Titans Terrors and Toys

In the current era of shared universes that was popularized by Marvel's blockbuster movies and their spin-off TV shows, it seems that every major media company is finding ways to shove multiple franchises into a single narrative setting to increase their collective profitability. Multiple shared universe movies are currently in development, and a few titles in the toys-to-life genre of video games used shared universes as a way to mix and match characters, vehicles and settings from different franchises. Even comic books are getting into the act, which brings me to the topic of this post: IDW publishing is launching a set of comic book series under the umbrella title of Revolution , a title that brings together several toy lines that are owned by Hasbro into a single shared universe. Stories in the Revolution title will consist of characters from G.I. Joe, Transformers, Action Man, M.A.S.K., Rom, Micronauts, and possibly others. On the surface, IDW's Revolution title is ...

The killer kids trope has long served as the go-to narrative device for whenever horror story tellers really want to disturb audiences. (Sure, monsters, ghost and maniacs can be scary, but precious little children? That's inconceivable! ) Yet like any other trope, there are ways that it can be used for maximum effect and ways that devoid it of shock. The films I'll be looking at in this review, Cooties and Sinister 2 , fall into the latter category but for very different reasons: one could not come up with enough material to support the trope, while the other laid out the trope so explicitly in its dialog that it lost any capacity to surprise or scare. Read on for my complete reviews (with spoilers ahead for those who have not seen the first Sinister movie).

I finally did it--I made it to the end of Fatal Frame 4: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse , the game that was released exclusively in Japan in 2008 for the Nintendo Wii. Just getting my hands on this game alone was a chore (you can read about that effort here ), so finally finishing it feels like quite an accomplishment in my video game geek-ified mind. Personal obsessions aside, Fatal Frame 4 (or FF4 ) is an impressive game in its own right and a great addition to the Fatal Frame series. Read on for my complete review.

As a horror film buff, I've seen plenty of things over the years. I've watched plenty of timeless classics, competently made yet forgettable films, and godawful turkeys. I've heard other fans talk about various horror film titles from all sorts of critical perspectives. Yet of these many experiences, one that fascinates me more than others is to watch a film grow from being an obscurity into a cult classic. Such is the case of the film I'll be talking about in this post: Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead , which was initially released in Italy in 1980 and arrived in the United States in 1983. Even though I just picked up a region-free copy of Arrow Video's deluxe Blu-ray release of COTLD , I first learned about this movie back in 1985 under one of its alternate titles, The Gates of Hell . While the film itself has mostly remained the same since it first appeared, perspectives about it have undergone significant changes between the '80s and now. Read...

I don't consider myself to be a die-hard anime fan, but I understand anime enough to know--and appreciate--that it can be the go-to medium for stories that won't be found in U.S. movies and television. Case in point: Erased , a 12 episode sci-fi/mystery anime series that was released earlier this year and can currently be watched on Crunchyroll . Erased begins in 2006 and it centers on the character of Satoru Fujinuma. A former manga artist in his late 20s, Satoru has a unique ability that he calls "Revival": an ability that allows him to relive small moments in time (a few minutes at most) to prevent fatal incidents from happening. After he finds his mother stabbed to death in his apartment and the police identify him as the prime suspect, Satoru experiences a Revival that sends him all the way back to 1988, when he was still in elementary school. During that year, three of his classmates were kidnapped and murdered, so Satoru becomes convinced that if can ke...