It’s the Capn’s favorite time of year!!!
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Horror Month 2026
WEEK 1
The Ice Cream Man – I swear I heard this was going to be an adaptation of the comic with the same name, a kind of anthology of sorts about a demonic ice cream man who gives kids ice cream to make them do horrible things. The movie however is about a demonic ice cream man that gives kids ice cream to make them do horrible things, so you can see my confusion. Anyway, there are some things to like about this movie. And oh boy are there things to hate about it, mostly involving the unnecessary use of AI. They say only the animated scenes are AI, but it’s very clear to me that other scenes not masquerading as animation are AI as well, like the very obvious AI graveyard scenes towards the end we see in a flashback. As for the good, a lot of practical gore SFX. Eli Roth doesn’t hold back, clearly inspired by films like Beware: Children at Play and Bloody Birthday. The ending is another strike against this movie, I can see Eli Roth fans enjoying the dark ending, but everything just seemed pointless. The backstory to the Ice Cream Man and what was happening to the kids was just laugh out loud stupid. It leans heavy into a lesser score, but I’ll say it’s a RENT.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma – I was hoping for something new from this director, but it seems they’ve got one singular message and that’s about all they have to say. So, it’s basically I Saw the TV Glow but instead of the inspiration being the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, it’s trashy slasher movies like Sleepaway Camp. The meta stuff is awful, and anything that flashed to the movie was infinitely more interesting, making you wish that this was just that movie. There’s a long massacre scene over I think a Counting Crows song, making it the only thing worth seeing, that is if we aren’t counting from the female lead nude scenes. It does have sex in the title after all, so at least they delivered there. But the meta-on-meta thing towards the end is just dumb, not clever or funny, just stupid. SKIP!
The End of Oak Street – Loved everything about this but the characters. The wife is kind of awful, essentially wanting to leave her family behind so she can write a book. A book about her wanting to leave her family behind. She’s also constantly nagging her husband to death about every little thing. You feel so sorry for the guy. And then there’s the son, who is such a pathetic loser, his own love interest chooses to be with his sister than him. The only character I liked was the dad played by Ewan McGregor. I also would have liked a bit of an explanation as to why this was all happening. Pretty violent for a PG-13, characters were meh but everything else I enjoyed a lot, a better Jurassic Park/World movie than Jurassic Park/World. RENT.
Soulm8te – So far, this one has been the biggest surprise. I was in the mood for something kind of trashy, and from the trailers this looked pretty trashy. This was produced by Blumhouse, written and produced by James Wan, so this works very well as a sequel to those M3gen movies. I honestly had a blast watching it. Yes, it’s super trashy, the first scene we get is a sex scene, so it knows what kind of film it is, even featuring a death by robot sex. This is a super fun, but trashy movie that I can’t recommend enough. I think it was originally meant to get a theatrical release but after M3GAN 2.0 bombed, they dropped it on streaming to die. SEE IT!
The Plague – Not exactly a horror movie, more like it was Lord of the Flies but with water polo. I like the idea of using teen puberty and the weird things your body goes through as this backdrop for a horror movie, then add the bullying of kids to the mix… the horror is a bit muted, focusing a bit more of the loneliness of being ostracized by your friends. Still, this was a pretty good movie that I’d gladly say is worth seeing, just maybe not for horror month. RENT.
Ghost in the Cell – Over the top gore, but when nothing is happening, which is often, it just feels like a bad prison sitcom series by Chuck Lorre. Not really what I was expecting or wanted from a movie with this such graphic kills. The lead looking like the Indonesian version of Adam Driver was slightly distracting as well. The humor in this is pretty bad, or maybe it’s just a lost in translation thing going on. There was a funny fight scene, where our lead and the rival in another gang had to stop and do silly things to calm down or else the ghost would kill them. The plot was kind of lame, with it just being about wanting to get revenge on someone at the prison. The characters were likable enough, but the sitcom stuff really needed to be trimmed back. RENT.
Buzzkill – As a Tubi original horror movie, this wasn’t that bad, or at least not as bad as I was expecting it to be. From the plot it seems pretty much like Happy Death Day, but instead of time loops, it’s getting super drunk so as to help remember who the killer is. The kills were gory if not a bit unbelievable like stabbing someone in the throat with a non-sharp blunt object like a wooden paddle. The main issue I had was the unlikable main character or any of the characters for that matter, they all suck and I really didn’t care who died. But it’s free on Tubi, so RENT.
Infirmary – It takes a super long time for anything to happen and by the time it does, it’s over so quickly that it felt like the movie had wasted your time. The plot was kind of dumb as well, with it being about a mad scientist that wanted to put brains in medical dolls for some reason. They filmed in a real abandoned hospital, so there was more they probably could have done to make this scary. The only time we get a hint of that is towards the end where our main character is lead into the dark basement. This I think is a SKIP.
Onslaught – I was excited to see this one, mainly because it seemed like a possible tie-in to Adam Wingard’s other film The Guest. And I guess it is according to the director, but it really didn’t have much of a connection other than a few obvious similarities. Honestly, it works better as a Universal Soldier tie-in. And that’s basically what this movie is, a cross between Universal Soldier and Tremors. What this film is really lacking however are characters. We barely spend any time with anyone. Our lead is a bit unlikable and all we know about her is she’s a bad mom dealing with PTSD from whatever war she was in that messed her up. That’s another thing that didn’t work, making one of the universal soldiers someone from her past that I guess she kicked in the balls once. It made it seem like he did all this just to come back and get revenge for her drop kicking his nutsack. It screams studio note. I was also disappointed in how easy it was to actually kill these unkillable killing machines. It kind of made them less threatening and kind of pointless. I can’t say I was bored, it sure was entertaining, so RENT.
Recomendation of the week: Soulm8te
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