C.H. Newell

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
4/5 68% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 25, 2021
4/5 90% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 29, 2021
4/5 89% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 23, 2021
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 28, 2020
4/5 70% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 5, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 5, 2020
4.5/5 98% Anything for Jackson (2020) By far one of the best horror films of 2020. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 17, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 11, 2020
2.5/5 80% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2020
4.5/5 87% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 24, 2020
4/5 62% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 21, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 15, 2020
3/5 85% An Unquiet Grave (2020) A deeply emotional view of grief, and wonderfully macabre. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 13, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 12, 2020
4.5/5 78% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 3, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 2, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 2, 2020
4.5/5 100% Bloodthirsty (2020) The view of monstrosity, from predators to artists, in Bloodthirsty is unforgettable. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 2, 2020
3.5/5 85% How to Deter a Robber (2020) 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 30, 2020
4/5 55% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 29, 2020
4.5/5 100% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 29, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 22, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 19, 2020
2.5/5 28% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 19, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 19, 2020
4/5 100% Host (2020) A lean, mean digital Gothic chiller best watched with the lights on. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 18, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 17, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 16, 2020
4/5 66% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 3, 2020
4.5/5 82% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 3, 2020
4.5/5 83% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 30, 2020
4/5 91% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 30, 2020
4/5 75% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 30, 2020
4.5/5 96% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 29, 2020
2.5/5 50% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 27, 2020
3.5/5 100% The Dose (La dosis) (2020) 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 16, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 29, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 27, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 18, 2020
4/5 87% 1BR (2020) 1BR keeps it focus on the perils of community, specifically one brutally controlled by various white patriarchal figures. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2020
4/5 94% The Deeper You Dig (2019) The Deeper You Dig depicts the existential struggle of life, death, and rebirth in the aftermath of violent crime. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 24, 2020
4/5 56% Dreamland (2020) Funny, strange, and violent. Less like a linear screenplay than it is a mood board full of sociopolitical resistance and grim, hilarious satire. - Scriptophobic EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 10, 2020
3.5/5 71% Becky (2020) A blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl turns a neo-Nazi's world upside down in a film about family, violence, and the hypocrisy of white supremacists. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 10, 2020
4.5/5 100% This Teacher (2020) Lifts the veil to show us the hidden face of many who'd love to believe themselves progressive when they're merely small cogs in a much larger wheel of systemic racism. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted May 21, 2020
4/5 No Score Yet Incredible Violence (2019) If there were a thesis for Condon's film it might be that film making as a capitalist industry, cheap horror, and pornography are all the same elaborate scheme. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted May 21, 2020
4.5/5 74% The Lodge (2020) The Lodge's terror exists in the real world, it's happening right now- in the fanatically faithful, the cruelty of gaslighting, and the exploitation of peoples traumas. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted May 19, 2020
5/5 90% Blood Quantum (2020) The infection in this film is not simply a zombie virus, it's whiteness and everything it entails: colonialism, patriarchy, and, most of all, the destruction of our natural world. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted May 9, 2020
3.5/5 80% Pod (2015) This is a riveting family drama for the first quarter or so, then it plunges into a mystery thriller before hitting the horror stride full-on within the last half hour. - Father Son Holy Gore EDIT
Read More | Posted May 6, 2020
3/5 41% The Quarry (2020) A lot of wasted potential, despite being well acted, but underneath is buried an important, timely interrogation of American whiteness and morality. - Scriptophobic EDIT
Read More | Posted May 4, 2020