Essays Posts

When we dig deeper into our favorites, be it favorite foods, favorite colors or even favorite movies, we often find that those warm and fuzzy feelings we hold are often due to the memories that come along with those favorites. For Hack or Slash’s C…

When I say the words “direct-to-video sequel”, what are some thoughts that come to mind? A lower budget. A new cast of characters. A brand name with TV-movie energy. Potentially a spinoff. These thoughts are often considered with a negative connotat…

As December snow falls, we’re wrapped in the warm embrace of red and green lights. But is it the most wonderful time of the year? Depends on who you ask. For many, reunions with family are long overdue chances to bond over dinner and the ritual of g…

Being a person who splits her affections between both horror and musicals makes me either the best or worst person to talk to at a dinner party. I can rattle off cast lists, album lyrics, quippy one-liners and useless fun facts that make you wish yo…

Hello and welcome back to Hack or Slash University! Class is in session, and today we’re talking all about horror documentaries! If you recall, earlier this month, the faculty and staff of Hack or Slash U issued you an assignment (should you choose …

Welcome to the second installment of Host Highlights! In this series, we take a look back at the history of our show and select memorable episodes from our catalogue that showcase each host’s unique point of view. In our first article we took a deep…

It is an age-old trope in the world of horror, a family, usually one with lots of kids, gets the opportunity to purchase a house at an absolute steal of a price.  The catch? The house can sometimes be drafty even in summer. The attic is filled with…

When we walk into the theater to watch a horror remake, or a requel, or a rebooted revival, we arrive interested and excited to see how a new cast of characters and a modern-day plot can help tell the same stories we grew up watching and loving. Bu…

With the return of Julie James and Ray Bronson on the horizon, it’s time to head back to Southport, North Carolina — the small coastal town where one bad decision started a legacy of blood, guilt, and hooks. Whether you’re planning to watch th…

In 1979, 14 years after man walked on the moon (allegedly…), we were introduced to a terrifying premise: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” With that tagline and a new monster, the Xenomorph, to haunt the audience’s nightmares for decades to c…

In the olden days, when pictures only spoke a thousand words instead of a million words as moving pictures. People got their thrills and chills from the written word. They gobbled up novels from Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley and weekly newspaper seri…

Dear creators of movie trailers: First of all, despite what I am about to say here, I’m a big fan of your work as a whole. I am one of those people who hustles to get to a movie early for the trailers. I will gladly sit through segments featuring …

Sometimes, love stinks. We’ve all had moments in our lives where every hint of love or Valentine’s Day spirit makes us want to swing a pickaxe at all those lucky enough to be in love. But before you decide to don a miner’s outfit and totally harsh …

Some of us have been in the horror movie space for so long that it may feel like nothing can surprise us anymore. We’ve seen the classics, the remakes, the requels, and analyzed them all down to their cinematic atoms.  We’ve memorized the final gir…

Note: This article was originally written in 2022 in celebration of the release of Scream (2022), and it’s now being shared with Hack or Slash for the first time in honor of the movie’s 3 year anniversary. There are spoilers for the first 4 films in…

As someone who has a December birthday, the end of the year has always enveloped me in a double dose of reflection. Not only for the year that’s come and gone as we anticipate a new calendar to fill with personal ambitions, but also the contemplatio…

Everyone remembers their first. The heady cocktail of excitement and anxiety, the blood, the afterglow of doing something that feels wicked and wrong yet also, somehow feeling inexplicably in love. Yes, everyone remembers their first horror movie e…

It is not an entirely false generalization to say that remakes are a large portion of the media we consume and see advertised (sometimes ad nauseum) every cinematic year. Very few things nowadays sprout from original IP, and the horror genre is far …

The second season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has come to an end, which also brings our character’s time in France to a close. Before looking ahead to the next season, I wanted to look back on my favorite character in the show.Spoilers ahead fo…

It seems almost too cliché to say that living through one “unprecedented historical event” after another feels like one long horror movie. There are villains who could win, heroes who could fall, seemingly inescapable scenarios, and a tinge of hopel…

I was raised in Florida for the first 5 years of my life. After that I moved around every 1-2 years until I moved back home in the early 2000’s. I was only home a few years before I left for the Navy, and I grew up — really became an adult — on the…

Long before the days of Stephen King’s Pennywise or Damian Leone’s Art the Clown, the clown has had a…complex relationship with our world. For centuries, even millenia, the clown; the jester; the fool; no matter what name it has held, has not only …

There is a stark difference in experience between sitting down on your couch or in a movie theater to watch a horror movie and immersing yourselves in those horror stories at a haunted attraction (colloquially called a ‘haunt” for short). When you’…

Do you have a scaredy cat in your life? They are the bewildering breed of humans who shudder at the thought of jump scares and immediately leave the room when you open the Shudder app on the TV.  But just because you have those people in your life …