2023: The Year in Horror

Horror movies had a strong year in 2023, but were outshined by the ongoing horror sh*t show that is the US Congress. Nevertheless, despite Taylor Swift and Barbie sucking up all the pop culture air, 2023’s horror and science fiction films gave us more Godzilla than ever before, shark movies continued unabated to chase ’n chew, and you couldn’t throw a bible and not hit someone possessed by evil. And animals everywhere were doing drugs right out in the open as if it was legal. 

There were nine superhero movies released in 2023 with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels being the worst (lowest grossing Marvel Studios™ movies of all time), and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse being the best. And even though it had four Flashes, four Batmans, four Supermans, two Supergirls and one Zod, The Flash had the biggest stumble, earning $266+ million at the global box office — with a budget of over $300 million. As fast as he is, Flash couldn’t outrun those kinds of losses.

With that, here’s a look back at the horror/sci-fi trends of 2023…

2023: YEAR OF UFOS

Even though they were barely featured in the movies, UFOs were literally everywhere else in 2023, finally becoming part of the mainstream conversation. It’s taken the US government to admit what we’ve already known since Roswell in 1947: Extraterrestrials are here and they want to party with us. UFOs dominated clickbait headlines, documentaries exploded on YouTube™ and the government even launched a UFO public database: AARO (All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office). They were even given a new distinction: UAP — Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Given the overwhelming evidence, UAP should really stand for “UFOs A’plenty”.

2023: YEAR OF GODZILLA

No other year has given us the building-bashing bounty of Godzilla in 2023. We got Godzilla Minus One, a new movie (the all-time highest grossing Japanese film in U.S. history and nominated for Best Foreign Language Film), Godzilla-1.0/C (Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color), a meticulously detailed black and white conversion, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters live action TV series, three live action mini films on YouTube™: Godzilla vs. Megalon, Godzilla vs. Gigan, Godzilla vs. Ultraman, an entire Godzilla channel playing free G-movies 24 hours a day on Pluto™ TV, a year long promotion leading up to his 70th birthday/anniversary in 2024, and teasers for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, another big screen monster mash scheduled for April 2024. This should be printed on money: “In Godzilla we trust.” 

2023: YEAR OF DEMONIC POSSESSION

Being possessed by evil became a thing in 2023, with 12 horror movies of varying degrees of body and soul takeovers/makeovers. The deliciously best of the bunch was Evil Dead Rise, Talk To Me and When Evil Lurks. Demonic possession movies that failed to test our faith were the over-hyped The Exorcist: Believer, The Pope’s Exorcist, and The Nun II. Not horrible, but a whole bible chapter full of “meh.”

2023: YEAR OF ANIMALS ON DRUGS

When we first heard of Cocaine Bear and saw the trailer, we were hooked (pun not intended). Who wouldn’t want to see a grizzly bear all hopped up on coke and going to murder town? And because horror eats its own, we got Cocaine Shark, Deep Fear (Cocaine Shark 2), Attack of the Meth Gator, Cocaine Cougar, Narco Shark, and Cocaine Crabs From Outer Space in CB’s wake. P.S. Don’t do drugs.

2023: YEAR OF CHILDHOOD HORROR

One of the more annoying horror movie trends in 2023 (besides social media horror) is taking childhood folklore and nursery rhyme characters and turning ’em into serial killers and slashers. What started in 2019 with The Banana Splits, followed by The Legend of Jack and Jill (2021), The Curse of Humpty-Dumpty (2021) and The Cult of Humpty-Dumpty (2022), now punishes us in 2023/2024 with Mickey’s Mouse Trap, Pinocchio’s Revenge, Peter Pan — Neverland Nightmare, Bambi — The Reckoning, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Death & Porridge, Alice In Terrorland, Three Blind Mice, Mary Had A Little Lamb, Punch and Cinderella’s Curse. Note to bandwagon filmmakers — don’t even think of going anywhere near There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. (Now that I’ve said that, it’ll be a horror movie by next week.) 

2023: YEAR OF SHARKS

As of 2023 there are nearly 200 horror movies about sharks gone wacky wild, with more lining up to shred our movie dollars into chum. For 2023, there were 21 shark movies released, most with the titles better than the movies themselves: Bathtub Shark Attack, Amityville Shark House, Invisible Shark, Ouija Shark 2, Ninja vs. Shark and Sharks N D Hood. This was also the year Sharknado celebrated its 10th anniversary. Seems like only yesterday. There were five sequels — and yes, there will be more because our hunger for sharks is second only to shark’s hunger for us.

Lastly, my personal favs for 2023 because no one asked (or cares): Godzilla Minus One, Talk To Me, When Evil Lurks, Totally Killer, No One Will Save You, Infinity Pool, Saw X, Candy Land, Renfield, Shaky Shivers. You’re welcome. Now please pay my bar tab. 

Tilting Chainsaws, Defeating Ghosts, Web Woman

Located in Benton, WI, Spooky Pinball LLC™ is a designer and manufacturer of boutique pinball machines — and they make rock & roll and horror movie themed Bally tables. Built as limited editions, Spooky Pinball™ has done games including Halloween, America’s Most Haunted, Rob Zombie Spookshow International, Alice Cooper’s Nightmare Castle, Ultraman, Scooby Doo, and now The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. (Leatherface sure plays a mean pinball.)

Limited to 888 games, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre pinball machine comes in two versions: Standard and Bloodsucker Editions and requires two things: $1,000 and $1,500 respectively down payment and $8,299.00/$8,999.00 respectively before shipping right to your front yard. According to Spooky Pinball’s™ website, The Bloodsucker Edition is a “standard body pinball machine where YOU will be taking on the role of the slaughter family, going about the gruesome tasks of catching, killing, and cooking your victims. Based on and featuring the entirety of the 1974 all time classic film on its 50th anniversary. You’ll be guided along by the powerful narrative voice of Scott Innes, and given rather gruesome support by the original hitchhiker actor himself, Edwin Neal.”

So while you clean out your retirement account and go to Spooky Pinball’s™ website (click this) to buy The Texas Chain Saw Massacre pinball machine because fewer thing in life will bring you this much happiness, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not have been made for $8,299.00/$8,999.00 respectively…

MIRAME / December 19, 2023 (Tubi™)

“When Lalo becomes haunted by the mysterious ghost of a young girl, he realizes his life is in danger and sets out to defeat the ghost for good.

Hard to defeat a ghost as ghosts tend to be dead already. So I’m just gonna say it out loud: Lalo is f’d in the b-hole. P.S. The title translates to Look At Me.

RED IRON ROAD / December 19, 2023 (Tubi™)

“Red Iron Road is an animated anthology series based on the works of famous European authors. The content explores dark themes through horror/thriller adaptations of short stories from literature, some of which were originally written in the 1800s. There are six episodes in the first season, between 10-20 minutes, produced with different creative partners, using a variety of animation techniques with an entirely unique visual style designed to suit each story.”

Wish they had this when I was a kid eating cereal in front of the TV every Saturday morning watching cartoons. Disclaimer: Okay, I still do that.

MADAME WEB / February 14, 2024 (Theaters)

“Cassandra Webb is a New York City paramedic who starts to show signs of clairvoyance. Forced to confront revelations about her past, she must protect three young women from a mysterious adversary who wants them dead.”

Cassandra Webb figures into Spider-Man’s Spiderverse and has been around in comic book form since 1980. Back then she appeared as an old woman with a debilitating condition and connected to a life support system resembling a spider web. Now she’s getting her own movie as Marvel™ is running out of ideas.

LITTLE BITES / Release pending 2024 (VOD)

“Mindy, a young widow and mother, tries to protect her daughter Alice from a flesh-eating monster named Agyar. Mindy has been secretly sacrificing her own life by allowing the creature to feast on her body as she keeps Alice hidden away at her grandmother’s house.”

A human snack bar. Beats eating health food.

God Monsters vs. Mad Science

One thing that makes mad scientists mad (or “displeased”) is when no one believes you when you go around screaming at the top of your squeezebox that dinosaurs exist. Can’t blame ’em — that’d chap my stick, as well. (P.S. Penguins are real, too, man — I’ve seen ’em!)

In South Korea’s War of the God Monsters (1985), that’s the case with Dr. Kim, whose jacked up no one will listen to his Jurassic bark. So he finds a young (i.e. gullible) reporter Kang Ok-hee to prove his case. Soon, his drunk-talk of all things giant reptilian was vindicated when a bird-like Pterodactylus shows up and starts crapping on cars from on high. (Now would be the time to yell, “In your face!” Or something more florid.) 

So what does one do when feisty fossils start busting up the joint as if it were Taco Tuesday at the Tug Tavern? Kill ’em and make tacos, of course. Maybe the job won’t be as tough as first thought as the monsters don’t resemble biblical depictions of dinosaurs at all — they look like they were were made from edible Play-Doh™. While we’re on the subject, climate change is blamed for the Kaiju Jamboree; Arctic ice melts from carbon emissions (car farts), thereby waking the not-quite-extinct beasts from their ice tray nap time.

Originally titled The Flying Monster (yawn), the movie is Frankenstein’d together with stock footage from Ultraman (1966), Return of Ultraman (1971) and Ultraman Ace (1972). There’s even pilfered scenes from the 1971 Taiwanese flick, The Founding of Ming Dynasty. (Yeah, I didn’t know that and had to look it up.) The “acting” is written around generic scenes of monsters making buildings go kablooey, side-dished with requisite doses of cry-yelling, explosion smoke and some sort of flaming fire. The confusing storyline makes about as much sense as toy clay-sculpted monsters, but you don’t rent flicks like this for the gripping narrative. War of the God Monster’s best part? The title.

Ultra Dead

While not a movie, this particular TV episode of 1966’s Ultra Man was unique in that our building tall hero dies while trying to save the world from extraterrestrial-filled flying saucers. That, and it’s black and white (all of his shows were in color) and dubbed into Castilian (think Gomez Addams) and televised in Argentina in the ’70s. Also, the characters are Japanese. The only word that sums this up is WTF?

Quick history lesson: Ultraman is part of a race of galaxy guardians from the M78 Nebula, or Land of Light. (They probably don’t need light bulbs or flashlights.) These guys have awesome powers and promote peace across the Universe. Good luck with that – the citizens of Uranus are a bunch of a-holes/b-holes.

So a fleet of UFOs invade our personal space, blowing up fighter jets with destructo beams. One lands, pops its top, and a giant balloon inflates. Once it ka-BOOMS, there stands an equal-in-Ultraman height bug-esque alien creature that uses beams to blast our real estate and his foe.

Ultraman arrives seemingly out of nowhere and does battle with the alien butt wad. But wait, the wad creature is resistant to Ultraman’s tricks of the trade and throws it back at him two-fold. How embarrassing is that?

As Ultraman is rendered inert and falls face first like a stiff surfboard, he goes into a death dream where he’s fighting Godzilla and some other weirdo monster, and beating the scales off them. Happy trails, Ultraman.

Then, out of the freakin’ sky, another Ultraman coming to claim the carcass of his fellow countryman. Planking in mid-air, this Ultraman spins super fast and uses the giant meteor/space ship to suck up the remains of the dying Ultraman. (He’s been alive for 20,000 years, so no regrests – it was a good run.)

There are other Ultramen in this meteor office space and, after a few choice words in Castilian, transports the corpse off to the Land of Light while the Science Patrol wave and yell goodbye: “Ootra Mon – Sayonara!”

Dry your eyes, for there are entire Nebuli full of replacement parts.

Ultra Pants

Do you ever take time to stop what you’re doing during a busy day and wonder just who the heck Ultraman is? I do all the time, usually while driving on the freeway. Can’t help it. As the iconic Japanese super crusader who wears a shockingly revealing uniform goes, Ultraman, around since 1966, became a pop culture phenomenon over the course of 40 TV shows and 29 movies, and remains a hugely bankable puncher of giant monsters.

Yeah, there’s more than one Ultraman – a legion, in fact – going through countless redesigns, upgrades, tighter super britches… But by and large, whoever is calling themselves an Ultraman these days walks in big shoes. Very big shoes, as Ultramen can grow or “enlarge” tall enough to look into the 20th floor Yokohama Landmark Tower.

A bit of ultra education: Ultraman is the story of a series of “Ultra-heroes” that arrive on Earth to fight giant, evil monsters set on destroying the world. Each Ultraman can grow to over 200 feet tall, and employs a variety of energy emission powers, as well as kick ass, hand-to-hand martial arts fighting styles. (I could totally be an Ultraman as I have a variety of energy emission powers if I’ve been eating at Taco Bell™.)

Ultraman Ginga S: Decisive Battle! Ultra 10 Warriors!! came out in 2015. But thanks to Tsuburaya Productions, Ultraman X is scheduled for the big screen in the Spring of 2016. Not sure if the new trailer that just showed up online is from that movie. Really hope it is, though; Ultraman – all skinny, red and silvery – does a downtown fist-y battle with a horned kaiju that looks like a second-stringer from Pacific Rim (2013).

That people-filled buildings are ground into the ground, isn’t the disturbing part. It’s the slow pan up between Ultraman’s legs that has you averting your gaze. Note to filmmakers: How about a little less “ultra” in the super-tight tights area – kids are watching this thing.