Reed Alexander
Bio
I'm a horror author and foulmouthed critic of all things horror. New reviews posted every Sunday.
@ReedsHorror on TikTok, Blue Sky, Instagram, YouTube, and Mastodon.
Check out my books at reedshorror.com
Stories (317)
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Reed Alexander's Horror Review of '31'
Jesus fucking Christ Rob... you sure do know how to pull every god damn trope out of the box that annoys the fuck out of me. This one opens with a talking head, and continues with an unnecessarily long exposition on how annoying all the fucking characters are. It was actually pretty quick, no more than 10 minutes, but it felt like a goddamn hour. Fucking seriously! I hate it when a movie challenges me to break my 30 minute rule. And just so you know how bad it has to be for me to break one of my own rules, one of the few movies where I did was The Bay.
By Reed Alexander6 years ago in Horror
Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'The Exorcist III' (1990)
I recently read a review that stated The Exorcist III (X-3) is finally getting the appreciation it deserves. That's an understatement. X-3 was thrown into the category cult classic as the only people who saw it were hardcore fans of the original (X-1). These are the people who suffered through the absolute fucking travesty that was the second exorcist (X-2). They stuck by and believed in the franchise and forced friends to watch X-3 over the years. My introduction was the same. "HAVE YOU SEEN X-3?!?" "THERE'S A 3RD ONE?!?" We were actually screaming, no lie.
By Reed Alexander6 years ago in Horror
Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Slither' (2006)
You know what was ballsy about this movie? Someone saw Night of the Creeps and said, "I can make that funnier and scarier." And maybe it takes someone like James Gunn to pull that off. If you've ever seen Night of the Creeps, you know it's one of the all time greatest intentionally bad movie. In fact, it was one of the first. The late 80s into the 90s was all about revolutionizing horror as an industry. Movies like Critters and Leprechaun were proving that horror didn't have to be good to be entertainment. Directors like Mark Jones and Fred Dekker realized that half of the movies they enjoyed as kids, were actually garbage, and that's half the reason for loving them. B-Horror helped define the industry.
By Reed Alexander6 years ago in Horror
Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Frankenstein's Army' (2013)
Okay, the very concept of this movie is fucking silly but... This movie was FUCKING AWESOME! Look, don't exactly expect a great plot. Hell, I'm not sure this movie even had a coherent plot. In fact, it was so thin they might as well have not bothered. But, FUCKING INDUSTRIAL MECHANICAL NAZIS!!! This made every portion of the teenage metal head inside of me squee with delight. If you played Wolfenstine, Doom, Blood, or Quake, this was just part of your horror scene growing up. Horror, Metal, and Video Games defined my generation. I'm actually shocked it took the horror industry this long to pander to us as adults.
By Reed Alexander6 years ago in Horror
Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Ready or Not' (2019)
Holy fuck! What a whacked out movie! I brought this up once before and I'll bring it up again in my review of Primal (coming soon), but I think I stated it best in my review of Don't Kill It. It is possible to go too dark for dark comedy. This movie was likely supposed to be your standard horror thriller when it was first written, then either the producers of the director realized how absolutely ridiculous the concept is. Mind you, this movie could be done seriously, as in not a dark comedy, but I really think adding the extra layer of dark comedy was positive. Don't Kill It went a little too far. This one was just about right.
By Reed Alexander6 years ago in Horror
Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Primal' (2010)
I love it when I tiptoe through the bargain bin movies and it yields a little gem like this. Like all movies with a shoe string budget, it's not what one would call good cinema, but it was a fuck ton of fun. As I'm often to point out, that's all that fucking matters. Remember, I also grade on a curve, and while this clearly did have some budget, it wouldn't even approach a small Hollywood production.
By Reed Alexander6 years ago in Horror
Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Pontypool' (2008)
The whole movie starts out with seemingly no real direction. Some alcoholic disk jokey, who does the 'fire and brimstone' shtick, starts his day at work, and from there, shit just gets weird. And that's the only way it can really be described at first. 'Weird.'
By Reed Alexander6 years ago in Horror
Sample: 'Inhuman Error.' First of the UPD Series, by James Lief and Reed Alexander, 2019
Inhuman Error: Part of a three book series that follows a specialist unit of the FBI called the Unnatural Perpetrators Department. The UPD is charged with hunting down and stopping serial killers of 'unnatural origins.'
By Reed Alexander6 years ago in Horror
Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Lo' (2009)
How do you hide the fact that your movie's budget is the same size as "Shakespeare in the Park?" Make a production that looks not entirely unlike "Shakespeare in the Park." A good friend of mine pointed out that, "If you don't have the budget, make the lack of budget look intentional." Here's the thing, it really worked. This movie is nothing more than a conversation between a mortal and a powerful demon called Lo. The conversation takes place in a single room, the mortal’s apartment, which is transformed into a dark stage. From that point on, everything happening in the movie is nothing more than the conjurings of the demon Lo as a sort of "dog and pony show" for the mortal who summoned her. Meaning, Lo, for her general amusement, could very well be providing a performance that intentionally looks ridiculous.
By Reed Alexander6 years ago in Horror
Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Lord of Illusions' (1995)
Barker was really on point with this story. It's dark and gritty, and fucking disturbing. I also forget just how insane it could be including the multiple extremely cringe-worthy scenes. Barker was always good at extremes. So when the guy who gave me Hellraiser put out an Eldritch horror, I dove on it like a live grenade.
By Reed Alexander6 years ago in Horror
Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'World War Z' (2013)
World War Z is... not a horror movie. I'm a little more than disappointed here. This was an action movie, not a horror movie. Brad Pitt might as well have been fighting terrorists for all it would have changed about the plot. You could literally remake this movie with different costumes and that would be the only real change. The Zombies could be replaced by any generic threat. Terrorists or an invading army like Red Dawn. Shit, even if it was Aliens, it would be action, not horror. This could have been an episode of 24 or a new selection from the Born series. Making the zombie robots would change fuck-all about this movie...
By Reed Alexander6 years ago in Horror
