Chris Jones
Entertainment Editor
Chris Jones, from Washington, Illinois, is the Mail Entertainment Editor covering Movies, Television, Books, and Music topics. He is the owner, writer, and editor of Overly Honest Reviews.
Death stops meaning what it used to when the people you’ve mourned walk through the door like nothing happened. That’s the unsettling starting point for a story that doesn't scream its horror but lets it crawl slowly up your spine. What could’ve easily been another reanimated-body horror fest takes a more calculated, character-driven route, where the supernatural is just the backdrop for something more personal.
A brutal cold open can be a gamble, but this one wastes no time throwing viewers into the thick of it—no mood-setting montage or gentle build-up. A single woman in a restroom and a very specific, visceral kind of bloodshed kick things off with a jolt. The moment screams for attention and dares you to keep watching. Unfortunately, the promise of such an unapologetically raw beginning doesn’t translate into sustained momentum, and while the premise is bold, the execution can’t always keep pace.
There’s something galvanizing about a performance that doesn’t wait for permission to tell its truth. CONFESSIONS OF A MENOPAUSAL FEMME FATALE doesn’t ease its way into vulnerability—it bursts in with humor, and a kind of creative control that feels earned. What begins as a return to a former home evolves into a much deeper excavation of identity, self-perception, and the fallout that comes with life changes that are too often pushed to the margins. This isn’t a special-interest project aimed at a niche audience—it’s a bold, sharply crafted spotlight on stories that rarely get told.
When a movie builds this much tension using little more than two actors, a tree, and a forest, it's doing something right, at least most of the time. Something is compelling about a minimal setup that borders on being experimental. Yet, it plays out like a psychological chess match, constantly forcing the audience to re-evaluate what they think they know. From the first frame, it’s not about what’s happening—it’s about why.
There’s something undeniably satisfying about watching a mismatched underdog try to make its mark in a space where it isn’t wanted. That’s the spark that drives this documentary, a film that dares to ask whether bold ideas can stand against legacy. Built on equal parts vision and persistence, it explores what happens when American racing tradition is dropped into an arena defined by precision, endurance, and expectation. This isn’t a story about winning a race. It’s about redefining the stakes.
There’s a difference between horror that shouts and horror that lingers in your mind. This one doesn’t rush to frighten you with jump scares or drown you in CGI monster and chaos. Instead, it creeps along steadily, grounding its supernatural premise in real-world heartbreak and emotional disarray. What starts as an eerie party game becomes a devastating spiral, but the raw humanity, not the haunted hand, leaves the deepest scars.
This one starts slowly but flies by once it gets going. Built around a fractured relationship between a grieving mother and her self-destructive daughter, the story hooks you with a deeply emotional premise before pivoting into something more dangerous. While that shift is compelling, it leaves you wanting more, and not always in the best way.
Watching a movie that understands restraint as a tool, not a limitation, is a quiet experience. This film keeps its punches tucked beneath the surface, letting atmosphere, performance, and suggestion do the heavy lifting. It’s a story where little is said outright, but everything—power shifts, emotional manipulation, quiet longings—can be found in a glance or a moment of silence. The tension simmers rather than boils, and the damage is all the more piercing when it does break.
Something is intriguing about pairing a fictional genius with a real-life monster—and in MURDER BY DECREE, director Bob Clark does exactly that. Taking Sherlock Holmes out of the cozy parlor-room mysteries of Arthur Conan Doyle and placing him squarely in the grim, gaslit alleys haunted by Jack the Ripper, this 1979 thriller thrives on mood, tension, and a human touch. The film never loses sight of its premise, and the thoughtful performances and grounded emotional undercurrent give it lasting power. If you've only known Clark for A CHRISTMAS STORY or PORKY’S, this is your reminder that his horror-mystery chops, honed in BLACK CHRISTMAS, were equally sharp, if not sharper.
If you went into ALIEN TERROR expecting a sequel to ALIEN, you wouldn’t be alone—and you’d be wrong. This 1980 Italian genre-bender, released in various territories as ALIEN 2: ON EARTH, is one of the more brazen examples of opportunistic rebranding, capitalizing on Ridley Scott’s 1979 hit with little more than a shared genre and the word “alien” in the title. But once you accept that, you’re left with a wild, uneven, and oddly hypnotic slice of Italian sci-fi horror that leans hard into atmosphere and subterranean dread. It's messy, sometimes nonsensical, but strangely watchable—and for fans of Italian genre cinema, there’s charm in its chaos.
Loud, quick-witted, and proudly chaotic, SISTER! lands like a punchline and lingers like a dare. It packs satire, unexpected vulnerability, and boisterous energy into 13 minutes that barely pause to breathe. This short-form storytelling goes full throttle, armed with a middle finger to convention and a heart that beats harder than it first lets on.
There’s a certain thrill when a short refuses to tiptoe around a subject and barrels straight through it with energy, humor, and no fear. This one doesn’t ask for permission—it makes an entrance, lays everything out, and dares you to look away. It’s the kind of story that hits hard without losing its wit, using a handcrafted world to dissect one of the most pressurized questions a person can face. And despite its short runtime, it manages to stir up an entire storm of feelings while keeping its comedic edge intact.
A story told without dialogue doesn’t sound like it would have much to say, but this one speaks volumes. Combining meticulous hand-drawn animation with a deeply personal tone, this short film relies on restraint instead of spectacle. It’s not trying to reinvent the medium or deliver a jolt of shock value. Instead, it slows the pace and leans into stillness, letting emotion come through in visuals and the space between scenes. That kind of patience may test some viewers, but it also creates something rare: a quiet, confident reminder of how powerful animation can be when it trusts the audience to feel instead of react.
What do you do with the things you can’t fix? That question hovers over every frame of this strangely moving animated short. Born from exhaustion and driven by an obsession with control, it offers a stripped-down but emotionally loaded reflection on perfectionism and the creative urge to build. Despite a brief runtime, it echoes, especially for those who know what it feels like to be left behind, unfinished, or not quite enough.