Robert

Film

Detective Pikachu Trailer

As a Pokemon fan from the start, did I ever think the franchise would be big enough to be adapted into a major Hollywood live action film? No. No I did not. I also didn’t think we’d get seven generations of Pokemon games and over 1000 episodes of the anime, but here we are.

Reviews

Ghost Adventures: Artifacts Review (TV, 2016)

I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. I feel like if you enjoy something and it’s not hurting anyone, you should be proud of it. Probably the closest I come to a guilty pleasure is the never-ending onslaught of ghost hunting shows. Travel Channel has most of them, though they are not alone in funding

Games

Don't Starve: Hamlet in Early Access

Don’t Starve, Klei Entertainment’s dark and whimsical survival horror game, is a game I return to again and again. Even the original base game provided hours of playtime. You play as one of several characters dropped into a randomly generated cartoon hellscape with no supplies and a warning that you

Games

Just Dance 2019 Review (Console Game, 2019)

This review focuses on the Nintendo Switch version of Just Dance 2019. Each console has their own control method determined by whether or not they have a camera or specialty controller built in. It’s hard to believe it, but the Just Dance franchise has been around since 2009. It is a party game ser

Reviews

The Mind of Jake Paul Review (Web Series, 2018)

You can’t fault Shane Dawson for his ambition. In the past year, he reinvented himself as a sort of YouTuber documentarian [https://sketchydetails.us/sketchy-details/formatshifthereinventionofshanedawson], creating series exploring the lives behind some of the biggest names on YouTube. After the mas

Film

Halloween Review (Film, 2018)

It’s been 40 years since Michael Myers escaped from a mental hospital for a killing spree on Halloween night. Laurie Strode, the young woman who survived, has spent every day since then preparing for his return to Haddonfield. She sacrificed her money, her social life, and even her family to set up

Games

Call of Cthulhu Review (Game, 2018)

Call of Cthulhu is an adventure game with RPG elements based on the Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPG from Chaosium Inc. The Call of Cthulhu universe is inspired by the work of HP Lovecraft, one of the most influential and problematic weird fiction authors of all time. He created this vast universe of mo

Event

#31DaysofHorror: A Recap

Sometimes, you just need to challenge yourself. I’ve been slowly pulling my life back together after giving up full time teaching. Returning to Sketchy Details was a huge part of that. It’s just running a media criticism site exercises very different parts of the brain than teaching did. I’ve writte

Event

Antibirth Review (Film, 2016) #31DaysofHorror

Content warning: the foundation of Afterbirth is sexual assault implied but not shown at the start of the film. Antibirth is modern weird fiction. There’s really no other way to describe it. It’s a modern psychedelic horror film with a very loose plot connecting a lot of strange imagery meant to sc

Event

The Ritual Review (Film, 2018) #31DaysofHorror

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get into a film. You can acknowledge its merits, appreciate the technical quality of the film, and just get nothing from the overall story. It makes reviewing a film like The Ritual a challenge.

Event

Beyond the Gates Review (Film, 2016) #31DaysofHorror

This will shock any long time reader of this site. I once had an obsession over a board game. Yes, shocking news from your friendly OCD critic here. It was called The Harbingers and was part of a VHS board game series called Atmosfear. I was obsessed with this game. My parents knew that I would just

Event

The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell Review (TV Series, 2018) #31DaysofHorror

It’s not very often that I find TV shows that really feel like I’m the target audience. My interests are wide and varied. I like crafting. I love horror. I’m a lifelong home haunter. I bake. I sew. I work in theater (educational theater mostly, but theater nonetheless) and love set design, lighting,

Event

A Dark Song Review (Film, 2017) #31DaysofHorror

Content warning: A Dark Song features scenes of violence against women and sexual assault. A Dark Song is a film about truth and perception. A woman, grieving the loss of her son, is willing to do anything to feel a sense of relief from the pain of her loss. She hires an occultist to take her throu

Event

American Poltergeist Review (Film, 2015) #31DaysofHorror

American Poltergeist is a horror film inspired by the Lizzie Borden story. A group of five college students move into a too good to be true mansion so they can live off campus while attending Brown University. They are renting rooms from a woman who does not tell them anything about the history of t

Event

Errementari Review (Film, 2018) #31DaysofHorror

Errementari is a retelling of one of the oldest folk tales in the world. “The Smith and the Devil” is the tale of a blacksmith who makes a deal with the devil. Whatever the deal is, the blacksmith uses his new power to trap the devil and torment him until the deal is broken and the smith regains con

Event

Stephanie Review (Film, 2018) #31DaysofHorror

Stephanie is a horror film about isolation and fear from the perspective of a young child. Stephanie is living on her own. We see her try to do the best she can to survive. She cooks with the few ingredients left in her house—some frozen and canned fruits and vegetables—that aren’t rotting. Aside fr

Event

Unsane Review (Film, 2018) #31DaysofHorror

Unsane is a horror film about mental health care. Yes, we’re toying with problematic subject matter here for the horror genre. Somehow, director Steven Soderbergh and writers Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer craft a horror film that doesn’t vilify mental health patients, largely because the main c

Event

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXIX Review (TV, 2018) #31DaysofHorror

Every year for the last 29 years, The Simpsons have released a Halloween special. Why not 30 for the show’s 30th season? The standalone series began with the Christmas episode that aired in 1989, so it began too late for Halloween. Since then, however, The Simpsons have provided an anthology horror

Art

The Haunt So Far #31DaysofHorror

I did plan on having a more substantive post today. Then I woke up at 11:30am after going to a Halloween party for the first time in over a decade and just needed a long day of self care. The party was great, but really overwhelming for my anxiety.

Event

Dead by Daylight: The Hallowed Blight Event #31DaysofHorror

Dead by Daylight fans know what they want for an event and Behaviour tries new ways to deliver that. We want the chance to get a lot of bloodpoints. We want new game mechanics and exclusive items and skins to the event. And we want that event happening at Halloween.

Event

The Devil's Candy Review (Film, 2015) #31DaysofHorror

The Devil’s Candy is a possession/haunted house film with a metal soundtrack and edge. A family moves into their dream house, even though they are told their dream house just had two people die in it a few days before. The father starts to exhibit the same signs and troubles of the surviving member

Event

Prodigy Review (Film, 2018) #31DaysofHorror

A psychologist is brought into a secret government facility to perform an evaluation. The subject is a nine year old girl tied to a chair with a straight jacket and kept in a locked room. Her appearance belies a genius intellect and a sadistic streak that led her to kill her own mother with no remor

Event

Dead by Daylight Mid-Chapter Patch 2.3.0 #31DaysofHorror

Behaviour Interactive, the developers behind asymmetrical 4v1 survival horror game Dead by Daylight, are consistently making good on a series of promises they made half a year ago. Once they made an agreement to buy back full rights to their own game, they promised to roll out regular updates to imp

Event

Tales of Halloween Review (Film, 2015) #31DaysofHorror

Tales of Halloween is an anthology horror film with 10 segments all set in the same town on Halloween night. To say the concept is ambitious is an understatement. The framing device is a radio broadcast (performed by Adrienne Barbeau, a wonderful piece of casting) describing all the dangers of Hallo

Event

Fear, Inc. Review (Film, 2016) #31DaysofHorror

Scream [https://sketchydetails.us/sketchy-details/film/film-review-scream-4-2011?rq=scream] sent the American horror industry in a very different direction upon its release. Forget about the resurgence of teen slashers in its wake or the stunt casting of a bigger name for the sole purpose of a shock