Revisiting the Resident Evil Outbreak games on PS2

Posted on February 18, 2025 by Daniel

These are the two games that took you to new areas of Raccoon City and played so much like the first four games (RE1, RE2, Nemesis, and Code Veronica)…except with some new game play mechanics that negated much of the straightforward fun of the original games, making this a sometimes tedious Resident Evil experience in single play mode. Let’s get into them.


RESIDENT EVIL OUTBREAK


Outbreak was released as a sort of launch title to take advantage of the PS2 moving into online game play and hard drive territory. Supposedly having a hard drive installed on your system drastically cut down on load times, and I would hope so, because the load times between screens are abysmal without it, which is a weird contrast to the chaotic, fast-paced way this game unfolds.

If you weren’t connected to the internet in these early stages of online console play, as I wasn’t, you could play the game in single play mode, which left you running around with a bunch of fairly useless AI characters, most of which would die off pretty quickly, leaving you basically back in a regular RE game by yourself. In fact, your best bet is to just let them die, because you’re supposed to communicate with them, share your resources with them, and make sure they stay healthy. Way too much effort in the adrenaline-fueled “scenarios” this game offers. This isn’t one long game you play through. You go through individual, short scenarios with definitive beginnings and endings. This also isn’t the classic slow burn, tension-building exploration gameplay the series was known for. You are seriously thrown into frantic situations through which you basically just have to run constantly simply to find what you need to find to move forward to get through the scenario and complete it as fast as possible. Not fun.

There are items to pick up, including health, weapons, ammo, keys, special items, and files, but you only have four damn item slots in your inventory, and every time you think you’re picking up an item, you’re actually swapping it out for an item in your inventory unless you opt not to. Basically, you need to carry one each of a weapon, extra ammo, health, and any crucial key item you find, which gets discarded as soon as you use it to make room for the next key item you need. There are also melee weapons, but they are the type that break after enough uses, leaving you defenseless in the middle of a zombie fight.

There are maps, but you won’t have the luxury of checking them, because you’re always running away from zombies trying to get to the next area. There are a few key items you need to do things like set oil on fire or blow up a street full of zombies, but good luck finding those items and knowing to grab them if you don’t use a walkthrough. As always, the files you find offer some narrative, but reading them doesn’t pause the game! In other words, don’t expect to have many chances to actually read any files.

One catch with this game is the numerous health issues. For starters, you begin the game infected! There’s a virus gauge at the bottom right of the screen, and the goal is to finish a scenario before the virus completely overtakes you. Ugh. You also have the usual health meter, and a bleeding meter, and the threat of being poisoned. The only upside is that each of these can be patched with the usual health items—first aid or herbs of various colors—and you don’t need to mix herbs to take them. For instance, if you are poisoned, you can just pop a blue herb without having to mix it with a green one first.

Finally, before I get into each scenario, there’s the save system, if you could call it that. Yeah, there are typewriters, but you don’t need ribbons to use them. Sounds like a yay, but it’s not. If you don’t accidentally miss the few typewriters completely (you can easily bypass a room with a typewriter entirely since you don’t have time to explore), when you do find one and save, it’s called a “temporary save”. It’s a one-time deal that also kicks you out of the game, forcing you to load the save if you want to continue playing right then, thereby erasing the temporary save, defeating the purpose of saving completely. Sigh. The only purpose it serves is allowing you to continue where you left off if you need to take a break for a while.

On the bright side, the control system uses familiar RE schematics…as long as you ignore the whole communicating with the AI characters aspect. The downside? The game is in real-time and doesn’t pause when you use the map or inventory. Argh!

Anyway, onto the scenarios.

Scenario 1: Outbreak

This is a great introduction to the new gameplay, because it brings you right into Raccoon City to see new sights…as they pass you by while you run for your life.

You begin in a bar. A zombie comes in, chaos breaks out, and you hurriedly have to find any items you can, including a key out of the bar, before more zombies break in. And that happens damn fast.


Once you start going from room to room, there is no rest. The zombies just come right in after you! WTF? So much for breathing, and you have to really fight them sparingly since you don’t have room for lots of ammo. Your main focus simply becomes escaping zombies and trying to figure out how to get out of one location after another. Really not enjoyable. There are a couple of unique aspects to the game that hadn’t been seen in RE games up to then, including jumping off ledges and swimming through some shallow water, but generally the game play is typical of the series. In the end you actually have two options for finishing the scenario, which you wouldn’t know without using a walkthrough. You can either retreat from a zombie outbreak on the street ahead of you or take the harder option…go down to the street, find pieces of a detonator around the ground while avoiding the horde of zombies, and then igniting it to blow them all sky high.

Scenario 2: Below Freezing Point

This is really familiar territory. You’re trapped in the lab and have to run around collecting passcodes and items that allow you to operate devices to get to the end of this multi-floor underground location. Unlike the first scenario, this isn’t a high-pressure situation, and I actually had two AI characters survive with me almost all the way to the end. I was even able to give each of them a handgun, because I found several along the way! It sure is a pain in the ass getting them to stand still long enough to “present” them with an item, but I succeeded both times.

On harder modes you have some encounters with lickers and hunters, plus there’s a giant moth you may encounter depending on the path you take and the character you play. In fact, the character you play can also affect the trajectory of your game. Some characters already have items you need, and therefore you won’t have to explore all the same areas to collect everything you need to complete the scenario, which provides various branching experiences. And since time isn’t an issue (other than your virus load), you can also explore areas you don’t even need to if you want to find more items like health and ammo (not that you can carry them). Of course, this also opens you up to encountering more enemies, which could lead you to using more health and ammo.


You eventually have to fight a classic mutated boss on the tram turntable. Pretty straightforward…as long as you have enough ammo and health to make it out alive. If you’re lucky, you found the shotgun along the way. Odd thing is, when you get to the turntable, you literally get a three-minute timer that means nothing other than leaving you open to the arrival of some new enemies…which you can just avoid and not have to waste precious ammo on if you step up onto the platform at the back of the tram. In other words, you can just stand around for three minutes taunting enemies until the cut scene introducing the boss is triggered. Kind of ridiculous.

Scenario 3: The Hive

If being chased relentlessly by Tyrant and Nemesis in RE2 and RE3 stressed you out, wait until you are terrorized by Leech Man throughout this scenario. Another invincible enemy, he drops out of ceiling vents minutes after you enter a room, usually not even giving you enough time to gather crucial items you need. Definitely use a walkthrough and the pause button (a lot) if you don’t want to be stuck backtracking endlessly.

Leech Man is attracted to your blood, so whenever you get hurt, he’s more likely to follow you. Plus, he drops little leeches that also latch onto you and suck your blood. Taking certain healing items will patch you up, but this is one of the more irritating levels when it comes to only having four inventory slots.


Other than Leech Man, as if he isn’t enough already, you will have to contend with the usual zombies, including a surprise zombie that jump scares you through a window…and grabs you for an instant kill! If you don’t read a walkthrough to know when and where to avoid him, you’ll have to start the whole level over again.

When you finally get to fight Leech Man in a morphed form at the end, it’s in a long, narrow sewer passage. You can either shoot him to death or lure him under overhead sprinklers and shoot the valves to spray him. I honestly didn’t see the valves because I was panicking, so I just unloaded bullets on him.

Scenario 4: Hellfire

This is a very straightforward scenario…aside from the fact that there are varying paths you can take, which demands you use a walkthrough so you don’t go too far off course due to that damn virus counter that will kill you if you don’t finish the scenario in time. As always, there are optional rooms to explore, but they just eat up time, you don’t have inventory space to pick up many of the items you’ll come across in them, and sometimes they will just use up resources thanks to more enemy encounters.


The enemies are really basic here—zombies and lickers. That’s it. The setting is also basic. A building. Just corridors, stairways, and rooms. The only catch is that the building is on fire, so you do have to avoid flame patches or you’ll get hurt. You mostly just have to find a few keys, find a gem to put in a statue to open a secret passage (classic Resident Evil), and eventually fight a fairly simple boss. She’s this pervy thing that hangs from the ceiling (maybe a former pole dancer?) blocking your way out of the building. First, you can just stay away from her since she’s stuck in place in order to kill a couple of lickers that come with this battle, then once they’re done, simply blast at her from afar with your shotgun while avoiding her long tongue attack and she’s dead before you know it.

Scenario 5: Decisions, Decisions

Well, they saved the worst for last. This one seems to be going along fine for quite a while, with you doing the usual Resident Evil scavenger hunt in a university building. However, using a walkthrough, you learn there’s a split path at one point, and you can take either one…or so I thought.

I don’t remember if I’d done each different path in previous plays years ago, but this time I opted for the one without sharks. Fuck that.

Unfortunately, when the paths finally merge again, your AI teammates in offline mode are supposed to meet you with a portion of a chemical you need to mix in a machine, which in turn also unlocks a door that leads to the final part of the game. Guess what…no team members met up with me. This is a problem, because the walkthrough at this point suggests that if you don’t meet them, you need to now go complete the other path you were able to bypass earlier to get that last ingredient. Fuck me. Fuck me more. My viral load was already up to 75%, so I didn’t have much time left. On top of that, this is the path that has you running across a dock…where the sharks simply leap over the dock and snatch you off it. Instant death. My whole fricking game down the drain, no way to start from where I left off.


By getting Jawsed, I mostly just missed the final boss, but I’m still pissed. And just note that there’s a section near the end of the game (before the sharks ate me) that has you being relentlessly chased by an invincible Tyrant/Nemesis type dude. You’d never know without a walkthrough, but the goal is to lead him to hanging electric wires you saw earlier and hit a nearby button to temporarily electrocute him so you can get a blood sample off him…one of the other ingredients you need to put in that mix machine to unlock that final door. Oh well. All I really missed by not finishing (I read the rest of the walkthrough) was a series of countdowns (ugh) and the final fight with the no-longer-invincible dude.

RESIDENT EVIL OUTBREAK FILE 2

There are a few new aspects to gameplay in the second game, most notably that you can beat down doors that have “fragile locks” (either shoot them, melee them, or just kick them), and you can also move while shooting. Plus, you get to choose two partners to join you on your journey in single player mode, and I found they really did stick with me the whole time, didn’t die, and actually helped me fight back against bosses. I also found the ability to swap items with AI partners works a lot better in this game, plus you actually have an option when in other characters’ inventories to tell them to use a particular item, saving you the trouble of swapping items with them to then use it yourself, such as when they need to be healed. Heal thyselves, bitches!

Scenario 1: Wild Things

I love this scenario, which has you cutting through a zoo of escaped zombie animals to reach a train station to get away. Along with the usual puzzle solving and monster fighting, there’s a bigger problem…an awesome zombie elephant that repeatedly barges in on you if you don’t kill it immediately. However, it takes dozens of bullets to kill it, so unless you’ve unlocked “infinity” mode or have a Codebreaker, you might just have to deal with his unexpected returns, much like the T-rex in Dino Crisis. There’s even a segment in which he will drag you out of windows with his trunk, killing you instantly, so you’ll want to use a walkthrough to know where or you’re going to be pissed when you have to start the scenario all over.


Meanwhile, you also fight zombie hyenas, dive-bombing birds, poisonous bugs, and female lions. Here is the other catch. If you read a walkthrough, you’ll also learn you can actually choose your final boss, dependent on your actions—the zombie elephant or a zombie male lion. Since you can fight the elephant any time during the scenario, it might me best to rid yourself of him once you have bigger guns and more ammo so that you can experience the male lion in the end.

Scenario 2: Underbelly

This is a straightforward scenario…although not so straightforward if you don’t use a walkthrough, because you’ll be going through maze-like areas of a subway system. This is mostly a fetching mission with a few puzzles, and the zombies are plentiful and even break through doors when you’re in a room too long.

The major enemy here is these big nasty bugs that leap on you and suck blood out of you, which really takes a toll on your health. One way to avoid these enemies is to grab the blood packs you see around and place them on the floor when the bugs appear. They go to suck on the blood bags, allowing you to quickly do whatever you need to in a location without being bothered. The other—and better—option is to just shoot the fuckers dead.


However, brace yourself. The final boss is a giant version of these bugs on the subway tracks, and he has a bunch of smaller bugs helping him out. Ugh. The good news is that your two AI buddies are along for the ride and help you kill the bugger fucker.

Scenario 3: Flashback

This is a fun but challenging scenario. It starts in a cabin in the woods. You can immediately grab a shotgun, but make sure to do so before one of your AI buddies gets it!

Interestingly, there are two routes you can take, and each one presents unique enemies. To take the shorter route, you actually have to wait in the woods outside the cabin for about fifteen minutes and not cross the bridge. After you kill all that time, there’s a cutscene of the bridge collapsing, and then the new route is open to you.

This time, I simply crossed the bridge and got right to…an abandoned hospital. Eek! And don’t you know that the second you enter it, you get attacked by an invincible axe man. Whenever he appears, you can either run from him or shoot him enough and he’ll just leave the room. There are also hiding places you can slip into, like in lockers and under beds, to wait him out until he leaves.


Much of this scenario involves avoiding getting poisoned. Ugh. The zombies have been infected by a plant and they spit out a poisonous gas you should try to avoid. There are also plants that shoot poison at you. And giant bees that poison you. Argh! Make sure to grab all the blue herbs you see in order to heal yourself. You’ll also need syringes to inject into plants that block your path to new areas, so grab those whenever you see them.

Eventually there’s a big final boss plant and its minion plants to fight, and the battle takes place in a very tight space. However, if you play your cards right, you’ll get a grenade launcher that takes him out quick.

The most annoying part of this scenario is the timed escape ending. It doesn’t tell you it’s timed and there’s no timer, but you do have to get to a specific door to escape in a specific amount of time, and you would have no idea which door or how to get to it fast without a walkthrough. On top of that, you encounter the axe man one more time! You can either avoid him or take the time to kill him, which affects the ending you get.

Scenario 4: Desperate Times

This is fun. It’s an entire scenario that takes us back to the Raccoon City Police Station. Yep, it’s rooms and hallways you’ve explored many times before, and all you have to do is find five pieces to insert in that big statue in the front lobby.


Here’s the catch. Hallways and rooms will randomly be filled with gas that raises your virus rate super-fast! You find neutralizing canisters all over the place, so always be sure to have at least two on hand. When you enter a room full of gas, place the canister down and it will temporarily clear the air.

The only enemies here are zombies and some crows when you use the outside stairs. The only other real challenge is that your damn AI partners can fricking pick up the puzzle pieces before you get to them, and wouldn’t you know in this scenario they tend to split up rather than sticking with you, so you may have to hunt them down a few times to get the pieces from them. It happened to me twice this playthrough.

Finally, the big battle at the end is simply a horde of zombies that busts through the outside gates in front of the police station. You need to shoot a certain amount of them with your partners to end the scenario. Pretty straightforward as long as you have plenty of supplies. You also get an opportunity to grab supplies for the battle all around the police station before triggering the event, but you won’t know where to find them and how to access them unless you read a walkthrough. Plus, you have to consider how much time you have left on your viral meter.

Scenario 5: End of the Road

Argh! This is a very frustrating scenario, and the longest one of Outbreak File 2, with numerous branching paths for different endings in the last part of the game…once you’ve escaped the underground lab you’re in for the majority of the scenario and come back up into Raccoon City, right where you were in the first scenario from the first Outbreak game.

Chances are you may not make it to the end of this scenario before your viral load reaches the maximum and you die. The good news is there are numerous typewriter saves in this scenario, and I discovered that there’s nothing weird about the save system here like there was in the first game. When you save, you stay in the game rather than immediately loading the save again, so you can even play this game over a few sessions…when you come back to the game, the save is there waiting to be loaded if you simply pick “continue” in the menu.

The underground lab takes us back to the old days, with lots of running around collecting items to move forward, giant spiders, zombies, hunters, and—brace yourself—Tyrant! Eek! However, the first time he shows up, he is actually programmed to help you defeat hunters for a while. Eventually, he goes berserk and turns on you. This is an early moment when what you chose to do can change your ending. If you’ve collected some better guns, you can defeat him and it prevents him from pursuing you for a while. When you eventually do meet up with him again, if you defeat him a second time he’s done. That is it. You never see him again.

Unfortunately, once you come back up into Raccoon City for the final part of the game, it’s chaos. There are mines on the ground that can take out you and your partners. There’s a sniper. There are numerous paths to take to get different endings. There’s an option to save a wounded character, which requires shouldering her and carrying her around while enemies attack. There’s a hard final boss. There’s even an option to bail on all of that by going right to the helicopter to end the scenario.


Like an idiot, I didn’t take the easy way out this time. I wanted to battle that last boss. I was almost there. That wounded bitch dragged me down as we were climbing stairs to a rooftop. I got attacked by a zombie and didn’t have time to let the bitch go and whip out my gun. I died. Argh!

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I am a Virgin in Candy Land

Posted on February 17, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a double feature of devilish debauchery, but are sex and blood enough?

I AM VIRGIN (2010)

This is an earlier film from the director of the zomcom Stripperland, which features a gay hero, so I was hoping maybe there was some gay content here as well, considering it’s a spoof of I Am Legend about a world overrun by horny vampires.

Alas, this is a much less tightly crafted film than Stripperland and lacks both the humor and the horror of that film. It amounts to a weak plot strung together by a series of very long softcore porn scenes.

Our cute main dude is living alone with his basset hound. During the day they go scavenging, but they must always return home before dark, when the horny vampires emerge. We do at least get some pretty ominous inside settings and the feel of a post-apocalyptic world outside.

The main motivation of the main dude is that he was brought up by strict religious parents (and still suffers from PTSD and has nightmares about them), and he really wants to lose his virginity, but there aren’t any live women around to do it with.

He thinks of sex constantly and spends all his time sneaking into dark buildings to watch vampires have sex. That’s it. That’s the movie. This is the breakdown.

First dark building – he watches a lesbian vampire threesome with plenty of scissoring. They catch him watching and chase him through the building.

Second dark building – he sees straight vampire sex while another female vamp watches. They chase him through the building when they see him.

Third dark building – a bald muscle hunk vampire and woman vamp have sex, see him watching, and ask him to join in. He runs away.

Third dark building – he sees a vampire hottie with 90s boy band vibes having sex with a female vamp.

Fourth dark building – he sees another straight vampire couple having sex. He almost jerks off while watching them but then runs away out of guilt.

Next, he comes to the home of a male vamp, played by none other than Ron Jeremy, who gives him some advice on how to get laid.

He ends up at a sex club where all the female vampires want him. He decides to wait and find a nice mortal girl to have sex with.

The end.

While the emphasis is on naked woman, the men are all quite sexy and definitely get some camera time, but the focus is mostly on their torsos with only occasional hints of man ass. Even so, this one earns a spot on the stud stalking page.

CANDY LAND (2022)

Based on the description of this movie–whores working at a trucker motel getting sliced and hacked–I really thought this was going to be a sleazy sexploitation slasher. Instead, the movie is sleazy serious and delves into the world of desperate kids selling their bodies for survival, as well as the damage religious grooming can do to children.

It’s 1996, “Pets” by Porno for Pyros is blasting on the radio, and a hooker is having sex with a trucker in his truck outside a seedy motel. It’s also Christmastime–each hooker’s room is decorated with a little Christmas tree, Christmas music plays several times throughout the film, and there’s a client dressed as Santa, landing this one on the holiday horror page.

Also, one of the hookers is a pansexual hustler dude who hooks up with male truckers, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

The skanky tone is set right from the start. There’s a proselytizing preacher at the motel with his children, there’s a shower scene with female bush, there’s a full pussy flash, and Billy Baldwin is the local sheriff who gets off on getting the male hustler alone and making him do stuff for him.

There is an icky period scene in the women’s restroom…along with a dead body. As Baldwin investigates, one of the main hookers sees that the teen daughter of the preacher has stayed behind after he left, so she becomes protective of her and brings her into the group of hookers. Their “madam” quickly enlists the religious girl into work.

This turns out not to be a whodunit. The killer is very upfront about slashing the pervy men that come to the motel, and there are plenty of nasty sexual situation, including a priest that makes slurping sounds and removes his dentures to go down on a hooker, as well as a truck driver who viciously rapes the hustler.

Although the movie is dark and depressing, it shows a very human side to the young people lured into this lascivious lifestyle. It’s quite tragic, because we see that they all really care about each other, and even Billy Baldwin’s character is not two dimensional, for this straight-presenting douche is actually harboring deep feelings for the young hustler.

The kills are brutal and bloody, and there are a whole lot of them, but this isn’t a movie meant to scare you. It’s all about the violent, totally expected religious insanity. And for longtime slasher fans, there’s a very familiar element to this movie that comes from the 80s direct-to-video flick Splatter University…the killer’s knife is hidden inside a crucifix. Therefore, it’s kind of convenient that the film serenades us with 90s music on the way in but goes for the 80s in the end with the Crowded House hit “Don’t Dream It’s Over”.

 

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TUBI TERRORS: another round of slashers

Posted on February 12, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a Mickey Mouse killer, a killer competition, and a slasher comedy that kills it with the comedy but not so much with the slashing. Let’s see if any one of them is worth watching.

MOUSE OF HORRORS (2025)

This might be my favorite entry in the Disney character turned killer subgenre so far, because this movie just doesn’t give a fuck. The opening scene lets us know immediately that our mouse’s kills are going to be bloody and brutal. The mouse wears an awesome mask, but it appears to be covering a monstrous face that, unfortunately, we never get to see.

The mouse dances around gracefully and gleefully, complete with giggles. He’s also not the only killer character…

WTF? I don’t know if this is an official spin-off of Blood and Honey, but Winnie the Pooh is also on board. They are both the minions of a crazy “doctor” living under an amusement park and has them gathering body parts for him so he can craft the perfect bride.

Conveniently, a group of friends comes to the amusement park, and the mouse quickly starts going to town on them. The kills and chase scenes are nonstop for the first part of the film. A few females are also brought back to the lair for body parts. Wouldn’t you know it’s the one Black female character who gets the worst, most gruesome, torturous kill.

Just when the film starts to slow down, the unexpected happens. It turns into Mickey vs. Winnie. What? They spend the final act fighting each other all around the park. This eventually leads to more fighting on a boat, and this movie so doesn’t give a fuck that a completely different horror subgenre is suddenly thrown into the mix for a split second. Blink and you’ll miss it. Don’t blink and you’ll still miss it. The hubby and I had to rewind to see if we’d actually seen what we thought we just saw….

MURDERFEST (2024)

This is one of those low budget flicks that looks like it was shot on video, with cheap effects and barely any sense of a script, and I was ready to just turn it off from the start, but I wasn’t in the mood to go digging for another slasher for this post, so I just left it on.

The plot is about a group of masked serial killers taking part in a live, online competition to see which one can get the most kills and the best kills. It is perhaps one of my least favorite slasher subgenres, because it just screams “I don’t know how to tell a story so I’ll just make a nonstop massacre movie”.

There are just random characters in the woods being hacked up, a host voice-over spouting off rules and displaying the kill count after each death scene, and clips of various viewers at home reacting to the kills as they happen.

The most notable plot point is that a tough woman comes in about halfway through to start killing all the killers and save what victims she can. It’s sort of refreshing, and would have been the best part of the film…if it were a better film.

Despite the writing feeling really amateurish, there are a few lines here and there that actually gave me a giggle, but I still wouldn’t recommend the film. There’s even a meta moment in the middle of the movie in which one of the at-home viewers says “this is getting repetitive”. That sums it up perfectly.

HAPPY HOUR SLASHER (2021)

This little indie slasher comedy written by, directed by, and starring cutie Ray Martin is an absolute charmer that suffers from one major flaw—barely any of the murders are shown! It’s a shame, because the movie only runs 73 minutes long, but I gladly would have taken a 90-minute runtime if the extra time had been dedicated to giving us death scenes.

It starts immediately with two kills, which gave me hope. But right after that this becomes more like a series of very funny vignettes, part of them like a Cheers scenario as different patrons come in and out of the main bar, the other part scenes from a town hall meeting in which a reporter stands outside asking the opinions of those attending the meeting as they leave. The good news about the revolving door of men that passes through the bar is that most of them are pretty dang cute. Plus, we get this little stud muffin as a main character.

The plot is that “the happy hour slasher” has been killing hipsters, centerfolds, and bar owners. Everyone is talking about it both at the main bar and at the town hall meeting. The cast of characters nails the dry humor, and the hubby and I laughed through the entire movie.

Unfortunately, we only get occasional announcements of another murder instead of full Monty death scenes. After the opening kills, the next onscreen kill is 55 minutes in. It’s a brief, goofy beheading, but it fits in perfectly with the tone of the humor. I don’t understand why we weren’t just given more of this. Like, every time a new murder was announced, why weren’t we treated to the murder instead of just hearing about it?

There’s even a comical body reveal scene, plus one hilarious reaction to death by broom handle up the ass, so it’s very clear that Ray Martin has it in him to make horror comedy kills a blast. I simply don’t understand why he held back.

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TUBI TERRORS: more masked killer horror

Posted on February 11, 2025 by Daniel

This was a mostly disappointing triple feature of masked killer movies for me, so let’s find out why.

THE SCOUT (2021)

When you feel the need to pack your IMDb movie page with reviews from friends saying things like, “so scary”, “fun and violent”, and “smart and clever”, which is a common practice on many indie horror flick IMDb pages, you should make sure you actually deliver on those claims, and these movies rarely do. The last 20 minutes of this 80-minute film are when all the slashing action happens, so it is a challenge to make it that far.

A micro-budget film crew is holding auditions for their new sci-fi slasher. There’s light humor as we sit through an endless number of auditions, but the understated humor can’t sustain it for the amount of time that demands it.

We are then introduced to the finalized cast and crew of their film at a round table meeting.

We then follow them to a shooting location that falls through.

We then follow them to a new shooting location, at which point this really begins to feel like a behind-the-scenes documentary about making a movie rather than a horror movie.

Throughout all of this there is loads of conversation about horror movies, serial killers, and Hollywood pedos, which I guess is meant to keep impatient horror fans riveted until someone is actually killed. I personally wasn’t riveted by the time the first kill happens at 40 minutes in.

55 minutes in there’s a prank scare.

With only a short time remaining, the cast and crew arrives at their destination, everyone is murdered one after another as they all run screaming from the killer, and the big twist is revealed. There was really no reason for the film to compress the whole slasher part into fifteen minutes in order to reach this point. Like many film set slashers that came before it, the kills could have been taking place periodically while they were shooting their movie, delivering a full-length slasher instead.

WEEKEND DEADAWAY (2024)

This is another slasher with everything crammed into the last twenty minutes. What is with indie filmmakers lately not knowing how to create a slasher that carries through the entire running time of the film?

We meet this couple, and after some time killed with the main guy and one of his friends at work, they meet up with all their friends at a bar. This is such a likable, pretty group of friends that they deserve a substantial slasher, but they didn’t get it here.

Eventually they arrive at a lodge in the woods. The hostess who welcomes them is weird, which makes it pretty clear what kind of trope is ahead of us. It is also a clear sign that this is going to be a cliché film when the two Black guys in the group start talking about being the first ones to die if they are in a horror situation. When referencing a trope in a movie becomes a trope itself, it’s time to come up with some different tropes to reference.

45 minutes in the killer starts making appearances, including the main girl having a dream of him. Yes, it’s one of those movies that uses a nightmare sequence for a scare when the character dreaming doesn’t even know the killer exists yet. Argh.

The group sits around a fire telling stories, and eventually they split up to swim and have sex.

64 minutes in the first couple is killed. Within a matter of minutes, everyone is killed except the main girl. She gets a brief chase scene, it’s implied they’ve unknowingly been eating human meat for dinner, and the sheriff finally shows up just when she needs him most. If you don’t know where this is going, you’ve probably not watched many horror movies.

Oh, and if you need more evidence that there’s nothing original going on here, it turns out the group is in Crystal Lake County. Sigh.

PAYMENT RECEIVED (2023)

This is a home invasion movie, and I’m going to be right up front about it—two hot cuties who both get shirtless are the only real highlight.

We meet a band performing on stage. The hot guitarist is shirtless, and the hot lead singer’s voice is so drenched in autotune it would make Akon jealous.

Next they are invited to an audition, so they go on a road trip. They have an encounter with a creepy as hell clerk at a convenience store.

There’s also a bloody goat head nailed to the wall next to the restroom in back.

And in the most clever twist ever in a horror movie, the girls go into the restroom and are shocked to find it is beautifully clean.

When the group arrives at the rental house they’re staying in, we get some relationship drama, and then in a flash they all see a masked figure enter the house.

I’ve never seen anything like this before. The group just sits around taking cover while wondering how they are going to get out of the house which, it turns out, has electrified doors. Two masked figures periodically pop in to say hello and hit them with various projectiles: a nail gun, darts, and a water gun full of acid. Members of the group occasionally run off, I think in an attempt to turn off the electricity.

The hot lead singer steals the show while running around shirtless, landing this one on the stud stalking page. 

Eventually the group does what they should have done all along. They simply gang up on one of the masked figures and take him down in seconds. That’s how frustrating this film is. If you love home invasion films, I would still recommend just looking for a different one if you need a fix. I’d also recommend totally watching this one if you need a fix of a hot shirtless man covered in blood.

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It all happened in the last twenty minutes

Posted on February 7, 2025 by Daniel

There are all kinds of terrors in the latest triple feature from my streaming watchlist, but all three movies have one thing in common—nothing really happens until the final act. Let’s find out if it was worth watching the first few acts to get there….

DEEP FEAR (2022)

What kind of half-assed attempt at a horror movie is this? Virtually nothing substantial happens in its 80-minute runtime.

A group of friends decides to party in the Paris catacombs. After a whole lot of nothing happens to give us some character development, they encounter a bunch of skinheads. They get the better of the skinheads and take off. And that’s the last we see of the skinheads.

56 minutes in they find a room full of Nazi stuff and quickly discover something is down there with them. Next, we see what looks like a zombie dog for about ten seconds, and that’s the last we see of him.

70 minutes in we finally see that what’s living underground is a Nazi zombie. He quickly kills off most of the group and then the final girl attempts to make her way to the exit.

Why wouldn’t they have members of the group periodically getting killed off throughout the movie instead of all at once? Why wouldn’t they have the skinheads getting what they deserve by an actual Nazi to up the body count and for the pure joy of watching Nazis getting slaughtered? Why was everything, which wasn’t much of anything, saved for the last fifteen minutes?

ASHBURN WATERS (2019)

This 80-minute movie about kids, a cabin, and a creature does its best to deliver its simple, cliché horror story, and does a good job of giving us that retro vibe of flicks from the late 90s and early 2000s in the process. The biggest issue is the slow pacing. All the horror is jammed into the last twenty minutes or so.

After an opening kill sequence that keeps the threat a mystery, we meet a group of friends heading to party at a cabin in the woods. The big story here is the main guy still coping with his breakup only to find his ex-girlfriend is coming with her new man. Yawn. We don’t need these overdone conflicts. Just mutilate people, dammit!

There’s lots of partying montage material, and there’s a dude creeping around the woods that looks like he is maybe supposed to be Native American.

It’s not until 37 minutes in that the main guy gets knocked over by some sort of creature in the woods. The first dead friend is found 47 minutes in. A girl is dragged out of her tent in a shadow puppet format 55 minutes in.

Then the battle of the exes comes to fruition. Really? Now, just when the monster is kicking it into high gear?

The final act shows the full monster Monty, and it’s a pretty standard, glowing-eyes creature. It goes to battle with the main group of survivors, just like you’d expect. It’s all very much like something you would have seen on the SyFy network back in the day. Good for a rainy Sunday perhaps.

DAGR (2024)

If you love found footage flicks, I don’t think you can exactly go wrong watching this one. Like most found footage flicks, it drags until the final act, when the horror finally comes fast, furious, and in flurry of blurry visuals.

I’ll keep this short. Two girls trying to become YouTube sensations decide to pose as caterers at a photo shoot at an old mansion in order to do some looting.

After lots of time is spent introducing us to the two girls and the photo shoot crew, the two main girls finally start secretly exploring the mansion. They find an iPad that already has some video footage from the photo shoot on it.

Would you believe this becomes found footage within found footage? We watch the footage the girls found, which features the photo shoot crew going through some supernatural stuff, the most notable being a robed, cloaked figured terrorizing them.

That typical found footage movie eventually shifts to the found footage of the two main girls being terrorized by the cult-like figure right up until a chase scene through the woods.

It’s as cliché as found footage horror gets, with no explanation as to the origins of this cult figure and his cult rituals.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: another possessed girl, a sleazy remake, and a horror anthology

Posted on February 6, 2025 by Daniel

The three latest additions to my collection were blind buys—one was included with a 3-movie set that I bought for one of the other films, the second is a remake of an 80s trash classic so I felt obligated to own it, and the third is the latest installment of a popular franchise, which I needed to complete my collection.

DEMON WITCH CHILD (1975)

This product of The Exorcist boom, which comes from the director of the Blind Dead movies, has some original ideas, but they only manage to make it all the more goofy rather than good.

When a baby goes missing, the number one suspect is an old witch.

She’s taken into custody, and when she dies, her spirit possesses the daughter of the main detective. Like, we literally see her ghost leave her body, head over to the young girl’s bedroom, and climb into her body.

Although the possessed girl does levitate once and her whole upper body joins in on a head spin, she isn’t confined to her bedroom and doesn’t turn all demon. Instead, she physically morphs into a little version of the old witch and also speaks like her when she goes out at night to join her coven to sacrifice babies. Awesome.

The side story is about a dude who has just decided to give up women to become a priest and isn’t well equipped to perform an exorcism. That would explain the lame finale, which takes place in a field with no suspense or horror to speak of, simply the priest sticking a crucifix to her head then watching her die.

Of note is that this movie may be the only possession film to feature an appearance by David Cassidy, even if it’s only on a poster on a bedroom wall.

STREET TRASH (2024)

This is such an underwhelming remake of a 1980s schlockfest, despite trying really hard to be equally as schlocky.

The plot is simple. The rich have crushed the middle class, so the homeless population has skyrocketed. The man running the city comes up with a plot to kill them all with a fatal chemical. When a small group of homeless friends uncovers the plot, they decide to revolt.

The film gives us an early taste of what the chemical does to victims—total gutting, oozing, melting flesh, and vomiting in neon colors.

It also sets out to prove how revolting and tasteless it can be by offering us a scene of a cop getting his dick chopped off by a fence.

The highlight here would be the practical effects of the gory melting bodies, which is icky, gooey goodness. Other than that, the film fails to make us really connect with the main characters, the action is weak, and the humor didn’t really hit for me at all.

That’s not entirely true. There is one character that delivers plenty of good, crass lines. Unfortunately, it’s a little blue imaginary friend of one of the main characters. It’s both stupid and annoying yet gets all the best lines that could have and should have been spread around to real human characters, leaving the imaginary friend out completely while making the main characters likable and memorable.

There is also some homeless gay-for-pay humor, and the little blue imaginary friend begs his maker to fuck him up the ass in a tag scene after the closing credits—an afterthought that makes me think modern filmmakers don’t have what it takes to make the kind of trash they used to in the 1980s.

V/H/S BEYOND (2024)

This turned out to be one of my favorite installments of this popular series, and it mostly avoids the sloppy problem with the last film, where you couldn’t distinguish the separation between stories and wraparound half the time. There are still some convoluted moments here and there, mostly because the unnecessary wraparound jumps back and forth between interviews with alien experts and stories of those who believed they encountered aliens. It’s irrelevant to the segments and should have been simplified or mostly scrapped if you ask me.
The stories are more like insane horror situations than actual stories, and that’s just what I want from my V/H/S movies.

1st story – a law enforcement team busts into a mansion, and it immediately turns into infected chaos with an onslaught of deformed humans jumping out left and right. This one is basically like a condensed take on the movie Quarantine…with something totally bizarre and freaky up in that top floor room. Eek!

2nd story – this is another awesome slaughter fest. Paparazzi tailing a gorgeous pop star go to a video shoot. There’s mention of rumors of the pop star practicing witchcraft, so is it any surprise that the cast and crew of the video are soon being mutilated by some sort of mutant creature? Gory!

3rd story – more intense horror chaos and gore. A bunch of people go skydiving, but before they can jump from the plane, it is attacked and destroyed. They all come parachuting down into an orchard full of viciously violent aliens. Amazing.

4th story – a group making an undercover video to investigate a woman who has a dog business at home discover the really fucked up thing she is doing to bring people and pets together…

5th story – if this really weak story had been cut, as it should have, the film would have been about 90 minutes long, which would have been perfect and left the film on a high note. This segment feels completely out of place, because it lacks the same hardcore horror tone of the other four stories. This is a weirdly spacey, abstract, and visually distracting tale of a woman that has some sort of alien experience in a cave. It feels like an experimental art piece and just drags the whole final part of this previously adrenaline-filled flick down.

There is some brief horror pay-off in the wraparound to make up for the disappointing fifth story, but it is super brief and feels like an amends for including that fifth segment.

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Slashing at a cabin in the woods, on a college campus, and at an office Valentine’s party

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Daniel

If you love slashers, here’s a trio you might find satisfying.

THE BENCH (2024)

How dumb am I? When I read the brief description of this film on IMDb, I seriously thought it was about a bunch of kids at a cabin in the woods getting killed off by a psycho killer each time they went outside to sit on some sort of park bench (and yet I watched the movie anyway despite thinking that was the plot). The actual bench being referred to is a sort of workbench where the killer takes all his victims to torture and kill them.

As far as backwoods slashers go, if you’re itching for something familiar, this is it. Nothing new here. Kids head to a cabin in the woods. They party, they hookup, they talk about a legend of a crazed killer in the area. And then…they start getting dragged to the bench.

This is not a masked killer movie. This feral looking dude has long, stringy hair and a machete, plus a few more torturous weapons in his lair. The torture is more implied than shown, there are some chase scenes, and there’s a “twist” that was pretty obvious to me right from the start.

INITIATION (2020)

This is in no way a body count slasher, and it’s rather slow paced, but it has a post-Scream aesthetic—sleek production, brutal kills, and a lingering sense of mystery that keeps you watching.

It begins with a frat party, shirtless boys, drinking, and a questionable situation. Our main girl, who is very natural, no nonsense, and likable, finds her wasted brother and a sorority sister passed out drunk in a bedroom and immediately questions what might have occurred behind the closed door.

Both the drunk girl and the brother also start to wonder what happened in the bedroom…

And then the kills begin. However, the first one doesn’t hit until 30 minutes in. The second one a half hour after that! The killer wears a mask and hoodie and is absolutely vicious in execution, which includes a drill with huge screws. Eek!

Most notable is that this is a reversal of the usual slasher trope—the half-naked victims are all male. We even get a guy jerking off and being attacked by the killer with his bare butt out!

There are police investigation elements as well to fill the time between kills, and the focus is on very few characters, which helps to keep the plot distraction-free.

The final act is a long, suspenseful cat and mouse chase scene between the killer and several characters. There’s a surprise ending, and it’s not one of those twists you’d ever be able to guess. However, what’s interesting is that the film opts to remain fuzzy on what did or did not happen in that bedroom at the beginning of the movie.

MY BLOODY GALENTINE (2024)

This fun holiday slasher is loaded with diva and queer camp value, in part thanks to a gay character that plays an important role in the film right up until the end.

Like Initiation, it isn’t a body count flick, but the small number of kills are quite entertaining, plus the killer wears a white mask with red-lit orifices and a black, hooded robe.

Three girls who have recently been dumped aren’t in the mood for their company’s Valentine’s Day office party, and they each have fantasies about killing their boyfriend, complete with red horror/Valentine’s lighting. The best part of these campy daydream kills is that they double the number of kills!

Instead of admitting to thoughts of murder, the girls decide to get revenge on their exes using simple cruel pranks.

Naturally, the guys start getting murdered.

And that means very few real kills sprinkled throughout the film. If anything, the film could have been trimmed down to 90 minutes from 104 minutes to bring us closer to the big killer finale at the Valentine’s party that much sooner. Despite some pacing issues, the girls are great, the energy is high, and the film is a blast. It most definitely earns a spot on both the holiday horror page and the does the gay guy die? page.

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New millennium undead of Bruno Mattei

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Daniel

The director of 80s Euro horror like Hell of the Living Dead, Rats: Night of Terror, Scalps, Night Killer, and The Other Hell came back for more after the new millennium kicked in, and the results are totally nostalgic.

THE TOMB (2006)

This is sort of like a Euro horror take on The Mummy with Brendan Frasier, and I just love the 80s throwback feel of it combined with its early 2000s, direct-to-DVD look.

It opens with a Yul Brynner looking high priest in ancient times indulging in a ritual that will give him immortality. Unfortunately, there are a lot of details he didn’t iron out…including the pain. The high priestess performs an agonizing ritual that mummifies him.


The King & Eyes

In modern times, pretty archaeology students come to Mexico to study the Mayan culture. After an awesome, old school attack of their tour guide in a cemetery at night, complete with numerous ghouls for no logical reason, the students wake to find he hasn’t shown up, and they are guideless.

However, they are redirected to a healer to help them and immediately witness her performing an exorcism. Ah, Euro horror. Everything but the kitchen sink.

Next, they head into the jungle to check out a temple. One of the girls is having nightmares about the high priest. The group encounters various death traps on their journey. The mummy is resurrected and wreaks havoc magically, but never bothers to stray far from his coffin.

It’s the healer, who turns into a demon that looks pretty much just like Angela from Night of the Demons, that delivers all the cheesy horror fun. Whether intentional or not, it all reads like high horror camp.

ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD (2007)

This was Mattei’s return to the zombie genre after decades, and he goes right for the kind of nonsensical shlock that made his zombie flicks favorites of the early VHS era. There are also loads of homages to classic zombie flicks, from Night of the Living Dead right through to all the Euro horror zombie films of the 80s. Awesome.

It starts with voodoo rituals on an island and colonial people shooting those that come back from the dead. It’s not an essential part of the plot, but it makes for a good, cheesy zombie action opener.

In the modern day, a group of treasure hunters on a boat comes across an island that is not on the map. Their dialogue is terribly dubbed—love it—making the whole vibe very comical and hokey. If you didn’t devour Euro horror in the 80s, you might not be able to deal with this essential aspect of Mattei’s movies.

On the island, the group ends up in what underground caverns and catacombs. They find ancient books, a chapel, treasure, and all kinds of zombies. There also seem to be some sort of supernatural forces at play, but don’t try to distinguish any logical plot…even when a talking zombie tries to explain it.

Just watch it for the practical effects and zombie makeup, the direct-to-video look and feel, and the chaotic action.

ZOMBIES: THE BEGINNING (2007)


This sequel to Island of the Living Dead picks up right where the last movie left off, with the final girl being rescued while afloat on the ocean. While recovering in the hospital, she has nightmares about her previous experience, then goes through some spiritual healing.

Finally, she is enlisted to lead a military team to another island that is rumored to have experienced a zombie outbreak.

Once again, the dubbing is over-the-top awesome in an old school 80s Euro horror way, as is all the cheesy horror and action insanity that ensues.

At the facility, the team discovers gore, dead bodies, gnarly zombies in cages that look much more like demons than zombies, plus these freaky zombie children with big bug eyes and huge egg heads.

There’s a basic plot about a breeding factory for these nasty zombies, with women in bondage being forced to give birth to them by huge tubes attached to their bellies to just suck the babies right out of them. Eek! And…gross.

And finally, adding to the 80s horror weirdness, our main girl at last finds the root of this whole outbreak…a talking brain in a glass box. I’m not even kidding. So maybe those zombies in Return of the Living Dead movies weren’t looking to eat brains…they were praying to their god…

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When zombies rip out your insides and tug on your heartstrings

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Daniel

These two flicks are more than just gut-munching fun. In fact, flesh-eating takes a backseat to character-driven stories. So how did that work out for my short attention span? Let’s find out.

DIE ALONE (2024)

Don’t expect a Frank Grillo zombie/action movie with this one. The director of 13 Eerie and the Wolfcop movies makes what I think is an elevated infected winner. The hubby and I were blown away by this simple yet emotional and incredibly smart take on the zombie genre.

I can’t even give many details of the story, because it would spoil the plot. Basically, a young man and his girlfriend have an accident. When he awakens, he doesn’t remember anything beyond that moment. He runs into a woman, played by Carrie-Anne Moss, who takes him in and informs him of a plant-based infection that has taken over the world.

Don’t expect hordes of zombies. There is one amazing, super infected humanoid scene and then just a few more infected moments. This perfectly paced, 90-minute movie draws you in because of the mystery it creates surrounding what happened to the main guy’s girlfriend as he begins to have flashbacks of what led him to where he is now.

Although action and horror hottie Frank Grillo is featured on the poster art, he has only a very small role that doesn’t come in until the 65-minutes into the film, but at least we get a nice crotch shot.

Even if you think you’re burned out on zombie/infected movies, this one truly brings something new to the table.

OUTSIDE (2024)

This Asian zombie film runs 2 hours and 22 minutes long. Eek! That’s the scariest part. However, while the film is slow with just a handful of really intense zombie scenes (just like Die Alone), its goal is to deep dive into the troubles of a fractured family trying to survive after the outbreak.

This is a long, emotional, moody journey that borders on soap opera level drama at times, despite the limited number of characters. A father, mother, and their two sons try to escape the insanity by heading to the secluded home of the husband’s parents. This is when we get the first awesome and gory zombie scene. The best part of these gnarly zombies is that they still speak, but only one single word or phrase over and over. It is fricking creepy.

Zombie attacks are sprinkled throughout the film to help with the low energy, and they really do, because it’s intense energy, especially a scene that unfolds on a bridge. Eek!

The reason for the tension between husband and wife unfolds as the movie progresses. The father’s brother told them about a safe zone to travel to, but the father doesn’t exactly want to reunite with the brother because of a serious betrayal that has shattered the family. The father is trying so hard to keep his family together while his ego is absorbing all the hits, but those efforts eventually backfire big time, and his nuclear family unit begins to splinter.

On top of that, the husband still has to contend with his brother, who keeps resurfacing and trying to lead them to the safe space. Pretty much everyone snaps, and the shit really hits the fan as this family’s drama comes to a head…with zombies.

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TUBI TERRORS: a werewolf, zombies, and underground dwellers

Posted on January 24, 2025 by Daniel

This was a pretty satisfying triple feature for me, despite each of these movies having some flaws. The cool creeps and creatures alone gave me a little jolt of horror, and that’s all I really ask these days.

WE ARE ZOMBIES (2023)

This little indie zomcom has plenty of good elements, and it even offers what seems to be a unique premise, although it does inevitably turn in on itself and become a rather standard zombie plot.

We start in a time where non-flesh-eating zombies roam the streets just trying to survive in a world of discrimination and fighting for the same rights as everyone else.

However, this isn’t really much of a commentary on that familiar horror movie concept. Instead, the focus is on three “freelancer” mortals that tap into the clientele of a big corporation that allows families to “retire” their zombie family members.

These three job robbers soon discover that this evil company plans to experiment (inhumanely?) on zombies and is also out to destroy the trio for stealing from their zombie supply.

It’s an interesting premise, but what happens is that the evil company’s experiments turn the zombies into…flesh-eating zombies. Kind of full circle back to the usual plot of an evil corporation causing a zombie outbreak!

The main characters are quite good and handle the fun, raunchy comedy well, but unfortunately, there isn’t enough of it or enough zombie action for a majority of the movie. The script is kind of flat and really needed a bit more excitement during its entire runtime.

It is in the final act that this zombedy really, um, comes to life. The main trio has to battle a flesh-eating zombie horde in a club, complete with a freaky boss monster. The energy here is what the rest of the film is missing. The zombies look awesome, the action comes fast and furious, and there’s good, gory fun. If only the cast had this much material to work with throughout the whole movie, this would have been a winner. It’s worth a watch, I’d say, but not good enough for me to add to my movie collection.

THE PACK (2010)

As someone who chowed down on the nonsensical story arcs of many Euro horror flicks in the 80s, I had no problem with the skewed narrative of this odd French flick, which manages to shift subgenre lanes various times, leaving a massacre of plot holes in its wake—an issue that might not be for everyone.

It begins with a tough girl driving through the country, she picks up a dude hitchhiking. They stop at a restaurant. Biker baddies show up and almost rape…the hitchhiker dude! It’s not the only time the leader of the bikers demonstrates an attraction to men. Gotta love rednecks.

Things take off from there. The main girl is abducted and thrown in a cage by a good old backwoods family.

She and her cage mate are tortured in various ways. And then they are left as sacrifices for…

Humanoid creatures that crawl up from the ground! A few throwaway sentences offer an explanation for their existence, but when shit is this weird anyway, why even bother with any explanation?

Before long, everyone seems to be changing loyalties in order to survive. Eventually, the bikers, the hitchhiker, and the main girl end up trapped in a little ramshackle house as the cool creatures try to break their way in. There’s gore, action, and chase scenes leading to a dismal finale.

HARMONY FALLS (2022)

There’s a moody, low energy to this little indie werewolf flick, with a lingering camera vibe and a horror music cue that comes back constantly and gets annoying after a while. The film opens with a couple camping in the woods and getting attacked in their tent…all screams, no visuals.

Seems there has been a rash of mutilations in a small town, so the sheriff calls in a scientist dude for help figuring out who or what is responsible.

Aside from a few attacks here and there, in which you never see anything, this is a very slow film, focused mostly on the investigation by the two men. The weirdest thing is that they always seem to wait until it’s dark to go hunting for clues in the woods. Huh?

One of the highlights of this otherwise dialogue-heavy flick is a goofy redneck bar fight, including a shirtless dude with nunchucks. Is he the pancakes boy from Cabin Fever all grown up? Sure feels like it.

When the werewolf is finally revealed at the end, he looks pretty damn awesome for a low budget indie. Actually, as cool as the werewolf form is, the human’s appearance before turning into the werewolf is way freakier.

I kind of wish the movie had been about the human terrorizing locals in normal freaky form, which appeared to be a partial transformation phase.

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