This week we're covering Stir of Echoes (1999) — David Koepp's criminally underrated supernatural horror film starring Kevin Bacon in one of the best performances of his career.

We dig into why this film got completely overshadowed on release (hint: it came out the same summer as The Sixth Sense), what makes its hypnosis sequence one of the most effective in horror, where the film stumbles, and why — twenty-plus years later — it deserves so much better than being a footnote to another ghost movie.

If you want the spoiler-free case for this one first, check out my article in the latest issue of AFH (@wellthatsucksreviews).

New episode every two weeks — defending overlooked and underrated horror, one movie at a time.

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This week we're going to the pictures.

Popcorn (1991) — a horror film set during an all night horror marathon in a cinema, made by people who genuinely loved the genre, released in February when nobody was looking, and forgotten almost immediately.

This is probably the most This Movie Deserves Better episode I've made yet. No franchise name. No recognisable face on the poster. Just a really good film that got completely buried and deserves to be found.

Five years before Scream got all the credit for being self aware about horror, Popcorn was already there — paying tribute to the golden age of William Castle showmanship with three original films within the film, gimmicks that become weapons, and a villain reveal in the third act that is simultaneously intense and absolutely unhinged.

Full history of the troubled production, scene by scene breakdown, where it stumbles, and the full case for why Popcorn deserved a proper audience in 1991 and a proper champion in 2026.

This Movie Deserves Better is a solo horror podcast championing the overlooked, the misunderstood, and the unfairly buried. Reviews and follows mean everything.

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The highest grossing film in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Robert Englund's personal favourite entry in the series. Praised by Wes Craven himself. And somehow it still gets dismissed as the point where everything went wrong.

This week I'm making the case that The Dream Master is a visually extraordinary horror film with one of the best protagonists in the entire franchise, dream sequences that actually feel like dreams, practical effects kills that belong in the 1980s horror hall of fame, and a soundtrack that is genuinely one of the greatest ever assembled for a horror film.

Full history of how Renny Harlin, a virtually unknown Finnish director was handed the most commercially pressured horror sequel of the decade and delivered something extraordinary.

Scene by scene breakdown including the beach sequence, the cockroach transformation, chef Freddy's soul pizza. Where it stumbles. And the full defence of why The Dream Master deserved better than thirty seven years of middling scores.

Plus the DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince story that nobody talks about. And an award for Kincaid's dog who was frankly the smartest person in the film.

Don't fall asleep.

This Movie Deserves Better is a solo horror podcast championing the overlooked, the misunderstood, and the unfairly buried. Reviews and follows mean everything.

Follow us @tmdbpodcast