The Descent
By Steve Newton
The world is a scary and disturbing place right now, what with all the death and destruction in Gaza and Ukraine, the mass shootings and brutal ICE arrests in the States, the possibility of nuclear war, and whatnot.
Many people seek an escape from the real-life events of today by watching horror movies, which means a lot of them are currently scanning the streaming channels, trying to find decent fright flicks.
The bad news is, there’s a lotta lousy ones out there.
So to save you the trouble of searching around and maybe blowing some money on crap, here’s my roundup of five recommended horror films currently showing for free on Tubi.
These are my original reviews, which were published when the films were first released in North American theatres.
Have a happy, horror-heavy October 2025. And try not to worry so much about human extinction and stuff.
It Follows (2015, Radius-TWC)
Review originally published on March 25, 2015
Every once in a while a low-budget indie fright flick comes along that makes everything on the major studios’ horror plate look like a pile of steaming crap. It Follows is that film, right now.
Maika Monroe is note-perfect as Jay, a pretty 19-year-old college student getting by in her average Motor City life. But while they’re out on a date, her new boyfriend, Hugh (Jake Weary), chloroforms her after sex in the back seat of his car and binds her to a wheelchair in her undies in the middle of an abandoned parking structure.
Just when you fear that It Follows might turn into yet another gruelling Hostel-type torture-porn epic, we learn that Hugh has only restrained Jay so that he can explain something very important to her. When she comes to, he wheels her around until they spy a naked woman in the distance, shuffling toward them. “This thing, it’s gonna follow you,” he warns. “Somebody gave it to me, and I passed it to you.”
Hugh tells Jay that she can only rid herself of the “follower” by sleeping with someone, but fails to mention that, while slow-moving, it’s powerful enough to rip her limbs off. The rest of the film is a terrifying portrayal of the goodhearted girl’s ordeal as she tries to save herself from the converging ghouls—visible only to her (and us)—without bringing death to those around her.
Writer-director David Robert Mitchell takes the puzzling premise of It Follows and runs it straight into your nightmares. He’s aided by a standout cast of young actors whose naturalistic performances play out against an eerie-as-hell soundtrack by Disasterpeace that echoes the spooky ’70s-style synth work used in drive-in movies by the likes of Goblin, Tangerine Dream, and John Carpenter.
Depressing footage of a decaying Detroit heightens the sense of hopelessness that fuels the engine of fear propelling It Follows, which ultimately leaves you heavy with dread and the notion that it’s the finest horror flick you’ve seen in years.
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
Review originally published on March 25, 2004
Bubba Ho-Tep is a horror-comedy about two elderly men at a rundown retirement home–one supposedly Elvis Presley, the other claiming to be John F. Kennedy–who battle a mummy that sucks souls from victims’ arseholes.
Who would have thought that such a far-out B-movie premise could result in this sharply directed, wonderfully acted, and laugh-out-loud-funny tale of courage and redemption?
Three people are most responsible for Bubba Ho-Tep‘s surprising success. First off would be hard-nosed East Texas author Joe R. Lansdale, who wrote the offbeat novelette on which the film is based, publishing it in his 1994 short-story collection Writer of the Purple Rage.
The director who brings Lansdale’s singular vision to life is genre vet Don Coscarelli, who was in his early 20s when his feverish sphere-of-death horror flick Phantasm brought him cult acclaim in 1979.
And Bruce Campbell is the actor who delivers the goods with a career-topping performance as geezer Elvis. His subtly nuanced take on the tragic superstar brings Campbell full circle from the Three Stooges like pratfalls of his Evil Dead flicks.
The talents of Lansdale, Coscarelli, and Campbell converge brilliantly in Bubba Ho-Tep, although thanks to the lack of foresight from any major Hollywood studio, that fact won’t be widely known until this overlooked gem becomes a hot property on video.
All the action, except flashbacks, takes place at the Mud Creek Rest Home in East Texas, where the decrepit residents start getting attacked by huge scarab beetles. Elvis’s battle with one such bug is particularly hilarious, especially when he skewers it on a fork, holds it up, and declares with a curly-lipped sneer: “Never, ever, fuck with the King!”
Soon after, Bubba Ho-Tep himself appears, shuffling about in cowboy boots and Stetson hat, sniffing around for stinky souls to steal. That’s when Elvis joins forces with the black JFK, played by charismatic Ossie Davis, and the two previously downtrodden codgers find new reason to embrace life in their quest to vanquish the ancient evil.
It’s the powerful bond between these two characters, much more than the creature effects or lowbrow humour, that screenwriter Coscarelli focuses on. His words, many of which are respectfully lifted directly from Lansdale’s original tale, are given resonance by the evocative, guitar-based score of Brian Tyler (Six-String Samurai).
After experiencing Bubba Ho-Tep‘s winning mix of pathos and absurdity, fans of contemporary horror-comedies will think twice when the next Scary Movie comes along.
The Descent (2006, Pathé Distribution)
Review originally published on August 10, 2006
A few weeks ago, we went camping at a lake near Powell River, and by camping I mean sleeping in a camper. I chose to crash at the very back of the rig, against the wall in the little bunk above the truck cab. Maybe it was the mixture of hot dogs, Pilsner, and smores, but I woke up in the middle of the night with a freaky feeling. I felt trapped and had to get out of that cubbyhole quick.
It was the first time in my life that I’ve experienced claustrophobia, and it wasn’t pretty.
The uncomfortable vibe returned last weekend, even in the spacious atmosphere of SilverCity Metropolis. It came while watching The Descent‘s six thrill-seeking girlfriends, on a weekend caving expedition in the Appalachians, squeeze themselves between tiny passageways of water and rock.
Writer-director Neil Marshall, who’d previously impressed genre fans with his 2002 soldiers-versus-werewolves saga, Dog Soldiers, does a brilliant job of preying on people’s natural fear of physical confinement.
The Descent is a regular Das Boot for the horror crowd.
Mind you, the Second World War German U-boat crew of that film only had Axis torpedoes to worry about. Here, the six chicks run into a race of humanoid creatures with faces that resemble the batlike vampire from Salem’s Lot but who have much nastier dispositions.
These blind but ferocious beings like nothing more than to rip open the tender necks and torsos of underground adventurers, but they find worthy opponents in this gaggle of adrenaline junkies, which include a blond Brit (Shauna Macdonald) who’s already survived the worst hell a wife and mother could endure.
The Descent is from Maple Pictures, the take-no-prisoners studio responsible for such gruesome terror titles as High Tension, the Saw films, and the ultra-disgusting torture epic, Hostel. So it goes without saying that the blood in this movie flows like an underground river; at one point, characters are actually submerged in it.
But the most disturbing scenes don’t involve the subterranean beasties getting their milky-white skulls impaled by climbing tools or their gooey eye sockets skewered by female fingers. Most of the audience’s squeals and squirms are reserved for the sight of a severely broken leg, the type that occurs on the world’s roadways and sports fields every single day.
It’s this skillful juxtaposition of the unreal and the common–along with believable performances, sharp editing, and crafty suspense–that makes The Descent a big winner. Although I wouldn’t quite agree with the joblo.com writer who claims it’s “the best horror-thriller since Alien”, I dare say that it’s in the running with The Hills Have Eyes as top horror flick of the year.
The Gift (2015, STX Entertainment)
Review originally published on August 5, 2015
If you thought Jason Bateman could only play affable sad-sacks, prepare for a nice surprise with The Gift. The actor best known for his gentle portrayal of the put-upon Michael Bluth in Arrested Development discovers his dark side in a big way in this unsettling revenge thriller about the terrible cost of youthful misdeeds.
We first meet sales exec Simon (Bateman) and his interior-designer wife, Robyn (Rebecca Hall), as they’re being shown around a new home in the Hollywood Hills. The picturesque place comes equipped with a surplus of windows, but there’ll be a lot more peering in than out.
While out shopping one day the couple run into Simon’s old high-school buddy Gordon (first-time writer-director Joel Edgerton), who exudes a harmless demeanour but soon worms his way into their lives with unannounced visits to the new place. His strange behaviour leads an increasingly frustrated Simon to admit that his nickname back in the day was “Gordo the Weirdo”.
After one too many troubling interactions, Simon and Robyn cut social ties with Gordo and focus on their main goal—becoming parents—while Simon also aims for a big promotion at his computer-security firm. It’s around this time that the real story behind Gordo’s weirdness starts to reveal itself—along with Robyn’s vulnerable psyche and Simon’s simmering menace.
The sure-handed Edgerton sets a slow-burning pace in the lead-up to The Gift’s harrowing revelations, and all three leads give well-controlled performances, their conflict never stretching believability past the breaking point—at least, not until that climactic “gotcha” moment.
After striking it rich with demon-based, supernatural franchises like the Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and Sinister series, it seems as if charmed production company Blumhouse has found a winning way with human-based horror as well.
Green Room (2016, A24)
Review originally published on April 25, 2016
I love Green Room‘s plot about a destitute punk band trapped in a grungy backwoods bar by murderous neo-Nazi skinheads as much as the next guy. Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier–who proved his suspense mettle with 2013’s Blue Ruin–does a bang-up job with the hair-raising aspects of that premise.
If only his first-act depiction of rockers on the road were slightly more believable. Maybe a few viewings of Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo would have done the trick.
The Ain’t Rights are a pretentious hardcore band from Washington, D.C., composed of greenhaired singer Tiger (Callum Turner), sensitive bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin), mother-hen guitarist Sam (Alia Shawkat), and loose-cannon drummer Reece (Joe Cole). The quartet barely scrapes by while touring around the Pacific Northwest in its aging van, siphoning gas to get from one crappy-paying gig to the next.
Like the best punk bands, though, they like to stir up shit, so when they score a gig at an isolated white-supremacist hangout they bravely open with the Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”. They survive the ensuing shower of beer, curses, and spittle, but while exiting the dive witness something that causes its evil owner (the curiously cast Patrick Stewart) to decide they must be killed. He dispatches a squad of jackbooted thugs to flush them out of the dressing room they’ve taken refuge in, along with fellow witness/stranger Amber (Imogen Poots).
Around this time the movie viciously transforms from a semi-hokey portrayal of a struggling punk band to a gritty survival-horror flick that keeps you transfixed till the bitter end, ladling on the tension and nasty violence, and offering up some of the most terrifying Rottweiler attack scenes since The Omen.
Like those fierce throat-chompers, horror fans will eat it up.
T0 read more than 350 of my original reviews of scary movies released theatrically in North America go here.