Chad Collins

Jacksonville Beach

Staff writer @dreadcentral/@dorianawards member. Previous bylines: @slashfilm, @gaylydreadful, @certifiedforgot, @manorvellum, @ruemorgue, others🎃

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Articles

All Bark, No Bite

2 days ago | dreadcentral.com | Chad Collins

Michael Bobori’s The Breed isn’t a classic by any means. Despite boasting the involvement of Wes Craven as a producer, that killer dog flick was all bark, no bite. It’s serviceable in that slick, early 2000s way (and boasts both Michelle Rodriguez and Oliver Hudson among its cast), though the film is certainly not a monster mash anyone thought would reasonably get the legacy sequel treatment (sort of). Well, it did.
Mike Flanagan Recommends This Gothic, Stop-Motion Masterpiece: "Absolutely gorgeous"

5 days ago | dreadcentral.com | Chad Collins

If you’re not following Mike Flanagan on Letterboxd, you really should be. Recently, the famed horror director has logged Black Bag, Drop, Mickey 17, and Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar. The man not only has taste, but a pretty diverse palate as well. And honestly, it’s pretty cool to see what one of your favorite filmmakers is watching in real-time. Drop? Haha, I saw that.
Megan Fox Stuns in This "Intense" Thriller, Now Streaming on Netflix

6 days ago | dreadcentral.com | Chad Collins

Megan Fox has really never gotten a fair deal. I’m not going to relitigate decades of Hollywood misogyny, but know that I believe Fox is a more talented performer than her harshest critics would have you believe. After all, nothing in cult classic Jennifer’s Body works without her, and it’s a considerably more complex performance than “sexy succubus”. In recent years, Fox has been cropping up in more and more horror films, and I’ve largely been a pretty big fan.
"Tight, fun, vicious, and brimming with practical FX"

6 days ago | dreadcentral.com | Chad Collins

You know what movie fans love doing? They love demanding more original movies yet failing to show up to auditoriums whenever those original movies do release. Why is Heart Eyes, the freshest slasher this side of Scream released in years, sitting at a worldwide gross of just $32 million? How did Cuckoo, a “bold, stylish, exquisitely fun” Neon release, only manage $6.7 million? M3GAN 2.0 is gonna make bank, I guarantee it, and I guess that’s just the world we live in.
This Disturbing Found Footage Masterpiece is Now Streaming Free

6 days ago | dreadcentral.com | Chad Collins

Analog horror is all the rage these days. For the uninitiated, analog horror largely makes use of the aesthetics of analog technologies (e.g. radio, VHS tapes) for an uncanny and dread-inducing atmosphere, often filtered through found footage techniques. It’s often serendipitously low budget, what with distorted audio and footage and evocative, often disturbing, and incredulous visuals. Think Skinamarink and The Backrooms phenomenon as two of the most popular and recent examples.
The Most Haunting, Nightmarish Film Ever Made is Now Free to Stream

1 week ago | dreadcentral.com | Chad Collins

A former Dread Central writer, Matt Serafini, once penned the idea of the “nightmare” film. The idea is a horror movie whose ethos is so psychedelic and dream-like, they both defy reality yet feel firmly planted in it, much like how a nightmare feels real, at least as long as you’re asleep. It’s a nebulous atmosphere that’s hard to explain, and I think it’s best conceptualized by the movies that achieve that feeling.
This Classic 90s Slasher Is Now Streaming on Netflix!

1 week ago | dreadcentral.com | Chad Collins

The horror scene post-1996 was really just every studio under the sun trying to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle success of Scream. It wasn’t enough to be scary anymore—there needed to be an undercurrent of cleverness to ground the horror. The Faculty, Urban Legend, and franchise favorite Halloween H20 were all Scream riffs, and several of those boasted the involvement Scream scribe Kevin Williamson himself.
"A fascinating and refreshing take"

1 week ago | dreadcentral.com | Chad Collins

We’re going to be getting a lot of AI horror in the coming years. It’s not M3GAN’s fault, either, though I think that diva bears at least some responsibility. According to the Pew Research Center, 52% of Americans are more concerned than excited about artificial intelligence, a sharp increase from the reported 37% just two years prior. Artificial intelligence is everywhere, and like the most frightening things we can imagine, AI is shapeless.
'House of Wax's' Gothic Terror Still Burns 20 Years Later

1 week ago | dreadcentral.com | Chad Collins

Something is missing from most (not all) slasher movies released today. Anyone who grew up in the heyday of the subgenre can likely sense that the slasher movies of this decade are deficient in some nebulous variable that rendered the classics so eminently rewatchable. Sometimes I’m not even sure what it is, but I can sense it. It’s probably a lot of “old man yells at cloud”, but they really don’t make them like they used to. Case in point?
'A Serbian Film' Shouldn't be Condemned

1 week ago | dreadcentral.com | Chad Collins

I need to start with a story. In middle school, we had just the one family computer shared among seven people. I was conspiratorial and technologically inept, and I irrationally feared that my parents had a direct line of contact with our ISP. Like most queer persons my age, I first started to understand my identity, and popular media was a wasteland of representation. I needed the internet to look at photos of “boys kissing” and “Nick Lachey shirtless,” but I couldn’t use the desktop.