Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

 I recently saw possibly the most hyped up horror of the 2025 season, Weapons.  There have not been many movies I've been excited to see in 2025. The only horror movies I've seen in theaters this year have been Companion, Heart Eyes, and The Monkey. Other than that, nothing has really interested me enough to spend money on seeing it in theaters. (I do need to watch Sinners; scheduling conflicts kept arising when it came to seeing that one on the big screen.) But I absolutely loved the initial marketing for  Weapons, making it look like footage from a real unsolved case, and it   has easily been one of my most anticipated movies of the year. But, sadly, I actually didn't like it.  This is not meant to be a "hot take" post in any way. I'm not here to rain on anyone's parade that did enjoy it, I just have a lot of thoughts about it that I want to unpack for myself, and maybe for anyone else who feels similarly. If you loved the movie, I'm honestly very ha...

 I recently saw a post, I believe it was in a Facebook horror group, about a movie from 2005 called Tideland. I had never before heard of this movie, but the post intrigued me to the point where I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it for the past month or so. I would occasionally Google trailers, and reviews, and it got to the point where I was so weirdly hyperfixated on it that I knew I would have to experience it for myself, despite not really being able to pin down exactly what sort of movie it was. It seemed like some kind of horrific fairytale fever dream, and something about it just really spoke to me. Thankfully, it is currently available on Tubi, so I was recently able to watch it for free. I’m going to start this off by saying, while I understand that he is influential, I am not familiar with much of Terry Gilliam’s work. I have specific tastes in media, and the only other movie I’ve seen of his, at least as far as I can tell, is The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, ...

In my personal opinion, 2024 was a great year for horror movies. I came away from it with so many new favorites, literally a handful of new movies sitting right among some of my almost-lifelong favorites. It was exciting, inspiring, and on some level, healing. I don't know if there will ever be another year like that for me again. I haven't been nearly as excited for much of anything in 2025...the main movie I'm looking forward to seeing is Wicked: For Good and that's not until Thanksgiving-time. And if the rest of the year drags on anything like January has, we may never get there. There are a couple of things in the coming weeks that I'm interested in. Of course my Valentine's-Day-loving self will be seeing Heart Eyes, and if you know me at all, you probably know how much I love Longlegs,  so The Monkey is obviously a priority. Still, though, it doesn't seem like much compared to last year.  But, given that I'm always in need of a spooky escape, I deci...

 I've seen a lot of movies this year, probably more than I have in a long time. I pretty much exclusively watch horror and spooky things, with a few exceptions. It's just what feeds my soul the most. I don't claim to be an expert. I like what I like, I gravitate toward what interests me. I probably couldn't win a trivia contest but I could sure as hell talk your ear off about a movie if I love it, or hate it. Though I don't expect anyone else to feel as I do about anything. I enjoy conversation about these things. That said, I always tend to see a lot of division among horror fans when it comes to their opinions of horror media. It's very black-and-white a lot of the time. It's absolute love and devotion, or it's a hate-fueled rampage. Being neutral on a horror movie doesn't seem to be a thing. And while I am extremely passionate about the things I love, and can come away from a movie feeling like it altered my brain chemistry somehow (or, alternativ...

To continue the recent theme of possession movies, today I'd like to talk about a movie in the same sub genre that far exceeded my expectations:   Late Night With The Devil. I didn't know a whole lot about this movie going into it. All I really need to know about a movie to want to watch it is that it's Halloween-themed. That's literally all it takes. Throw in a vintage vibe and I'm all in. Late Night With The Devil is presented in the style of a lost broadcast of a popular 70s late-night talk show known as Night Owls, hosted by a man named Jack Delroy. The beginning of the movie gives us a little rundown of Jack's career, his constant rivalry with Johnny Carson, his controversial involvement in a "gentlemen's club" known as The Grove, with questionable intentions, and eventually the tragic death of his wife, an actress named Madeleine Piper. Jack's career takes a hit while he grieves for Madeleine, but he decides that Halloween night, 1977, wi...

I recently watched last year's attempted legacy sequel/semi-reboot of the Exorcist franchise, The Exorcist: Believer.  I don't think I heard a single positive thing about this movie when it was released. The hate for it was truly inescapable within the horror community. I didn't watch it expecting a cinematic masterpiece. It was more of a "It's free, may as well see what everyone's bitching about" type of watch. I wasn't expecting to like it. In fact, I was expecting to, most likely, laugh at it. (That said, I never choose to see or not see a movie based on reviews, anyway.)  However, while it certainly is far from the most amazing and brilliant thing I've ever watched, I have to say, I failed to see exactly what was so wrong with it.  To give a quick synopsis, The Exorcist: Believer is the story of a young girl named Angela, raised by a single father after an earthquake in Haiti killed her pregnant mother. There's a whole opening sequence that...

 I’m going to start this review by saying, I think this may actually be my personal favorite episode of the Stories franchise so far. And believe me when I tell you, when I saw what the episode was about, I went into it with extremely low expectations.  Last season had a few episodes based more or less on technology-based horrors, and these episodes really weren’t my favorite. The concept got tired after the first few instances of “a video plays and people die”, and it just added to the overall atmosphere of “AHS for a teen audience”. So, when I saw the episode was all about a doorbell camera, I was skeptical. Just about the only thing that made me want to watch this episode was Gabourey Sidibe’s involvement. And I guess I ought to thank her, because this was a great ride! Aura opens up with a commercial for a security camera system/app named, you guessed it, Aura. I have to say, whoever wrote this portion really nailed that feeling of an overacted security system commercial. ...

 As I’ve mentioned before, I often spend significant amounts of time browsing through Halloween-themed movies on streaming services, hoping to find something that truly speaks to me. There’s a certain something that I look for in Halloween movies that I can’t quite explain, and I usually know, fairly quickly, when I’ve found it, or, also, when I haven’t. Not that certain movies aren’t fun watches even if they don’t have that something, and I’ll talk more about those types of movies in the future, but today, I stumbled upon a movie that will surely be added to my list of go-tos and really want to share it. This is a little movie that came out last September, called Bad Candy. A few people I know within the Halloween community have watched this movie, but I never hear anyone talk much about it. I won’t lie, I put it on today as background noise while doing some cleaning, fully expecting it to not hold my interest enough to want to actually sit still and watch it. I tend to get cranky...

 One of the most puzzling things I can probably tell you about myself is, despite the fact that my obsession with Halloween began at the age of four, I was very much a “scaredy cat” in childhood. In fact, most people found it quite odd that my favorite holiday was Halloween. Any kind of spooky storyline or imagery that didn’t directly relate to Halloween, was usually too much for me, even when it was something aimed at children. This was possibly due to my overactive imagination, but whatever the cause, I was not one of those kids who grew up enjoying horror. As you probably already know, horror is my main genre of interest nowadays. And I recently decided to the revisit the movie that really kickstarted my interest in horror, the first horror film I ever really watched on my own, at the age of fourteen: the Stephen King miniseries Rose Red. What got my attention about this movie, initially, was that Kimberly J. Brown was in it. Rose Red was released about three months after the se...