Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

 I watched a movie yesterday on a whim that wound up making quite an impression on me, and I wanted to share a quick review of it, in the hopes that maybe this will find the right people in the next few days, and become a fun little part of someone else's Thanksgiving celebration. While browsing movies on Tubi after a particularly trying holiday-season morning at my retail job, I ran across a movie called The Last Thanksgiving. It seemed to be in a similar vein to a lot of the independent Halloween-set horror movies that I love so much, and also on par with how my day was already going, so I decided to give it a watch. At just over an hour and ten minutes in length, it seemed like the perfect little bite-size distraction, in the spirit of the gloomier, heavier side of autumn. The Last Thanksgiving tells the story of a "dysfunctional family" type group of restaurant workers, grappling with the fact that their manager has chosen to open the restaurant on Thanksgiving Day. T...

I have really been wanting to write a review of the movie Good Boy, since seeing on opening day.  This was honestly my most anticipated horror movie of 2025, although I admit the bar this year is extremely low. After being gravely disappointed by Weapons, I go into everything with low expectations.  But, as a dog lover and also a lover of experimental horror, Good Boy was a must see. I have to admit, though, I was also scared for this one. As a child, I absolutely refused to watch any movie where I thought the dog might die. I'm not sure if any of my fellow 90s kids recall a movie called Fluke, but I watched that as a child and it left me positively traumatized. (Looking back, it was extremely dark subject matter for a movie aimed at children and families...dog death aside, even. I don't think my eight or nine year old self was ready to learn so much about death in general.) My mother used to offer to rent me movies about dogs, one specific one that sticks out is My Dog Skip, ...

 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 recently, finally, was able to watch the movie Orphan: First Kill and it made such an impression on me that I wanted to talk about it/give a little review. This will contain spoilers, for both this movie and the original Orphan, so if you haven't seen either of these movies and are planning to someday, I wouldn't recommend reading this, as it's better to go into these movies fairly blind. I saw the original Orphan movie almost immediately when it first came out. I love creepy kids, and while I have no plans to ever actually bear a child, if for any reason I ever end up with one, I pray they're a spooky kid. But anyway, while I don't come back to Orphan in the same way that I come back to certain other movies (primarily the ones that are set on/have something more to do with Halloween), though I have rewatched it several times, it has stayed with me since that very first viewing. If you don't know, the Orphan movies are about a seemingly normal, albeit slightl...

 One of the big things I have been looking forward to this Halloween season is seeing how the Halloween movie franchise finally ends. Halloween has been an iconic part of my “spooky seasons” since I was very young, even before I actually watched the movies. And, even though I may enjoy Freddy Krueger’s sense of humor just slightly more than Michael Myers’ more “strong and silent” approach to slasher-dom, the Halloween movies are always my go-to when it comes to rewatching an OG slasher. The atmosphere is just perfect. While many people seemed to be on the fence about Halloween Kills, I absolutely loved it and it’s one of my main go-to movies, period, not even just within the Halloween franchise. So I naturally had pretty high hopes for Halloween Ends.  To say that I was disappointed, just might be an understatement.  Halloween Ends was basically  the Necro episode  of American Horror Stories, minus a few details, with a little bit of Laurie Strode and Michael My...

 I am always looking for new Halloween-themed movies to watch. Anything that sets the perfect mood in the off-season, or at the very least, is a fun watch in the spirit of the season, will almost instantly become a go-to.  But, sadly, many of the Halloween-themed horror films that can be found on streaming services suffer from… issues. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes these movies so subpar, but in many cases,  I think a huge part of the problem is that they try so hard to live up to the standards set by the more popular films, that they ultimately end up shooting themselves in the foot.  One such movie came to me today in the form of Candy Corn , a movie that got a lot of buzz in the Halloween community when it was first released in 2019, but hasn’t been free to watch until now.  With its beautifully designed signature pumpkin pail, and the fact that it’s set both on Halloween and at a creepy carnival , Candy Corn almost seemed, at first glan...

 Today, I’d like to talk about a Halloween themed horror film that I recently discovered and was pleasantly surprised by: A 2019 Canadian film called Halloween Party. I first became aware of this movie while scrolling through Tubi one afternoon looking for something else, and immediately declared it a must-watch. You can view the trailer  here .  Now, these random streaming-service spooky finds can be very hit-or-miss. There are quite a few that I’ve turned off before ever finishing them, so I tend to go in with low expectations. But, while I don’t find Halloween Party to be Oscar-worthy or anything like that, I personally found it to be a very interesting, smart horror film. Our story opens with best friends Grace and Zoe, hanging out in Zoe’s dorm room. Grace is scrolling through pictures on Zoe’s computer when suddenly a very primitive Halloween animation pops up, declaring itself “A Halloween Party For GRACE” and prompting her to type her worst fear in a little box wh...