Horror Fuel
☰ Browse the Crypt
Author

Joseph Perry

648 stories

Spoiler-Free Review: Her Will Be Done

Official synopsis In a remote village, Nawojka grapples with dark urges she believes stem from an ancestral curse. Her world shifts when Sandra moves in next door, offering a glimpse of freedom from her family’s rigid control. Review Director Julia Kowalski’s Her Will Be Done (Que ma volonté soit faite; France/Poland, 2026) is a scathing look at the dominance of males — most of them poorly behaved and some outright dangerous — in a rural French village, and the desire of two young women to break free from that society. At least one of them has occult powers that may make that possible.  Nawojka (Maria Wrobel) is a young woman whose Polish family  has  moved to a rural French village. Though she expresses her wish to go to veterinary school on a scholarship, her father Henryk (Wilciech Skibinski) wants her to stay home and take care of him and her rude brothers Tomek (Przemyslaw Przestrzelski) and Bogdan (Kubya Dyniewicz). Nawojka’s

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 3, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: Bloody Tennis

Official synopsis Follows Sophie, who is admitted to an elite tennis academy hidden in the South of Europe, where she must contend with fierce competition and the school’s increasingly sinister undercurrents.  Review Writer/director Nikias Chryssos’s Bloody Tennis (Germany, 2026) feels far closer to pastiche of Suspiria than mere homage. This is obvious as soon as American tennis player Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) steps foot on the European tennis school campus for elite players and meets school director Mary (Elina Löwensohn). Mary gives off “evil leader” vibes right off the bat, and the Suspiria parallels have only just begun. Suspiria isn’t the only fear-fare film that Bloody Tennis apes. The  film also borrows heavily and frequently from Eurohorror of the seventies and eighties, with Hostel-like vibes from early 2000s torture shockers also thrown in for good measure. A big problem here is that viewers are not given anyone to root for. Sophie is the protagonist — at least for a while

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 2, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: Child

Official synopsis To save their dying son, a father follows his wife into a mysterious journey where the promise of life slowly reveals the monstrous depths of a parent’s love.  Review Avoid spoilers, dear readers, and go into director Cyrus Neshvad’s chilling Child (Luxembourg, 2026) as cold as possible. This thriller with horror elements had me captivated the entire time, building from tense, dramatic suspense from the outset to a jaw-dropping third act full of unexpected shocks. Anne (Brigitte Urhausen) and her physician husband Greg (Mailk Zidi) are a highly troubled couple whose young son is hours away from dying if he doesn’t get an organ transplant. Anne blames Greg for their son’s situation, making their drive from their home city in Luxembourg to a remote rural location in another country to pick up the needed organ a dreadful one.  Once they arrive at the destination, matters become ugly and dangerous right away. But this is only the first act,

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 2, 2026

Tubi FrightFest Announces Fear-Filled Lineup for Halloween 2026

London’s TubiFrightFest Halloween has just revealed its 2026 lineup, and whether you prefer slashers, spiders, stalkers, or the supernatural, the festival has something for horror cinephiles of all stripes. Following is the official press announcement. Hot on the hellish heels of its spectacular 27th year August five-day event, the UK’s most vibrant genre film festival returns to the ODEON Luxe West End in Leicester Square to present its annual 2-day Halloween event. Taking over both screens on Friday 30th October and Saturday 31st October, the spine-chilling line-up heralds nine premieres from five countries, spanning Europe, North and South America and Australia/Oceania. Each film will be screened twice. So, hold on tight as Tubi Frightfest takes you on a spooky, carnage-crammed journey featuring powerful mutants, seasonal spooks, psychotic neighbours, venomous spiders, vengeful werewolves, and shocking Christmas tales where it’s not just the turkey that is carved up. Opening the gates to ‘Helloween’ is the UK premiere of FREAKS PART II, which

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 1, 2026

Columbus, Ohio’s Nightmares Film Festival Delivers the Fear with Its 2026 Lineup

Columbus, Ohio’s Nightmares Film Festival enters its second decade with a mouth-watering selection of fabulous fear fare from October 15–18, 2026. From occult terror to home invasion horror to intriguing documentaries and beyond, the fest has something for horror fans of all stripes. Following is the official press release. Nightmares Film Festival (Oct. 15 to 18) today revealed its 2026 program, opening its second decade with a celebration of the boldest, freshest and most surprising work keeping genre dangerous.  “It’s our eleventh year, but we’re thinking of this as year one of a new decade of Nightmares,” said co-founders Jason Tostevin. “We’re celebrating the innovation, imagination and camaraderie that fuel the best of genre film.” Dubbed the “Cannes of horror” (iHorror), Nightmares is part summer camp for horror lovers, part annual reunion for some of the world’s top genre creators. Taking over the world-renowned Gateway Film Center, the festival will bring fans, filmmakers, screenwriters, press and industry reps together for

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 28, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: Never After Dark

Official synopsis Never After Dark follows Airi (Hoshi), a wandering medium who spends her life guiding restless spirits out of the world of the living. Summoned to an isolated country house, she comes face to face with a grotesque apparition with powers that defy Airi’s experience. As she digs deeper into the house’s past, a secret comes to light — and Airi finds herself hunted by a far more unpredictable force. For the first time, her greatest adversary is not the supernatural, but the living.  Review I’ve been waiting to see writer/director Dave Boyle’s Never After Dark since its film festival debut. Alas, my festival viewing dates and the film never matched up, but now that it is on its wide release, I finally had the opportunity to watch . . . and the wait was more than worth it. Never After Dark is the type of fear-fare feature that I don’t want to spoil in any way, because going

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 28, 2026

Spoiler-Free Reviews: Welcome to Dolly’s House and Attack on Paradise (Fantastic Fest 2026) 

Welcome to Dolly’s House (Taiwan, 2026) Official synopsis Maria stumbles into a surreal trap after she finds a video of a girl running from a mysterious woman and is drawn to an eerie, mind bending mansion. Fantasy-horror animation inspired by the classic literary anthology Taiping Guanji.   Review Codirectors Rady Fu, Tree Muta, and Seven Ych have crafted an intriguing rotoscoped fear-fare animation feature in Welcome to Dolly’s House. The story follows young online influencer Maria as she and her deceitful boyfriend try to uncover the mystery of the woman named Dolly who appears in a video where a young girl suddenly vanishes into thin air.  The animation is absolutely gorgeous and is reason enough to recommend this supernatural offering, but the third act is also a strong reason to seek out this film, as it goes into quite unexpected territory.  Aficionados of creepy-doll horror should especially find Welcome to Dolly’s House an engaging watch. It’s a colorful, trippy, eye-popping experience.

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 25, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: Kung Fu Deadly (Fantastic Fest 2026) 

Official synopsis Two hapless rat catchers encounter a kung-fu Taoist Guardian pursuing an undead Chinese Jiangshi. Together they uncover family secrets and must embrace their fate to rid Dublin of this supernatural menace, the only way they know how: Extermination. Review Generally, genre-film festivals need some fun to balance out the more horrific and darker fare. Director Fergal Costello delivers the feel-good goods with martial arts/ jiangshi/supernatural action comedy Kung Fu Deadly (Ireland/Australia, 2026). The film seeks to entertain, and absolutely does, with a tale of two underachieving buddies who need to do some “growing up” fast unless they want to either become or be killed by traditional Chinese hopping vampires. Danny (Steven He) has been running Deadly Vermin Control since his father passed away. His childhood best friend and current roommate Frank (Michael Tient) works with him. Their lack of success with the business is nothing compared to the trouble that awaits them when jiangshi begin appearing, and it

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 24, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: THE ONES WHO GRIEVE (Fantastic Fest 2026) 

Official synopsis from Annick Mahnert’s Fantastic Fest summary Set in the French countryside at the end of the 19th century, The Ones Who Grieve follows Jacob, a deeply religious man who works as a soul keeper. Believing he is liberating those afflicted by a mysterious illness, he imprisons them behind wooden masks after sewing their eyes and mouths shut. His daughter, Zélie, lives under his tyrannical rule and dreams of freedom. When Jacob sells her beloved horse, Thunder, her resentment reaches its breaking point, prompting her to defy him by hiding an infected soldier in the family barn.  Review Director Can Evrenol gave cinephiles perhaps the strongest candidate so far for “Feel-Bad Movie of the Year” in 2026 with his pitch-black Spanish horror comedy The Turkish Coffee Table (a reimagining of Caye Casas’s also disturbing The Coffee Table [La mesita del comedor]). But now along comes director Quarxx, who says “Hold my needles, thread, hammers, pliers, wooden masks, and guns”

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 21, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: Who’s Watching

Official synopsis Eccentric musician and aspiring filmmaker Caleb becomes obsessed with his new coworker, Krista, secretly documenting every aspect of her life in an effort to make her the subject of his latest film. As Caleb’s fixation intensifies, the lines between observer and participant begin to blur, pulling him deeper into a dangerous spiral of surveillance, manipulation and obsession. As the cameras keep rolling, the question becomes increasingly unsettling: who is really watching who?  Review Director Tim Kasher delivers a taut chiller with Who’s Watching. A disturbing character study of a stalker filming his target of interest transitions into jaw-dropping, unexpected territory that works satisfyingly well. Zachary Ray Sherman gives a fine, eerie performance as Caleb, a metal musician who gives off instant creep vibes that only escalate when he becomes fixated with new workplace employee Krista (Gracie Gilliam). His obsession is clear to everyone at work, and even friends of his band take notice. Krista was initially kind enough

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 17, 2026

More from Joseph Perry

Spoiler-Free Review: Her Will Be Done

Official synopsis In a remote village, Nawojka grapples with dark urges she believes stem from an ancestral curse. Her world shifts when Sandra moves in next door, offering a glimpse of freedom from her family’s rigid control. Review Director Julia Kowalski’s Her Will Be Done (Que ma volonté soit faite; France/Poland, 2026) is a scathing look at the dominance of males — most of them poorly behaved and some outright dangerous — in a rural French village, and the desire of two young women to break free from that society. At least one of them has occult powers that may make that possible.  Nawojka (Maria Wrobel) is a young woman whose Polish family  has  moved to a rural French village. Though she expresses her wish to go to veterinary school on a scholarship, her father Henryk (Wilciech Skibinski) wants her to stay home and take care of him and her rude brothers Tomek (Przemyslaw Przestrzelski) and Bogdan (Kubya Dyniewicz). Nawojka’s

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 3, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: Bloody Tennis

Official synopsis Follows Sophie, who is admitted to an elite tennis academy hidden in the South of Europe, where she must contend with fierce competition and the school’s increasingly sinister undercurrents.  Review Writer/director Nikias Chryssos’s Bloody Tennis (Germany, 2026) feels far closer to pastiche of Suspiria than mere homage. This is obvious as soon as American tennis player Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) steps foot on the European tennis school campus for elite players and meets school director Mary (Elina Löwensohn). Mary gives off “evil leader” vibes right off the bat, and the Suspiria parallels have only just begun. Suspiria isn’t the only fear-fare film that Bloody Tennis apes. The  film also borrows heavily and frequently from Eurohorror of the seventies and eighties, with Hostel-like vibes from early 2000s torture shockers also thrown in for good measure. A big problem here is that viewers are not given anyone to root for. Sophie is the protagonist — at least for a while

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 2, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: Child

Official synopsis To save their dying son, a father follows his wife into a mysterious journey where the promise of life slowly reveals the monstrous depths of a parent’s love.  Review Avoid spoilers, dear readers, and go into director Cyrus Neshvad’s chilling Child (Luxembourg, 2026) as cold as possible. This thriller with horror elements had me captivated the entire time, building from tense, dramatic suspense from the outset to a jaw-dropping third act full of unexpected shocks. Anne (Brigitte Urhausen) and her physician husband Greg (Mailk Zidi) are a highly troubled couple whose young son is hours away from dying if he doesn’t get an organ transplant. Anne blames Greg for their son’s situation, making their drive from their home city in Luxembourg to a remote rural location in another country to pick up the needed organ a dreadful one.  Once they arrive at the destination, matters become ugly and dangerous right away. But this is only the first act,

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 2, 2026

Tubi FrightFest Announces Fear-Filled Lineup for Halloween 2026

London’s TubiFrightFest Halloween has just revealed its 2026 lineup, and whether you prefer slashers, spiders, stalkers, or the supernatural, the festival has something for horror cinephiles of all stripes. Following is the official press announcement. Hot on the hellish heels of its spectacular 27th year August five-day event, the UK’s most vibrant genre film festival returns to the ODEON Luxe West End in Leicester Square to present its annual 2-day Halloween event. Taking over both screens on Friday 30th October and Saturday 31st October, the spine-chilling line-up heralds nine premieres from five countries, spanning Europe, North and South America and Australia/Oceania. Each film will be screened twice. So, hold on tight as Tubi Frightfest takes you on a spooky, carnage-crammed journey featuring powerful mutants, seasonal spooks, psychotic neighbours, venomous spiders, vengeful werewolves, and shocking Christmas tales where it’s not just the turkey that is carved up. Opening the gates to ‘Helloween’ is the UK premiere of FREAKS PART II, which

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Oct 1, 2026

Columbus, Ohio’s Nightmares Film Festival Delivers the Fear with Its 2026 Lineup

Columbus, Ohio’s Nightmares Film Festival enters its second decade with a mouth-watering selection of fabulous fear fare from October 15–18, 2026. From occult terror to home invasion horror to intriguing documentaries and beyond, the fest has something for horror fans of all stripes. Following is the official press release. Nightmares Film Festival (Oct. 15 to 18) today revealed its 2026 program, opening its second decade with a celebration of the boldest, freshest and most surprising work keeping genre dangerous.  “It’s our eleventh year, but we’re thinking of this as year one of a new decade of Nightmares,” said co-founders Jason Tostevin. “We’re celebrating the innovation, imagination and camaraderie that fuel the best of genre film.” Dubbed the “Cannes of horror” (iHorror), Nightmares is part summer camp for horror lovers, part annual reunion for some of the world’s top genre creators. Taking over the world-renowned Gateway Film Center, the festival will bring fans, filmmakers, screenwriters, press and industry reps together for

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 28, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: Never After Dark

Official synopsis Never After Dark follows Airi (Hoshi), a wandering medium who spends her life guiding restless spirits out of the world of the living. Summoned to an isolated country house, she comes face to face with a grotesque apparition with powers that defy Airi’s experience. As she digs deeper into the house’s past, a secret comes to light — and Airi finds herself hunted by a far more unpredictable force. For the first time, her greatest adversary is not the supernatural, but the living.  Review I’ve been waiting to see writer/director Dave Boyle’s Never After Dark since its film festival debut. Alas, my festival viewing dates and the film never matched up, but now that it is on its wide release, I finally had the opportunity to watch . . . and the wait was more than worth it. Never After Dark is the type of fear-fare feature that I don’t want to spoil in any way, because going

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 28, 2026

Spoiler-Free Reviews: Welcome to Dolly’s House and Attack on Paradise (Fantastic Fest 2026) 

Welcome to Dolly’s House (Taiwan, 2026) Official synopsis Maria stumbles into a surreal trap after she finds a video of a girl running from a mysterious woman and is drawn to an eerie, mind bending mansion. Fantasy-horror animation inspired by the classic literary anthology Taiping Guanji.   Review Codirectors Rady Fu, Tree Muta, and Seven Ych have crafted an intriguing rotoscoped fear-fare animation feature in Welcome to Dolly’s House. The story follows young online influencer Maria as she and her deceitful boyfriend try to uncover the mystery of the woman named Dolly who appears in a video where a young girl suddenly vanishes into thin air.  The animation is absolutely gorgeous and is reason enough to recommend this supernatural offering, but the third act is also a strong reason to seek out this film, as it goes into quite unexpected territory.  Aficionados of creepy-doll horror should especially find Welcome to Dolly’s House an engaging watch. It’s a colorful, trippy, eye-popping experience.

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 25, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: Kung Fu Deadly (Fantastic Fest 2026) 

Official synopsis Two hapless rat catchers encounter a kung-fu Taoist Guardian pursuing an undead Chinese Jiangshi. Together they uncover family secrets and must embrace their fate to rid Dublin of this supernatural menace, the only way they know how: Extermination. Review Generally, genre-film festivals need some fun to balance out the more horrific and darker fare. Director Fergal Costello delivers the feel-good goods with martial arts/ jiangshi/supernatural action comedy Kung Fu Deadly (Ireland/Australia, 2026). The film seeks to entertain, and absolutely does, with a tale of two underachieving buddies who need to do some “growing up” fast unless they want to either become or be killed by traditional Chinese hopping vampires. Danny (Steven He) has been running Deadly Vermin Control since his father passed away. His childhood best friend and current roommate Frank (Michael Tient) works with him. Their lack of success with the business is nothing compared to the trouble that awaits them when jiangshi begin appearing, and it

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 24, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: THE ONES WHO GRIEVE (Fantastic Fest 2026) 

Official synopsis from Annick Mahnert’s Fantastic Fest summary Set in the French countryside at the end of the 19th century, The Ones Who Grieve follows Jacob, a deeply religious man who works as a soul keeper. Believing he is liberating those afflicted by a mysterious illness, he imprisons them behind wooden masks after sewing their eyes and mouths shut. His daughter, Zélie, lives under his tyrannical rule and dreams of freedom. When Jacob sells her beloved horse, Thunder, her resentment reaches its breaking point, prompting her to defy him by hiding an infected soldier in the family barn.  Review Director Can Evrenol gave cinephiles perhaps the strongest candidate so far for “Feel-Bad Movie of the Year” in 2026 with his pitch-black Spanish horror comedy The Turkish Coffee Table (a reimagining of Caye Casas’s also disturbing The Coffee Table [La mesita del comedor]). But now along comes director Quarxx, who says “Hold my needles, thread, hammers, pliers, wooden masks, and guns”

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 21, 2026

Spoiler-Free Review: Who’s Watching

Official synopsis Eccentric musician and aspiring filmmaker Caleb becomes obsessed with his new coworker, Krista, secretly documenting every aspect of her life in an effort to make her the subject of his latest film. As Caleb’s fixation intensifies, the lines between observer and participant begin to blur, pulling him deeper into a dangerous spiral of surveillance, manipulation and obsession. As the cameras keep rolling, the question becomes increasingly unsettling: who is really watching who?  Review Director Tim Kasher delivers a taut chiller with Who’s Watching. A disturbing character study of a stalker filming his target of interest transitions into jaw-dropping, unexpected territory that works satisfyingly well. Zachary Ray Sherman gives a fine, eerie performance as Caleb, a metal musician who gives off instant creep vibes that only escalate when he becomes fixated with new workplace employee Krista (Gracie Gilliam). His obsession is clear to everyone at work, and even friends of his band take notice. Krista was initially kind enough

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 17, 2026
Next →