Alien Code (2018) – Michael G. Cooney

Somewhere along my prowling of the internet, I stumbled across the trailer for this film, and was suitably intrigued enough to add it to my viewing queue. Watching it, there’s an intriguing premise, a well-orchestrated execution of subject matter despite budget constraints, and despite overreaching on its subject matter (seemingly wanting to throw every piece…

Diablo Mesa (2022) – Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Grand Central Publishing was kind enough to send me the latest Preston & Child thriller, Diablo Mesa, which came out in February. It had been a long time since I dug into a Preston & Child book, but back in 2014, I was plowing through their Pendergast series until my pile of To Be Read…

Spiritwalker (2020) – Yoon Jae-keun

Hitting digital, DVD and Blu-Ray today from Well Go USA Entertainment is this Korean bare-knuckle action flick with some sci-fi undertones that keeps things moving right until the last frame. The film gives a new spin on familiar territory, and features solidly constructed, and executed action and fight sequences. Ian (Yoon Kyesang) isn’t who he…

Clown in a Cornfield (2020) – Adam Cesare

Some times you know everything you need to know by the title of the book, and Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield is exactly that, a spin on the slasher teen genre this is a rapid-fire read, that tells you exactly what you are getting into with the title. Quinn, and her doctor father, have…

The Last House on Needless Street (2021) – Catriona Ward

Catriona Ward delivers a fantastic, engaging tale that is horrific, heartbreaking, and revelatory. I discovered this title when I went searching for something scary to read, something to freak me out, and mess with my brain a bit. The Last House on Needless Street does exactly that. The book is broken up into three narratives,…

The Lineup (1958) – Don Siegel

The port city of San Francisco serves as the backdrop for this noir thriller that features Eli Wallach as a homicidal criminal on the trail of a heroin shipment from Hong Kong he’s expected to collect and deliver. Each shipment has been stowed in statuettes, dolls, and other such trinkets, all in the hands of…

The Final Girl Support Group (2021) – Grady Hendrix

I’ve been a fan of Grady Hendrix’s writing since I first discovered the vhs looking cover of My Best Friend’s Exorcism. Since then, I hunted down anything he’d written before and after that (two last titles to read and I’m caught up) so I dug eagerly into The Final Girl Support Group. A Final Girl…

The Mary Shelley Club (2021) – Goldy Moldavsky

So I have been reading a lot of science fiction of late, and wanted to shake it up a bit, and find something a little bit more from the horror/thriller genre, and a top horror novels of 2021 list returned the Young Adult (I hate that term) novel, The Mary Shelley Club. Well I put…

Beneath Her Skin (2021) – C.S. Porter

Nimbus Publishing, under its Vagrant Press, brings a new voice, C.S. Porter to the mystery genre, with their first novel, Beneath Her Skin, a lean, brisk, thriller. With the sub-title A Kes Morris File, one can assume that this will be Porter’s first foray into a series around their creation of Kes Morris, a female…

Looper (2012) – Rian Johnson

Rian Johnson is a fantastic writer/director (no matter what some Star Wars fans may think), and with his science fiction thriller, Looper, he plays with a number of familiar tropes, especially those of the western genre as he explores, and plays with, causality, in this brilliant actioner that stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily…