FOUND FOOTAGE: ghosts, a killer clown, a vampire spirit…and even a gay hottie

I haven’t delved into a bunch of found footage flicks in a while, so I figured it was time to throw in a marathon of them. Let’s find out if that was a good decision.

CHATEAU (2024)

If you love found footage films, this is a pretty fun one to check out. It’s filled with cheap scares, ghouls, and horror hottie Colton Tran as the gay best friend of the main girl, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

Our main girl is trying to make it as an influencer, so Colton suggests she go ghost hunting in a haunted chateau in France. She poses as a cleaning lady, and once the woman who owns the house leaves to let her do her work alone, she whips out her camera and starts her supernatural search, and eventually welcomes Colton in to help her out.

It’s everything you’d want from a found footage flick. The chateau setting is amazingly creepy. She roams dark halls, she catches glimpses of something in the shadows, she falls victim to bogus scares, she falls victim to real scares.

Complicating matters, she gets calls from what sounds like her dead mother, and her mother even joins the corpse-like ghosts that seem to multiply as the film progresses. Yes, her grief over the loss of her mother is a driving factor in her life in case you’re looking for something a little deeper in your found footage flicks. Personally, I was not.

She even decides to do what she says they do in horror movies…she hides under a sheet. Considering this foolish knows hiding under a sheet is what they do in horror movies, she should have expected it to go exactly as it does.

There are definitely some great suspense and scare sequences, but I was underwhelmed by the turn the plot takes in the final act.

THE HAUNTING OF THE MURDER HOUSE (2022)

This is another one that sticks to the found footage template and should satisfy fans of the subgenre. The opener draws us in as a cop slips into a dark house and encounters a killer clown.

Next, we meet a group of ghost hunters doing a live stream in the house, where a serial killer tortured and murdered numerous people.

The group explores the house and sets up some fake scares to entertain the masses. However, one team member thinks they should actually try to conjure something supernatural.

They use a Ouija board, they do a ritual in a pentagram, they find a mannequin in a clown mask that offers up a very Hellhouse Llc scene, and one guy has a Lights Out moment.

Finally, in the last 20 minutes, the action picks up, and this briefly turns into a killer clown found footage slasher, complete with a cheesy, old school final frame scare.

OBAYIFO PROJECT (2024)

This Spanish film is one sloppy found footage flick. Good news is it’s only like 72 minutes long.

A group of friends wants to make a Blair Witch movie about an African vampire spirit. They travel in an RV. They visit a shaman. There’s a ritual. Someone dies. That someone is buried. That someone apparently had a camera strapped to their chest.

The rest of the movie consists of snarling sounds as the camera shakes wildly and gets splattered with the blood while the vampire spirit attacks lots of random people that seem to be out in the middle of nowhere.

There’s a lot of running through ruins, screaming, and flesh-gobbling that’s too blurry to see. It was all just too chaotic, dark, and unfocused for me to find any of it scary. And yet…still scarier than anything we ever see in The Blair Witch Project.

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Tapping into the supernatural and occult with this trio of flicks

In my latest hunt to find three horror movies to watch on streaming services, it started with, “Which movies look good?” but then in an instant became, “Ooh! These three movies all have covers in red, black, and white.” Yes, that is the method to my madness, so let’s see how my madness worked out for me.

HIDEOUT (2021)

I’m a fan of the subgenre where criminals on the run hide out in a location only to get what they deserve when it turns out something sinister awaits them. This film sets us up for that concept, but then it runs for almost two hours, bombarding us with dialogue and clashes between characters instead of an actual threat.

One character’s visions deliver the only horror moments for most of the movie. They’re actually such good horror sequences that they deserved to be real and not just illusions.

It begins with the gang of four involved in a shootout at a liquor store. One of them has been shot, so they go up to the first house in the middle of nowhere for help, where a nice older woman welcomes them in.

Before they even get in the house, one of the thieves “disappears”, never to be seen again, and the rest of the thieves mention him once and then pretty much just accept that he took off…on foot in the middle of nowhere?

Anyway, the woman who invites them in has her adult granddaughter staying with her, and this young woman is painted as having sinister motives for the entirety of the movie, despite never actually doing anything evil. There are also backstories for both grandmother and granddaughter referenced briefly yet never fully developed, so nothing really comes together.

After a whole lot of time filled with the one thief having visions, the granddaughter acting ominous, and tons of talk and infighting, eventually things come to a head. The number of characters is quickly whittled down to one thief, and she goes head-to-head with the granddaughter…before meeting the king of all evil in the house, which is a totally awesome entity that appears for approximately two minutes while trying to steal her soul.

WTF? How do you have an awesome entity stashed away for the whole movie when it could have been stealing souls left and right, not only to keep the horror coming, but also to shut these chattering characters up sooner?

THE HOPEWELL HAUNTING (2023)

This one definitely has an intriguing opener, even if there is a little overkill after a few moments. The camera explores a dark, derelict house as we hear bangs and screams. Eek!

Next, we meet a crabby old preacher in a southern town. A desperate couple asks him to bless the new house they just bought. He puts up a fight but eventually agrees to do it, and he soon becomes obsessed with what is lurking in the basement of the house…the same house from the beginning of the movie.

This isn’t an action-packed film, but there’s something moody and sinister about the way it is shot, including his first introduction to the dark house, which reminded me of the effective, lingering shots used in Absentia. I was totally on edge the first time he peered down into the basement, and I even jumped a few times.

The preacher is determined to find out what ails the house, so he moves into the empty place alone with nothing but candles lighting his way. We’re treated to way more encounters with the creepy entity than I was anticipating in this bare bones indie, but it does become repetitive, with that cool set up shot of the preacher staring down into the darkness of the basement being used again and again.

For the final act, the preacher finally goes down into the basement—which gave me Hell House LLC vibes—but there were some issues with this scene. First, why didn’t he wait until daylight to go down there? And second, why didn’t he go down there with someone else?

We also get a pretty basic and subdued conclusion instead of a major climactic moment, so this isn’t exactly the kind of haunted house film you go into if you’re hoping for an adrenaline rush.

CONJURING THE CULT (2024)

This one sets you up for a lot of trauma porn. Guy comes home and finds his daughter has committed suicide in the bathtub.

Next, he’s in group therapy. We learn his wife left him after the suicide. He blames himself for the suicide. One dude is wearing a Cult concert T-shirt (wink wink). There’s a gaggle of girls that look like they can’t decide if they want to cosplay as The Craft girls or the Hocus Pocus witches.

Those witchy girls offer to help him out. While he weighs that option, he is haunted incessantly by his daughter’s ghost, which is like a Grudge girl on two legs.

A huge chunk of the runtime is padded with endless nightmare/vision scares, and those simply start to lose their effectiveness after about 30 minutes, and it only gets worse when they become dream scares within dream scares. To mix it up a bit, the witches stop by and do some cleansing, plus the main guy starts seeing visions of cult members around his house.

The final act actually delivers some crazy stuff after something new finally happens an hour in. Personally, I guessed why the father is being haunted from the start, but it ensures some delicious revenge sequences when the dad makes the mistake of doing a ritual to bring his daughter back to him. Can you say Daughter Sematary?

This bitch is angry! She torments dad, she chases him with a knife, and eventually she pulls out the big guns…her demonic teeth. And it gets even nastier after that. I just wish the nightmare sequences didn’t carry most of the movie.

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Delving into two new holiday slashers

This time around, my complete holiday horror page scores both a St. Patrick’s Day and Halloween slasher, so let’s get right into them.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY MASSACRE (2024)

I was excited for another slasher to add to the small list of St. Patrick’s Day horror flicks that are out there, so I blind bought this one, which is only available on DVD.

The killing kicks off in Dublin, Ireland in 1825. An enraged man wielding a scythe busts into a tavern on St. Paddy’s Day and takes an extreme approach to stopping sexual sin before being shot to death by the patrons. There’s even a bit of humor in the reveal of the sin, so I was anticipating a movie with a touch of humor, but that isn’t the case. This is a straight-up slasher.

In the present, four female college friends are at a bar celebrating the holiday. They meet a man who invites them to his tavern to party. This is a moment that could have set us up for more kills, which is what this movie needed. There is one bartender who chats with the girls and eventually seeks them out at the tavern. Why not make it a group of guys that hit on the girls and then follow them to the tavern, especially since there are so few possible victims and the first half of this movie has no kills?

The rundown old tavern is aglow with mood-setting, dim green light. The girls explore, there’s some promise of a lesbian hookup, and the guy who invited them recounts the story of the crazed killer from the beginning of the movie.

It’s not until 45 minutes into this 80-minute movie that the killer rises from the dead to kill again. There’s killer POV and undead groans, but unfortunately, the star of the film is his scythe. We don’t see him until 70 minutes in! It seems pretty pointless to keep his appearance hidden, especially since that would just add to the horror and make him more memorable.

When he finally does come into view, he has a bit of a zombie-like appearance, as you would expect. He deserved more screen time. Instead, the scythe hogs the camera.

There are only a few kills, and they are simple and basic. I just so wish there had been more victims and more killer, both of which would have beefed up the horror, helped with the pacing, and maybe offered up an opportunity for some old school slasher sex scenes, because this one had loads of potential as a holiday slasher.

CHEATER, CHEATER (2024)

This little Halloween slasher indie has a lot of heart and does its best to set a melancholy tone with seasonal atmosphere, character development, and a murder mystery angle. Just know that it definitely feels like an indie and is a bit heavy-handed, so the pacing suffers a bit and the slasher elements never really move to the forefront of the action—or lack of action, in this case.

The genuine outside fall footage of kids trick or treating in the opener definitely captures the tone. We pretty much meet all the main characters, and a killer in a pumpkin mask and hoodie comes knocking, but there is no hardcore death scene to start us off. Even so, it turns out that like five people were apparently killed that night.

5 years later, one of the main characters announces to his peers in an AA meeting that he’s heading home, which he does by driving there to the beat of dance music. He begins reconnecting with the other main characters, and plenty of exposition lays out all of their relations to one another.

It’s once again Halloween time, so there is Halloween décor galore, but it isn’t until 42 minutes in that the killer first strikes. It’s 55 minutes in before the next kill. And that’s about it before the final confrontation between the main guy and the killer.

There is a twist that highlights the whodunit aspect of the movie, but it still seems like the killer motivation monologue doesn’t quite answer that question, perhaps setting us up for a sequel?

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An 80s hair band, a 90s rock band, and an all-girl band walk into a horror movie

Did these three flicks about musicians struggling to make it big in a world full of unthinkable horrors rock my world? Let’s find out.

HAIRMETAL SHOTGUN ZOMBIE MASSACRE (2016)

I’ve had this horror comedy, which has now been uploaded to YouTube, on my “to see” list for almost a decade because it never received any kind of distribution. It’s a shame, because I would definitely add it to my movie collection despite one glaring issue, which we’ll get into.

My guess is the makers of this film really grew up in the 80s, both immersed in horror and heavy metal, because this is perhaps one of the most authentic feeling and looking retro horror flicks I’ve ever seen. It is easy to believe this was actually made at the end of the 1980s. Even the guys playing the members of the main metal band have an insanely accurate 80s rocker look, from their body types to their faces to their hair, which looks real, not like bad hair metal wigs.

The opening intro text is right on the mark as well, describing this as taking place in “some irrelevant year after 1989…the true year hair metal died”. If you were there, you know.
We meet the members of a Texas metal band looking to strike it big. Adding to the throwback vibe, one dude’s bedroom is covered in horror posters like From Beyond and Freddy’s Dead.

Next we see them at a gig—all the music used captures the true sound of 80s metal and totally fits the tone of the film—where there are only like four audience members, plus a rival band. This is where we get the first taste of an issue that plagues the movie. The main band members repeatedly have gay slurs thrown at them for being a hair band, which was common in those days when late 80s rockers were glamming it up with full makeup, hairspray, and skin tight clothes in neon colors. The point is made right up front, but it never ends. They are called fags, trannies, and drag queens, and sexually threatened by pretty much every character they encounter. Historically accurate homophobia for sure, and I grew up in that era, so it’s shit I’m numb to, but younger generations may find it jarring. I also can’t help wonder if the filmmakers are poking fun at the homophobia against hair bands or if they are bigots, because one bandmate is fond of the Confederate flag, and has it on his guitar and shirt. Ugh.

If you can look past that, you get a great homage to Evil Dead, zombie flicks, and direct-to-video heavy metal horror flicks from the 80s. All the performances are great, the humor totally works, the practical effects and makeup rock, and the setting and atmosphere nail it.

Hoping to record an album, the band heads to a ramshackle cabin in the woods…with a cemetery right outside. There are even jack-‘o-lanterns in the cemetery, so I assume it’s supposed to be Halloween, although the holiday is never mentioned.

At the cabin, the band collaborates with a new producer while awaiting the arrival of a record exec and referencing numerous bands of the era. Desperately in need of a gimmick, they conveniently find a trapdoor leading to a cellar in which there is an ancient occult book. Uh-oh.

They hatch a plan to make a satanic concept album, but before they can start recording any music, words from the book are read out loud and the dead begin to crawl out of their graves in a cloud of fog machines and eerie blue light. Awesome.

Someone makes a reference to them being demons, not zombies, but for all intents and purposes, they are totally zombies. If it looks like a zombie, walks like a zombie, and eats like a zombie, it’s a zombie.

Windows are boarded up, guts are munched, and the band is forced to figure out a way to either make it to daylight, when the demons go back to hell, or to fight their way out of the cabin. There’s even a cameo by Tom Araya of Slayer.

If you love 80s horror, I’d highly recommend checking this one out. It so deserves some attention and should be on some streaming services and at least released on DVD, dammit.

PUSSYCAKE (2021)

When I make reference to moist, frosted cakes, PussyCake isn’t exactly what I have in mind. With a title this icky, the horror better deliver. And it does. This is a sticky, bloody, nasty romp wrapped up in a lesbian romance, but don’t expect any of it to make any sense. Hard to believe something so fun could completely fail to deliver any semblance of a logical plot.

We first meet a teen dealing with the fact that his scientist father claimed to have discovered a parallel universe right before vanishing from the face of the earth. Perhaps dad went to that other dimension using the machine in his garage that his son turns on, which seems to return his father to him as a zombie.

Next, we’re introduced to an all-girl band. Two of the girls are in a relationship, and one of them is extremely protective of the other.

They land a gig that will give them a chance to perform for a record exec. However, when they arrive at the location, the whole town looks abandoned. Not quite. Before long, the girls are being chased by zombies that puke what looks like loads of cum into the mouths of the humans they grab. Do we ever find out why? No, but I think they might be inseminating them with some sort of life form.

Victims are also buried up to their necks in the sand on the beach. There’s also this big ominous baddie in a robe and wearing a sort of gas mask that stomps into town and starts terrorizing the girl band while also gathering little embryos from the bellies of those that have been filled with zombie mouth jizz.

What does it all mean, and what does it have to do with the other dimension and the scientist, whose house is in the same town? Have the girls somehow entered that other dimension? What exactly are the zombies trying to spawn, and why does that big boss baddie want to destroy them? No idea, and there’s no explanation. There’s simply the girl band fighting to avoid having zombie loads puked down their throats or embryos implanted inside them.

There’s goo, there’s gore, there’s violence and brutality, there are two lesbian leading ladies, and there’s even a slimy little leech monster that latches onto people’s heads.

It’s all reminiscent of Stuart Gordon’s wacky Lovecraft adaptations of the 80s, and that’s enough to make it hella entertaining, but I really wish some of the horror details would have come together.

ART OF A HIT (2024)

I pondered whether or not to even watch this one based on various comments on the internet that claimed it is not a horror movie but merely has some horror visuals that seem to be dreams or delusions. The promise of some nightmarish sequences, plus the fact that it’s a movie about a struggling rock band in the 90s led me to cave and check it out.

The best way to look at this is like Jacob’s Ladder. The main character experiences some disturbing and terrifying shit, but we never learn where it stems from and what it all means.

If I had to guess, I’d say this one is about the lead singer of a band that is gasping its last breath of stardom suffering some sort of mental breakdown due to the pressure of trying to rejuvenate their relevance. It begins with him seeing a flash of a bloody-mouthed man that looks like a zombie as his band is performing on an awards show in 1996.

After that, the band heads to France to work with a new producer in a chateau in hopes of reinventing themselves and rocketing back up the charts. However, the lead singer gets a phone call about their record deal that he can’t bring himself to share with his bandmates or the producer.

Meanwhile, the producer is unconventional and brutally honest with them. He also warns them not to enter one particular door in the chateau.

Every night, the lead singer is awakened by weird noises, followed by a phone ringing. He follows the sound with a flashlight. He keeps encountering the bloody-mouthed presence from his awards show vision.

The chateau and the flashlight beam combination are quite creepy. The producer, who mentions rumors of the place being haunted, has a large box hidden away that is supposed to cut off all sound when you get inside, and it looks suspiciously like a coffin.

During a night of partying, one of the band members starts to act possessed, and while everyone blames it on drugs, the only Black member calls it as he sees it…it was like some shit from The Exorcist.

On top of all that, the lead singer has more visions and nightmares of having his playing hand cut off and of his bandmates mutilating themselves. He’s eventually stalked by the bloody-mouthed presence, which is wielding an axe.

There’s plenty of symbolism in all this, and that’s cool and all, but it really would have been more intense if the great horror elements sprinkled throughout the film had culminated in something substantial…like maybe the lead singer actually snapping and going on a murder spree.

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A foursome of vampire and werewolf movies

I was due for a marathon of low budget moves focusing on classic creatures of the night, so let’s get right into these modern takes on vampires and werewolves.

OPERATION BLOOD HUNT (2024)

Actor Louis Mandylor is very recognizable by face even if you don’t know him by name, and has been in his fair share of horror flicks. He also directs this time around, with mixed results.

I went into Operation Blood Hunt with the hubby by my side because it looked like a SyFy level werewolf movie, and we were so up for it. To an extent, that’s exactly what it is, but unfortunately, after a great opening scene of a cheesy cool werewolf attacking several military men, we don’t get another juicy werewolf attack until 65 minutes in!

The real problem is in a side story that adds absolutely nothing to the main plot. Main plot—during World War II, a big, burly reverend played by sexy wrestler Rampage is sent with a military team to an island where communication with military men has been severed.

There they meet the local native tribe and eventually come under attack by a pack of werewolves. That should have been it. The whole plot, the whole story, filled with werewolf action from start to finish instead of having it all jammed into the final act.

The subplot has Jonathan Rhys-Myers as a bar owner who is a friend of the reverend and has a past working in supernatural studies. I really feel like this subplot was in place for the simple purpose of giving Mandylor a role in his own movie. He plays a vampire who pays a visit to the bar, complete with streaking visual effects as he moves quickly across a room. He proves to be a wimpy vampire who eventually caves and gives the bar owner some inside information about gold hidden on the island where the reverend has been sent—another completely irrelevant plot point.

For me and the hubby, the meat of the movie was the big bad wolf battle that was sadly relegated to the final 20 minutes. The werewolves are an awesome mix of digital effects and men in big hairy costumes. So much potential to be an action werewolf bonanza missed due to that unnecessary vampire side story.

Shockingly, the final moments set the movie up for a sequel. Less shockingly, I would watch it in a second.

FANGS OUT (2023)

This one has total early 2000s direct-to-DVD vibes. Either you love this kind of hokey horror with corny acting and amateur sets or you don’t.

Four friends head to Mexico so one of the girls can get a boob job to be in porn.

Turns out there’s a crazy vampire doctor and his clownish vampire nurse waiting for more victims to bleed dry.

It’s absolute foolishness from start to finish. The doctor convinces all the friends to get some sort of surgery, including penis enlargement and pussy tightening. With all the talk of sexual body parts and porn, I kind of wish the movie had been more sexploitative, but there’s none of that. The film fails to live up to the trashy levels its dialogue promises.

The major subplot is that one girl’s dad is coming to rescue her after he finds out she crossed the border.

There’s no nudity, not much blood, very little of the humor works, and the effects used when vampires burn in the sun look like something from a PlayStation 1 game. The vampire nurse is perhaps the highlight here, but only when she finally hits her stride and gets quite campy in the final act.

BLACK OUT (2023)

Horror veteran Larry Fessenden directs and writes this werewolf flick, which I would describe as a rural, moody take on An American Werewolf in London with a 1970s horror movie aesthetic and a classic Wolf Man vibe.

There was something oddly compelling about this one, which focuses on a man trying save his own town from power and greed while also protecting it from himself—the monster.

The opener sets the tone, with a couple having sex in a field under the moonlight and then being viciously attacked by the wolf man.

Our main man interacts with townsfolk as he juggles the local drama, including property being bought up, contaminated water, and a rash of killings that are being pinned on an innocent Spanish man.

Familiar faces include Barbara Crampton, James Le Gros, the pervy gym teacher from Elm Street 2, and even the late William Hurt in a photo as the father of the main guy, who is literally William Hurt’s son in real life. He’s also equally as unassumingly sexy as his father.

There is quite a bit of talk as the main man navigates his interpersonal relationships, but there are also plenty of effective wolf man attack scenes and flashbacks.

Eventually the film takes a thrilling turn once the main guy looks to his friend for help putting the curse to rest once and for all in a segment that adds a little levity to the serious tone. The wolf man action and horror atmosphere in the final act have such a classic vibe and left me quite satisfied.

SUCKERS (2024)

Suckers is another vampire flick with an early 2000s direct-to-DVD feel. It is slow to start, but when this low budget flick finally takes off, it’s the simple kind of fun I love.

Running only 67 minutes long, the film begins with a couple alone in a studio being attacked by an unseen force.

Next, a group of pretty influencers gathers at a venue drenched in pink and red horror lighting. They believe they are there for some big event that will help shoot them to stardom. A lot of time in the first half of the movie is spent on them talking and getting to know each other.

Considering this is such a short film, I wish they would have cut back on the introductions and gotten to the action sooner.

35 minutes in, after there is finally a hip hop partying montage, we get a sex scene between the bombshell hostess and a hunky pretty boy. Her true vamp side is revealed, and the makeup effects are campy and playful.

From there she begins luring more influencers away from the group and biting them. In turn, they become vamps, causing more trouble for the core group of influencers, who discover they are locked in the building with the bloodsuckers. It’s my favorite kind of simple formula.

At this point, one dude steps forward to serve as the comic relief, and he absolutely steals the show. He is a hoot. There are also references to plenty of vampire flicks, as well as a shirtless muscle vampire. It’s simple, sexy vampire comedy fun that deserved to be at least 80 or 90 minutes long with more sexiness, silliness, and vampire thrills.

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Revisiting the Resident Evil Outbreak games on PS2

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


RESIDENT EVIL OUTBREAK


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, onto the scenarios.

Scenario 1: Outbreak

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

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


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

Scenario 2: Below Freezing Point

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

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


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

Scenario 3: The Hive

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

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


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

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

Scenario 4: Hellfire

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


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

Scenario 5: Decisions, Decisions

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

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

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


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

RESIDENT EVIL OUTBREAK FILE 2

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

Scenario 1: Wild Things

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


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

Scenario 2: Underbelly

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

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


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

Scenario 3: Flashback

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

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

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


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

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

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

Scenario 4: Desperate Times

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


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

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

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

Scenario 5: End of the Road

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

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

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

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


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

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I am a Virgin in Candy Land

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

I AM VIRGIN (2010)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The end.

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

CANDY LAND (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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TUBI TERRORS: another round of slashers

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

MOUSE OF HORRORS (2025)

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

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

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

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

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

MURDERFEST (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

HAPPY HOUR SLASHER (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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TUBI TERRORS: more masked killer horror

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

THE SCOUT (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

55 minutes in there’s a prank scare.

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

WEEKEND DEADAWAY (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PAYMENT RECEIVED (2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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It all happened in the last twenty minutes

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

DEEP FEAR (2022)

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

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

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

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

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

ASHBURN WATERS (2019)

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

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

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

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

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

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

DAGR (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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