31 Days of Horror: Return to Silent Hill

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

Confession time: I’ve never played a single minute of any of the Silent Hill video games. I have, however, now seen all the movies based on that franchise. I’m captivated by everything going on in the background of these films: the monster design, the world-building, the lore, etc. The plots, for better or for worse, are just noise while I’m looking around at the rest of Silent Hill. With that in mind, let’s look at the most recent entry in the series.

Return to Silent Hill is based on the video game of the same name and, from what I understand, largely keeps the same plot. A man receives a letter from his deceased girlfriend and goes to Silent Hill to investigate. Once there, he finds himself being drawn into the hellish environment of the city—and possibly his own mind.

Keeping in mind what I stated above, Return to Silent Hill is a return to form for the movies franchise. The first film, while not perfect, did an excellent job of setting up the horror of Silent Hill and the curse that afflicts it. The second one, despite the presence of both Sean Bean and Kit Harington, was underwhelming to the point I couldn’t recount the plot if a gun was put to my head. This one felt more like the first and was unencumbered by any baggage the first two films might have imposed upon it had it not been based on the video game of the same name. Free from the constraints of the events in the first two movies, Return was free to explore the weird city and its monstrous inhabitants, some of which are damn-near Bosch-ian in their unearthliness. No film since Silence of the Lambs has done more to make a moth unnerving, I can tell you that.

The cast is largely unknown which works in this case. No overly familiar faces to jolt us out of the weirdness and horror of Silent Hill. These events could be happening to anyone—including us if we’re not careful. The film also does a good job of blurring the lines between what is real and what might just be in our protagonist’s head. There’s a Jacob’s Ladder level of reality twisting, even if it doesn’t do quite as good a job as that older film.

Fans of the video game will likely have their own opinions about the film’s quality, but as someone who’s just along for the horror and weirdness ride, I wasn’t disappointed.

Rating: I’m going to skip rating this one since I looked upon it more as an exercise in world-building and monster design than a piece of narrative entertainment. I enjoyed it enough to consider breaking my self-imposed moratorium and actually play one of these games for the first time. My only fear is that the games would have to compete with my internal head canon and that never goes well.

Month of Darkness 2026: Day 9

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

The First Betrayal


The hilltop was rocky, the sere landscape stretching out to the horizon in all directions, unblocked by trees. Down in the valley at the hill’s feet, a small herd of goats grazed on the grass along the stream’s edge. The sky was brilliant blue with no trace of clouds.

One figure stood on the hilltop. He wore a loose garment and sandals made from goatskin. His beard was black, and his hair brushed his shoulders. His body was that of a man who tilled arid soil under a hot sun. Even so, he panted with excursion as he looked down at the fruits of his labors.

At his feet lay the body of another man, one much like himself. Near the corpse was another, that of a yearling sheep, its throat cut by a flint blade. The carcass lay atop a flat stone next to a woven basket filled with grain.

The man had been killed less cleanly. His skull and face were bloodied, fragments of broken bone visible under the battered flesh. One eye had been reduced to jelly by the bludgeoning.

His killer gazed down at his work, a bloodied stone in his hand. His brother’s blood mingled with that of the sheep’s. The arid ground drank both greedily.

Overhead, the sky turned black as night and a voice like that of thunder echoed across the land.

CAINE, WHAT HAS THY DONE?

The man looked to the sky, all anger leeching from his body. Letting the stone slip to the ground, he fell to his knees and waited for a far more fearsome blow to fall.

31 Days of Horror: Zoltan, Hound of Dracula

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment


When I was a kid, the New York City area featured the WNEW Channel 5 Drive-In Movie. Every Saturday afternoon, you could tune in to such great fare as Horror of Frankenstein, Satan’s Cheerleaders, and The Five Deadly Venoms. There were also some not-so-great films. I recall one advertisement for Dracula’s Dog, which, even as a young boy, sounded terrible. I didn’t bother to tune in that week. However, the title remained with me until the year 2026 when, while looking for another movie I’d never watched for this year’s marathon, I came across Zoltan, Hound of Dracula. There couldn’t possibly be TWO Dracula’s dog movies and a little sleuthing around IMDB confirmed that Dracula’s Dog and Zoltan, Hound of Dracula are indeed the same film (based on the novel The Hounds of Dracula.) It looks like it was time to reconnect with my childhood and see if I had missed an overlooked gem some four decades ago.

Zoltan, Hound of Dracula opens with the Soviet Army dynamiting its way through Romania when they come across “a Dracula tomb.” A soldier is left behind to guard it overnight, but an earthquake causes one of the coffins to slide from its niche. Investigating, the soldier finds a shroud-wrapped corpse inside—with a stake through its heart. Having clearly never seen a vampire film in Soviet Russia, the soldier removes the stake and unleashes (heheh) Zoltan, Hound of Dracula! Once freed, Zoltan and his handler travel to California in search of the last of the Draculas so they can serve their new master. Hot on their trail is a Soviet inspector (played by Jose Ferrer). Can he reach Dracula’s descendant before Zoltan does?


But you’re not interested in all that. I know what you’re really thinking. It’s “Does Zoltan, Dracula’s dog, have oversized canine teeth like a vampire? I mean, more oversized than dogs usually do?” My friends, I’m happy to report the answer is “yes.” And, unlike his two-legged owner, Zoltan doesn’t go around biting people and turning them into vampires. He bites dogs, making more vampire dogs!

Look, we all know there’s no way this was going to be anything but a B-movie for the drive-in crowd. Up until halfway through it, I was still debating with myself whether this was a TV movie or not. It is perhaps one of the goofiest entries in the vampire film catalog, making that really the only reason to sit down and watch it. There is plenty of animal violence, some done by animals and some done to animals, so sensitive viewers might want to skip this one for reasons above and beyond mere quality. I’m just hoping Jose Ferrer was able to buy himself something nice with the paycheck he picked up on this one.

Rating: The Tomb from earlier this month is still worse than Zoltan, Hound of Dracula, meaning that this dog of a film can “sit, stay, and roll-over” on a comfortable score of 2 skulls out of 5.

31 Days of Horror: The Tunnel

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

When you binge on 31 movies, all of which must be new to you, eventually you’ll hit a found footage horror flick. It looks like this morning was my time.

The Tunnel concerns a news crew descending into the tunnels under Sydney, Australia to discover if government plans to develop a water-recycling program will impact the already at-risk lives of a homeless population living down there. They discover the homeless have a much bigger problem and, when their soundman goes missing and the news team gets lost, so do they.

Horror films are by nature a mixed bag, subject to everything from poor writing to low budgets to fans’ expectations when trying to deliver the scary goods. Throw in the found footage element and you’ve got even higher barriers to overcome. The Tunnel does one of the better jobs at handling the found footage genre, largely because they use a documentary style framing story. We’re watching a professionally produced documentary covering the events of the film, so it’s not 90 minutes of jerky camera work in the dark. There is that, but we do get a dose of pseudo-Werner Herzog to help it all go down smoother.

The premise isn’t a new one: Something is eating folks underneath the city. It could be C.H.U.D., it could be alligators (crocodiles more likely since its Sydney), it could be cannibals, but we don’t know. So how does The Tunnel handle this? That all depends on how much ambiguity you like in your spooky movies. The Tunnel never explains what’s down there and, because we see the events in low light conditions and via night vision, we’re left to guess for ourselves. Did that work for me? Not really. The real world is ambiguous enough so if you’re going to entertain me, I ask for a little effort. Anything would have sufficed, really, but apparently that was too big an ask for The Tunnel.

This isn’t the worst found footage film I’ve ever seen, but it suffers from the usual flaws despite the documentary frame. Shaky cameras, no illumination, people screaming other people’s names in the dark, and, worst of all, continuing the trend begun in The Blair Witch Project of having the only woman in the cast be responsible (or rather, irresponsible) for the mess that ends up with folks being murdered in the dark.

Rating: The documentary frame elevates The Tunnel slightly, earning it 2-and-a-half skulls out of 5. Had they actually gotten Werner Herzog, it would have been a solid 4 out of 5.

Month of Darkness 2026: Day 8

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

No One Will Believe You

He’d grown use to the stink of his own body, the pungent reek of human filth, and the smell of rotting food. The house was dark, even during the day. He’d painted the windows with the dregs of paint cans from the garage, turning each into a chaotic collage of a half-dozen colors. The faint glow of the TV no longer connected to the internet was the only light.

His walk had become a scuttle, his movements like a beaten dog awaiting the next blow of its master’s hand. The slightest sound caused him to start, a gasped whimper escaping his lips. Once, two or three days ago, he had tried to leave the house, but the touch of the door handle burned his hand like a stovetop. A malignant laugh from somewhere inside the home came in response to his scream of pain.

How long had this been happening? A week? Two? He’d lost track of time in the dark. Outside he could hear the howl of leaf blowers, the traffic on the street, a jet passing overhead, jetsam from a world of sunlight and normalcy.


He did know how it began and suspected how it would end. It started the night he put on the watch he’d bought on Etsy, a curious model of uncertain make, but so unique it was bound to make a few of his fellow managers jealous. The dreams he experienced that night were horrific, filled with visions of dirty forms locked in a filthy cellar. Their eyes had the same haunted looks he was sure his own now showed. They too had undergone the same suffering at the hands of their shared tormentor. He knew that now.

He crawled across the carpet, keeping close to the wall like a rat. As he did, navigating the filth-encrusted carpet by feel alone, his hand touched his phone. He’d hurled it into the darkness some days ago after his efforts to call for aid were answered by the formless voice of his enslaver. No one will believe you, the voice growled, mockingly.

He knew that now. Even he struggled to believe how quickly the world which was his on a silver platter had tarnished, tainted by the spectral form he now shared his once-opulent home with. He began to weep, tearlessly, his dehydrated body unable to spare a drop of moisture.

From the kitchen, he heard a clatter and the ringing of stainless steel as something knocked the Italian-made knife block off the counter and onto the floor. No one will believe you, so why put off the inevitable? There’s only one way out of here. Come here and see. There are so many options. Filleting knife? Butcher’s knife? A dainty paring knife? The voice fell silent, but he could feel the entity waiting.

Slowly, still crying tearlessly, he started to crawl towards the kitchen.

31 Days of Horror: Abraham’s Boys

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

Continuing the Dracula theme, I picked this one out of a hat more or less. I expected something along the lines of the TV series Supernatural, figuring this would be about Van Helsing training a new generation of vampire hunters. Was I right? Let’s see.

Abraham’s Boys takes place in 1915 California. Abraham Van Helsing and his wife, Mina, have relocated to the Central Valley with their two boys. The family’s search for peace is threatened, however, as the railroad expands near their isolated farm. But does the railroad bring more than new settlers to the region? Abraham suspects a vampire has hunted them down.

Putting the “Van Helsing’s wife, Mina” elephant in the room aside, the premise of the movie isn’t a bad one. Abraham is played by Titus Welliver, who is no slouch when it comes to acting (Exhibit A: Deadwood). Moving the action from the gothic setting of Victorian England to the dry but beautiful Central Valley immediately informs us we’re not looking at Dracula: Part 2. The film’s focus is mostly on Abraham’s two boys, Max and Rudy, and their relationship with their sometimes-overbearing father. Their mother is still dealing with PTSD from her encounter with Dracula and has become a nervous wreck, a vast difference from the woman who largely ensured the Circle of Light triumphed over the Count.

Abraham’s Boys further moves away from Stoker’s story by suggesting that Van Helsing might not be entirely sane, making his motivations highly suspect. Was he truly hunting down the undead or was he murdering the innocent due to an undiagnosed madness? It’s here where the film really becomes interesting. Once that question begins hanging around the edge of the plot, we know were not in for a typical vampire film.

Based on the novel by Joe Hill, Abraham’s Boys took a beating in the reviews and I can understand why. People, much like myself, assumed they were in for some vampire ass-kicking and were instead confronted with a film similar to the greatly overlooked Frailty. Once I saw what the movie was up to, I changed my expectations accordingly and found this one to be better than IMDB’s rating suggested.

Rating: While not a contender for best film of this year’s marathon, I enjoyed it, earning it a solid 3 skulls out of 5. Audiences familiar with Hill’s novel might feel otherwise, but being unfamiliar with the book, I can’t judge it as an adaptation.

31 Days of Horror: Dracula (2025)

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

Last night I got current on my Dracula adaptations with Luc Besson’s Dracula (formerly known as Dracula: A Love Story.) How does it compare with those which have preceded it? Let’s take a look.

A Carpathian prince loses the love of his life, denounces God, then spends 400 years looking for his lost love’s reincarnation. Shenanigans ensue.

I heard things about this one so I went into it not expecting much. Which turned out to be the right attitude towards the film. Dracula is ripe for adaptation and new interpretation, so I didn’t slight Besson for moving many of the characters to France and setting the events during the 100-year anniversary of Bastille Day. I’ve seen poorer choices and the French setting didn’t have much of an impact on the story overall. What I do hold against Besson is lifting so much from Francis Ford Coppola. In fact, this film could have been called Luc Besson’s Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. When ancient-looking Dracula answers the door of his castle looking like he’s been holding Gary Oldman’s hairdresser and customer prisoner, my eyes did roll and I uttered an audible, “Really?”

I didn’t expect much of a horror film given the movie’s original title. It is, at its un-staked heart, a love story, after all. Leaning towards this genre rather than horror is likely the reason we get an awful subplot where Dracula spends centuries making the most alluring perfume on Earth. No, really. He uses the scent to entrance the female population of Europe in hopes his lost love will be attracted to him. Despite having telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers, I guess vampiric hypnosis was a bridge to far for Besson and a more mundane, yet outlandish, workaround was needed. Oh, and the perfume ends up having nothing to do with his eventual finding of his lost princess, so you be the judge if that part of the movie’s running time was well-spent.

The film is not devoid of pleasure. An inspired scene uses Dracula’s increasing treasury as a means to shorthand the passage of time and—spoilers—when Dracula finally perishes, having all the flames and fires in his castle go out was a nice touch. Christoph Waltz (playing “Priest”) delivers his usual greatness, but I fear he’s in danger of being typecast as the unconventional mentor figure. I had hoped for some excellent costuming and set design given what I assume was the film’s decent budget, and there are, but not enough by far. Oh, and Besson joins the parade of filmmakers guilty of Quincy Morris erasure. Goddamn it! Is it so hard to fit a cowboy into a vampire movie?!

Rating: It’s all been done better by others, meaning Dracula (2025) goes back to the grave with only 2-and-a-half skulls out of 5.

31 Days of Horror: Pale Blood

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment


The late 80s and early 90s saw a boom in low-budget vampire movies featuring lovelorn vampires and the women attracted to them. Films such as To Sleep with a Vampire, Dance of the Damned, Tale of a Vampire, and, my personal favorite, To Die For. Day 6’s film (yes, I’m woefully behind right now) is part of that group—or perhaps, should I say, coven—of films.

Pale Blood is the tale of lonely vampire, Michael Fury (played by George Chakiris of West Side Story and the best “Mayan’s discovered Texas” film ever made, Kings of the Sun), who arrives in Los Angeles following news reports of a string of vampire murders in the city. Having recruited the assistance of private investigator, Lori (Pamela Ludwig), the search for the killer takes them into the orbit of video artist, Van (Wings Hauser) and his models who may be tied into the murders. Will Michael meet another vampire or become the victim of one?

If you’ve seen any of the vampire flicks I mentioned above, your enjoyment of Pale Blood will be dependent on whether you liked any of those. Pale Blood is cut from the same cloth, complete with nighttime L.A., neon lights, late 80s club scenes, and Wings Hauser. The most innovative idea is Michael’s portable coffin, a canvas suitcase that unfolds and is assembled like a tent (I’m going to steal that for a future vampire game!). Chakiris is game, but the role mostly has him being remote form the humans around him, including vampire fan Lori, who is clearly smitten with her employer. Scarily so. I’d have ended business with her on Night #2 if she was working for me. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Ludwig in the role, and I am a little sad she didn’t have more of a career.

There’s not much to see here, but as someone who lived in L.A. in the early 90s, the shots between scenes which are mostly Los Angeles during the day with radio station DJs’ commentary to fill the silence, were a trip down memory lane. And it gets bonus points for an appearance of the punk band Agent Orange as the house band at “Drac’s,” the nightclub featured in the film.

Ratings: Not great, but it has its charms if you lived through this era of low rent vampire romance films. I give it 2-and-a-half skulls out of 5, but deduc7 a ½ skull if you prefer more blood and less saxophones in your vampire films.

Month of Darkness 2026: Day 7

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

What Keeps You Here?


Hate.

Hate for those who did this to me.

Hate for those who allowed this to happen.

Hate for those who will allow this to happen to others.

Hatred that there’s so few of us willing to draw a line and say, “No further.”

Hatred at the fact the bastards might win in the end.

Hating myself for turning love into hate.

When the last of them burn and dawn breaks, then maybe, maybe, I can love myself for one final, brief moment.

31 Days of Horror: Blood Red Sky

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

While I try to watch a movie each night, real life does gets in the way. I tend to get caught up on weekends, and the goal is to get through 31 by the end of Halloween, so do not worry if a day or three passes without a new movie review. With that said, let’s look at last night’s film.

Blood Red Sky has an interesting and potentially fun premise: a woman suffering from a baffling blood disorder is on a transatlantic flight to America with her young son when their plane is hijacked. But the hijackers picked the wrong flight to commandeer. It’s with little surprise that we discover the woman is actually a vampire trying to hold onto her humanity for her son’s sake. But you can only push a vampire so far…

Blood Red Sky is a German production with an international cast. I’m unfamiliar with the work of Peri Baumeister who plays Nina, our vampire protagonist, but she does a wonderful job slowly becoming more and more animalistic as all her good intentions about holding on to her human nature start to slip once her son’s in danger. Alexander Scheer portrays our main antagonist, channeling Crispin Glover’s maniacal energy and sharing a not-dissimilar appearance. Dominic Purcell of Prison Break and Legends of Tomorrow fame has a supporting role as one of the hijackers, but feels underused. And speaking of underused, Graham McTavish has a glorified walk-on role that left me wanting more.

The film is more action than horror for most of its run time, but once Nina’s infection begins to spread throughout the passengers on the flight, we start veering into the airline sequence from World War Z, and the balance shifts towards gore and the horrific. By the end of the movie, one feels like this could be the prequel to The Strain.

The film’s biggest flaw is its 2-hour running time. Had it been shaved down to a tense 90 minutes, I feel it would have been a more effective story. Pacing was certainly an issue, but if you’re looking for an action/horror mix with some good physicality in its lead and a plot you could steal for a Night’s Black Agents campaign, you could do a lot worse.

Rating: With no major flaws, but also limited bits of true creativity, Blood Red Sky earns a middle-of-the-road 3 skulls out of 5.