All through October, I’ll be posting reviews of the best of the best films in the horror genre released since October 1, 2024, through September 30, 2025. As an added bonus, I’ll be adding a secondary review that may be somewhat related to the main review or slightly missed the countdown by inches. Follow along the countdown every day in October. Feel free to agree, disagree, or better yet, give me your own picks for your favorite horror movies of the year. Happy Halloween!

18. PARVULOS: CHILDREN OF THE APOCALYPSE (aka PARENTS, 2024)

Released on April 2, 2025, and is available On Demand on Amazon Prime from Firebook Entertainment!
Directed by Isaac Ezban.
Written by Isaac Ezban, Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes.
Check out the trailer here!!

A trio of children (Mateo Ortega Casillas, Farid Escalante Correa, Leonardo Cervantes) make their way across a post-apocalyptic world, defending their home from outsiders desperate to scavenge from their supplies. In the basement, they hide a dark secret.

The filmmaking genius Isaac Ezban is not a household name, but in a true and right world, he’d be as on the tip of your tongue as Guillermo Del Toro, Paco Plaza, and Álex de la Iglesia. Ezban was the twisted mind behind THE SIMILARS, a modern-day Twilight Zone epic that should not be missed by anyone who loves horror and suspense. He was also responsible for THE INCIDENT, which is another epic idea taken to horrifying levels. If you haven’t seen either of these two films, I’m jealous because you get to experience these modern masterpieces for the first time. With PARVULOS, Ezban dives headfirst into apocalyptic horror, but of course makes the movie unique and riveting.

This being an early review, I don’t want to reveal any more from the plot of PARVULOS, as there are a few juicy twists that occur as the narrative of the film. But the best way to describe the film is that PARVULOS is the zombie apocalypse through an Amblin lens. These three kids are put through the emotional wringer for most of the film, yet Ezban manages to inject so much heart and soul into their journey. Kids in peril tales were all the rage a while back, cashing in on the nostalgia craze. But while those films did a decent job aping the look of those old films like GOONIES, THE EXPLORERS, and E.T., many failed to capture the soul of these films. PARVULOS recognizes that in times of hardship, kids are affected too. But also, they retain that childlike hope that often fades with age. That child-like hope, above all odds is what PARVULOS is all about.

How far would you go to save a loved one? Would you give up all of your belongings? Would you scour the earth to help them? Would you kill for them? That’s what PARVULOS is about at its core, represented by these three children walking the heavily forested wasteland to find some way to survive. Ezban is able to capture that incorruptible hope of a child and offers up a compelling story around it. You’ll feel for these children. You’ll laugh, cry, and grow angry with them. This is a film that will move even the stoniest of hearts.

The child actors are fantastic here. I’ve often said, kid actors are usually a tough sell for me as it feels like lines are being fed to them right off screen because they just don’t have the emotional experience to back up their performances. These three made me believe that their struggle was real and feel deeply for them to have their almost unattainable dreams come true.

But PARVULOS is not all doom and gloom. This is a film that is quite often laugh-out-loud funny and heartwarming as the kids try to go on with traditions like birthdays and Christmas despite their horrible situation. The film stands as a testament to the unbreakable power of the child’s imagination and determination to have what was taken away from them.
I laughed. I cried. I puked a little in my mouth from the gory grossness that occurs in PARVULOS. This definitely isn’t a movie for kids, as it deals with some adult themes, but man it delivers an emotionally devastating story with characters you can’t help but root for.

Worth Noting: AZRAEL (2024)

Released on October 25, 2024, and streaming on Shudder from IFC Films!

Directed by E.L. Katz.
Written by Simon Barrett.
Check out the trailer here!!

From the director of CHEAP THRILLS and the writer of YOU’RE NEXT and THE GUEST comes AZRAEL, a story set in a post-apocalyptic future after the biblical rapture. Those left behind seem to have either become religious zealots or barbaric nomads, living simply in a commune in the middle of the woods that is also populated by wandering demons. The group has taken a vow of silence, and its women are all pregnant, hoping to bear the new Anti-Christ. One woman (Samara Weaving) escapes the community and must evade capture from the zealots and the demons alike.

That’s one hell of a synopsis and AZRAEL is one hell of a movie. Much is supposed to be taken for granted upon going into this one. That the biblical Rapture actually happened. While this is explained in the opening, I think it would have done this movie a favor if we saw how this Rapture went down. I get it. That kind of worldwide phenomena would be expensive to show, but even an animated sequence would have been nice to see. Now, having gone to church as a kid, I know about the Rapture, and I’m sure most do, but I think the filmmakers would have done the audience a favor to show their version of it in some way. They represent a prophecy of a woman caring for a demonic child as a chalk drawing on the wall of a church, so an artistic rendering of this biblical event would have been possible, cheap to make, and a unique way to bring the viewers up to date. Instead, it’s described in a paragraph at the beginning.

That’s a minor gripe about a relatively awesome movie as that really is just set up to a movie-long cat-and-mouse chase sequence. With everyone vowing silence, there is no exposition to be doled out and other than a Frenchman who is quickly offed, there is hardly any dialog at all in AZRAEL. This makes it a more raw and rugged film relying on action rather than words. E.L. Katz was responsible for the dialog-heavy CHEAP THRILLS, so seeing him direct a balls-out action-horror film with no dialog shows the filmmaker’s range and creativity. And while one might think a screenplay without dialog would be an easy feat, YOU’RE NEXT writer Simon Barrett keeps this interesting with twists, turns, and all sorts of obstacles in Weaving’s path to make this story an unpredictable one.

Weaving, as usual, is breathtaking, even covered in mud and soot. Since there is no dialog, it would be hard for most to really get you to empathize for the character, but because of her giant blue eyes, she expressed a myriad of emotions through blinks, squints, and wide-eyed expressions of terror. She is put through a gauntlet of horrors, and it is refreshing to see an actor of Weaving’s caliber return to the horror genre over and over again.

While the ending is predictable, the trip there isn’t. Anyone who has seen films whose plot hinges on a prophecy knows it’s going to come about one way or another in the end and this one, of course, does just that. But it is the unique peril Weaving is placed into and the especially gnarly demons, all soot covered, staggering, and tumorous, that really makes you root for Weaving to get out alive. AZRAEL may have had a bare bones script with no dialog, but in the end, it used this factor as a benefit to make a grungy, down in the muck, survival nightmare.

The Best in Horror Countdown 2024-2025
#31 – GET AWAY (DARK MATCH)
#30 – PABRIK GULA (#MISSINGCOUPLE)
#29 – YULE LOG 2: BRANCHIN’ OUT (THE LAST VIDEO STORE)
#28 – FREWAKA (THE SURRENDER)
#27 – FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES (V/H/S/BEYOND)
#26 – ALMA AND THE WOLF (CUSTOM)
#25 – LOOKY-LOO (THE CREEP TAPES)
#24 – DANGEROUS ANIMALS (THE MAN IN THE WHITE VAN)
#23 – THE MONKEY (THE DAMNED)
#22 – THE DEVIL AND THE DAYLONG BROTHERS (THE SEVERED SUN)
#21 – TERRIFIER 3 (CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD)
#20 – PRESENCE (HOUSE ON EDEN)
#19 – THE RULE OF JENNY PEN (GRAFTED)
#18 – PARVULOS: CHILDREN OF THE APOCALYPSE (AZRAEL)