last Australian theatrical run, and the pus-filled carnage hasn’t aged a day. This isn’t a screening — it’s an exorcism of sanity, an orgy of undead slapstick that makes every Marvel movie look like a children’s nap-time.

And just when your skull’s about to split, along comes Necromorphosis, burrowing into your flesh like a cockroach in heat, and Sun, a fever-dream hybrid of movement and madness that dances straight into the abyss. By the time the anthology Adorable Humans rolls around, Hans Christian Andersen will be spinning in his grave fast enough to power a small Danish village.

Closing night locks the doors and swallows the keys with The School Duel, a dystopian grenade lobbed at society’s fragile bones — ferocious, timely, and cruelly relevant.

This isn’t just a festival. It’s a séance. A bacchanal of blood, dread, and midnight delirium. Between the Aussie and international shorts, the Movie Boutique of VHS relics and arcane treasures, and filmmakers dropping truth bombs about low-budget survival, Dark Nights is where the monsters come to play.

Forget safe cinema. Forget the plush multiplex glow. The Ritz is where the shadows come alive, and the screen bites back.

Dark Nights Film Fest Vol. 2 — October 9–12, Ritz Cinemas, Randwick.
Bring your nerves, bring your nightmares, and leave your soul at the door.

  • Saul Muerte