Matt Donato – Page 2 – All Things Ick

‘Cube’ – Surviving the Canadian Original and Its Japanese Remake [Revenge of the Remakes]

January 16, 2024 Matt Donato Cube, Editorials, Movies, Revenge of the Remakes

I’m thirty-plus entries into Revenge of the Remakes and have finally reached an original/remake pair where neither is American. Vincenzo Natali’s Cube (1997) is a maple-scented product of Canada’s independent filmmaking scene, while Yasuhiko Shimizu’s 2021 remake hails from Japan. You’re free of rants about stale Americanizations and Hollywood’s sometimes shortsighted approach to horror remakes. […]

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‘Santa Isn’t Real’ Review – Latest Christmas Horror Movie Fails to Make the Season Bright

December 8, 2023 Matt Donato Movies, Reviews, Santa Isn't Real

Between Thanksgiving and It’s a Wonderful Knife, it’s been an especially rewarding year for seasonal slasher fans, an esteemed group that Santa Isn’t Real does not join. Writer and director Zac Locke’s low-budget Christmas massacre barely has a pulse until the final few minutes, only thanks to a few teaspoons of gore. Performances are stiff, […]

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‘A Creature Was Stirring’ Review – Christmas Horror Movie Struggles to Execute Its Admirable Ideas

December 7, 2023 Matt Donato A Creature Was Stirring, Movies, Scout Taylor-Compton

The differences between Damien LeVeck’s sophomore effort A Creature Was Stirring and his feature debut The Cleansing Hour are staggering. His instincts are ironclad in the cleanly polished and despicable exorcism thriller that stands as one of Shudder’s best original releases in 2020. Unfortunately, A Creature Was Stirring doesn’t replicate the same accomplished approach as […]

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Slasher Renaissance? A Closer Look at the Sub-Genre That Never Went Away

December 7, 2023 Matt Donato Editorials, Eli Roth, featured, Movies, Slashers, Thanksgiving, topnews

This holiday season’s release of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving is cause for celebration amongst slasher fans. It’s been a hot minute since mainstream horror audiences have been able to watch a wide-release slasher that feels gruesomely throwback *and* is based on a wholly original concept. Thanksgiving is a contemporary reinterpretation of cheesy 80s midnighters about masked […]

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‘Don’t Suck’ Review – Vampire Horror-Comedy Is Soulless and Uninspired

December 1, 2023 Matt Donato Don't Suck, Movies, Reviews

It’s a shame Don’t Suck doesn’t take its own advice [comic rimshot]. Sorry, are you not a fan of plucking low-hanging fruit? Don’t expect anything more from RJ Collins’ soulless vampire standup horror comedy that tries to manufacture edginess with faceplant jokes about Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and Jeffrey Epstein in the first however many […]

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‘Godzilla Minus One’ Review -Toho’s Latest Raises the Bar for Godzilla Movies and Kaiju Cinema

December 1, 2023 Matt Donato featured, Godzilla, Godzilla: Minus One, Movies, Reviews, topnews

Godzilla Minus One is a blessing to Toho’s kaiju franchise and a towering accomplishment for the entire kaiju subgenre. Director and writer Takashi Yamazaki respects the balance between monster mashes and human perspectives, unlike our blockbuster domestic efforts, which oftentimes lean toward larger-than-life action thrills (although Apple TV+’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is off to […]

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How ‘The Crazies’ Reinterprets a Romero Classic for a New Generation [Revenge of the Remakes]

November 27, 2023 Matt Donato Editorials, George A. Romero, Movies, Revenge of the Remakes, The Crazies

There’s a solid chance this month’s edition of “Revenge of the Remakes” ends up as one of my favorite column entries. George A. Romero’s The Crazies and Breck Eisner’s The Crazies inspire an exceptional case study about the peaceful coexistence between remakes and originals. Both filmmakers choose unique perspectives when dooming small-town America, even though […]

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‘Do Not Disturb’ Review – Psychedelic Anarchy Is Unleashed in This Vacation Freakout

November 20, 2023 Matt Donato Dark Star Pictures, Do Not Disturb, Movies, Reviews

John Ainslie’s Do Not Disturb portrays what nastiness festers behind locked hotel room doors in this heavy dose of psychedelic anarchy. What feels like a stripped-down mashup of Bones & All, Very Bad Things, and The Hangover sends broken people on a bad and bloody trip. It might not look that way at first, because […]

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‘Killer Book Club’ Review – Netflix’s Spanish Slasher Is a Pale Imitation of ‘Scream’

August 30, 2023 Matt Donato Killer Book Club, Movies, Netflix, Reviews

Carlos Alonso Ojea’s Killer Book Club doesn’t hide its intentions to remix Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s Scream — you’ll see both Scream and It referenced by name in the Netflix synopsis. The problem is, over two decades later, who hasn’t attempted to bottle that meta-slasher magic anew? Tyler MacIntyre’s Tragedy Girls and Scott Glosserman’s […]

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‘Haunting of the Queen Mary’ Review – Gary Shore Chills the Bones with an Overstuffed Supernatural Voyage

August 24, 2023 Matt Donato Gary Shore, Haunting of the Queen Mary, Movies, Reviews

The retired RMS Queen Mary docked in Long Beach, California is considered one of the most haunted locations in the world — which only somewhat shines through in Gary Shore’s Haunting of the Queen Mary. Any wishes to relive Dark Castle Entertainment levels of production design in Ghost Ship won’t be fulfilled, but that said, […]

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Seeing Red Again: An Appreciation of Horror’s Greatest Visual Storytelling Tool

August 22, 2023 Matt Donato 47 Meters Down, Belzebuth, Crawl, Editorials, Evil Dead, Lights Out, Movies, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the descent

Frantic campers scavenge a park ranger’s rucksack inside his abandoned jeep. A shipwrecked sailor drags their waterproof emergency kit ashore. Apocalypse survivors raid a hardware depot after zombies chase civilization far away. Three different horror movie scenarios, all adding a holy grail item to whichever characters’ arsenal. Maybe loaded into a chamber, possibly as a […]

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‘Brightwood’ Review – Minimalist Relationship Thriller Gets Lost in Its Own Time Loop

August 22, 2023 Matt Donato Brightwood, Movies, Reviews

The prickliest challenge for indie time-loop thrillers like Dane Elcar’s Brightwood to overcome is simple: can you entertain an audience with minimalist repetition? Elcar utilizes nothing more than a suburban pondside trail, two actors, and the temporal puzzlement of purgatorial duplication. Your mileage will vary with an almost 90-minute mindbender that’s as barebones as a […]

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Sadako vs. Samara – Why ‘The Ring’ Is Terrifying in Either Language [Revenge of the Remakes]

August 10, 2023 Matt Donato Editorials, Movies, Revenge of the Remakes, The Ring

Gore Verbinski’s The Ring led the first wave of early 2000s horror remakes that partially defined the era’s landscape alongside Saw torture-porners and other reactionary post-9/11 subgenres. Granted, remakes have always been a foundational pillar that keeps horror reinventing itself decade after decade — but the 2000s were different. Production companies like Platinum Dunes and […]

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‘Cocaine Shark’ Review – Too Little Creature Feature Mayhem Sinks This Schlocky Throwback

July 7, 2023 Matt Donato Cocaine Shark, Reviews

If you’ve sought out any of Mark Polonia‘s previous microbudget (at best) horror releases, you know what quality ceiling to expect from Cocaine Shark. The movie costs as much as the animation to manipulate Cocaine Bear’s left paw for thirty seconds, maybe even less. Polonia’s signature is churning out poster-perfect titles like Amityville in Space or Sharkula with table-scrap resources, […]

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How the ‘Mother’s Day’ Remake Properly Updates a Low-Budget Troma Film from the 1980s

June 8, 2023 Matt Donato Charles Kaufman, Darren Lynn Bousman, Editorials, Movies, Revenge of the Remakes, Troma

No Troma remake should attempt to match Troma at its revolting, boundary-demolishing, trigger-happy game. Take 1980’s Mother’s Day, for example. Troma Entertainment ringleader Lloyd Kaufman let his brother Charles Kaufman shoot a rape-revenge exploitation sleazefest no mamma would applaud. Darren Lynn Bousman’s 2010 remake abandons Tromaville signatures almost entirely for a mean-mugging reinterpretation rooted in […]

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