Reflections

By Uncle Bob’s AI 

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Zoc: This is the report AI runs for me each week. I created it to keep up to date (as much as possible) with what’s horror-happening in movies and streaming. I may tweak it now and then. Take the review blurbs and ratings with a lot of salt. I’m not a fan of ratings services. If you rely on them, the best of luck with that.

It’s a quiet week on the slate. No tentpole wide release, but two titles to note. Adam Wingard’s A24 creature-slasher Onslaught hits theaters September 4th trailing solid reviews (82% fresh) for its Guest-adjacent, John Carpenter-flavored carnage, even as critics flag a story that runs out of gas before the credits. Shudder counters the same day with Parasomnia, James Ross II’s feature debut about a woman whose night terrors start bleeding into reality. Mixed-to-positive notices praise the practical gore and dread, less so the rushed ending. Scary Movie 6 continues its critic-proof victory lap on Paramount+ (27% RT, $56M opening), and a cluster of VOD and limited-release indies: Ever After, Dark Hollow, Confinement, and more, round out a slate heavier on quantity than consensus.

Onslaught

Release: Theatrical (wide) — September 4, 2026, distributed by A24

Tomatometer: 82% (Fresh, 22+ reviews)    Metascore: Mixed-to-positive; no aggregated score yet at filing

A former Army sniper (Arjona) becomes the last line of defense for her family when a squad of genetically engineered super-soldiers breaks loose near the same rural New Mexico town from Wingard’s The Guest, forcing her to out-monster the monsters to survive.

Critical Consensus: Praised for its gritty, practical-effects-driven ’80s action aesthetic and go-for-broke violence; docked for a story critics feel needed another draft to match its style.

“Gloriously crafted if narratively undercooked, the action-thriller is a pretty good time. It’s just that it had seemed for a moment like it was going to be a great one.” — Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter

“It pushes the earlier film’s exploitation-movie excesses farther, and appropriately so, suggesting Assault on Precinct 13 by way of The Prowler.” — Slant Magazine

“Fun but scattered — Wingard’s most aesthetically accomplished work yet, even when the plot can’t keep pace.” — Variety

Audience / Community Reaction: Early buzz is warmer than the critical split suggests — genre audiences on social media are responding to the practical gore and Carpenter throwback aesthetic.

Skewed Angles to Ponder:

• How does Onslaught’s New Mexico setting and shared-universe wink to The Guest change the stakes for viewers who’ve seen Wingard’s earlier work?
• Critics agree the craft outpaces the script. Is that a fair trade-off for a genre film? (Not sure which critics, though.)
• Is the ensemble (Stevens, Biehn, Hall) underused, or does the film wisely stay locked on Arjona?

Parasomnia

Release: Streaming exclusive — Shudder, September 4, 2026

Tomatometer: 82% (Fresh)    Metascore: Not yet available

Riley, a young woman plagued by severe night terrors rooted in a childhood marked by murder-suicide, must figure out whether the demon from her dreams has crossed into the waking world after her best friend disappears.

Critical Consensus: A strong, gory practical-effects showcase with a committed lead performance and real dread — undercut for some by a tight runtime that rushes the third act.

“Wild paranormal lore and serious scares render Parasomnia a real winner.” — Chad Collins, Dread Central

“A bold, bloody and bloodcurdling feature debut.” — Kat Hughes, The Hollywood News

“The story becomes convoluted and strange by the third act.” — B-Sides & Badlands

Audience / Community Reaction: Festival-circuit word of mouth (Overlook, Brooklyn Horror, FrightFest) has been consistently positive on practical effects and lead performance since 2025.

Skewed Angles to Ponder:

• Does a Shudder day-and-date debut undersell a film that’s been building festival buzz for a year?
• Is the “CGI fatigue-corrective” framing fair to the film on its own terms?
• Does a strong 80 minutes excuse a rushed close? (Zoc: depends on your definition of rushed.)

And…

Pulled From

Variety — Onslaught Review
The Hollywood Reporter — Onslaught Review
Slant Magazine — Onslaught Review
Forbes — Onslaught RT Reviews
Rotten Tomatoes — Onslaught
Dread Central — Parasomnia Review
The Hollywood News — Parasomnia Review
Daily Dead — Parasomnia Review
Horror Movie Lists — This Week’s Releases
Yahoo/CBR — Scary Movie 6 RT Score
Bloody Disgusting — September Streaming Horror
Wikipedia — Onslaught (film)

By Uncle Bob’s AI and JM Cozzoli

Cults, hereditary orders, and esoteric sects run through Lovecraft’s oeuvre. These organizations (groups) are the human side, mostly, of the Mythos: ordinary people, questionable people, and those that are not quite people, who have gladly or dangerously made contact with the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods, while awaiting, summoning, or trying to hobnob with them. This incomplete but important primer lists the principal groups in Lovecraft’s own writing, then broadens to later authors who borrowed, extended, and tricked them out into the growing Cthulhu Mythos.  References are cited at the end.

In Lovecraft’s Own Writing

The Cult of Cthulhu   The Call of Cthulhu (1928)

A diffuse, worldwide secret cult that worships the Great Old Ones and awaits the day “when the stars are right” and Cthulhu rises from sunken R’lyeh. Lovecraft shows it through degenerate swamp worshippers in the Louisiana bayous and the Esquimaux diabolists of Greenland, with others alluded to in New Zealand and beyond, united by the chant “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.” The captured cultist Old Castro supplies its doctrine. The story was first published in Weird Tales in February 1928, and this cult is the template for nearly every Mythos cult that follows.

The Esoteric Order of Dagon   The Shadow over Innsmouth (1936)

A hereditary religious order founded by Captain Obed Marsh in the decayed Massachusetts port of Innsmouth, where it displaced the town’s Christian churches after Marsh returned from the South Seas around 1838. Members worship Dagon, Mother Hydra, and (to a lesser degree) Cthulhu, and interbreed with the amphibious Deep Ones in exchange for gold and bountiful fishing. Written in 1931 and first published in 1936, it is Lovecraft’s most realized cult, most alluded to by later writers.

The Church of Starry Wisdom   The Haunter of the Dark (1936)

A Providence sect founded around 1844 by Professor Enoch Bowen, an archaeologist and occultist, which used the Shining Trapezohedron to summon and commune with an avatar of Nyarlathotep, the “Haunter” of the title. Public outcry and a string of disappearances eventually shut it down. Lovecraft wrote the story for his correspondent Robert Bloch as part of a friendly exchange of tales, and the church has had a long afterlife in other hands.

The Witch-Cult of Keziah Mason   The Dreams in the Witch House (1933)

The lineage of Keziah Mason, a Salem witch who vanished from captivity in 1692 and used non-Euclidean geometry to slip between dimensions. She is served by the rat-like familiar Brown Jenkin and ultimately by the Black Man — Nyarlathotep in human guise — having signed the Book of Azathoth. First published in the July 1933 Weird Tales, the story fuses period witch-cult lore with Mythos cosmology.

The Red Hook Cult   The Horror at Red Hook (1927)

A syncretic immigrant cult in Brooklyn led by the wealthy scholar Robert Suydam, worshipping Lilith and pre-human powers through Kabbalistic and Near-Eastern ritual. More occult-criminal than cosmic, it is an early sketch of the esoteric group idea Lovecraft would later perfect.

The Kingsport Yule Cult   The Festival (1925)

A hereditary New England family cult that performs an ancient subterranean Yuletide rite beneath the old town of Kingsport. Less a formal organization than an inherited tradition of worship passed down through bloodlines. Leave it to Lovecraft to dampen the Christmas spirit.

Human Servitors of the Mi-Go   The Whisperer in Darkness (1931)

Not a named body, but a network of human agents who do the bidding of the Mi-Go (the Fungi from Yuggoth) in the Vermont hills, helping conceal the aliens’ presence and their practice of removing human brains into cylinders for transport between worlds.

…

Lovecraftian Esoteric Groups
A PrimerRead More »

By Uncle Bob’s AI (from original sources cited below) and Iloz Zoc

H. P. Lovecraft’s stories are populated by dread and the beings that foster it. Entities that are so ancient and alien that mere awareness of their existence imperils human sanity. Central to his supernatural cosmology is the principle of insignificance: humanity is not the focus of any malevolent design but rather an inconsequential smear of organic matter in a universe that neither knows nor cares. The gods and entities Lovecraft created express this idea with theological consistency. Yet, the mystery remains of why some humans would become acolytes and enablers of these unfathomable monstrosities, yearning for and actively preparing for their disruption of everyday reality.

Three main categories emerge from his fiction and letters. The Outer Gods (also called the Other Gods or the Ultimate Gods) are the supreme powers of the cosmos:  transcendent, often mindless or incomprehensible forces that dwell beyond the known universe. Chief among them is Azathoth, the Blind Idiot God whose unconscious existence is the very engine of reality. The Great Old Ones are a tier below: ancient, immensely powerful beings who once ruled the Earth and now lie dormant, imprisoned, or in exile, awaiting the right alignment of the stars to reclaim dominion. Cthulhu is the most famous representative of this group. The Gods of Earth, sometimes called the Dream Gods or the Dreamland Gods, are a comparatively humble category: the native deities of Earth who dwell in the Dreamlands and receive the prayers of mortal dreamers. They are capricious and vain, powerful within their domain but negligible by the standards of the Outer Gods.

…

The Cosmic Beings of H. P. LovecraftRead More »

This just flew in via batmail…I wish I could attend. Last time I attended a Buffy convention it was in New Jersey,  fronted by Fangoria. I’m really bummed by the sad passing of Anthony Head. If they ever do a rehash of Buffy in a new series, just won’t be the same without him.

TORRANCE, CA – This June, the global Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom is bypassing traditional convention centers for a highly anticipated, on-location return. From June 13-14, 2026, Torrance High School—the historic real-world filming location of Sunnydale High—will be taken over by fans and series legends for the three-day immersive fandom convention, HellmouthCon 2026. Hosted by Fandom Charities Inc., a 100% volunteer-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the event challenges the increasingly expensive comic-con industry model. While offering an exclusive, limited VIP tier, HellmouthCon ensures every attendee with a general wristband has access to robust celebrity panel programming and an elite cast roster, featuring Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia), Emma Caulfield (Anya), Amber Benson (Tara), Amy Acker (Fred/Illyria), J. August Richards (Gunn), Doug Jones (The Gentlemen), and more.

HellmouthCon replaces exhausting, high-volume autograph lines with a curated, immersive festival atmosphere. The historic campus will come alive with deep-dive panels, hands-on workshops, and academic lectures running throughout the grounds. Between sessions, attendees can grab a bite from local food trucks, interact with roaming cosplay guests in character, enjoy live musical performances, or compete in a highly anticipated cosplay contest. Fans can also shop the Sunnydale Mall for unique, fandom-inspired artisan goods, join limited-capacity themed breakfasts with the cast, or take guided historical walking tours of the iconic filming locations.

Beyond the immersive entertainment, the convention serves as a massive philanthropic engine. Inspired by the series’ core message of protecting the vulnerable and fighting for the greater good, event proceeds directly fund LGBTQ+ youth support networks (Rainbow Spaces), pancreatic cancer research (PanCAN, in memory of late Buffyverse actor Camden Toy), and youth education (Ron Glass Memorial Scholarship).

● Tickets & Information: www.fandomcharities.org/hellmouthcon

By Uncle Bob’s AI and Iloz Zoc

I turned to Zombos. “How does this sound?”

Fantasy coffins are one of Ghana’s most striking artistic traditions. In the Ga language of coastal Ghana, these are called abebuu adekai, roughly “proverb boxes” or “receptacles of proverbs.” They are functional coffins, actually used for burial, but each is sculpted and painted to represent something meaningful about the person who has died: their profession, status, passions, or clan symbol. A fisherman might be buried inside a giant carved fish or a wooden canoe; a successful businessman inside a gleaming Mercedes-Benz; a cocoa farmer in an enormous cocoa pod; a chief in an eagle or lion. There are coffins shaped like Coca-Cola bottles, airplanes, chili peppers, sneakers, mobile phones, hens with chicks, and cameras. Among the Ga people, death is understood as a transition rather than an ending. Ancestors continue to influence the living and a funeral is a major celebration of a life. The coffin honors who the person was and sends them into the next life in fitting style.

“I suppose it will do.” He stooped a little closer. “What are you using?” He put on his spectacles to read my laptop screen better. Yes, I know, but to him they are spectacles. If you dare say eyeglasses he goes all hissy fit and sulks. Old habits and all that, you know, with him. “Does that say Bob’s AI?” …

Fantasy Coffins of GhanaRead More »

Getting sick while you age seems more challenging — the survival to wellness part, I mean. The last covid vaccine I took was about three years ago. Last year I got the flu, and yup, that was the year I didn’t get the flu vaccine either. My track record is not looking good. That feeling of normal life interrupted, unable to do anything beyond not moving, not eating, and not doing much of anything that you really needed to do, is very annoying and depressing. The only thing left is to make the best of it with what you can.

So in the past week, between chills, sweats, sleep, lack of sleep, and (a definite benefit here) weight loss, I managed to get caught up with the CBS show Tracker — loved seeing Jensen Ackles as Colten Shaw’s brother — and its blend of cases to solve. At first I didn’t like the show, thinking it was yet another addition to the pablum-bloated, scripted fantasy-reality shows that CBS indulges in like NCIS, FBI Blue Bloods, Sheriff Country, Boston Blue, the list goes on. Given the current reality of what’s happening today, the scripting is more a wishful throwback to the good old days, so how anyone can watch that stuff is beyond me. But Elsbeth is a lot of fun and brilliant in many ways — if you haven’t seen the Doll Day Afternoon episode you must, it’s an instant classic.

And then there’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and the outrageously awesome South Park. Dissent is what made America. Ironically, it’s also chipping away at our unity and shared sense of purpose when some insist their dissent is the only one that holds value. But Colbert and South Park are hilarious in how they voice dissent in very damning ways with a maliciousness that so easily merges into comedy (satire? parody? the Court Jester making fun of the obtuse King?), that each episode for either of them is a wonder to behold.

I also managed to finally watch Doctor Sleep. What works so well for it is the merging of both the novel and Kubrick’s The Shining to a better degree than Kubrick’s vision alone. I know Stephen King did not like that vision much (I was disappointed too: that Dick Hallorann chest meets axe thing, huh?), enough to write up a multi-part tv series to get the taste out of his mouth, but I’m glad he liked Mike Flanagan’s vision of finally putting a resolution and salvation into Doctor Sleep that was missing in The Shining. It was also a great pleasure to watch a straight-forward horror movie again, riffing on the vampire theme. I love Jordan Peele’s horrors, don’t get me wrong (Nope is my favorite so far), but sometimes, a cigar can just be a cigar, to steal a bit from Freud. Movies like The Substance (2024), The Strays (2023), The First Omen (2024), and the underwhelming The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) can gain a lot of traction from social, religious, and political commentary wrapped into the core of the horror, but that commentary can also dilute the terror by neon-signing over it.

For a book recommendation I heartily command you to read Splatter Flicks: How to Make Low Budget Horror Flicks by Sarah Caldwell. Even if you aren’t a budding horror maestro, itching to lens your first indie testament to terror, you will learn a lot about how movies get made, not just horrors. The reading is smooth as pâté spiced with essential experiences and guidance from pros in the field who worked themselves through and upward in their filmmaking craft. After watching horrible horrors like The Brain (1988), you kind of wish the book was available back then, too.

I’ll have a full review for Splatter Flicks up soon. That is, assuming I don’t get the flu too. Gotta work on that track record.

There’s an east wind coming, Watson. All the same, such as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind nonetheless, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.” His Last Bow, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1917.

The east wind that Sherlock Holmes told Watson about alludes to the east wind mentioned in the Bible, beginning with Moses. It is a powerful, destructive, but potentially beneficial or malevolent element of nature or divine intervention, take your pick. Artificial intelligence is our east wind for the ages, and whether it proves beneficial or not, it certainly will be powerful and destructive and oddly beneficial too. But for whom remains to be seen. It is the closest we have come, so far, to realizing science into magic. With the ongoing technologies in robotics and quantum computing, that magic can become either white or black depending on who wields it and, more concerning, who can make money from it.

But here we are. You and me and everyone else are like that unseen character in Zork, suddenly standing in an open field, given a few hints and hoping to make the right decisions to figure which way to go. AI is the white house with the small mailbox, but the front door is wide open. You must go through that door, willingly or not. That east wind of AI is too strong now and it is pushing all of us in the same direction. Frankly, it is a coin flip whether AI will eventually work well for all of us. Or not. But for right now, you can use it as your assistant to benefit your writing and anything else you care to.

I say now because we are still in the first level of AI, the generative stage. It means we prompt AI–provide input–and hopefully it generates good responses as outputs. The next stage is general AI. That is when robotics merges seamlessly (one can hope, right?) with AI, when prompting is no longer needed by us. Instead, AI does the thinking and takes actions or provides outputs based on what it learns (just like us). All those science fiction movies where room-sized computers took over the world or tried to, well, that’s general AI. So you can breathe a little easier as my guess is we still have some years before that kicks in. Once we have self-determining humanoid robots that can do lots of varied jobs people do, that techno-cat’s clawing out of the bag pronto. …

AI and the WriterRead More »

Binge watching the streams and eye-balling the books falling off the shelf. What a life.

Finished the fifth season of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and I’m wondering how much to the Hydra well they will go. I like that each season builds on that never-ending threat, sort of, but constantly making S.H.I.E.L.D destroyed by the lop off one head, two more take its place thematic is getting scripturally claustrophobic. And there’s the time travel goto that seems more a what-do-we-do-next necessity than an inspired creative exercise. I liked the first season more, where there was a solo episodic feel to the stories instead of a multi-threaded continuing narrative as the team came together with Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg–just sublime in the role, really). That team has the requisite techie nerds/hackers du jour/problem solvers duo of Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons (lain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge), May (Ming-Na Wen) the martial arts prone pilot with a grim past; Ward (Brett Dalton) the dashing and heroic agent who turns out to be…but that would spoil it for you; Mack (Henry Simmons) who provides the moral compass and some solid knuckles; and Skye(Chloe Bennet) who can whip up a quake in a second. Interestingly, you can find some similarities between the Skye and Jane Doe (Blindspot) characters. Luke Mitchell, who plays Lincoln Campbell, an inhuman here, and Roman, a mean human in Blindspot, also generates a similar ambivalence in both of his characters across the two series.

Surrealestate is back for its third season on Hulu. A novel touch has a real estate group tackling the more paranormal aspects of their properties with August (Maurice Dean Wint),  the nerdy guy who builds their ectoplasmic-fantastic gadgets to deal with the supernatural; the good hair guy, Luke Roman (Tim Rozon), who leads the group and can sense through the ether and talk to ghosts; his partner Susan (Sarah Levy) with her telekinetic and pyrotechnic abilities; and Clytemnestra (Elena Juatco) or just Lomax for short, who seems the more grounded-to-the-ordinary side of things person among them. Zooey (Savannah Basley), former receptionist and office manager, but now law career-minded–one foot in, one foot out–character, rounds out the main cast. There was Phil (Adam Korson), a former priest who worked with the group, but he was in seasons one and two. Being a Canadian production, like the X-Files first five seasons,  it has that narrative je ne sais guoi quality that differentiates it from American television storytelling. At first I thought a show about ghosts every episode would be redundant, but Surrealestate goes the heavenly highway route as seen in Touched by an Angel, Highway to Heaven, and Ghost Whisperer. But, and it’s a big but, it manages to avoid the saccharine aftertaste and leans more toward sinister shenanigans that need to be excised. That’s not to say that each story doesn’t wrap up to a white light ending, but in these stories, the characters and storylines are presented with more salt and less sugar. …

Crossing the Streams:
Blindspot, Surrealestate, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.DRead More »

At AMC, heading in to see F1 (which was good by the way), I spotted these new standees in the lobby. I have mixed feelings about Fantastic 4: First Steps. Love that they finally seem to have Kirby’s Galactus, which is an awesome character. Sad to see Silver Surfer is not male. I make no apologies. I understand that Shalla-Bal becomes the silver surfer in alternate universes’ stuff (Earth X), but in the original comics it was Norrin Radd. If there’s a thematic or planned storyline reason for her as Silver Surfer here, I’m all ears, but for now just not fully buying it. Just really tired of the redundant multiverse excuse for character timelines, that are picked up when original storylines run dry. The trailer for Superman gave me goosebumps, though. Looking forward to that one.

Binge watching the streams and eye-balling the books falling off the shelf. What a life.

Finally caught up to the Punisher on Disney Plus. I’d say the title should be more like the Punishment. He does get beat up. A lot. Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle presents the perfect picture of a human punching bag that punches back. Castle returns in a one-off special for Disney Plus, to be co-written with Bernthal, to air in 2026. The two seasons, so far, are intense, with Castle hunting down the people involved in his family’s murder. A twist pops up in season two when one of those people survives a horrific beating with some screws shaken loose and little past memory of how evil he was. He struggles between guilt and embracing that evil as it returns in flashes of violence. Castle just struggles with everything, but especially some internally driven guilt, leaving him open to bleeding. A lot. The Punisher ties neatly into the Jessica Jones and Daredevil universe, so essential viewing if you like that dark underbelly of crime noir dripping off of wet urban sidewalks feeling. …

Crossing the StreamsRead More »