Alexis den Boggende

2 weeks ago | bostonhassle.com | Alexis den Boggende

The Fear Street trilogy (1994, 1978, 1666), based off the works of beloved young adult horror author R.L. Stine, was a critical success on Netflix in 2021. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Leigh Janiak’s Fear Street movies offered horror fans an escapist nightmare brimming with blood, guts, camp, a strong storyline, and brutal kills (I am frequently haunted by the bread slicer scene). These films felt like a triple horror feature you’d see at a drive-in on a hazy summer night.

2 months ago | bostonhassle.com | Oscar Goff |Alexis den Boggende |Kyle Amato

The 2025 Boston Underground Film Festival ran from Wednesday, 3/19 through Sunday, 3/23 at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, and the Hassle’s intrepid writers Oscar Goff, Alexis den Boggende, and Kyle Amato were on the scene. Click here to catch up with the Hassle’s first dispatch from BUFF, and watch this space for our team’s continuing coverage!THE DUNWICH HORRORS dir.

Jul 25, 2024 | bostonhassle.com | Alexis den Boggende

Dystopian flicks are beginning to feel a little too close to reality—and that’s exactly how Caitlin Cronenberg’s Humane feels. The film opens with depressing and overwhelming sound bites that feel a little too close to what we hear on CNN—snippets of various television networks spewing nothing but bad news. Humanity is facing a horrific environmental crisis, and governments worldwide are enforcing voluntary, humane euthanasia upon society to lower the population by 20%.

Apr 4, 2024 | bostonhassle.com | Alexis den Boggende

Arkasha Stevenson’s directorial debut, The First Omen, is a visually stunning horror prequel that offers haunting imagery, a harrowing score, startling kills, and clever homages to the 1976 Richard Donner classic. Though it begins promising, this demonic prologue struggles in its final act. In 1971, Massachusetts native Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free) is sent to Rome as a novice, weeks away from taking her vows to become a nun.

Oct 26, 2023 | bostonhassle.com | Alexis den Boggende

Typically, PG-13 horror breeds apprehension. However, on rare occasions—such as Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell and Gore Verbinski’s The Ring—teen-rated terror tales can burrow beneath the skin and be surprisingly effective. Most often, though, PG-13 horror is limited, placing strict constraints on kills, gore, terror, and language—some of the most prominent features of a fun horror flick. It’s notoriously difficult to achieve a formidable horror film under these restrictions.