A slasher, an alien beehive, and a killer clock

Posted on April 25, 2025 by Daniel

Even if they are not the greatest films, this is another trio of indies that offered some standout moments for me.

THE CLOCK (2024)

If you just need an old school, low budget style movie about a family that buys a haunted object from a tag sale, this is your kind of movie.

It begins by showing us what we’re in for later. Men are carrying a grandfather clock out of a house and onto a priest’s truck. The men suddenly get glowing demon eyes and chase the priest as he drives away and back to his church.

A few years later, a straight couple buys the clock from a church sale. Once they place it in their home, they notice what looks like blood on the face, and we get red clock POV. Awesome.

Strange occurrences begin in the house, but the real star of this movie becomes the self-proclaimed, pervy, straight couple that lives nearby, who even gets a couple of montages of them living their pervy lifestyle, notably dancing at a strip club and taking erotic photographs. Why can’t I have neighbors like that?

Anyway, it seems possession is being passed around to all their neighbors to build an army to get to the clock. Simple, creepy effects and camerawork give this one a particular nostalgic charm as more and more people connected to the main couple get drawn into the possession chaos.

There’s a séance, a Ouija board, a psychic medium, a backstory about the main woman’s mother being into black magic, and eventually some chaotic old school ghostly special effects for the final battle in the couple’s living room. There’s a brief, creepy clip of what I can only assume is the devil, and then suddenly the dust settles and everything seems okay again, and the family has been saved from the evil clock.

The hubby and I were convinced the filmmakers like…left out a scene that actually showed how they defeat the evil. Weird. Even the psychic medium’s reaction when she comes out of her trance is campy.

BE OUR GUESTS (2019)

The trivia section for this movie on IMDb says it all:

“The movie was made as a front for a collection of Z grade musicians associated with the production company. As a result the movie awkwardly cuts between a generic slasher film and a series of poorly made music videos.”

It’s a shame, because aside from a weak script loaded with plot holes, the co-writer/director of this film did a great job of creating solid slasher elements that, unfortunately, get very little screen time due to the endless montages of that music mentioned above.

For over an hour of this 110-minute movie, we watch a bevy of young, undefined characters in montages—boxing, working hospitality, recording music, ballet dancing, getting tattoos, sunbathing, and attending a concert. You can watch the first part of the movie for preliminary storyline until the music montages start, then jump to the 56-minute mark and you’ll get a tightly paced slasher about kids getting knocked off at a bed and breakfast.

Despite two cool killers worn creepy masks and perfectly executed kill scenes, plus some suspenseful chase scenes, the plot is a mess. We first meet parents called to school because not one, but both of their sons have violent tendencies.

15 years later we meet several characters that aren’t really characters. They’re just extras that get knocked off to set the stage for a slasher.


Then we meet a bunch more college kids. Then we get all those music montages. In between, it is established that the two violent kids from the beginning are grown up, wear masks, and kill off people that come to their family’s B&B.

Once we hit that 56-minute mark, the killers start terrorizing the characters we never had a chance to know, so just watch it for the kills, because you won’t care about any of the characters. Too bad the filmmaker wasn’t given a chance to actually make a full-fledged horror film.

Adding to the weirdness of this production, if you watch past the credits, there’s this bizarre scene of a campy drag queen talking directly to the camera about the movie, briefly summarizing the plot and then claiming she didn’t understand it. It’s almost like they plucked an audience member from a screening of the film and said, “Just tell us what you really think about the movie.”

THE BEEHIVE (2023)

The final 20 minutes of this alien movie serve as a sign of what a suspenseful sci-fi/horror movie it could have been if it had delivered on more of that level of suspense—and more of the monster, which we only get about three glimpses of.

So much of what happens here that fills the first hour of the film feels like incomplete thoughts. A young girl lives with her father and her older brother in their rural house. She is interested in bees. She finds what she thinks is a beehive attached to a tree in the woods.

Their mother died, but we never find out how—or why it seems like it’s taboo for anyone in the family to speak about it.

The father discovers the city is trying to take over part of his property. We don’t know why, but in the end, it seems like it’s just an excuse to have a city worker’s body part turn up.

There’s a very weird scene of a friend putting his arm around the brother, and the brother looks at him like it doesn’t feel right, but there’s no explanation for or exploration of this incident. So why was it made so obvious?

Bees keep turning up everywhere, and it’s almost like they hold some significance. Only…they don’t.

The aunt of the kids believes aliens are coming after reports of weird lights in the sky, yet despite seeming to know more than she’s letting on, she doesn’t play any major role in the end.

There is a nasty scene of people eating lobster at a picnic. The sights, the sounds…I could almost smell it, and I wanted to hurl. I only mention it because it was so gross.

When anyone touches the hive, it oozes slimy goo and appears to do something to them. At first I thought maybe it was going to turn them into creatures, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Finally, we get the could-have-been part of the movie, a short sequence of intense monster thrills that deserved to play a larger part in the film. It’s not exactly a giant bee, but it does look like some sort of bug larva.

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Attack of the killer Bs

Posted on April 22, 2025 by Daniel

In what turned out to be a sort of throwback to the horror of the early years following the turn of the millennium, my latest triple feature included ghosts, a syringe-wielding killer, and a fishman.

THE LAST INN (2021)

I’m pretty convinced all the actors in this film had to go back and dub in their dialogue for whatever reason, because even though the words match the lip movement, it looks and feels very disconnected.

That weirdness just adds to the hokey vibe of the whole thing. More than a horror movie, this comes across like a too-long episode of some sort of cheap horror anthology show you would see on television in the 80s. We have blue-faced ghosts that look almost as ridiculous as the zombies in the original Dawn of the Dead, and the most oddly 2-dimensional, cartoonish looking computer-generated effects, including visuals like a person falling to the floor and being dragged under a bed. That one made me giggle.

Anyway, our main girl has a car accident, comes to a nearly empty hotel, and immediately seems to step into a different dimension of reality where the owners and the few guests walk around as if in a fantasy land. There are ghosts everywhere, but no one seems to be all that intimidated by them. I think the bad dubbing has a lot to do with the lack of emoting.

There’s also a ghost doll terrorizing the main characters, which include the main girl, one straight couple, and one young dude, who is a sort of love interest for the main girl.

The owners of the hotel act weird, everyone thinks everything is weird, yet they just keep going around exploring the place in the dark with flashlights. There’s no sense of reality to anything that happens, so it makes the big twist ending not surprising at all, especially since it’s a twist that quickly became a cliché for ghost movies about 25 years ago. There is, however, one sub-twist within the larger picture that’s kind of clever.

NEEDLESTICK (2017)

This one gave me that nostalgic, direct-to-DVD vibe from the early 2000s, has Lance Henriksen for that direct to SyFy network feel, and features a menacing guy in a hospital murdering people with a syringe for that old school slasher feel.

It also has a lot of melodrama between hospital staff members, from relationships to ladder climbing ambitions. And then there’s the “mystery” of what kind of unethical experiments Lance is doing on dying patients, and why this killer seems to have come back to life to jab people.

The main weapon being a syringe might not be the most exciting, but it does make for one nasty eyeball scene. Eek!

There’s an interesting twist in how the killer is used to the advantage of the survivors, and there’s even a big bomb threat finale. Other than that, it’s fairly generic yet totally watchable if you’re in the mood for a throwback to the 2001 – 2007 era of B horror.

THE RED TIDE MASSACRE (2022)

This was the perfect SyFy level creature feature for me to watch with the hubby. It’s so simple and so satisfying, with a crazy body count.

A natural disaster has struck Florida, leaking contamination into the water, and for some inexplicable reason, allowing for the escape of a cop killer convict. Unfortunately, he needs to wade through water to get away, and he quite quickly begins turning into a modern day Creature from the Black Lagoon…or the fishman from my gay horror novel Rise of the Thing Down Below. He’s the perfect specimen of a man in a rubber suit.

Meanwhile, Michael Pare is the local sheriff determined to get this guy, his son works at the beach, and a female reporter is investigating the murders that start piling up.

There’s also a local dude convinced that the skunk ape is to blame. How is it that I never heard of this Floridian urban legend until the past few months when I covered a movie about him, and now he’s mentioned again?

Anyway, that is all the plot you need. The first kill comes a short 18 minutes in as the convict begins fully transforming into the creature for the first part of the movie, hacking up people left and right along the way. The final, primitive battle between our heroes and the creature on a dark road at night is awesome, and the cheesy “where are they now?” segment about each character at the end is icing on the cake of this popcorn movie.

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Celebrating Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day the horror way

Posted on April 21, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a smorgasbord of four flicks to add to the complete holiday horror page, so let’s get right into them.

PUMPKINHOLE (2022)

When I told my hubby I was watching Pumpkinhole, he said, “You already did that on your book cover”. Okay, maybe he didn’t remember the name of my book is Wet Screams, but the cover art has definitely made a lasting impression on him…due to awe or embarrassment. I’m not sure which.

Anyway, there is no literal “pumpkinhole” in the movie, although the main character does mention going into the pumpkinhole once. No, I didn’t understand what it meant, but it was hot hearing him say it.

This is more trauma porn than horror, but there are definitely some haunting visuals and sequences, and even flashes of gore. Also, Halloween is crucial to the plot and adds to the very moody, gloomy tone and atmosphere of the film.

It’s actually a tragic story about a broken man suffering from the trauma of having run over a trick or treater a year ago while drunk and then choosing not to report it. But I felt like the film goes deeper than that and is more like an allegory about failing to achieve what you wanted in life, even if it was just the simple yearning for a wife and child.

Our main man’s existence is sad and lonely. He kind of stalks the grieving mother of the child he killed out of guilt, which gets very uncomfortable and awkward. He is plagued by visions and nightmares. He sees a lone pumpkin floating around wherever he goes, he is haunted by the dead trick or treater, and even Halloween candy infiltrates his delusions.

He tries in various ways to face his demons as Halloween draws near once again, including confession at church, a tarot reading, and attempts at supporting the grieving mother.

There’s a flashback to the night of the accident, and it sort of doesn’t make sense. He struck the little trick or treater with his vehicle in a desolate tunnel. Why was a little boy in costume in a tunnel at night on Halloween? Or did that incident even really happen, or is it part of an alternate reality that mirrors the longing for and loss of something our main man never had?

Regardless, the tunnel scene is quite disturbing and comes full circle in a dark twist at the end of the movie. Like I said, it’s not totally horror. However, it’s conclusion is totally horrific.

ELF IN THE HOOD (2024)

This 75-minute killer doll flick gives off a major Full Moon films vibe circa the turn of the millennium. It’s Christmas Eve, and there are plenty of holiday lights at the house in which the events take place, but the killer elf doll is not a dedicated Christmas elf. Blah. It’s just a foul-mouthed, possessed doll from the ghetto that likes to drop the n word. Leprechaun had more fun in the hood than this little twerp.

The highlight here is really the super nasty, practical effects gore during kill scenes. The story is kind of abysmal.

A couple struggling to make ends meet scores a doll that is apparently worth some money. When they bring it to the home of a woman who wants to buy it, they are all targeted by the doll after it comes to life.

The buyer tells a backstory about the demon in the doll, which is called Ju-Ju. The actress playing the buyer seems to stumble over almost every single line of dialogue, often pausing as if trying to remember the next word. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m still not sure if it was accidental or an acting choice.

Plenty of other people pass through the plot just so the doll can drop some one-liners and deliver some dastardly death scenes, but the doll itself is totally uninspired and forgettable. It also appears to be CGIed into shots, so it looks like it’s just floating there. Not exactly a standout (or stand up) killer doll.

The film really starts to drag when the main characters make a plan to stop the doll and then begin hunting it through the house, and the final scene is accompanied by goofy, whimsical music—very Full Moon.

ADVENT (2024)

The director of Werewolf Santa is back with more Christmas horror. This time he takes on Krampus…sort of.

I really like the premise of this movie and the folklore backstory that goes with it, which is told mostly through interspersed clips of an “expert” on the subject who is sitting in atmospheric horror lighting as he’s interviewed.

The main story is about a young woman who lost her mother, is living with her alcoholic father, and has a YouTube channel on which she and a friend tackle urban legends and paranormal phenomenon—Bloody Mary, Ouija boards, etc.

She becomes obsessed with a Krampus advent calendar. She purchases one, and she and her friend begin filming their experience as they open one door on the tree-shaped calendar each day leading up to Christmas.

Behind each door is a challenge, and the goal is to do the challenge each day to eventually summon Krampus on Christmas Day. At first, the challenges are fairly simple, such as circling the Christmas tree backwards or mailing a bunch of envelopes to Krampus. Much of the running time is filled with these challenges, which the friends film around the house.

Halfway through this 75-minute movie, the challenges turn dark, which is when things get creepy. You would think when the main girl reaches a challenge in which she has to kill an animal she’d call it quits. For the sake of the movie, she doesn’t—she’s probably kind of possessed by the paranormal experience at this point. For our sake, we don’t see animal murder. It’s a blocked shot of her injecting a hamster.

The movie has some eerie moments, like one where there’s a woman’s head just poking around a corner while drunken dad is in Blair Witch position, and another involving an under the bed scare. Also, the escalation of the challenges adds some good tension, but in the end, do not expect to see Krampus. This is essentially a low budget found footage film with a rather tidy, offscreen climax.

HEART EYES (2025)

This is the biggie in the bunch—made it to theaters, stars horror hunks Mason Gooding and Devon Sawa, plus Olivia Holt of Totally Killer, and features a soundtrack of familiar pop hits, including Lonestar’s “Amazed”, “Please Don’t Go” by KC & the Sunshine Band, and The Supremes’ classic “You Can’t Hurry Love”.

She’s all of us right now…

It also happens to be the perfect balance of horror comedy, horror romance, and slasher, with some really fresh takes on the genre. Plus, Heart Eyes has an awesome mask and is a vicious killer.

After a gruesome opening sequence at a vineyard that starts things strong with four kills, we meet our main characters.

Olivia works at a jewelry business that is suffering losses because of the Valentine’s killer Heart Eyes, who appears to be targeting loving couples. Mason’s character is brought in to help do damage control. When he and Olivia join up for a work dinner, things quickly spiral out of control.

The pair is interrupted by Heart Eyes. They end up spending the rest of the movie being chased by the killer in various locations—drive-in theater, police station, a church—leaving a whole trail of dead bodies along the way.

The humor is perfectly understated, the chemistry between the leads is fire, Mason Gooding is more adorable than ever, Heart Eyes knows how to execute a kill, and the drive-in massacre sequence rocks. The big denouement even makes a statement about what constitutes a romantic relationship. Heart Eyes is a welcome addition to the yearly marathon of Valentine’s Day horror movies.

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Low-tech scares…going back to basics by dabbling in the occult

Posted on April 17, 2025 by Daniel

Cults, the occult, and a witch? Sign me up! But…did I get what I signed up for with this trio of selections from Tubi that rely on simple incantations, rituals, and sacrifices? Let’s find out.

EVERWINTER NIGHT (2023)

With a 105-minute runtime, this one could be considered a “slow burn”, but the burn isn’t hot. There’s no sense of dread or suspense as we move towards the sudden amplification of action in the final act.

As if to remind us this will eventually be a horror movie, there’s a brief opening in which a couple on a road trip stops at a lodge for directions, and it’s implied that something sinister happens. It’s really not a necessary scene other than the promise it establishes of terror at this lodge.

That was 30 years ago, which would have been the 1990s. I’ll never get over the act that there we were in 1978 thinking that it was the olden days when Michael Myers killed his sister in 1963. Sigh.

Next, our modern day main girl meets up with her friend to hang for the weekend. However, her friend invites two other girls, and those two girls have met some guys who invited them to a winter lodge, and so on, and so on, and so on…. Anyway, our main girl, who just wanted a weekend with her one friend, is dragged into a big party.

Turns out this party is some sort of mystery celebration being thrown by a bunch of young men. There are masks, partying, drinking, and lots of talk and character interactions. Following that, very slowly, all the girls at the lodge begin acting…different.

Eventually, like way, way into the movie, our main girl starts to notice there’s something very Stepford Wives about these girls all of a sudden. There’s some sort of man cult, there’s a sacrifice ritual, there’s an entity that you barely see because it’s obscured by strobe light effects, and then there’s some possession for a battle to the death. It’s an entertaining enough climax, it just takes a long time to get there.

When he’s so big it feels like it goes right through you

THE BOOK OF THE WITCH (2024)

 

Eureka! It’s a short, simple, atmospheric witch movie with a classic scary witch, pointed hat and all. So simple yet so effective.

The opening alone sets the tone. Much like the trick or treaters silhouette in Halloween III, we see a witch grunting and struggling to drag a body along the ground with a fiery sun set as a backdrop. We get to see what she does with the body, and then we jump to our main characters.

There are two security guards, a man and a woman, working the night shift in a building, patrolling the creepiest areas drenched in red light. There’s something very Last Shift about this segment of the movie, with the bonus of some fantastic witch action.

For reasons that aren’t clarified initially, the female security guard is tracking the witch like a detective investigating a serial killer. When she pinpoints the witch’s home, she heads into the California desert to break into it, and then we discover what her plan is.

She is afraid of her own mortality due to the death of her mother, and she believes the witch uses a book of spells to cheat death. So…she steals the witch’s book!

It’s like Hocus Pocus goes full-on horror. Pretty soon, the female security guard is being terrorized by the witch and the ghost of her own mother. I’m telling you, this is straightforward, witchy fun with a dark twist.

THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT (2022)

Folk horror usually bores me to tears, and even much of this film ran a little long and slow for my tastes, but at about 45 minutes in the folk horror aspects merge with home invasion and revenge flick elements loaded with blood and action, giving me the jolt of excitement I need to keep my attention.

After a man’s wife dies in a car accident, his sister comes to stay with him at his rural home. While out hunting, he finds a hole in the ground, complete with Blair Witch sticks and all.

His neighbor tells him natives used to discard of criminals and evildoers down there before settlers turned it into a holy grail of some sort.

Pretty soon, the main guy and his sister are experiencing strange occurrences in the house, including figures lurking around corners.

Once the sister witnesses a cult sacrificial ritual in the woods, things finally take off. There’s home invasion, abduction, rape, and a surprisingly underwhelming drop down into the hole, which I would have expected to be the big shocker reveal of the film instead.

From there, it becomes a revenge hunt by the brother and sister, where things get super violent and gory, with male nudity and eventually demon eyes.

That pretty much checks off all my boxes, so I was totally invested in the second half of what is otherwise pretty familiar horror territory.

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There’s something in the woods…and behind the mirror…and in your mind

Posted on April 14, 2025 by Daniel

This was an intriguing and random selection of movies from my Tubi watchlist, and it was also a pretty satisfying one.

DEMON BEHIND THE GLASS (2023)

Despite a plot that becomes hard to follow and only slightly makes sense when all is revealed in the final act, this little indie has a classic, mid-80s, direct-to-VHS feel. We’re talking loads of action featuring the main creepy demon ghoul in billowing mist. I was so feeling the atmosphere of this one.

A journalist going through hard times is renting a house in a small town. Of all things, would you believe he finds a corpse behind the mirror in his bathroom? EEK!

There are some odd reactions to this discovery, especially by the cops, who write the corpse off as a peeping Tom who just got stuck in the wall…and then want the journalist to pay to have the body removed. Say what?

The journalist also finds a document in the wall that talks about a demon that needs to harvest seven spirits to make itself stronger. Before long, this demon corpse is coming for him and anyone he interacts with!

The demon basically begins getting passed off from one person to the other like possession, so there’s a whole lot of horror fun going on here.

The effects, a mix of practical and CGI, totally work with the throwback vibe, the mostly single setting in the rental house really centers the action, and I was loving the creepiness of the demon so much that I was able to just go with the confusing plot.

SKIN WALKER (2019)

This is a deceivingly titled horror flick, and that Castle Freak looking thing on the poster art isn’t what it appears to be. I also found the whole point of the movie to be really predictable, so there were no surprises for me here.

The film is definitely tightly produced and has some great visuals and atmosphere. It’s also trippy and bizarre. It starts off seeming to make sense, somewhere in the middle it all gets weird and confusing, and in the end it all makes perfect, predictable sense.

We meet a young woman who returns home to see her father, played by horror king Udo Kier.

This young woman hasn’t had a pleasant family life. Her mother lost a baby boy at birth and is now in a mental institution. Her psychiatrist has been sexually abusive to her. Her grandmother has just been brutally murdered. And a man comes to her to tell her that her whole family has been lying to her, that he is actually the father of her brother, and that her brother didn’t really die and is now back seeking revenge on those that sent him away as a child.

As she tries to come to terms with everything else, she is plagued by the horrors of her own mental state. Seriously, all the nightmares and recollections she has make it pretty clear she’s insane, so it’s fairly obvious how this trauma porn is going to climax.

It starts to feel like a sinister fairy tale as her haunting, psychotic visions encroach on her life. Yes, she does eventually encounter her now grown, deformed brother, but don’t expect this to be a movie about a monstrous killer brother, because it’s not. It’s a fairly good story if you’re new to the horror genre, but it’s nothing new if you’re…well…old to the horror genre.

LOOP TRACK (2023)

If you know my taste in horror based on my opinions when I cover movies on Boys, Bears & Scares, you know my attention span doesn’t have patience for many slow burns, with some notable exceptions. I was hesitant to even go into this 95-minute movie after noticing some of the headlines of reviews on IMDb, but I kind of just had to know, so I hit the play button on my Firestick remote.

We meet a man whose acting is a large part of what makes this so watchable. We don’t learn much about him other than that he feels he’s a fuck up, feels he’s weak, and is totally paranoid. It’s so unnerving. He has come to the woods to escape life, but unfortunately, life finds him.

He gets drawn into a small group of strangers sharing a cabin in the woods…it’s like this thing where there are little “safe houses” sprinkled throughout the wilderness for hikers to crash in. As someone who doesn’t like to even walk between two trees in my own backyard, I’m not sure…is this a thing in national park forests?

We also learn very little about the main guy’s new roommates. There are two young female friends, a straight couple, and a single guy looking to mingle. The group ends up exploring the woods together, and our main guy becomes convinced there’s something following them, because he keeps seeing a dark figure in the shadows in the distance behind them on the trails.

His fears steadily intensify, and the others begin to think he’s crazy. The viewer starts thinking the same thing, and we start to imagine what horrible things he might do to others. Is he a killer? Is he working with someone else? Is he a shape-shifting monster? OR…is it all in his mind?

All I’m going to say is that if you love movies where it’s what you don’t see that is scariest, you will totally be invested in this film. If, on the other hand, you need some sort of visual payoff, you should be invested in this film. The last twenty minutes totally deliver.

What you see might make you roll your eyes, or it might just make you amazed at how out-of-the-box the threat is. It looks great, it’s totally unexpected, there’s no explanation for it, and the end of the film is so perfectly inconclusive while also providing a tidy conclusion.

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A backwoods creature, a found footage killer, and a tarot curse

Posted on April 7, 2025 by Daniel

It’s another smorgasbord of subgenres from my watchlists, so let’s get right into them.

STOKER HILLS (2020)

This is a third-person POV/found footage hybrid that jumps back and forth between detective hunting for missing film students and the footage they found of what the students were experiencing before they disappeared.

The film begins in film class, with the late Tony Todd as the teacher. The group of students plans to make a film about zombie prostitutes.

When they head off in their car to work on their film, one of them ends up getting abducted. The others give chase and are soon in an abandoned building of horrors. Within minutes they are being chased by a hooded figure with a gun. No! Why a gun??? Yawn. On top of that, there’s a very Saw-like killer motivation in the end.

Depending on how you feel about police procedurals, you might find the addition of the investigation segments either boring or a fresh break from the found footage moments. Personally, I found the breaking of the case and killer motivation pretty incidental, because I just wanted to be in the thick of the horror the kids were experiencing.

Either way, the horror, as in most found footage films, doesn’t explode on screen until the final act, which is intense and gritty in the killer’s lair, with plenty of violence, slashing, and action.

SOMETHING IN THE WOODS (2022)

This short, 75-minute film is one weird, anticlimactic creature feature that didn’t make much sense to me.

After we get a little too much filler of a reporter at her home, she is kidnapped and driven into the woods by the daughter of a senator who committed suicide after a story the reporter ran ruined his life.

I think the daughter wants to send the reporter into the woods to then hunt her down, but instead, the tension between them neutralizes pretty fast and they spend time in a house in the woods together.

Eventually they encounter an alien-like creature and have to work together to escape the woods. We’re suddenly hit over the head with this weird, infectious cannibalistic plot element that isn’t fully fleshed out and leaves viewers to fill in the gaps. On top of that, there is no tension and not enough creature action.

TAROT CURSE (2025)

The director of Rave Party Massacre gives us a simple, slightly sloppy throwback to the paranormal killer flicks of the early 2000s. This one really feels like Final Destination…with tarot cards.

After an awesome head splat opening kill, we meet high school friends heading to New Orleans for a birthday celebration. How I wish this film had taken place entirely in New Orleans, but unfortunately, it’s just a short segment to facilitate the tarot curse. Really, they could have just stayed home and gotten cursed by a local tarot reader since they clearly weren’t even filming in New Orleans anyway.

The two best characters are left behind in New Orleans—one of those voodoo priest guys, and the witchy tarot reader who curses the kids.

The kids come back home and begin getting picked off supernaturally, with a tarot card left behind after each death. The kills are surprisingly gory and this movie will make you never dare to slip your hand inside a vending machine again or drop a bowling ball on your head (in case you’ve thought of it). The hubby and I also laughed out loud at the abrupt pacing of a prom king kill. Best scene in the whole movie.

In between the kills, there’s lots of soap opera drama, a mystery woman showing up at every funeral, and the kids figuring out that when the predictions made by their tarot readings come true, they die.

Thankfully, the sole survivor heads back to New Orleans for another encounter with the voodoo priest and a final battle with the witch…a harsh reminder that we so needed more voodoo priest and witch.

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Guests check in, but they don’t check out

Posted on April 1, 2025 by Daniel

It’s vacation time for friends and family, which means nothing is going to go right in this trio of slashers.

STREAM (2024)

Go into Stream with a bunch of your horror fiend friends and a big bowl of popcorn plus plenty of cherry cola, and then sit back and revel in the gnarly, gory practical effects, rockin’ kills, sex and nudity, four masked maniacs, and the numerous horror icon appearances.

The storyline is a bit problematic with several plot holes, but the movie is jam-packed with horror action and death scenes that will have everyone at your watch party crying out with shock and delight at the gruesome and brutal kill sequences. The body count is quite high, so the action rarely lets up once it begins, but that just proves a really important point about filmmaking. No matter how high energy a movie is, it should not be two hours long. Ugh. Even though we were eating up the chaos, at about the 75-minute mark of this 2-hour movie, we started shifting into “there’s still 45 minutes left?” mode.

Who better to open the movie than Dee Wallace? She’s a house cleaner at a hotel, and I’m pretty positive that when she’s attacked by a masked killer, the scene is an homage to her death scene in Rob Zombie’s Halloween.

Next we meet a family that checks into the same hotel. Danielle Harris is the mother, and I’ll never stop finding it weird to see her playing the parent of teenagers.

The hotel clerk is Jeffrey Combs, Dave Sheridan looks adorable as a bartender, Tim Reid of WKRP is a detective, and Terrifier David Howard Thornton is one of the four killers.

Felissa Rose pops in momentarily later in the movie, and the late Tony Todd makes an appearance at the very end. Meanwhile, we were left wondering what happened to two other anticipated cameos based on the cast list: Bill Moseley and Tim Curry. Turns out they are both in a fairly long scene that drops somewhere in the middle of the closing credits. Here’s the really weird part. We never see Tim Curry. He is in a wheelchair and wearing a mask he doesn’t take off, which sort of defeats the purpose of a cameo.

The most notable plot problem is that the bulk of the concept isn’t presented until more than halfway through the movie after only being hinted at earlier. For most of the movie it seems like guests have simply booked rooms at a really bad hotel where there just happen to be four masked killers being harbored. However, the actual premise is eventually revealed when loads of people have already died—there’s some sort of streaming “game” taking place in which people watch the action live and place bets on which killer will score the best and most kills.

Once the main point of all this murder and mayhem is finally revealed, it suddenly feels like a reset, as if one film ended and you’re now watching a different movie. Not sure what the intention was for laying it all out this way, but you just have to go with the new vibe and enjoy the continuation of the kills.

Despite its flaws, Stream is still a satisfying hack ‘n’ slash flick, and I will definitely add it to my collection if it gets a physical media release. Oh. Did I mention the mega-muscled killer in overalls? I didn’t? Well, he alone is worth the price of a disc, and he lands this one on the stud stalking page.

DEAD TEENAGERS (2024)

The director of the gay horror flick The Exorcism of Saint Patrick opts for a more mainstream, cabin in the woods slasher of sorts, although there is a little lesbianism depending on which storyline you’re in at any given moment. See, Dead Teenagers tries so hard to be as complex as meta can be that it becomes an almost indecipherable sequence of branching plot possibilities. Think Happy Death Day if it was nearly impossible to follow.

There’s this group of friends staying at a house in the woods. The main girl finds a bunch of script pages in the forest, and apparently that causes the kids to end up immersed in the plot of the script.

I was lost almost from the start. There are signs of a cool killer wearing a welding mask and flashes of gory kills, but this is predominantly a movie in which the characters sit around trying to figure their way out of their predicament—in between bringing up religion quite a few times.

I could not follow the plot at all. It becomes a repetitive cycle of everyone acting weird and turning on the main girl, who they feel caused this whole situation by finding the script. What’s missing most from this film about kids trapped in a slasher script is an actual slasher.

Things get even more confusing when there are multiple faux endings, complete with the credits beginning to roll. It’s meta taken to the extreme. There’s even a moment when the main girl experiences flashes of scenes from The Exorcism of Saint Patrick.

LATE CHECKOUT (2023)

This 69-minute movie is like speed slashing. This is how you do a low budget slasher—just get to the point and check off all the essential tropes along the way.

It starts with a sex scene, a man in panties, and brutal kills as Night of the Living Dead plays on a TV in the background.

Next we meet a group of friends renting a cabin in the woods. There’s a splash of relationship drama, a dash of partying montage, and then a killer in a welding mask starts taking out victims one after the other.

The kills come quick, and they’re bloody, with practical effects. A cop shows up just long enough to die, the two final girls are lesbians, and Felissa Rose even shows up to add some extra insanity to the final moments of the movie.

Killer motive is basically irrelevant, and there’s a little twist if you stick around for the scene that takes place after the credits begin rolling. This is a satisfying quicky if you just need a fast slasher fix.

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Bringing out the animal in humanity

Posted on March 31, 2025 by Daniel

My weekend was filled with a 4-flick marathon of movies featuring humans with animalistic tendencies, so let’s sink our teeth into them.

SHARK GIRL (2024)

I really expected this one to be some sort of trashy, indie mess, but the film takes itself seriously and is actually a pretty sleek production. Any elements of camp are simply embedded in the fact that it’s a movie about a young woman with shark-like tendencies.

A pretty influencer is pressured by her douche bag boyfriend/manager with great hair to go into the ocean so he can take photos for her channel. Her paranoia as she is told to go deeper is quite effectively shot both below and above the water level, and it definitely felt like a nod to the opening scene of Jaws.

However, we never see a shark. She disappears, the boyfriend goes home because he doesn’t give a shit, and then she’s found at night washed up on the shore by a couple hanging out at the beach.

The film wastes no time in introducing “shark girl”. Before the couple can help her, she attacks! However, shark girl never turns into a shark hybrid. She simply flashes savage teeth and bites her victims in the neck.

As she continues her feeding frenzy throughout the movie (mostly attacking those that wrong her), the oddest thing about it is that there are all these reports of shark attacks, yet she’s biting people with a human-sized mouth and teeth, so any expert should be able to see the bites aren’t the work of a shark.

Anyway, it’s sexy and fun as she racks up kills, but the movie does start to lose some steam as we meet the other characters along the way—a cute reporter she went to school with, and her best friend, who is investigating contamination in the water. Naturally they team up to stop shark girl in the end.

The only disappointment is that they go to a kooky scientist surfer dude for advice on how to stop her, yet this quirky character doesn’t join in on the final act like Quint did in Jaws. He could have added some fun to the mix during the final battle.

The highlight of the film is that after talk about stopping her with a serum, in the end it’s a good old harpoon gun that saves the day. Awesome.

FROGMAN (2023)

Frogman gets down to basics in the found footage genre—it follows the template of Blair Witch with one exception—it delivers camptastic frogman horror at the end. No movie has delivered such a great frog finale since The Maze.

Like many found footage flicks, this one begins with an urban legend. The frogman was caught on video in the 90s by a couple of kids. Now, the guy who was behind the camera as a kid wants to save his reputation, for he’s been mocked online as a fraud.

So, how to prove he didn’t fake the video? Go hunt down the frogman, of course. Our main guy gathers some friends to go with him, grabs his camera, and they’re off to the infamous location where the frogman has been spotted.

They interview locals, check out memorabilia, explore touristy hot spots, and eventually head into the woods to find the frogman.

It takes an hour, but when the frogman shows up, he practically leaps off the screen! We get frogman attacks, people being slimed and then suffering wart breakouts, a cult that worships the frogman, and a giant tongue attack.

This is all the cheesy good creature feature found footage payoff you could ask for.

The only surprise is the incredibly anticlimactic ending, which concludes with two too many survivors. Perhaps there’s a reason for that…like…Frogman 2?

PIGMAN (2024)

I’m usually a fan of director Louisa Warren’s British indie horror flicks, but this one was just not my thing at all…other than the violent and bloody kills and the killer’s potato sack pig mask.

No, the Pigman is not a deformed beast. It’s just a human in a mask. Speaking of humans, the movie runs too long and focuses too much on human issues…really shitty humans at that.

A group of content creators decides to come to an old farm to expose the truth about the Pigman myth. As usual, these online fauxlebrities are the worst of humanity, especially the dude leading the charge. He is flippant and cruel with victims of the supposed Pigman and even abusive to his girlfriend. There’s no one to root for or like in this film.

The Pigman’s backstory is bland, and the movie drags on as it tries to add complexity to the plot…a plot that simply needs to be about a guy in a pig mask sack hacking up horrible people.

PIGLET (2025)

Like Pigman, Piglet starts with a psycho with a sack on his head, but it’s merely a plain mask. After some quick and vicious opener kills, he finds a pig mask and slips it on, which means we never get to see his face! What the hell?

The plot is basic. A group of girls goes to party at a cabin in the woods, and soon they are being dragged off one by one to Piglet’s lair to be brutally murdered.

It begins with a sex scene between a guy and a girl in the woods getting slaughtered. Yay! Now that’s my kind of backwoods horror.

In the cabin, the girls have their little spats, they sit around talking about the legend of Piglet, two girls soak in the hot tub, a lesbian kiss…you know, the usual.

The score is pretty good and reminds me of the music from Phantasm, the gore is good (although at one point you can see a hook is made of rubber because it’s bouncing), and the main girl takes her final girl responsibilities seriously and delivers on the screams and the final fight.

Piglet offers up a perfect backwoods killer vibe, and the tone is nice and gritty. However, it essentially decides to go the “backwoods family” route. Therefore, Piglet isn’t working alone. It isn’t really necessary, adds nothing to the straightforward plot, and makes some of what happens fairly predictable. It is definitely a backwoods slasher cookie cutter situation, so you could say this is comfort horror for those that love this subgenre.

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Clash of the subgenres

Posted on March 25, 2025 by Daniel

Each of these films features a curious combination of subgenres that makes them all rather unique when taken as a whole, yet simultaneously cliché in how the individual subgenres are presented and play out in each movie.

FOG CITY (2023)

Indie filmmaker Steve Wolsh has made three full-length horror flicks—this one, Kill Her Goats, and Muck. Muck was a St. Paddy’s Day horror that was supposed to be part of a trilogy that never came to fruition, but I still wish it had. I have all three of his films on disc, but Muck is by far the only standout among them. Like Kill Her Goats, Fog City had potential, but ultimately it was not a movie that gave me the warm and fuzzy horror feels.

I’d describe it sort of like The Fog meets Cabin Fever meets The Crazies.

A girl whose father owns the local factory, which has a bad track record, is invited to party at a house near the factory.

After a quick sex scene (yay! I love that Wolsh has brought gratuitous sex and nudity back to horror—and I also love the setup shot for the scene), sirens begin to wail and a smoky mist starts to rush in.

Here’s the interesting part. The group becomes convinced that something toxic has leaked from the factory. They decide to hibernate in the house and close off all air holes so they won’t, you know, turn into zombies or anything.

The question for the audience is whether there actually is something poisonous in the fog, or if the friends have just watched way too many horror movies and are suffering from some sort of mass paranoia. Don’t expect to ever find out for sure.

Either way, the group becomes convinced they can catch something and pass it on to each other. They begin forcing those they believe are infected into isolation. They turn on each other. Some of them begin to become crazy and homicidal. Others feel like the crazies are using up their precious air supply and would be better off dead than as a living threat to the rest of them.

It’s an entertaining concept, and Wolsh definitely manages to make the fog feel like a character in the movie much like John Carpenter did in The Fog, but the initial sense of foreboding and establishment of suspense he creates when those sirens first sound quickly get watered down, and we are left with a bunch of kids just yelling at each other, fighting with each other, and eventually acting out and killing each other. There are some worthy scenes of violence, but too many of them involve use of a gun (yawn), so overall this is a really lackluster flick. I think what could have helped this movie is if this guy had been in it more. There’s something very enticing about the “not an exit” sign behind him…

CONTROL FREAK (2025)

There’s a whole lot going on in this movie, which blurs the lines between elevated horror, body horror, and good old monstrous demon horror (the part that kept me watching).

The movie is very much about the female psyche and female identity. Our main character is a successful self-help speaker who feels her career beginning to slip away from her. At the same time, she is plagued by a chronic itch at the back of her head. The incessant scratching definitely starts to go right through you after a while.

She is also dealing with her husband, with whom she’s been trying to have a baby, even though she doesn’t totally want one. Indeed, the movie is about bodily autonomy. The husband soon finds out that respecting your wife’s bodily autonomy requires you to take care of your own bodily autonomy…

It’s also about mommy issues, which we learn as the story unfolds and the main character explores the volatile relationship she had with her deceased mother.

To add to the itch, the appearance of ants plays a significant part in the body horror, but we also get a few teases of a demon hand that seems to be initiating her scratching. Several of these horror sequences are nothing more than nightmares or delusions, and that always gets stale after the first few times.

It generally unfolds with a typical body horror slow burn, so I wasn’t all that engrossed in it for a large chunk of the run time. The payoff for me came when the menacing demon finally comes out to play. Yay! The shift away from the usual body horror flesh rotting scenario to a simple demon battle definitely drew me back in for the final act.

COMPANION (2021)

This is an odd mashup of zombie and ghost genres that kind of folds in on itself due to a self-inflicted, full-circle plot. I’m talking Control Freak level head scratcher.

We are thrown into the middle of a weird kind of apocalypse. The dead are basically returning as ghostly entities, but they can physically make contact with you when they feel like it, so they’re basically zombies. But not. They’re transparent, so they’re ghosts. They look rotted, so they’re kind of zombies. It’s all very confusing, but it has an interesting catch—they can’t travel far from where they were originally killed.

The movie focuses on a small group of people. First, we meet a straight couple trying to survive this ghost zombie apocalypse. A radio broadcast makes reference to a safe place, so they’re trying to head there.

The couple gets attacked by a crazy preacher and his minions.

A cowboy who has been chasing the preacher saves the couple from being killed. The preacher runs off. The main guy, who has been hurt, asks the cowboy take his wife and get her to the safe place.

They leave, the preacher returns, and the main guy teams up with him! After lots of fighting with ghost zombies for most of the movie and loads of character development, the cowboy and the woman come back, and now the husband considers the cowboy to be his enemy for taking his wife. What?

The trajectory of the plot really falls apart, but the ghost zombies are an interesting break from the usual outbreak movie. They are predominantly computer generated and do that flickering head thing that was so common in ghost movies in the early 2000s, so you might find it somewhat nostalgic if you miss that era of ghost horror.

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Cautionary tales about the supernatural side effects of being around white people

Posted on March 24, 2025 by Daniel

This was a pretty fun marathon of movies featuring Black main characters in paranormal peril due to bad choices made by white people.

BLACKSTOCK BONEYARD (2021)

Blackstock Boneyard is apparently based on a true story of two Black men that were framed for theft, rape, and murder and then wrongly executed back in the day, which is encompassed in the opening segment of the film, but that’s where the true story element ends.

After that this becomes a fun ghost revenge flick reminiscent of early 2000s direct-to-DVD horror, with a satisfying theme of a couple of Black ghosts killing off horribly racist white people. That’s right. There are two killers in this one. Double the fun.

Our main white girl learns she has inherited property in a small southern town. She heads there with a group of friends and is soon being pressured by the most powerful white man in town to give up her land to him.

Just for kicks, a very weak romance between her and a Black dude is barely developed and completely pointless beyond giving her the ability to demonstrate to the revenge ghosts that she can’t be racist because she had an interracial relationship written into her story.

For a generally light, fluffy, supernatural slasher, the film does go in surprisingly hard on the racist stuff. White characters say some pretty vile things to Black characters, the ‘n’ word is tossed around, and there’s a near lynching scene that is tough to watch.

However, that all makes you want to cheer when the Black brothers bust from their graves and begin killing all the redneck bigots.

I live for grave bust out scenes…and dead redneck bigots.

The classic creepy killers are big and ominous and still wearing the sacks that were placed over their heads when they were put in the electric chair. The kill scenes add to the good time, delivering just enough violence and gore to make this a traditional slasher experience.

MAMA BEAR (2022)

There is what might be an unintentionally campy tone to this film, but whether intended or not, it makes it quite endearing and complements the indie look and feel.

The only real problem is that the movie runs way too long at two hours, and the creepiest parts are reserved for the beginning and end. There’s really no horror whatsoever for a majority of the film.

So, there’s this man raising his son alone and dealing with the loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident several years before. With mama bear out of the way, it would be great if papa bear decided he needed a daddy bear in his life.

But alas, he instead brings a white, blonde girl home after a first date together. Big mistake. Should have gone for a daddy bear. This blonde be-otch wants to see his house because she heard it’s haunted, so she starts poking around the place while he’s getting them drinks. Things get crazy fast, and it doesn’t end well for her. This is a damn good opening sequence.

However, the main guy thinks the date simply left when he was out of the room, so he goes on with his life. We get a few scenes with his soon referencing a presence in the house that he calls his “other mommy”. Eek!

The main guy catches glimpses of her himself and has some seriously eerie nightmares. There’s even a moment with him waking up and seeing his son standing in the doorway with a knife, like Angela from Sleepaway Camp. Yikes!

Before long, the police come looking for the missing white girl, and the main guy is drawn into a legal situation due to him being a prime suspect. His son disappears for a majority of the movie, but his sexy, deadbeat brother-in-law appears on the scene, and eventually they have to team up to rid the house of the evil that dwells there. I wish they would have teamed up for some other things as well.

It all comes down to performing a ritual in the house, which makes for a damn thrilling final confrontation with a freaky demon. The movie simply needed more of the supernatural scares in the house rather than the bloated legal plot that stalls the action throughout the central section.

As for the “Mama Bear” title, it is incorporated into the story in the form of a personalized mug that belonged to the dead wife, and it even makes a final appearance in a totally cheesy final frame.

THEY WHISPER (2024)

This movie is so intriguing for a majority of its runtime, but it somehow veers off into hokey territory for the final act, which is a bummer.

Some white kids coax their Black friend into being the first one to climb down a mine shaft. Things don’t go as planned, and the boy ends up in a coma.

The families of the white kids totally shun the Black parents for fear of being held responsible for the son’s condition. One dad is particularly douchey…and also a big burly daddy.

Meanwhile, a black mist is floating around the houses of the kids, and its first appearance in the home of the Black family is particularly effective. There’s even a play on the Lights Out schtick.

There are all sorts of weird developments. The son awakens from his coma, but they find a strange mark on his skin. The douche bag’s son, who is also acting kind of comatose even though he isn’t, says one thing…”they whisper in the ground”.

Unfortunately, as the main father tries to figure out what happened to his son down in the mine shaft, nothing all that suspenseful or scary transpires beyond him running into John Schneider in the woods, whose douche-baggery isn’t an act.

The movie falls apart somewhat in the final act when the wife goes down in the hole and has a conversation with the black mist. Ugh. Their son turns on them, and they have to figure out a way to save him from the grip the supernatural presence has on him.

It’s an underwhelming finale after all the buildup, and quite honestly, the ending is kind of sad and seems like it would lead to a whole lot of bad repercussions. Perhaps a sequel?

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