C.H. Newell
Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:
C.H. Newell is a Master's student and author from Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, whose short stories have been published in Canada and the U.S. He wrote a short period piece horror film called New Woman that went into post-production in 2018. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society.
Publications:
Film Inquiry,
Father Son Holy Gore,
Scriptophobic
Critics' Group:
Online Film Critics Society
Movie Reviews Only
| T-Meter | Title | Year | Review | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.5/5 | 82% | For the Sake of Vicious (2021) |
For the Sake of Vicious is a fierce horror full of action. It'll kick you in the teeth, the balls, or wherever it hurts most. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Jul 13, 2021
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| 3/5 | 90% | Till Death (2021) |
The film tackles trauma in a compelling way through Fox's protagonist and the harrowing journey she must take to be free of her husband's figurative, and literal, shackles. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Jul 6, 2021
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| 5/5 | 100% | Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019) |
The doc expertly examines the initially negative reception to the first Elm Street sequel's queerness, plus how that affected Mark Patton as a gay man and an actor. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Jul 6, 2021
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| 4.5/5 | 98% | My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To (2021) |
Cuartas explores issues of family, morality, and sexuality through a vampiric lens. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Jul 2, 2021
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| 4.5/5 | 88% | Censor (2021) |
Censor depicts how trauma can warp the way a person sees the world, sometimes to the detriment of their better sense and at the expense of social freedoms. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Jun 21, 2021
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| 4/5 | 46% | Seance (2021) |
The discussion of urban legends and privilege that Seance brings up are icing on an already tasty genre cake. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Jun 3, 2021
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| 4.5/5 | 76% | The Retreat (2021) |
The Retreat is the embodiment of so many anxieties us queers feel when we're watching backwoods horror films, let alone when actually being in the middle of the woods. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted May 26, 2021
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| 4.5/5 | 85% | Jakob's Wife (2021) |
Jakob's Wife is a grim riot and an appropriately bloody vampire flick, all about power: who has it, who wants it, and what they do with it when they get it. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Apr 16, 2021
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| 3/5 | 67% | Honeydew (2021) |
Honeydew digs into serious subject matter like the horrifying effects of religious patriarchy, as well as the existential and bodily terror of heteronormativity. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Apr 14, 2021
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| 4/5 | 67% | The Yellow Wallpaper (2021) |
Pontuti's film captures the psychological horror of Gilman's short story, illustrating the abject, isolating terror of what it means to be a woman in a male-dominated society. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Mar 25, 2021
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| 4/5 | 65% | Wrong Turn (2021) |
Wrong Turn illustrates how often those who want to create their own new, separate society from the rest of the world wind up creating a more barbaric state of being. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Feb 25, 2021
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| 4/5 | 89% | The Queen of Black Magic (Ratu ilmu hitam) (2019) |
A modern Gothic tale in which the past returns to violently haunt the present, touching on the corrosive powers of patriarchy and lasting damage of secrets. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Jan 29, 2021
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| 4/5 | 91% | PG: Psycho Goreman (2021) |
Everything from disappointing male behaviour to cops gets a ribbing in this journey full of belly laughs, old school blood and guts, and 1990s-style television sci-fi. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Jan 23, 2021
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| 4/5 | 94% | Hunter Hunter (2020) |
Linden shapes what could've been a very simple plot into something viciously exciting that's also a microcosm of much larger issues regarding gender and violence. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Dec 28, 2020
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| 4/5 | 68% | Kindred (2020) |
Never lets up on the doom, thrusting its Black female protagonist into an unfamiliar, uncaring world dominated by patriarchal values and bourgeois whiteness. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Dec 5, 2020
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| 2.5/5 | 89% | The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020) |
Playing a violent, sexist cop for dark laughs is a questionable venture in 2020 when there's little to no real catharsis, only violence and self-pitying, brooding men. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Dec 5, 2020
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| 4.5/5 | 98% | Anything for Jackson (2020) |
By far one of the best horror films of 2020. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Nov 17, 2020
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| 5/5 | 100% | His House (2020) |
His House uses its Gothic horrors to illustrate the mental and physical strength required of refugees by a white world that, more often than not, refuses their humanity. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Nov 11, 2020
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| 2.5/5 | 79% | Synchronic (2020) |
Synchronic sets up compelling ideas about being Black in America, but ultimately disappoints and instead ends on a troublesome racial note. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Nov 3, 2020
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| 4.5/5 | 88% | Violation (2021) |
Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer's VIOLATION pulls the rape-revenge film out of its exploitation roots to give it an actual message. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Oct 24, 2020
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| 4/5 | 60% | Hunted (2020) |
Paronnaud's film depicts the capability of women to exert their natural power in defending themselves against violent men without needing tragedy to birth it. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Oct 21, 2020
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| 4.5/5 | 94% | Dinner in America (2020) |
Dinner in America takes a look at imperfect people rejected by a capitalist U.S. society that values only those who fit a perfect mould. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Oct 15, 2020
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| 3/5 | 69% | An Unquiet Grave (2020) |
A deeply emotional view of grief, and wonderfully macabre. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Oct 13, 2020
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| 4/5 | 91% | Bloody Hell (2020) |
Grierson's film is a must-see that'll crack some up, gross some out, and make many others think. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Oct 12, 2020
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| 4.5/5 | 77% | 12 Hour Shift (2020) |
Full of important conversations about women struggling in the workplace, whether at a hospital or an organ trafficking ring, as well as about euthanasia and the death penalty. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Oct 3, 2020
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| 2/5 | 33% | Death of Me (2020) |
The screenplay inadvertently plays into worn out Orientalist tropes depicting Americans under siege by threatening Others in a foreign land. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Oct 2, 2020
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| 4.5/5 | 83% | Hosts (2020) |
Hosts never skimps on blood splatter. Better than that, the story's focus is on subverting images of Christian Christmas. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Oct 2, 2020
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| 4.5/5 | 84% | Bloodthirsty (2021) |
The view of monstrosity, from predators to artists, in Bloodthirsty is unforgettable. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Oct 2, 2020
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| 3.5/5 | 75% | How to Deter a Robber (2021) |
An intriguing exploration of what happens when a young person finally experiences an event in their life that shatters the illusions of youth. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 30, 2020
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| 4/5 | 52% | The Antenna (Bina) (2020) |
The Antenna is an eerie dystopian horror that reflects Turkey's descent over the past decade or more into a state of mass surveillance. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 29, 2020
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| 4.5/5 | 96% | The Boy Behind the Door (2020) |
What's so chilling about The Boy Behind the Door is the plausibility of its premise and how real the plot feels, particularly once the story's horrors fully reveal themselves. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 29, 2020
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| 4/5 | 85% | Ten Minutes To Midnight (2020) |
Beneath the blood and teeth are timely issues about the difficulties women face in the entertainment industry. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 22, 2020
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| 4/5 | 92% | Relic (2020) |
The film uses its Gothic elements to explore the decay and hereditary horror of mental illness, specifically dementia. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 19, 2020
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| 2.5/5 | 30% | Antebellum (2020) |
Antebellum suffers from its insistence on exploiting Black pain and an underwritten story that feels confused about what it's truly trying to say. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 19, 2020
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| 4/5 | 97% | Z (2019) |
The lasting effect of the film is in its allegory of how mental illness attaches itself to us, to the point we sometimes find comfort in it. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 19, 2020
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| 4/5 | 100% | Host (2020) |
A lean, mean digital Gothic chiller best watched with the lights on. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 18, 2020
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| 2/5 | 73% | Followed (2020) |
An unlikeable protagonist and messy story take away from a film that otherwise has compelling things to say about true crime entertainment and social media influencers. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 17, 2020
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| 4/5 | 78% | Murder Death Koreatown (2020) |
A deeply unsettling film that blurs the line between found footage and documentary, all while interrogating true crime obsession. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 16, 2020
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| 4/5 | 63% | The Owners (2020) |
Eerie and exciting in equal measure. All the thrills and the horror compliment the story's themes, bringing out terror based in issues of class, family, and masculinity. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 3, 2020
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| 4.5/5 | 79% | Fried Barry (2020) |
At once hilarious and serious, using humour to keep things slightly foolish while the chaotic plot simultaneously digs into important issues about addiction in Cape Town. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Sep 3, 2020
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| 4.5/5 | 84% | You Cannot Kill David Arquette (2020) |
A powerful tale of redemption, self-acceptance, and the supportive people we all need to occasionally lift us up when we're too weak to carry ourselves. Beautiful and weird. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Aug 30, 2020
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| 4/5 | 90% | The Dark and the Wicked (2020) |
Bertino delivers a grim vision of evil that offers no hope, not a single brief glimmer of light at the end of its dark tunnel. Deliciously horrific. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Aug 30, 2020
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| 4/5 | 69% | Unearth (2020) |
A cautionary tale about the horrors of fracking, wrapped up in a drama filled with tragic social realism. A stunning eco-horror, and one of the best of its kind. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Aug 30, 2020
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| 4.5/5 | 90% | The Block Island Sound (2020) |
The Block Island Sound explores the horrors of the unknown with a very unique perspective, also questioning humanity's treatment of the natural world. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Aug 29, 2020
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| 4/5 | No Score Yet | Unearth (2004) |
Unearth explores the terrifying consequences of fracking in this desperate ecological warning of a horror film with part social realism, part gruesome terror. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Aug 29, 2020
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| 2.5/5 | 49% | The Pale Door (2020) |
Although The Pale Door stumbles a good bit it does offer a horrific look at misogyny, patriarchy, and the enduring Puritanism of America. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Aug 27, 2020
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| 3.5/5 | 86% | The Dose (La dosis) (2021) |
Two lonely men play God in an ethical thriller about euthanasia that's as much a rumination on male loneliness and power as it is a tale of duelling nurses. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Aug 16, 2020
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| 3.5/5 | No Score Yet | Catacombs (1988) |
Catacombs a.k.a Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice packs its runtime with Gothic religious history and explores the Roman Catholic Church's repression of desire and sexuality. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Jul 29, 2020
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| 5/5 | 83% | Midsommar (2019) |
One woman's journey to a remote Swedish village helps reveal to her an existence outside of American patriarchy and toxic men. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Jul 27, 2020
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| 4.5/5 | 88% | Sator (2019) |
Sator is as much an experience in the art of film making itself as it is a horror story. - Father Son Holy Gore
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| Posted Jul 18, 2020
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