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A Review of A Quiet Place: Day One I only recently watched the first two A Quiet Place films. The concept of alien predators that hunt solely by sound but somehow navigate the void of space (where, as we learned in Alien, no one can hear you scream…

“I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation.” -David Cronenberg Like many people, I have dozes of different ideas at any given period, the bulk of which are never accomplished due to time and/or financial constraints, or the rest…

There’s a subgenre of horror that deals with cursed films. My favorite is John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns, one of his contributions to the Masters of Horror anthology. In Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, I found something which didn’t quite hi…

“The danger in bringing the light to a dark place, is that you might find out what lives in the darkness”. -OUT OF DARKNESS (2022) The nature of horror is ancient. It resides in the flickering shadows of our earliest ancestral memories, going b…

Kyle, a young man of little means with a serious addiction, walked up to the food truck hiding a gun in his jacket pocket. He knew this dude made a lot of money because people lined up around the block to get a burger around lunch and in the evening…

By C. Rommial Butler ====== Stephen King helped catapult Clive Barker into worldwide fame with this line: “I have seen the future of horror… and his name is Clive Barker.” He was right. Where King helped make horror wildly popular in the …

By C. Rommial Butler ====== When mirror regards mirror which is the reflection? This question popped into my mind when I stumbled onto the doctor’s experiment. But I cannot go into that without some background. I’ve always had a way with …

“Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches, the other seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who’s ahead, who’s stronger.” -Carl Sagan It would be…

“YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP. DAMN YOU. GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!” -Captain George Taylor ***** MAD: Hunter, it’s great to speak with you again today and thanks for agreeing to this short discussion! There’s a lot to talk about, but first o…

By C. Rommial Butler ====== Here’s a tough thing for us to admit: We are not responsible for every bad thing that happens to us. Here’s another tough thing for us to admit: We are responsible for the way we deal with it in the aftermath.…

If you’re a massive horror aficionado such as myself, you likely have a huge stockpile of films waiting in your watch list, across multiple streaming platforms. With so many movies to view, and so little time, it’s often difficult to gauge what you’…

When I first saw the news that a “spiritual sequel” to George A. Romero’s classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was about to be released, it immediately jumped to the front of my “to do list”. Romero’s original DEAD trilogy are among my favorite films of…

It’s always a pleasant surprise when you stumble upon a hidden gem which manages to break through all the buzzing static of mainstream horror and presents an original story. Even better if that film delivers unique supernatural themes, merged with s…

MAD: Jaime, it’s good to talk to you again! We had some correspondence a couple of years ago in regards to a zine I was working on, and I’ve always dug your style and subject matter (primarily comic books and horror art). It has been very cool to se…

By C. Rommial Butler ====== As I was picking my way slowly through Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea, I happened upon a point of view relevant to horror fiction. Discussing how dogma tends to fail to align with the intrinsic …

By C. Rommial Butler ====== At a local bookstore, I nabbed a reprint of Cotton Mathers’ On Witchcraft. He was one of the judges who presided over the Salem Witch Trials, and the book is his justification for the proceedings. I outright rejec…

By C. Rommial Butler ====== First off, let me say that Talk to Me was an immensely enjoyable film. I urge you to watch this 2023 Australian affair if you haven’t already, and especially before you read the following essay, as it will contain…

There’s a certain inevitability for any avid reader, of which we meet various books that simply don’t hold our interest for one reason or another, and we’ll regretfully put them down, perhaps never to pick up again. There’s no shame in not finishing…

"Sometimes dead is better." -Stephen King, Pet Sematary ====== It might sound strange to some fans, but if one were to ask about my favorite books by horror master Stephen King, more than one of them would come from his alter ego, Richard B…

By C. Rommial Butler ====== Most people will recollect Stephen King’s IT from either the TV miniseries or the more recent films. These treatments of the story each have their charm and deserve a visit if you haven’t yet taken the time; the m…

By Michael A. Dyer ====== When one considers low budget horror movies, a few things come to mind. Of course, we have such offerings as THE TOXIC AVENGER ($500,000) from Troma Entertainment, and many of the straight to video features of the 8…

By C. Rommial Butler ====== I went into Night Swim not expecting much and I was pleasantly unsurprised. I still don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. This brings to mind an interesting point about the Horror genre, especially in film…

By Andy Emantsal ====== Welcome again to another addition to Horror To Culture. In this gripping continuation, you will see how my tormented night terrors got worse for me to endure. The doctors said my creativity exacerbated my parasomnia. …

By C. Rommial Butler ====== Rod Serling on The Twilight Zone. The Cryptkeeper on Tales from the Crypt. Indy’s own Sammy Terry from Nightmare Theater. These are just a few examples of the horror host. The horror host is a convention that goes…