Family dysfunction and destruction

Posted on February 10, 2026 by Daniel

My latest triple feature proved to be pretty suspenseful, disturbing, satisfying, and a whole lot of commentary on fractured families. Let’s get right to them.

DADDY’S HEAD (2024)

This is a goodie for anyone who grew up on slow burns from the 1970s, with the creature being presented in quick flashes, shadows, and blurs instead of full Monty madness, making its fleeting appearance all the creepier. The film also doesn’t fill in all the blanks when all is said and done.

After his father dies following a car accident, a boy is left under the guardianship of his stepmother. He misses his dad tremendously, but I personally wouldn’t want my dad back if this is the way he looked the last time I saw him…

The tension gets under your skin as weird things begin happening in the forest behind their house. They notice smoke billowing out from the trees, but no fire is found.

Blue lights flicker through the windows at night. A figure starts appearing outside. Their dog barks furiously at something unseen.

And eventually, something scurries through the house. Eek! This is such a great scene, because the stepmom holds the son back while screaming for the dog to come back and not chase the creature. As a super protective doggy daddy, I felt what she was fearing about the dog’s fate at that moment.

I’m just going to say, if you are dog death sensitive, you might have to leave the room at one point in this movie.

The son begins to hear his dad talking to him at night, he’s beckoned into the woods, he finds a visually stunning branch structure that his stepmom prevents him from going in, and there’s a terrifying vent scene in the house.

It’s all kinds of sad, because the son longs to have his father back so much that he looks past how freaky all this shit is and continues to be drawn to whatever is posing as his father.

The final confrontation with the creature is the big money shot, and it’s a great scene, but like I said before, you really will be left not knowing exactly how and why this thing in the woods materialized to begin with, because it’s definitely not a metaphorical grief monster, thankfully.

OTHER (2025)

This one really makes a good double feature with Daddy’s Head. Another slow burn with a whole lot of eerie tension and suspense, it’s about a woman’s relationship with her mother and some sort of creature creeping around the house.

It’s also perhaps a bit too complicated for its own good, so the main story gets lost in plot elements like a drone, security cameras, an underground bunker, video monitors, VHS tapes, and even a Speak and Spell.

After a spooky opening clip—someone in a mask exploring the woods at night while filming and talking about a kid found with his face missing—we see a woman leave her house wearing a mask in search of something in the woods.

Then we meet our main woman and her man—or, at least, his ass. That’s because the only face we see in this movie is that of the main woman. The few other characters’ faces are intentionally obscured.

The main woman is called home after her estranged mother’s gruesome death. She ends up trapped at the house with something lurking in the shadows. She also keeps seeing a kid on a bicycle wearing a mask and telling her to hide her face. Eek!

Slowly but surely, we learn through videotapes she watches that she was a beauty contestant when she was young and that her mother was very abusive. Which begs two questions—why did her mother film herself being abusive, and why would the main girl want to watch the videos and relive those moments?

In between the thrilling sequences, you have to pay attention to the little details to understand what transpired in the past and how it explains what the creature is. Even if you do figure it out, by the end of the movie you will feel like a whole lot of details were left out, resulting in quite a few unanswered questions. Personally, I’m not sure if this monster was material, metaphorical, or a bit of both.

KILLER THERAPY (2019)

This is more of a portrait of a mentally ill boy than it is a full-fledged horror flick, but it really does draw you in thanks to great performances, dark themes, and appearances by several horror veterans.

A couple adopts a daughter only to quickly discover their teenage son hates her. Like, this kid is a psycho, played to sadistic and sinister perfection by the young actor. Not to mention, the father is played by Thom Mathew’s of Friday the 13th VI and Return of the Living Dead parts 1 and 2.

The main boy is constantly jumping from one therapist to another (including horror queens PJ Soles and Adrienne King), and it is revealed without any graphic detail that one male therapist sexually abuses him. This movie is seriously dark.

It’s truly unnerving watching the family fall apart as the son begins to lash out, eventually getting violent. He’s sent to an institution for six years, and when he returns home, things are only worse. His family doesn’t trust him, and before long he begins killing. However, this isn’t a slasher. The kills are infrequent, spontaneous, and end in him being devastated about what he’s just done. It’s really kind of tragic and heartbreaking.

Another cool aspect of the film is that Daeg Faerch, the original young Michael Myers from Rob Zombie’s Halloween, bullies the main boy in school and ends up doing a sort of role reversal scene of the one in which he gets back at a bully in Halloween. In fact, while the plots are different, I wouldn’t be surprised if Zombie’s film inspired this one.

With fifteen minutes left to go, the main guy (now in a really bad and distracting, long-haired wig) totally snaps and goes on a revenge killing spree. He also suddenly covers his face in makeup for no clear reason and ends up looking like the double for Jennifer Beals dancing to Laura Branigan’s “Imagination” in that Flashdance scene at the club.

The kills come fast, furious, and in quick edits, except Adrienne King, who gets a great, suspenseful build-up scene…with no payoff! WTF? She also gets the best horror lighting in the whole movie.

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TUBI TERRORS: Fairy Tale Frights

Posted on February 8, 2026 by Daniel

I’m always up for an evil adaptation, and this trio of selections from my Tubi watchlist went from not so great to a total winner. Luckily, that’s the exact order in which I watched them, unintentionally saving the best for last.

RUMPELSTILTSKIN (2025)

I’ll say it right up front; just stick with the 1995 Rumpelstiltskin. Almost nothing works in this odd little movie, which runs 77 minutes long.

We meet a straight couple that doesn’t seem very much in love. They just moved into a new house. The wife is pregnant. The husband finds a basket of yarn by an old sewing machine. There’s a mask inside.

He puts it on and gets Rump’s face (I don’t feel like spelling it out every time). We never see the husband take off the mask, but in between his fixes of putting it on, he’s just back to living his normal life with his normal face.

Eventually, he begins to kill a few people each time he has Rump face.

A guy who has been creeping around the house eventually warns the wife of the tale of Rump and how he steals unborn babies.

The wife at last confronts the husband, assuming he killed everyone, and he admits he did and intends to take her child. He gets Rump face, she tries to kill him, he runs off, he peeks at her from around a tree…the end. WTF? No ripping a fetus from mom’s body at least? And the body count is way low, which is a shame, because Rump is absolutely giddy and a lot of fun when he’s killing people.

THE WIZARD OF OZ: THE DEAD WALK (2025)

I’m always up for indie director Louisa Warren turning the joys of children’s imaginations into the stuff of their nightmares. Her timing on this one coincides with both the Oz resurgence thanks to Wicked, and the new Wizard of Oz horror movie Gale.

The original L. Frank Baum novels, like most classic children’s literature, were not all rainbows and sparking shoes, so I like the dark place the script takes us to. Namely, a rehab center where Dorothy is being treated for drug addiction. I mean, why wouldn’t she become a hot mess that needs drugs to escape reality after returning from a place no one believes she visited? Perhaps this is a nod to the 1985 Oz sequel Return to Oz?

Naturally, no one in the facility is normal or nice. The staff is sinister and psychotic, and the other patients are not mentally well, including a hot hunk who wears only short shorts and dies way too soon for my tastes. Why introduce such a strong, almost naked presence and then remove him from the equation so fast?

Dorothy is having nightmares about the witch enslaving her friends the Tinman and the Scarecrow. She believes she must do something to save them after leaving them behind. Sadly, the Cowardly Lion is only vaguely referenced later in the movie, but I imagine that’s because of what happens next.

Dorothy tracks down Glinda’s book of spells and reads a passage from it. Quicker than a twister can pick up her house, the Scarecrow and Tinman show up in the rehab center, and they’re like the Silent Hill version of the beloved characters.

They start a killing spree immediately. Scarecrow kills and steals brains. Tinman kills and steals hearts. Brilliant. Obviously, this is why the Cowardly Lion would have been a tough sell for a slasher. How exactly would he steal bravery?

The kills are violent and gory, although there is one poorly planned kill scene in which the Scarecrow is supposed to be cutting a victim’s scalp off with a meat cleaver, yet no blood or open wounds appear.

The witch also shows up to cause trouble, plus Aunt Em comes to visit Dorothy. While I love the idea of how Dorothy’s PTSD after escaping Oz has created real-life horror for her, this pretty much becomes a basic slasher with not much resolution or closure for our heroine.

THE DEATH OF SNOW WHITE (2025)

Eureka! A streaming marathon that ended with a winner. Despite being 111 minutes long, this reimagining of the tale of Snow White is fast-paced fun for the whole family. And by whole family, I mean me and the hubby. It’s definitely not for kiddies. It’s funny, it’s action-packed, it’s dark, it’s twisted, and it’s gory as hell, with practical effects.

The opener totally sets the tone, with a witch raising hell as she tries to infiltrate the castle while Snow White is being born. There’s violence, there’s magic, there’s murder. It’s awesome.

We then flash ahead in time. Snow White is now grown, her mother died in birth, her father has died, and her wicked stepmother is a psycho bitch from hell. We’re talking Elizabeth Bathory level bloodlust.

And her magic mirror is the stuff of nightmares, with a trio of naked, demonic women in its reflection taunting the wicked stepmother constantly and pushing her to do more extreme things to chase youth.

We meet Snow White, her female friends, the prince, his two comic relief friends, and the huntsman (played by the director Jason Brooks, a horror veteran actor himself).

Inevitably, Snow White is forced to flee. In the dark forest, she encounters freaky tree monsters and is saved by the dwarfs. It’s amazing to see a load of little people getting lead roles in one movie. Snow White’s initial interaction with them is cute and campy, and light banter and humor are sprinkled throughout the movie perfectly.

That also creates a nice balance with how fricking gruesome and grisly this movie is. The wicked stepmother is absolutely sadistic, and the torture she inflicts on innocent people is nasty as fuck! She makes Sigourney Weaver’s take on the wicked stepmother look like the fairy godmother.

Sticking to the main points of the story as we know it, the wicked stepmother eventually transforms into a witch to go find Snow White herself. The one interesting thing here is that the wicked stepmother has some major magical powers, which begs the question—why can’t she just use a spell or potion to make herself young forever?

Anyway, it all leads to a major battle for Snow White’s body between the wicked stepmother’s henchmen and the dwarfs. By the time people start dying left and right, you feel invested in these characters. You’re also cheering on the heinous revenge they enact on the wicked stepmother. Eek!

This one was an absolute blast with high production value, and it never slowed down despite the near 2-hour runtime. There’s even a super clever nod to the Brothers Grimm, the originators of the tale.

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PRIME TIME: a parasitic creature, demonic possession, and a sleepover slasher

Posted on February 6, 2026 by Daniel

This is definitely my kind of smorgasbord of horror subgenres, but does each of these three films do its theme justice? Let’s find out.

HELL HOLE (2024)

The opening scene of this kind of comedic creature feature is so awesome and leaves us with high expectations. Back in the 1800s, a horse explodes, and an awesome, parasitic creature bursts out of its carcass to the sounds of rockin’ background music.

Problem is, that energy is only delivered during the attack scenes sprinkled throughout the film.

In contemporary times, we meet a group of Americans fracking in the woods in Serbia when they exhume something unexpected. In between parasitic attacks, there’s a lot of dialogue, some of it humorous, but that’s pretty much all this movie is—it bounces back and forth between excessive dialogue and quick, fun, gory monster sequences. Also, note that not all characters speak English, so there’s some subtitled dialogue.

The film has some nasty elements, like the parasite’s tentacle squirming out of one guy’s ass and inserting itself into another guy’s mouth, so you’d think things could get super wacky and wild. Unfortunately, there’s just no real plot to drive the movie forward beyond people occasionally getting the parasite in them.

The best part is when the monster starts jumping from one person to another in the final act, so the humans just keep shooting each other.

YOUNG & CURSED (2025)

This is one of those movies I should have turned off once I saw how hokey it is, but it just has such an early 2000s direct-to-DVD look and feel to it that I couldn’t resist the simple comfort of it.

Five kids come to a cabin in the woods with no idea why. They are greeted by a young woman who is both paranoid and possessed right from the start. She called them there but has no idea why. However, the possessed part of her that peeks out sporadically knows. It takes a while, but the bewildered kids eventually drag the truth out of her in between fighting her silly SyFy television show magic effects.

The possession faces that eventually start showing themselves are also basic –CGI overlays on top of the actors’ faces.

They do a séance to get to the root of why they’re trapped in the cabin, which unleashes the witchy woman trapped inside the girl that called them there. Her goal is to harvest their souls right as a lunar eclipse takes place.

Now they have to figure out how to stop their fate. It involves confessing their sins, in some cases dealing with their struggles as marginalized individuals, and facing their inner demons, which rise to the surface as actual demons. That might make it sound like this eventually turns into some sort of Evil Dead knockoff, but they don’t terrorize each other. The pain is mostly self-inflicted and emotional. Blah. That’s no fun.

THE CHEERLEADER SLEEPOVER SLAUGHTER (2022)

This indie film runs only 62 minutes long, yet despite having plenty of pretty good kills, it somehow feels like it goes on forever.

Other than the kill scenes, the writing just doesn’t have enough ideas to create a full, engaging slasher script. It’s a movie about a cheerleader sleepover. There are plenty of classic, similar themed slashers one could consult to see how they filled the time, but alas.

We even get filler. The intro credits, playful and accompanied by an apropos theme song, are a little long. There’s an unnecessary dream sequence scare. There’s a cheerleading montage. There’s a twerking montage. And games of Never Have I Ever and Truth or Dare add nothing to the story, character development, or entertainment level.

The plot is simple. The cheerleaders practice. The cheerleaders plan a sleepover. The cheerleaders prepare for the sleepover. Boys plan to crash the sleepover—and drink Cherry Pepsi. Awesome.

The girls gather for the sleepover. There’s a peeper who is clearly just a loser and not a red herring. The boys show up. They all party. And eventually, they all die.

The kills are the highlight, capturing that classic, early 80s style, complete with practical effects. The killer wears a hoodie and mask and uses traditional sharp weapons to stab and slice throats. There are shower scenes, nudity, and backseat ambushes in cars. Most importantly, the kills are perfectly paced throughout the movie. But you have to wonder why the girls don’t become super concerned when the size of their squad begins to dwindle as they near the night of the sleepover.

Luckily, there are still enough cheerleaders for the killer to take down in the final 10 minutes. One girl who didn’t quite come across as an obvious final girl suddenly finds herself in that position, leading to a satisfying and violent hack n’ slash battle with the killer, so the movie does at least end strong.

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Backwoods crazies!

Posted on February 5, 2026 by Daniel

It’s a foursome of flicks about big baddies in the woods bashing brains left and right, but the difference is day and night. Like, literally, some of them take place in daylight, and others in the dark.

CREEPER IN THE WOODS (2025)

This movie is 80 minutes long, yet after the opening kill, the next kill doesn’t happen until about 50 minutes in.

The first kill scene is simple but serviceable. A couple having sex by a lake gets stabbed with a pitchfork.

Then we meet some main characters as they chat while playing pool at a bar. A pregnancy is mentioned, but it doesn’t play any role in the rest of the movie. Neither does much character development or subplots. There are, however, two actors from Psycho Science, which I just covered the other day.

Our main group of friends heads into the wilderness to camp. The fact that the whole movie takes place in daylight makes it really obvious that the same location is used over and over—a perfectly mowed, car-width path in “the middle of nowhere”.

There’s a camp setup montage, the group sits around talking, and then they go exploring…on that mowed path.

43 minutes in, we are introduced to a threatening redneck dude. Then we meet his brother, who wears an animal skull mask. The first kill is with a gun. Yawn. But after that, there are plenty of stabbings. Nothing all that gory, but at least there’s blood.

It’s just a series of chase scenes—down that mowed path—as the friends try to escape the baddies and eventually fight back.

In the end, one survivor hops into a car that’s driving by on the deserted road at just the right time. If you can’t guess the twist, you’re a total horror amateur.

My favorite part of the film is the song used during the end credits. “The Last Time” by 10eighty6 is definitely getting played on my Future Flashbacks show.

BUTCHERS BOOK TWO: RAGHORN (2024)

This sequel to Butchers, about a cannibal family in the woods with one mutant goon member (that we never actually get to see a full-on, clear face shot of), doesn’t seem to be connected to the first film as far as I can tell. There are no retuning actors, and the names of the characters in the family are not the same.

The opener is a goodie, with the mutant squishing a woman’s head with his hand. No CGI here. It’s all practical effects gore.

Then we meet the very unpleasant main group. They’ve clearly done something illegal and are on the run in a car on a desolate road, but there isn’t much depth of plot or characters here either. The group argues, they hit a deer, and the leader of their pack dies (and he’s played by the shirtless bully from Ghoul House, which I covered in the same post as Psycho Science!).

Turns out the group has someone tied up in the trunk of the car. They take the prisoner out and traipse through the woods. They are abducted by the cannibal family and brought to a cabin for some torture.

The movie is grisly, including a graphic penis severing, but don’t expect suspense or scares. Or any nighttime scenes for that matter. This is another movie that takes place entirely during the day. However, there is one unique twist, and it involves an androgynous main character without any real acknowledgment or explanation. Cool.

BUTCHERS BOOK THREE: BONESAW (2024)

So, there’s definitely no connection between the three Butchers movies other than the goon whose face barely see. And that’s okay, because each film really has a vibe all its own.

This one takes place entirely at night and is sleazy and gory. It’s a bit long for what little story it has to offer, but it really captures the feel of the brutal hack n’ slash movies of the Wrong Turn era.

This time, the goon is working totally alone…out of a van…in the area surrounding a strip club. The setting feels more urban than backwoods, but there is a whole lot of desolate road stuff going on, so I guess it’s still supposed to be a rural area or small town.

The goon hacks up plenty of random victims in the back of his van, but he also gets drawn into the drama of the strippers from the club. One girl has been fired. Another girl is buying drugs from a dealer and then selling them for a profit at the club. And a third girl consults a psychic to determine her future. The prediction couldn’t be clearer, yet she still ends up in the back of the van.

The gritty look and feel are perfect, a guy whips out his dick for a blowjob (blurry shot), there are gruesome mutilations, the goon finally mutters some dialogue, and two of the strippers have a great final battle with the goon in his van, which even leads to a car chase! Despite being longer than necessary, I definitely like the dark tone of this one better than Book 2.

MR. BUZZKILL (2025)

What a great title for a slasher about a killer wielding a buzzsaw. The film runs only 73 minutes long, and while it’s essentially a straightforward slasher with tight kills balanced by subtle humorous moments, it takes a roundabout narrative approach.

It’s the 26th anniversary of a massacre of the Mr. Buzzkill massacre. A group of friends is hanging out at a campfire near the site of the slashing, so naturally the conversation turns to the kills.

We learn how Mr. Buzzkill became a masked killer as a child, then we see a quick series of his kills as an adult (all daylight scenes), including lots of boobs, and a girl who cries and screams like Tara Reid in Urban Legend. Awesome.

Next, the campfire story turns to the tale of a group of friends that went to party at a cabin in the woods and was then slaughtered by Mr. Buzzkill. This is where you get the traditional template, with them partying, having sex, and being sliced, diced, and sawed by Mr.Buzzkill, who has a great, ominous presence.

Like I said, the humor is understated, but indie horror king Jason Crowe is the one who gave me a giggle…right before a gruesome death by bong.

The main slasher segment takes place at night, and the kills are delivered with indie horror practical effects perfection. There’s a chase scene, cops show up to raise the body count, and then the movie ends with no resolution, promising a sequel.

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A foursome of funny frights

Posted on February 2, 2026 by Daniel

It was time to break up all the horror flicks I’ve been watching with some funny fluff. Did these four flicks do the trick of raising my spirits? Let’s find out.

GHOST BABE (2023)

This light supernatural comedy has a kind of 80s throwback—a classic goofballs conjure up something supernatural vibe. However, it doesn’t quite push the comedy envelope enough to live up to the laughs of the best 80s era ghost comedies.

The black and white opening does perfectly capture that vibe, however. In the golden age of Hollywood, a starlet receives a protective amulet from her lover…right before being murdered by the mob. That amulet clearly didn’t work, so you’d think her revenge as a ghost would be to come back to give her man a piece of her mind for giving her a shitty gift.

Next, we meet the main three cute slacker/surfer type dudes in the current day, making this a new addition to the sausage fest scares page. One of them, who looks exactly like Cary Elwes of Saw, inherits his grandfather’s house, so the trio moves in. Shirts optional. Awesome.

Everything that happens after feels totally underdeveloped. A real estate agent tells them the place is haunted and wants to help them sell it. He clearly has other motives, but he isn’t in the movie enough to be a true foil.

The bear of the bunch, who looks like an even cuter Zach Galifianakis and absolutely steals the show as the only real funny one of the group, seems to have visions, but that’s not explored very much. Unfortunately, a scene with him in only a towel is spoiled when you can see that he’s actually wearing shorts underneath. But man, is he scrumptious.

Anyway, he pushes the other guys to try to contact the starlet’s ghost after it attacks him. They hold a séance. They go to a psychic. They find the starlet’s amulet.

And this is where things get weird in the third act. The starlet appears in solid form, and they start partying with her, but there’s still not much in the way of humor that really hits.

However, there are some kills, yet the guys just write each one off as no big deal and stay chummy with the ghost! It really feels like the script just couldn’t decide how to juggle everything it threw together, and it makes the ending really anticlimactic and loaded with loose ends.

PSYCHO SCIENCE (2024)

Running only 68 minutes long, this low budget indie answers the question “What if Weird Science was a slasher? What it nails the most is the theme song, which is an instrumental copycat of Oingo Boingo’s “Weird Science” theme song. Not to mention, it swaps genders, so we get a stud instead of a babe. Awesome, but no, the main two characters that create him aren’t gay guys. That would have actually made for a better, funnier movie.

In terms of comedy, the film really doesn’t deliver any humorous highlights. So much of the first half features our two main girls going on bad dates, and none of it is all that funny.

Meanwhile, their geeky guy friend creates a machine, which looks like an aluminum foil tower, that can materialize anything you want if you simply feed it a photo of what you desire.

19 minutes in, they decide to create the perfect man to share. Out comes a hottie just undies, and the first thing he does is shower. Yay!

Here’s the weird thing. The girls don’t really share him. He is pretty much exclusively with one girl, while the other girl doesn’t show any signs of jealousy. That could have added a deeper dimension to the plot and played better into the horror and slasher elements.

Instead, the girls discover they fed a photo of a serial killer into the machine. Their creation heads to a cabin in the woods to kill off a group of friends that is introduced halfway through the movie. It’s purely low budget, complete with big tits and a totally hokey, CGI beheading.

When the plot finally circles back to the two main girls, their solution to stopping the murders is absolutely silly and anticlimactic.

GHOUL HOUSE (2021)

Is this 73-minute horror comedy about unexplained cat zombie people and a murderous school bully infiltrating a party absolutely goofy and illogical? Absolutely. Did it totally keep me riveted thanks to perfect auditory and visual 80s vibes? Also absolutely.

We meet the main players at school, and then we movie right to the party. This house is drenched in Argento light colors and strobes, setting the perfect tone. We also get a nonstop synth score and at least four dance montages that feature only like 2 to 4 people dancing, which is kind of funny.

This is the lowest attendance party ever. But the tracks used for the dancing scenes are fantastic: “Moans” by Parade Ground from 1988, and the modern wave track “Rites of Macabre” by The Seance.

The crazy bully, a beefy dude who goes shirtless and is the major comic relief thanks to his over-the-top performance, is outside waiting to crash the party and makes a couple of funny gay jokes throughout the course of the movie, including a sadly thwarted plan to face fuck a dude he wounds.

The cat zombies are also a hoot. The hubby and I both chuckled at the way they moved and made cat sounds.

Only thing is, the cat zombies don’t get inside until 53 minutes into the movie. This doesn’t feel like a very fleshed out script. Nothing is explained, plot points are dropped, and after a bunch of kills, the movie simply ends with the two survivors running off being chased by the cat zombies. Even so, the final act with all the cat zombie chaos in the house is just such a vibe.

1 HOUR TO KILL (2025)

This is a sequel to 6:66 PM, with the same exact cast of characters once again trying to film a ghost hunter show. This time they are checking out a house supposedly haunted by a serial killer.

A good portion of the first part of the film doesn’t do much of anything. The banter as they film on location isn’t all that funny, they do the screaming in unison gag a bit too much, and the most excitement is that the lights go out.

Everything changes when cutie Michael Buonomo comes on the scene.

He is perfectly over-the-top and hilarious in his psychotic need for revenge for his sister, who died at the hands of the serial killer.

He performs a ritual that is meant to cause someone to be possessed by the serial killer’s ghost, which will allow him to then kill the ghost. He chases the ghost hunters in order to track down the one possessed by the serial killer, but the ghost keeps jumping bodies.

The cast hits its comedic stride at this point, especially the always funny Chad Ridgely.

The chase scenes do get a bit repetitive, but the final confrontation in a salt circle makes for a good climax.

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TUBI TERRORS: 3 movies with sinister hands on the poster art

Posted on January 31, 2026 by Daniel

How’s that for a theme to use to knock three more off my Tubi watchlist? Let’s find out if this trio grabbed me by the throat…

MEATHOOK (2024)

This one really surprised me. I was expecting just the usual, generic, cabin in the woods slasher, but a decision is made here to trash the template for a different approach. It almost works for me, but something seriously bizarre happens in the final act.

The traditional opening scene has a straight couple hiking through the woods when a killer wearing some sort of tribal garb and an animal skull mask appears and wielding a hook appears. There’s a good chase scene, which includes the girl tripping and fucking up her ankle. Classic. However, overall, we never get any really good shots of the killer’s full form, so I had to go with this fleeting, close-up mask shot.

Next, everything changes. We meet our main girl, who is such a great, unassuming final girl. Again, classic. She is a college student suffering from PTSD, and the surprisingly serious portrayal of her struggle is played perfectly by the lead actress. She was the survivor of a slasher situation in which she saw all her friends die at a cabin in the woods.

The flashbacks of the incident sprinkled throughout the film present an intense slasher and had me convinced this movie is a sequel to a movie I somehow missed. But it’s not. The flashbacks are essentially used to deliver slasher scenes to satisfy the audience, and it works. Like, I really wanted to see that whole movie. Prequel in the works, perhaps?

There is a slasher going on within the main story as well. While the main girl is becoming a downer for her college friends, who are trying to enjoy campus life while she’s avoiding any fun, people start to get killed off in random locations. The main girl is (rightly) paranoid that someone is out there and coming for her, which is getting on the nerves of her friends as they plan a big party.

The main girl’s fears only heighten when word gets out about the new murders. A detective from the first round of kills is called in because these new kills seem like a copycat situation. When he comes to speak with the main girl, her trauma kicks into high gear.

Inevitably, this is going to turn into a situation in which the killer targets her and her friends at the party, but just when that is about to happen, a sequence unfolds that left me baffled and took me out of the rest of the movie. One of her friends is in a bathtub, getting gruesomely hooked by the killer in the worst possible part of the body, when there’s a fourth wall break. Suddenly, she’s an actress surrounded by a film crew and director making a movie. There’s no explanation for this moment, and the movie goes right back to the real plot line with the killer targeting all the friends. I cannot wrap my head around what the intention was here. Was it a meta moment to ensure us that this girl didn’t actually have a hook in her hole? No idea.

Either way, once we’re back in the main story, we finally get the traditional slasher finale, with our main girl facing off against the killer, and it’s just as satisfying as her slasher flashbacks.

But wait! There’s another interesting choice made in the movie. There’s this adorable dude wearing an 80s-style half-shirt as they prepare for the party, and he’s totally into slashers and final girls. He also wears leopard print undies and gives his booty a spank when he’s being pressured by his girlfriend to get married.

All I could think the whole time was that this dude is so gay! Apparently, he either inexplicably is a closeted gay or he’s supposed to be in the bi closet, because later on, he starts feeling himself up while ogling a photo of a muscle bod on his phone, which lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

FEAR CABIN: THE LAST WEEKEND OF SUMMER (2024)

This is a case of a movie that has so much potential with the main through line but opts instead to distract with time jumps and side plots.

What it delivers in its main story is tried-and-true, straightforward, popcorn movie fun—a group of friends goes to a cabin in the woods and accidentally unleashes benevolent evil.

In this case, it’s a witch. Love me a good witch, and this witch is a blast. In the opening scene, she kills a bunch of people in colonial times with her powers.

In modern times, we meet our main group of pretty people, with the guys being shirtless in a pool, including this stud muffin.

Thank you, Mr. Director, who also happens to be one of the shirtless stars of the film.

For no reason other than to give us an early kill, we then see a random jogger get dragged into the woods.

When our likable group heads to a cabin in the woods, they are unpleasantly welcomed by Jeremy London, who the audience knows is a ghost since he was in the opening scene. He warns the group to stay away from the gravestones in the woods. That’s all the use we get out of him aside from a familiar name in the credits. His role is unnecessary. His ghost adds nothing to the proceedings, he doesn’t help take on the witch, and the main cast never even learns he’s a ghost.

They do, however, not only go near the gravestones inadvertently, but they also read from a book they find in the cabin before throwing it on their campfire. That’s it. That’s all we needed to get the ball rolling.

The witch appears. She’s just a regular, vengeful girl, not all gnarly or anything, but she does do the neck tick thing to deliver some creepiness. She also just pops up all over the cabin and tosses people around magically, which is good enough for me. It’s also the one and only special effect exploited here. There’s not even any gore.

Instead, this film veers into those confusing time jumps, made even more convoluted because the director plays a different role in each of them. They’re merely other cases of people that have gone to the cabin and encountered the witch. That only manages to steal from the time we get to see the main group being terrorized.

In fact, when we finally return to them, the witch has to make haste and kill most of them off one after the other, when what we could have had was a classic scenario of the suspense, tension, scares, chases, and kills ramping up to a major climax. This was so close to being the witch equivalent of an Evil Dead scenario, but it tried a little too hard to be different. Even so, overall, it’s a pretty fun flick.

SPOOKT (2023)

The opening of this one really hooked me. A young boy walking home from school runs in terror past an infamous house where a child disappeared after going inside on a dare. The house the filmmakers found for the exterior shots is totally perfect.

In some flashback moments, we learn about a doctor, played by Eric Roberts, who previously lived in the house and was believed to have done horrible things to patients. Another unnecessary cameo.

The main story is about an online debunker and a psychic medium both arriving at the house at the same time to bring their personal perspectives to the story. What is quite cool here is when the skeptic arrives and a man in a dress answers the door, she immediately apologizes after fearing she misgendered him. It’s smooth and simple and the way anyone could do it in real life.

Anyway, the skeptic and psychic are at odds with each other from moment one as they take different approaches to investigating the events that took place in the house.

Resting debunker face.

The problem is that the movie just isn’t compelling. There are a few slightly spooky moments, but the two women don’t experience anything terrifying enough to hold your attention.

There are some side characters, but they don’t get much focus until the single moments when their horrific additions to the backstory are revealed. In fact, two of those instances have more “eek!” factor than anything the two main women experience throughout the course of the movie. The climax is just weird and confusing, and I didn’t quite understand it.

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Messing with the minds of men

Posted on January 30, 2026 by Daniel

It’s a trio of films in which we get a main guy who feels like he’s losing touch with reality. So, did any of them make my spine tingle? I mean the movies not the men, although, all three guys were pretty cute.

THE TWIN (2024)

Watching this particular entry in the trauma porn subgenre (as I like to call it), I was initially reminded that with novels like Pet Sematary, Stephen King has been doing trauma horror for so long in a way that the current decade of trauma dump overkill rarely does. In King stories, the trauma is there, but the horror isn’t merely a metaphor for the horror. The trauma is what leaves the characters vulnerable to the trappings of actual horror, like the urge to bury your deceased child in a cemetery that brings the dead back to life, only…they don’t come back the same.

There are perhaps five minutes near the end of The Twin that make it seem like there might indeed be a demon “twin”, but this is mostly a movie in which mental illness and grief trigger a character to see things that aren’t really there. And even worse, the therapist in the movie refers to the conjuring of these delusions with the term “fetch”. No, seriously. This movie tries to make fetch happen, and I couldn’t get past it. And I couldn’t even figure out if the therapist was using fetch as a noun, adjective, or verb. Were the monsters “fetches”, were they very fetch monsters, or was the main guy “fetching” the monsters? No idea.

So, our main guy is home with his young son when tragedy occurs, causing him to spiral downward. For his own good, his wife sends him off to live in his dead grandmother’s house (where he already experienced trauma in his childhood!) under the watchful eye of a therapist.

What unfolds is a whole lot of horror imagery. Meaning…the demonic doppelgänger and corpse grandmother the main guy keeps seeing are never really going to hurt him. Cue loads of bogus jump scares. Sigh.

It’s in the final act that the wife and therapist seem to temporarily face off against the doppelgänger that has been terrorizing the husband. That battle doesn’t last long before it’s back to symbolic schizophrenia as the husband is forced to confront his frightful feelings while in a hypnotic state. It’s really nothing we haven’t seen before, although the fetches he fetches were pretty fetch. Fuck it. I’m going to make fetch happen.

THE DARK ROOM (2023)

Sometimes, I can’t figure out what exactly filmmakers were attempting with the scripts they use, and this is one of those cases.

To start things off, the movie opens with one of the final moments showing the main guy being stabbed by the masked killer. Why? WHY? Why show such a spoiler scene first? Especially since the very next scene after the credits shows another victim being stabbed! That could have been the opener if they were so intent on grabbing us with a kill scene.

The film is moody, somber, and slow, with a grindhouse filter to set a tone that the film never quite lives up to.

The main guy works in a photo development shop. He’s bipolar. He has video call meetings with his therapist, played by 80s movie queen Diane Franklin. He has uninteresting conversations with customers. He becomes obsessed with a series of killings happening around town. He gets weird calls from a female. And he has awkward interactions with a reverend who comes into the shop.

While this seems to be trying to play out as a mystery, there are only three characters shady enough to possibly be suspects—the reverend, the woman caller, and the main guy. Considering the main guy is stabbed by the killer in the preview scene at the beginning, that leaves two possibilities. Sigh.

Nothing compelling happens here to keep us riveted. There are occasional kills of redneck dudes every now and then in the first part of the film, but the kills completely stop for the second half. The main guy researches Native American legend and lore, but Native Americans don’t play any crucial role in the movie. The main guy eventually turns his attention to the reverend, who seems totally off. This movie is nothing if not predictable.

There’s all this promise of horror angles—the main guy has sleep paralysis, sees shadow people, acquires a protective amulet, spies on a ritual involving a statue—but in the end, this is seriously just a movie about someone in a mask killing people. Really underwhelming.

BENEATH THE LIGHT (2024)

Yowsah. The main guy in this one has a bangin’ bod, so I’m not bummed by the opening being a scene from later in the movie that briefly shows his eventual encounter with the supernatural as well as his shirtless physique.

This is more trauma-based horror, this time in the form of a haunting. It’s a slow burn about a guy who takes a job working at a lighthouse because he has vague memories of playing with the owner’s daughter when he was a child.

The cast consists mostly of just the main guy, the guy that owns the lighthouse, and a young waitress from the mainland that the main guy befriends.

The owner seems really shady, and as soon as the main guy starts working in the lighthouse, he is plagued with disturbing visions of something happening to the young girl from his past.

As he spends plenty of time shirtless and creeping around the house at night, he experiences spooky situations, but it all feels like some sort of repressed memory plaguing him rather than an actual haunting. Don’t expect to be all that frightened by what unfolds.

There’s more of a mystery aspect to it, so you end up just watching to learn what really happened to the owner’s daughter. And, you know, for more of this…

It’s ultimately not a very thrilling film, but there is a clever twist involving misremembered memories, which is about the juiciest element of the whole movie.

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CAUGHT ON CAMERA: ghosts, demons, killers, and the boogeyman

Posted on January 26, 2026 by Daniel

It’s a variety of plots involving people that want to be seen on camera getting offed on camera. How I wish it was as fun as it sounds…

THE HAUNTING AT JACK THE RIPPER’S HOUSE (2025)

This one is about capturing live footage of ghosts, but it’s mostly not in first person POV. The focus switches to that only occasionally.

There is so much filler here that they should have just made it like 70 minutes long instead of 85 minutes long to tighten the pacing.

The opening has a straight couple exploring a house and then getting dragged away and killed, with no obvious sign of who or what did it. That pretty much describes the whole film.

We then meet a group of YouTube ghost hunters. Viewers think they are fakes, so they want to prove they aren’t.

We then get a short sequence of them exploring a haunted abbey that shows us that they are indeed fakes.

We next learn that they plan to go to Jack the Ripper’s house. Considering it’s never been proven who he actually was, how did they pull off finding his house? Apparently that question is answered by a news clip saying new evidence shows the most obvious identity of who he was. Sigh.

Then we cut to four years ago for a short clip of how the two main guys started the ghost hunting channel. Then we cut to two years ago for a short clip of the team filming another fake scare. None of this is necessary. Seriously.

Next, the two guys who found the team fight, and one quits. Then the others are interviewed about going to Jack the Ripper’s house. Then they film themselves talking to fans on livestream while driving to the place.

Once they arrive, the caretaker dude that lets them in is a perfect parody of the classic crazy dude who gives the ominous warning.

The usual exploration and bogus scares begin, the group uses a Ouija board, shit gets weird, and I laughed when a ghostly voice said, “Get out!”

With 25 minutes left, team members begin getting possession eyes, someone in a top hat with a sack hiding their identity begins killing everyone, another killer in a black mask shows up, we get one killer reveal and motivation, the other killer is not revealed, I don’t know why people were getting possessed or why one of the killers would kill them after they did…yeah, this movie made no sense. And to top it all off, it ends abruptly while in the middle of a scene that really could have gone somewhere.

FOUND FOOTAGE: THE MAKING OF THE PATTERSON PROJECT (2025)

I don’t care if it’s found footage or a horror comedy. If you’re going to make a 90-minute horror movie, dedicate at least the last 30 minutes to horror-focused thrills, not just 3 minutes near the end, which is all you get here. And for a horror “comedy” that is trying to be slyly humorous, this one simply is not funny.

It’s supposed to be about the hurdles of aspiring filmmakers trying to make a found footage movie. I’d say the real story here is about a hurdle the makers of this film never got over…making a horror comedy that works.

Anyway, we are introduced to all the main players on the film crew one by one as they are interviewed. Then we watch them meet with movie biz people in an effort to get funding. Then they hold auditions. Then they explore the house in the woods where they are shooting their Bigfoot film. Then they rehearse and start to experience a variety of hiccups.

None of it is interesting or funny, even though that appears to be the intention.

The funniest part is when they dress one of the guys up as the late Alan Rickman because they told an old lady investor that he’s in the movie, and she’s coming to visit the set.

That is when we get a big sign that this movie isn’t about a film crew that’s making a Bigfoot movie encountering an actual Bigfoot. Nope. It’s about demonic possession.

Suddenly, 78 minutes into the movie, the demonic shit hits the fan for three minutes, like Evil Dead on speed. Okay. Evil Dead on even more speed. To think they could pull off such a great segment and didn’t embellish on it is a shame, and it simply isn’t enough to make this film worth sitting through.

EVIDENCE OF THE BOOGEYMAN (2025)

This is another formulaic flick that goes nowhere, and it barely uses its boogeyman.

A film crew of four goes to a haunted cabin in the woods to learn more about a legend of “the boogeyman”. We also get some unnecessary commentary sprinkled throughout the film from a few experts on the subject.

I immediately had to turn on subtitles, because the sound mixing is not good, so it’s hard to hear what is being said throughout the movie whenever characters have “whispery” conversations.

The group doesn’t do much of anything for a majority of this movie. They explore the cabin, they perform a magical ritual in the woods that spooks one of them, and one guy even gets the lone girl in the group to start having POV sex (found footage fucking?), at which point the boogeyman makes a fleeting appearance—perhaps the best moment in the movie.

Slowly but surely, the characters begin disappearing into the woods until there’s only one guy left. He sees all the others walking towards him like they’re under some sort of spell, runs into the boogeyman…camera cut. The end. This was the third miss in the bunch for me.

HOUSE OF ROOMS (2023)

This one feels like a SyFy movie circa 2005, and I was so there for a retro vibe that brought me back to a more hopeful time (yes, now that era feels like better times…).

I liked the look, the cast, the concept, the campy tone, the cheesy effects…and yet, the movie just wasn’t exciting.

The opening has a night janitor seeing a bad CGI ghost girl before getting chloroformed and locked in a coffin.

Next, we meet a devious TV producer who needs a hit show. He plans to draw together all types of people—different races, gender identities, sexualities, political leanings, etc. Yet it’s virtually all white people with no clear expression of gender or sexuality. Some of them have accents, so I guess that’s the diversity.

The group is put in one room in a dark building, and they get sent out separately to complete search and find challenges. Sounds like it could set up some pretty good scenarios, right? Nope. It’s just bland, bland, bland exploration with offscreen disappearances.

There are some confessional clips, the contestants bicker, they become concerned people might actually be getting killed, the producers watch gleefully from monitors from another room…

Special glasses come into play that allow you to see ghosts, but don’t expect to experience anything on the level of the 13 Ghosts remake. There’s also a film strip they view of people being experimented on, yet it still doesn’t bring any grit or gore to this horror-lite flick.

Eventually, we learn the identity of the actual killer, and there are some chase scenes, but the killer starts using a gun! Yawn.

The best part is when the ghosts finally do something exciting…they turn against the killer. And just when you think it’s over, there is a trippy twist in the final scene.

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Slashing and savoring

Posted on January 23, 2026 by Daniel

It’s a trio of indie flicks with cannibals, masked killers, and even some signs of the supernatural. As a bonus, we get a final gay!

THE BOATYARD (2025)

This is as paint by numbers as a cannibalistic crazies movie gets, with absolutely no genuine horror thrills to be had. However, the film stands out for two reasons. First, horror daddy Mike Ferguson has a blast playing a psycho.

Second, we get a Black final gay guy, which lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

A group of friends goes out on a boat. They party for a while, complete with some girl-on-girl action. Not that the girls have much choice since there’s only one straight guy and one gay guy with them. The boat dies. The group calls for help.

Mike Ferguson comes to their rescue and takes them to…an island? His hotel in the middle of nowhere? I’m not sure, but wherever it is, there is absolutely no one else around beyond the friends, Ferguson, and the creepy man and woman that run an empty bar next to wherever it is that Ferguson sets the friends up with rooms.

After another partying montage, the friends retire for the night. Once alone, the gay guy is all ready to jerk off when he thinks he hears someone in his room.

And then, the friends begin getting abducted one by one. They are thrown in prison cells. Some are killed. Some are eaten. Some fight back.

The gay guy eventually runs into another gay dude who seems to come out of nowhere and offers to help him save his friends. But first…

There’s some gore and violence, but we don’t get any kind of suspense, tension, or atmosphere. Even the music disappoints, sounding like the kind of dramatic action music you hear during the cutscenes in a Resident Evil video game. I would know since I just finished revisiting RE3 the other day.

There is a reason for the killings (it’s one you’ve heard many times before), plus we get a hokey ending that sets things up for a sequel.

THE JOLLY MONKEY (2025)

I found this one to be highly entertaining as far as cheesy slashers go. The killer is dressed like one of those cymbal-crashing monkey toys and wears a monkey mask that is so goofy it morphs into looking ghoulish, and the kills are pretty dang gruesome.

A family inherits a motel, but they’re split in their opinions on what to do with it. And soon after, they start getting split by the killer.

One of those monkey toys begins popping up in various places, and when it does, the person that finds it is stabbed to death and has their face peeled off by the killer. Eek!

There are some cheap scares, good atmosphere and chase scenes, and twists and turns as the family tries to figure out a way to escape the killer. The ghost of a former victim even makes an appearance as the final act picks up.

The killer reveal is a doozy, and there’s a fun explanation for the face-peeling, as well as a bit of a supernatural element.

It’s all topped off with a classic, hokey final frame promising a sequel.

THE DEVIL’S HACKSAW (2025)

You really have to approach this one from the right perspective to appreciate it. There are loads of kills, dark themes, and grindhouse visuals that might make it seem like a serious film spoiled by a cheap, corny, low budget production. However, if you give it a chance instead of quickly giving up on it, it’s actually a playful slasher with plenty of humor and a dose of campy graphic novel elements.

The black and white animated opener alone sets up the tone as we learn of a killer abducting a bus full of children and then being thrown in an insane asylum.

Next, we see a killer in a straight-jacket and mask approach two girls parked in a jeep. I think they were speaking redneck, because I could barely understand them. They flash their tits, which of course means they’re just asking for it. It feels like a serious chase and kill scene, but the killer stroking his lead pipe and a comic book splash of blood that splatters the camera lens says otherwise.

Another cool, animated sequence reveals how the killer slaughtered the staff of the institution and escaped. After that, the numerous kills should make it clear this is comedy. For instance, the killer dumps gas on a mechanic who casually begs not to be torched, followed by the killer dancing giddily when he sets the mechanic on fire.

THAT is the vibe you have to go with to appreciate this one. It mostly bounces from kills (the killer even eats body parts at one point) and the local law enforcement investigating the scenes of each crime.

For the final act, the killer does what masked killers do best; he terrorizes a summer camp. Awesome. It’s a major massacre, he roasts eyes like marshmallows, and we get a long, final girl chase scene.

But perhaps my favorite moment of all is the final scene, in which the killer returns for Christmas.

And if I’m not mistaken, he targets a gay couple (again, redneck speak causes a language barrier, so I wasn’t sure).

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RESIDENT EVIL 3: Nemesis is forever my nemesis

Posted on January 22, 2026 by Daniel

Resident Evil 3 is still my absolute favorite RE video game. It is the first RE game I played on my first PC, right after the first RE movie came out, and it put me in a panic the whole time…except for that whole chunk of time I spent running in circles when I couldn’t figure out what I was missing that was keeping me from progressing. That was when I first learned about online walkthroughs.

While I really liked the remake from a few years ago because it was a new gaming experience with familiar elements, I still wish we had gotten a faithful update like the Resident Evil 2 remake. I would love to see the original Nemesis game refreshed on modern systems.

Revisiting the original game now on my GameCube, I can’t even imagine how many times I replayed it. My last “game completed” save was on hard mode, which means…I had infinite ammo for every weapon. Awesome.


That didn’t help much at the very start, when Jill Valentine is left surrounded by zombies after the opening movie. I had only an infinite handgun on me, and I was so not equipped to handle a throwback to the old tank controls. Holy crap did survival horror games play differently back then. At least this game introduced quick turn…which I ended up not using even once during the replay. You also get dodge functions, but I didn’t use those either. At least, not on purpose. At times when I was button mashing, they were triggered accidentally, and shockingly, it always worked out in my favor.


Once I made it to the first save room (RE3 still has the best save room music ever), I grabbed the infinite rocket launcher from the storage chest, and I was good to go. I just wish that you’d also get infinite printer ribbons. Ugh. I hate feeling nervous to save too often. As for supplies, this game is kind of tricky, because a lot of items don’t glimmer, so they’re not easy to spot. For instance, at one point I randomly decided to click on a pile of rubbish in the corner of a room and found another ink ribbon! That’s 3 save slots I could have missed out on, and apparently the person who wrote the walkthrough did, because it wasn’t mentioned at all. You best believe I immediately Googled all ink ribbon locations for the game and wrote them all into the walkthrough.

I love that RE3 lets you run through the narrow, claustrophobic alleys in Raccoon City. You can actually hear how evacuated the city is. So creepy. The distant moans of zombies carry on the wind, and occasionally you’ll run past windows that have zombies banging on the other side of them. Eek! The streets are extra unnerving in hard mode because there are a lot more zombies around, but they were no match for my infinite rocket launcher. And once you find the first map, you realize how helpful the RE maps were compared to the useless maps some other horror games offered back then.

The challenge for me was trying to keep inventory slots open. With only 8 of them and no telling which items you can leave in storage for a while, I often found myself leaving behind minor items that are major to me—like health! Argh! Thanks to my infinite ammo, what I didn’t need to worry about was the whole aspect of picking up and mixing gun powder to make ammo, which was first introduced in this installment of the series. The upside is that when you use an item and it isn’t needed again, the game prompts you to discard it, which is a weight off your shoulders.

The fun for those who played RE3 after originally playing RE2 first is when you arrive at the Raccoon City Police Department. There’s not much time to rejoice, however, because you immediately encounter that big bully Nemesis. EEK! This is the first time in the game where you get a “choose your own adventure” selection on screen. Following a walkthrough will help you make informed decisions as to how your game will differ based on the choices you make in these moments, and this is perhaps the reason I played the game so many times. I’m sure I meticulously made notes as to which paths I took each playthrough so that I could select different ones every time in order to experience all the game had to offer. Not to mention, I first played it on PC…then got the PS1 version for my PS2 to play on a larger screen…then upgraded to the Dreamcast version for tighter graphics…then did the same when I bought the GameCube. Holy shit, I’ve wasted so much money buying the same things over and over again.


Anyway, for this first encounter with Nemesis, there’s an option to completely avoid him, but with my infinite rocket launcher equipped, I opted to blow him away instead. That drops him temporarily, and you get to pick up a bonus treasure that he leaves behind. I’d forgotten just how many “choose your own adventure” moments add replay value to this game. The walkthrough I used was extra thorough and broke down the path choices and which one was “recommended”. In most cases the recommended one ensures you avoid a battle with Nemesis. However, those rules don’t totally seem to apply in hard mode. At one point, I chose the recommended option, in which Nemesis is supposed to get blasted through a window by an explosion so you don’t have to fight him. I thought I was in the clear after the cutscene and began nonchalantly exploring the room for supplies while Nemesis was draped dead over a windowsill…but then the monster music began and the bitch got back up and I had to shoot him with my handy infinite ammo rocket launcher. Man, this game is fun once you score that weapon.

When you enter the police station, the extra thrill of being back in your old stomping ground is that you get to enter a few different areas that were closed off to characters in RE2. Awesome. You do some basic exploring, item gathering, and zombie killing, and then Nemesis shows up again. Without a walkthrough, you wouldn’t know that you are actually finished in the police station at that point and should just leave instead of wasting ammo on him (if you don’t have an infinite rocket launcher).


Back on the streets, you now have to contend with zombie dogs as well as continue running around in circles not really knowing exactly what the hell you’re trying to accomplish. These games really did make you feel like you were absolutely without motivation most of the time, didn’t they?

Zombies become more prevalent, Nemesis shows up more, and you have some random puzzles here and there. You also have to pick up a lot more items, and even after you score an added satchel that gives you two bonus item slots in your inventory, you should read ahead in a walkthrough to see what you can leave in storage for later to free up some room.

As desolate as the city is, you don’t feel totally alone, because you meet several military guys along the way. Human contact. It matters. However, as you get deeper and deeper into the city, it becomes more maze-like, and more zombies, killer dogs, and bigger creatures start appearing, so the loneliness comes flooding back. The game also delivers some great jump scares just when you think everything is calm and quiet.


The moment you’ll know you’re near the end of the first part of the game is when Jill has to get a cable car running. Before you can even get to the cable car, you end up falling into a hole and land in a little corridor with a giant worm popping out of holes in the wall. The goal is to turn on three switches in various corridor offshoots to lower a ladder to get out of the hole. Problem is, the worm always fricking knows where you are. As soon as you enter a nook to hit a button, the worm hits you and knocks you out of the nook. It also takes a load of your health. Fuck. And the fixed camera angles make it almost impossible to see the worm when you really need to. Fuck. This little side section wasted so much of my damn health, and there was none to be found on the way to the cable car. I even tried blasting he bitch with my infinite rocket launcher, but I got the sense he’s indestructible in this segment. Not to mention, the only way to avoid being hit by him before I could lift my launcher was to stand outside the nook, at which point the camera angle would change and I couldn’t see if he was even in the nook anymore. I have a feeling he wasn’t.


Once you get the cable car running, holy crap does shit get hard. You end up at a clock tower, and there are more zombie swarms, killer crows, and those damn giant spiders.

Whenever you kill them, they release little baby spiders that swarm you and poison you. There’s one central foyer in the Clock Tower that has some blue herbs to heal the poison immediately without having to put it in your inventory first, but there is really nothing in the way of regular health. I’m not going to lie. By the end of this section, I was clutching my side and dragging my leg, with my health status in total danger mode, and it was at that point that I had to fight a Nemesis battle. Oh fuck.


I don’t know how I pulled this off, because in this boss battle he was shooting at me with a rocket launcher. The idea is to shoot back when he isn’t holding up the launcher. That also happens to be when he’s charging you. Somehow, I managed to zombie shuffle my wounded ass out of the rocket’s way a few times and shoot my own infinite rocket launcher at him as he charged me. Shot him twice and he was done.


Right then, you switch over to playing Carlos. Jill has been infected, and it is up to him to find a cure…without access to her inventory. The difficulty increases with Carlos. In infinite ammo mode, he doesn’t have the rocket launcher, just an assault rifle and a handgun. Obviously, I went with the assault rifle, because the enemies are insane during his mission. The only other thing you get for him is a set of 3 ink ribbons. Yay, because you find 3 more for him in another save room. Sadly, you can’t leave them behind for Jill once you switch back to her, but on the bright side, you should absolutely use them all.

You have one mission here. Go to the hospital and find a few ingredients for a vaccine. Unfortunately, there are lots of zombies, and lots of fricking hunters. I also noticed that if you have to load a save because you die, or in my case, because my aging GameCube kept freezing up, items like herbs are in different places, and you get different enemies despite retracing the same path you walked the first time.


This isn’t a long segment—you only have to go to two floors and just a few rooms—but the number of enemies makes this one a chore. However, as you leave the hospital, there’s suddenly a bomb on a 7-second timer. The door to leave is literally about ten steps adjacent to where you are standing before the timer cutscene, but you know how fricking disorienting those returns to playing after cutscenes can be. Worst of all, just as you are about to return to Jill, Nemesis appears in a bigger, badder, mutant form, and he chases you through doorways! The idea is not to fight him but to just run right back to the room where you left Jill, since it’s a save room and he can’t follow you in.


Once you are back to being Jill (video games have been woke and gender fluid for decades), you are in the final stretch of the game. The good news is that if you research where ink ribbons are in the game, you can score like 12 in total in this final section. I was saving left and right. It was awesome, and I still had like 10 ribbons left when I finished the game.

By the way, even if you were deathly ill as Jill before you became Carlos (as I was), you are all fresh and healed when you are back to playing her. Good thing, because you immediately encounter mutated Nemesis. You can dodge him, but he does follow you. With the infinite rocket launcher, I just blasted his ass, and he dropped one of those 3-pack health sprays. Holy shit, I forgot all about them. Three health sprays taking up only one inventory slot. Crucial here, because the enemies are brutal in this final section. I also noticed that the rocket launcher, even infinite, has two disadvantages. First, it takes time to lift the heavy fucker every time you shoot, so if fast enemies are right on you, you get caught in a loop of them hitting you while you’re lifting the launcher, at which point you start the movement all over again and get hit again until eventually you die without having shot one rocket. Second, you can’t aim up or down with the rocket launcher, so if anything is crawling on the floor or ceiling, you shoot right past the enemy. I decided to also carry my infinite assault rifle for this last part for shooting speed and flexibility for the crawling enemies.

We even meet some new enemies, including snakes that drop from above in a park section, as well as the return of the giant worm, which you do get to fight this time. You also go through a graveyard where fricking zombies come up from the ground. Awesome from a horror perspective, but in reality, Resident Evil has always been about infection, not the rising of the dead, right?

The park area is dark, spooky, and loaded with enemies, at least in hard mode. Decades ago, when I first played on easy, there was an amazing moment where I entered this really tranquil boardwalk path over the water and through the forest, and there was just one lone zombie standing at a turn in the boardwalk, swaying back and forth, not even looking at me. It was terrifying. This time, hunters kept jumping out of the water left and right and beating the shit out of me. Fuckers.

Most of this section is about finding keys just to open paths to get to other keys. You also have a few very short runs through the sewer (hate the sewer), and some of the puzzles are damn annoying, even with a walkthrough. Plus, there are quite a few choices to make to choose your own adventure and change the ending of the game.

There are plenty of save rooms, which are the perfect complement to all the ink ribbons you find. There’s also lots of health around, so I would advise grabbing it all and running back to the save rooms to store it for use during the final boss battle.

Before the final boss, you have a run-in with mutant Nemesis. You are required to kill him to get the last necessary key card, so health and ammo are crucial to have on hand. This battle is also followed by a timer, and I was panicking, because a cutscene shows the card key following the defeat of Nemesis, but as soon as I regained control of Jill, I was spinning in circles around the room trying to locate that spot. Argh.

The final battle is tricky. Nemesis has now morphed into a big slug thing with tentacles. In the tight room you’re in, which has several offshoots, the goal is to fend him off while you run around pushing three huge batteries into their designated spots. You know how slow those pushing animations can be. Argh. The smart thing to do is to go check the batteries and their locations before you press the button that triggers the battle, because they are numbered 1,2, and 3, and you have to push them in order. Also, once you get the machine running, you have to lead the monster in front of a giant laser gun thingy so he will be shot by it, and you have to get him to stay in front of it more than once.

As soon as he’s dead, it’s time to jump in a helicopter and watch a city explode below you…just like in most Resident Evil games.

Still think this is one of my favorite RE games, with Code Veronica as a close second. I will find out soon enough, because that one is next on my replay list.

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