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Overview
Well, here we are! It's BEFORE Halloween and Horror Lasagna has their horror fest episode out. YAY!
These were good choices for the year, a variety that worked well. We thought each was enjoyable in its own 3way.
And we had been posting about the choices for this year - so what were the finals?
Here you go:
1 - Slash Back
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash/Back
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9050310
2 - Rabbit Trap
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_Trap
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29567402
3 - What Josiah saw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Josiah_Saw
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3097396
Were those your picks? Did you watch any of the others? Keep an eye out for appetizer reviews of the other choices.
Trailers
Get Them
Get hack/slash on Amazon - https://link.amazon/B0cP9iVDn
Get Rabbit Trap on Amazon - https://link.amazon/A0hDjinhz
Get What Josiah saw on Amazon - https://link.amazon/A04GiJFr0
YouTube
Transcript
2026 Halloween Horrorfest Bonus
Stephen: as you pointed out, we're ahead of the curve this year. It only took us 55 years to actually get on time and ahead. So we're d- we did our Halloween fest earlier in the month because you are traveling to Ireland later in the month, and that means we're recording it before Halloween, and I'll hopefully get it out before then. So yeah, that'd be nice. So here we are, our Halloween Horror Fest, and we put up a lot of the trailers asking people for their opinions what they thought we should watch out of the list. I- in general, I've-- we picked three, and you and I have watched most of the other ones, and I would have to say the three we picked were good picks for the fest
Rhys: Yeah. Going through the other ones, they were... they weren't bad.
Stephen: No
Rhys: None of them were bad, but yeah, I think these were probably the best three on the list
Stephen: Did you finally watch Wounded Fawn?
Rhys: I did not. What was the last one I just watched? I just watched oh, the one where they're-- "Dark Harvest," which I thought was actually pretty good. For what it was
Stephen: Y- yeah, it wasn't the deep horror psychological or anything like that. It was a fun popcorn movie that wasn't Jason or Freddy,
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah, so we come up with a list of possibilities for our horror fest, which by the way, this is our fifth. We come up with possibilities for our horror fest, and then we end up watching them all anyways. The only difference is we watch three of them together.
Stephen: And it was fun. And last year we had multiple kids. The year before that we had a couple, and then this year it was just us adults. Dylan came
Rhys: Dylan came and, he's my kid, but he is
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: now, something like
Stephen: Yeah. How old are we? Yeah. W- we've got the, the rest of them are in various locations, so it was it changes, but it is what it is. So what we picked was Slashback, and then the Rabbit Trap, and then what Josiah saw. So let's talk a little bit about each one of those.
So the first one was Slashback
Rhys: Yeah, Slash/Back came out in 2022. It ran an hour and 26 minutes. It is a Canadian film which isn't overly astonishing. They shot it on Baffin Island, which is Canada. So it's the calling it an island is kind of a misnomer. It's huge, bigger than most countries. And it's the one that's between mainland Canada and Greenland, so you're way up there.
Stephen: Right, which makes sense. That's what they were portraying, Arctic Circle-like
Rhys: It, the movie's about an Inuit community. It got-- had four nominations. It got one win out of that, which I think might've been for costuming. It was set during the midsummer and it was shot then as well, so there's no night scenes in this film at all
Stephen: No, that's true. I didn't realize that, yeah.
A- and what intrigued me about this one was the Inuit community, which I can't say there's a large horror collection of Native American-related films. S- some, some maybe some ancient curses or something, but not s- modern communities and all that.
So I was intrigued by that, and it was, looked like a, almost a kids story. A Stranger Things type thing, a group of kids fighting back, which I like those, obviously. So I was intrigued by what this one was, and overall it was fun
Rhys: Yeah. And it was really an Indigenous film. It was directed by Nyla Inuksuk. He's got six other pieces, but this was his first full-length feature film. He's got one that's out there, I think it came out this year, called Heart of the South. But the cast was also very Indigenous. You had Tatiana Shirley, who was in, who only had two pieces before this and has two upcoming pieces, It Doesn't Show and Copper Mine.
Stephen: 80% of the cast was under the age of 15
Rhys: Alexis Vincent-Wolf, this was her first movie. Nalajie Ellsworth, this is her second movie. Her previous film was another Inuksuit film. She was in, Something like The Bear and Two Lovers or something like that. She plays some hockey kid in there. And Chelsea Pruski, this was her second film-- well, her second project.
Her first project was a television show. But I thought it was really good. It was entertaining. It's certainly one of those kind that you could take anyone to see
Stephen: Yes. Yeah, it was a creature thing, aliens. It had some creature special effects, but not overly to where it looked horrible. The bear, the fox, and that, those looked pretty good. When the people were inhabited and they-- their movements, we joked it looked like Cirque du Soleil was doing the acting for it the way they were moving
Rhys: It, it was it's been called Attack the Block meets The Thing, which I think is a very apt description.
Stephen: Absolutely, 100%. Except it's the other side. Wasn't the thing
Rhys: thing was in Ar- in Antarctica, yeah. And we also should mention Troy James. He was a contortionist who they used for lots of the effects in this because, like, when the people are moving around, they're moving very peculiarly, and it was him who was doing it.
And in fact they called them skin suits, the things that they would put on him. But the polar bear was him.
Stephen: Oh wow!
Rhys: And he, to actually get the effect to look right, he would arch his back and kind of crab walk backwards while inside this huge suit, which, they filmed those scenes in a day, and it was just a day for that guy.
When he was done stuffed in that suit all day long, being bent and twisted. Being able to make those movements is amazing enough, but then doing it all day long, that's a lot for anybody,
Stephen: Absolutely. It was like from The Flash TV show, The Dollmaker. the, if you saw that, he had some of the same contortionist movements and stuff, and it's kinda what's his name? The guy that always... The long, tall, skinny guy that plays all the parts, you need the contortionist guy, this is the one to call
Rhys: Yeah, exactly. So
Stephen: So yeah, overall Slashback's fun, worth it. It was enjoyable for everybody. It was an easy to watch piece without being like, "Oh my God, are you kidding me?"
Rhys: It was the one piece my wife watched
Stephen: Yeah. She's not a horror movie watcher. She bowed out of the other ones.
Rhys: Yeah. And she did sh- shriek once or twice out loud during this.
Stephen: helped that a little bit too, a, a couple times. And it didn't even have that many big jump scares,
Rhys: yeah
Stephen: Yeah, all right, so that was Slash/Back. And then the next one totally changed up what we were watching, was The Rabbit Trap. And we watched this one because it was Welsh and that's one of the things we like to watch your heritage.
Tell me about Rabbit Trap
Rhys: It came out in 2025. It's a full horror piece.
Stephen: Yeah. It different though. It felt more different folk horror than most for folk horror we've watched
Rhys: I, I think it's because the fae involved in this case they're doing the Welsh version, which is the Twrch Trwyth. You never see them. They never actually play a role in it aside from this dr- this force that's behind everything
Stephen: Th- yeah, it's not like the red hats, the
Rhys: Right, this was a UK/US cooperative piece, so the US had some more than likely funding, if I had to guess.
'Cause the box office on this wasn't huge. It was about 108,000 take worldwide. It had six nominations and three wins. Oddly enough, it is set in Wales because Wales is a very kind of fae-looking kind of place. It's got a lot of folklore that runs through it because of that. But it was actually shot in Yorkshire because in Wales they have laws restricting how much you can smoke on set.
And so instead of trying to get around it or rewriting scenes without the character smoking, they just decided to shoot it elsewhere. So they shot it in Great Britain instead of Wales.
Stephen: Interesting
Rhys: The film sc--
Stephen: Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead
Rhys: oh, I was just gonna say the film score was by Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram, and it gets mentioned because Derbyshire is also very famous because she arranged the "Doctor Who," the modern "Doctor Who" theme.
Stephen: Oh, okay
Rhys: I don't know that anything in it really jumped out at me, like score-wise. It was good, but, it wasn't like I was walking away humming a song from there or anything like
Stephen: Right. It fit it had its place to set the mood
Rhys: Yeah. This was written and directed by a guy named Bryn Chaney. He has 10 pieces in his resume. This was his first full-length film. And it is a super small cast. There is a grand total of three people in this movie
Stephen: I was gonna say I don't remember too many beyond the main ones
Rhys: Yeah. You have Dev Patel, who is like the-- he's the weightlifting guy in this. He's a London-born actor. He's been in 15 pieces, I think, in like big stuff. Like he started with a long TV show run on a show called "Skins." His first big movie was "Slumdog Millionaire,"
Stephen: Oh, geez
Rhys: Which is pretty huge. He was in the last live action "Last Airbender," which, isn't anything to write home about.
But he was also in "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," the second "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel." He had a long run on "The Newsroom," which I-- Was I just talking to you about "The Newsroom"? It was an HBO series
He was in Chappie, great sci-fi South African film. He was in The Green Knight, which is another really good folk horror piece.
And he has two upcoming films, one called The Journeyman and one called The Peasant
Stephen: Okay
Rhys: Rosie McEwen is also in this. Rosie McEwen has been in 13 previous pieces including a long run on a show called "The Alienist," in a miniseries called "Close to Me." She was in an episode of "Black Mirror." Her latest movie is called "Mission." And then Jade Croot played the child, who does not have a name for a reason.
The child was played by Jade Croot. She's a Welsh actress who started acting at 13. She's got 13 previous pieces, starting with "The Machine." She was in an episode of "The Witcher." She was in a movie called "Mary," one called "Sacrifice," and she's worked with really big names, Anya Taylor-Joy.
Just the nu- the cast of people that she's been around in the pieces that she's done is pretty impressive for somebody who's,
Stephen: That young.
Rhys: maybe 18 now at best
Stephen: Yeah. And that right there is part of what is disturbing about this movie, because honestly, it's not really a scary movie. It's more unsettling and disturbing, and part of it is because you have this girl basically playing a boy. They don't specifically say it, but they treat her like a boy, talk about her like she's a boy, and y- you- without even thinking about it, you're like, "Is that a boy or a girl?"
Not that it matters, but it's that part makes it a little unsettling. Not to mention the acting she did in it and the way she acted. And it definitely keeps you kinda wondering what's going on the entire movie until the end. Then it gets a little Alice in Wonderland and bizarre, and then you're like, "Okay, wait a minute.
What just happened here?" It could fit the s- seventh season we're on right
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. It's really odd because typically a lot of this was based in sound, and I have found horror movies that are based heavily in sound tend to be really like, "What the hell was that?" The, the Barbarian Sound Stare- Studio is like the perfect example of that. You watch that movie and when you're done, it, it certainly could have fit in the season 'cause you're like, "What the hell did I just see?"
So that-- When I went into it, I was like, "That's probably gonna make this a little weird 'cause it's very sound-based," which, I don't know what it is, whether the people who write them are really into sound and that puts them in a specific head space or what, but It's not-- I'm not gonna say it's for everyone.
It's certainly not like your typical Halloween kind of piece. I was reading through reviews, and the people who disliked it because of, oh, it's a slow burn kind of thing. The people who don't have patience for that. But even they had to say, "Oh, the performances by the actors were all phenomenal.
I just didn't like the story," is basically what most of the negative reviews were
Stephen: A- and that's not even saying it's a bad movie. It's just not for everybody, which I get, and we talk about that all the time. There's plenty of other subgenres of horror. Pick the one you like. We can still all like horror and watch it. I really liked this one 'cause it, it kept you captivated.
It was very different, and at the end we sat there having to chat about it for a couple minutes. What was that really? What did we see? What happened? Oh, I see that. Oh, I understand. And then you think about it for days, and I even said to him I'm gonna have to process this one for a couple days."
And I did. And I was like, "That, that was a good one." That's one I'm- I would put on again at some point just when I want something that maybe is a little horror, but I wanna relax a little bit without having to watch something and get scared every five minutes or something
Rhys: Yeah I think one of the really nice things that they do in "The Rabbit Trap" is that it doesn't, it does not really blatantly resolve. The story resolves, but at no point in time in the end are they like, "Here's what you just saw." They just throw the information out there. These are, this is what happened, and you can interpret it how you want.
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: There's no hard definition of what just happened on screen
Stephen: A- and I thought of even a couple other things like, oh, it could kinda be this. Still what we had talked about. I don't wanna give things away, but there's still things that I was like, oh, I could see this. Again, maybe I'll watch it again and pick something up different. And there's nothing super objectional about this.
I'm not sure if kids would enjoy it so much. Some might, but there's nothing that's going to... No boogeyman under the, the floorboards and nothing jumping out making you s- scare a whole lot,
Rhys: yeah I don't know that kids would really enjoy it that much.
Stephen: Probably not
Rhys: I mentioned the first horror movie I ever saw was "What Ever Happened to Rosemary's Baby?" 'Cause it happened to be on TV and I think I was like four. And there's a scene in it that takes place in a disco that really stuck with me.
To this day I still can picture it. So I hunted the movie down, which was a trick because it was a made for TV movie. So I was watching it on YouTube, I think, which-- And the quality was crap because there is no good quality version of this out there. And I watched the whole movie and it's not good. I'm not recommending this to anybody.
But it was very much an intellectual horror piece, and I was like, I-- "Okay, I remember seeing it, but I don't remember much about it because I was too young to actually grasp the scary part of the story."
Stephen: Not enough worldly knowledge.
Rhys: And this is similar. If you sat a little kid down to watch it, there would be visual things that they would find interesting, but the story's elevated enough that I-- they wouldn't keep up with it, I
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: I could agree with that. Speaking of as a side thing the new Carrie series, Mike Flanagan is, I think it's out now, and the Camp Crystal Lake series is gonna be out in a week or so. So for those of you looking for some horror s- movie or shows, those are, they're there. The Mike Flanagan one definitely looks good.
I don't know much about the other one, all right. And then our last movie, What Josiah Saw with the Silver Terminator maybe
Rhys: Yeah. No, you're right. It came out in 2022. It was done in 2021, but it didn't release until 2022, right after the first of the year. This is a two-hour saga-esque kind of film but more so than Devil All the Time, and arguably more so than Hold the Dark, both of which I consider kind of saga-esque films.
This one I think fit more securely in the horror realm, but not Fall of the House of Usher, where every second of it's horror, like the end of this is, and that's it
Stephen: Right. It has that classic horror feel where it's all story leading up to the last 10 minutes, which is the horror part. But the story itself is that setting and the story, like Last House on the Left. There, there's a few bad parts in it, but then all this stuff happens like the last 10 minutes or so.
That's the one I always remember watching. I'm like, "Oh my God, when is something going to happen?" This didn't feel like that. There was always something going on. And again, we thought afterwards, "What, what went on? What happened? What was this?" And we chatted about it
Rhys: Yeah. The box office on this was about 48K. This was not something that made a whole lot of money.
Stephen: Yeah, I don't even think I remember this.
Rhys: Oh so just in case anybody else has, "Hey, how do you pick this?" I go to, i'll just go to Google and be like, "Unknown horror movies from," and then list the year. And they'll literally give you a list of 20 movies that weren't on anyone's radar. And of those 20, maybe five of them look good.
And so that's how I compile these lists for like the horror fests. I'm like, so these were the, I think '22, '23 and '24 maybe. So yeah, it's not-- no wonder you didn't hear it. It only had $48,000 at the box office, so it appeared maybe in three places. But it did get seven, seven wins out of 13 nominations for awards, so
Stephen: and jokingly, like I said, it had Robert Patrick in it, who's no small actor, is a very known name to some pe- most people, lots of people
Rhys: Yeah. It was directed by a guy named Vincent Grayshaw. He is a California-born director. He's got a handful of previous titles. It started in 2002 with a show called Callous Sentiment. His first full-length film was in 2013, Cold Water. And his latest piece is called Bruton, B-R-U-T-O-N.
He is not a horror director, per se. A lot of his stuff is just kind of dramas. It hits that, which if you take the last 10 minutes out of this movie and resolve it some other way, this would've been as well
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. It's a very drama period type piece based movie, even though it's modern. It had a lot of flashbacks and it, but it was set out in like the country. You didn't have everybody on cell phones all the time and computers and stuff, so
Rhys: Yeah, when it starts, I thought it was a period piece.
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: But Robert Patrick is in it. He was born in Georgia. He moved around a lot, lived around the Great Lakes region. He was in Dayton, he was in Detroit, he was in Cleveland. He went to Bowling Green University, but he dropped out to become an actor.
Stephen: Good choice
Rhys: he was in a boating accident on Lake Erie, and he personally was, like, swimming for three hours rescuing other people from the accident site.
When he was done, he was like, "I'm leaving the shores of Lake Erie," and moved to California and went on to become an actor, so
Stephen: Wow. I do remember an anecdote I heard during the filming of The Terminator 2 when they had the scenes with him running. They had to ask him to slow down because he was running too fast, and they had to take pauses because he would run and not get out of breath. And they were like you're running too much.
Stop." So
Rhys: If you could spend an three hours in an evening swimming in Lake Erie, there's some cardio there.
Stephen: There is a bit
Rhys: His first piece was in '87. It was called Equalizer 2000. And then he went on to do 178 pieces like Die Hard 2, Terminator 2 Wayne's World, Fire in the Sky, The Last Action Hero, Double Dragon.
He had a long run as voiceover in the '96 version of Jonny Quest. He was Race Bannon.
Stephen: Oh, cool
Rhys: He was he had a long run on a show called The Unit. He was in The Men Who Stare at Goats, and he had ... this guy's done a lot of series. Last Resort, From Dusk Till Dawn the series, Scorpion, Reacher, 1923, Peacemaker, Tulsa King, and True Blood.
He's had very long, lengthy roles on lots of television pieces. His latest movie was called Diamond, and he's got two upcoming projects. One's called How and the other's called Outpost LMS. He was very much the veteran star on this show.
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: But he was close behind him. Nick Stahl was born in Texas in '79.
He plays one of the boys. He's been in 71 pieces. I wouldn't have known that he was that old looking at him in this film.
Stephen: Yeah, absolutely
Rhys: He's ... Let's see. His first piece was a made-for-TV movie in '91 Stranger at My Door. He was in The Thin Red Line. Bully. He was in Terminator 3 so you had two Terminator people there.
He had a long run on Carnivale or Carnivale. He was in Sin City, Locke & Key. He had a run on Fear of The Walking Dead and the Let the Right One In series
Stephen: Jeez, oh man, I've watched just about all of those and didn't recognize him.
Rhys: Yeah. He was in Gr- Gang Land, which is another movie that Grayshaw directed back in the day. His latest movie is Down the Arm of God, and he has some upcoming pieces, All Day Happy Dance, Devoted Green River Killer, Cliff House, Lupo, When the Lights Go Out, and he is in an episode of Heated Rivalry that will be coming out.
Stephen: Wow, quite busy
Rhys: Yeah, so he was certainly a seasoned actor in his own right. The other two have been in a considerable amount, but nowhere near these two. You had Scott Haze. He was born in Texas. He's been in 47 pieces starting in 2004, doing voiceover for the obscure video game. I don't know if you remember that, OBS and capital C-U-R-E. He was in As I Lay Dying, and he was in The Sound and the Fury, both of which are based on a Faulkner novel, on two different Faulkner novels, both directed by James Franco. Apparently Franco is big into Faulkner, and it's-- he should be. He's a good author. He was also in Midnight Special. He was in The Vault, Venom, Antlers
Stephen: I like the antlers
Rhys: Yeah, it was okay. I wasn't a huge fan, it but it was all right. As I Lay Dying... I already said that. Jurassic World: Dominion The Red Right Hand, and his latest movie is called Found Alive. It came out this year. He's got three upcoming titles, Exhale, The Long Home, and The Prince.
Stephen: You got
Rhys: And the last of the siblings, Nick Stahl, Scott Haze both played brothers.
The last is their sister, Kelly Garner. She was born in California in '84. She does s- a lot of stage work. She does that. She's been in 53 other pieces, starting in 2000 with Architecture of Reassurance. She was in Bully with Nick Stahl. She did an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was in The Aviator.
She was what's her name, in the Jesus of Suburbia video by Green Day.
Stephen: Oh
Rhys: and it's not what's her name 'cause I can't remember her name. That's the name of the character. She was in Lars and the Real Girl that G-Force movie. She was in a long run on Pan Am. She was in Neighbors and Horns. A pretty long run on The Enemy Within.
She was also in Godzilla: King of Monsters. The, one of the VHS anthologies, VHS '85
Stephen: Yeah, aren't there like 50 of those now?
Rhys: Yeah. The Red Mask, and her latest was called Misty Green, and she has three upcoming jo- films, Blood on the Ice, There, and You Always But yeah I thought the movie was... I don't mind long saga-like films. The kind of richness that you build between having all of those characters, and this really was just four main characters, but you got deep into their stories, and I enjoy that kind of thing.
But it's hard to find one that actually pulls off a blatant horror situation. A lot of times, Hold the Dark, it was subtly hinted at. It wasn't overt. This one gets very overt at the end
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah, and i- it's definitely if you don't like the slashers and stuff like that, this is one you should check out. It's a kind of drama mystery for a large part of it. Wondering what's... It's more a mystery for us what's going on actually, and who's telling the truth and what we should believe with some horror elements thrown in.
So it, it almost could have been a King story the way it was, the characterization and things spooled out
Rhys: It felt a lot like 1922
Stephen: Yeah. And we mentioned that watching it, we both thought that same thing. A-
Rhys: Yeah, I, like the setting was basically it without the whole cornfield around it
Stephen: Right. Yeah. It, again, we talked about it afterwards "Wait a minute, what happened? Let me think about it." I'm sure if we watch it the second time it'll be like, "Oh, there's a, a hint dropped right there that we did
Rhys: Went right past us
Stephen: we didn't realize what the ending was." So it's definitely another one of those should watch it a second time movies.
Rhys: Yeah, for sure
Stephen: So all right. Hey, there we go. Three good Horror Fest movies this year earlier.
Rhys: Before Halloween, so hey
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. I was very happy with it, good choices, and we had plenty of others to watch from that list too. I think if anyone's interested, over on our Facebook page w- I listed all of them that we were looking at if anybody's interested in going to check them out.
But, we'll put links to these and the trailers and all that. Check these out. Recommended, all three of them All right, ma'am. Hey if I don't see you before Halloween, 'cause you'll be flying to Ireland, which has no history of horror or anything get some good
Rhys: like Halloween comes from there
Stephen: No, yeah, not like there's any creatures or anything that could be there. You have a great trip and good horror fest.
Rhys: Awesome. I thought so too.
Stephen: Later.
Rhys: Take it easy
