SLASHERS: Killer cat man, house sitter horror, and another killer Mickey

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Daniel

This triple feature was sometimes horrific, sometimes humorous, and sometimes boring for me. Let’s get right into it.

CAT SICK BLUES (2015)



In this day and age, this movie is basically one big trigger warning, so only go into it if nothing really bothers you and you like fucked up movies with psychotic killers doing depraved things to victims.

That’s mostly all that happens in this nasty flick, although the movie does seem to be trying to present two different extremes on how people cope with grief—in this case, the loss of a cat.

The opener introduces us to our killer, who wears a cat mask when he strangles and hacks up victims.

Then we meet our main girl. She has a beloved cat that is an internet sensation. A mentally challenged fan unexpectedly comes to see the cat live at her home…before unaliving it and then raping the main girl, which is all caught on camera. Footage that ends up on the internet.

Yeah. This movie indulges in cruelty. Continuously.

We then get to know our killer better. He is totally sexually messed up. He has a terrifying, huge, spiked strap-on. As much as this movie indulges in terrorizing women, it really could have been worse, because we never actually see the killer using this thing on any victims.

We do get plenty of scenes of him killing women though. In between all that, he joins a grief support group the main girl is in, and we learn he also lost a cat. As a result, he begins to bond with the main girl.

It’s weird. It’s uncomfortable. It’s disturbing. What it isn’t is scary, so unless you’re a fan of twisted cinema, you’re probably best off skipping this one.

HOUSE SITTER (2026)

 

There are some fun moments in the last half hour of this occult/slasher/home invasion hybrid flick, but there’s a lot of bland, chill downtime with the three main characters for a majority of the runtime.

A young woman takes a job house sitting for a wealthy dude. She invites along her best friend and her boyfriend, who can’t stand each other and bicker a lot. There’s plenty of exploration of the house—yet nothing interesting or ominous is discovered. They lounge by the pool, which at least gives us the boyfriend shirtless.

They also order pizza, and we’re subjected to unnecessary footage of the delivery guy trying to find the place. He is then killed in a cutaway scene.

When weird stuff finally starts happening, the trio begins panicking, but they decide to just relax and watch a movie. This is when the best friend and boyfriend discover they both love horror, and they get into a detailed convo about their favorite scenes from different horror movies.

An hour in, we finally get a chase scene with a masked figure wearing a hoodie. But…it’s only a dream sequence. And yet, as soon as the best friend wakes up from this nightmare, the same killer is actually outside the house. So…is she psychic?

There’s something rather funny about the way the trio acts in response to the killer’s appearance, but this final act is the best part of the movie. There aren’t many kills considering the small cast, but there are several surprises along the way, and the film tries to keep us entertained by piling one twist on top of another to make up for the low body count. The highlight for me is a very close-up eye shot that feels like something out of an Argento movie.

SCREAMBOAT (2025)



The tone of this film is refreshingly fun, and with its dash of playful humor, it brought to mind the slashers of the early 2000s.

Although not as blatantly based on Disney cartoon properties as some of the other films released in this subgenre lately, it does make meta references to various Disney animated classics if you pay attention.

Unlike the other killer Mickey movies I’ve seen recently, this take on Steamboat Willie—in this case, Screamboat Willie–doesn’t resemble Mickey Mouse at all. Actually, he’s the worst part of the movie. The mouse makeup is really goofy, but drag out the old green screen, because he’s not human size. He’s only two feet tall! He is, however, played by none other than Art the Clown.

The opener is a goodie, and demonstrates the kind of gore and cheesy practical effects we’re going to get, and that perhaps is the highlight.

Teen Wolf Tyler Posey is shamefully relegated to a short cameo. Would have preferred him as the leading man, although the leading man is just as cute.

Passengers board a ferry in New York City, and pretty soon they’re being killed by Screamboat Willie. That’s it. That’s the plot.

The humor and gore carry the movie for quite a while, but this boat does begin to…um…lose steam after a while, I think due to the fact that the 24-inch Screamboat Willie simply isn’t menacing. There are some camptastic kills, including death by ferry propeller and double death by forklift, as well as an old school boobs and sex scene, which leads to a severed wiener in mouth mid-BJ. Screamboat wiener….

After some lag, the film picks back up for the final battle. I think maybe it just needed to be edited down somewhere in the middle to fix the pacing issue.

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Eek! Evil entities!

Posted on May 7, 2026 by Daniel

The ghostly ghouls in these three flicks are awesome, but do the movies do them justice? Let’s find out.

AMOROSA (2025)

This is another take on the Bloody Mary/Candyman concept, only in this case it’s updated—you summon Amorosa (no, not the reality show villain) by standing in a dark room, telling her how many followers you have, and then asking her to take a selfie with you.

If you ask me, this actually could have been a satisfying, cheesy throwback to early 2000s supernatural slashers, with Amorosa hacking up obnoxious influencers left and right. Unfortunately, it takes a mostly dull route instead.

A woman calls a psychic in to help her learn what happened to her daughter. The psychic works alone, so she’s not happy when she arrives at the woman’s house to find four ghost hunters have been invited as well.

There’s a lot of walking around and feeling out the ghostly vibes, with the psychic getting some impressions here and there, but none of it is thrilling. I know. Throw in a scary doll. That will fix it!

Someone is finally killed 54 minutes in, but we don’t see Amorosa yet. We also don’t see her when someone else is killed 69 minutes in. Or at 82 minutes in.

Don’t ask me why they chose to only show Amorosa in the last few minutes of the movie, because she’s a creeptastic mix of witchy and possessed.

Sadly, she gets little screen time, and the battle with her is anticlimactic. However, I was really feeling the autumnal vibe outside the house as the survivors leave at the end.

GHOSTS OF WAR (2020)



Even though I hate period pieces, especially war flicks, I checked this one out because it has a cool cast, including hottie Alan Ritchson of Reacher, Skylar Astin of Pitch Perfect, Kyle Gallner of Jennifer’s Body, and Billy Zane.

This one really threw me for a loop. For a majority of its runtime, it reminded me of the lost 80s military flick The Supernaturals (which seriously needs a physical media release). Just like that film, most of this movie is slow.

It builds atmosphere, and there are some creepy moments, but it doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. Fact is, even if you pay attention to the details of what is happening, much of it won’t make sense during the first watch….

American soldiers in France during World War II take cover in a large, abandoned building, and little by little, they experience supernatural situations that suggest that they are not alone.

Things do eventually pick up somewhat (I’m talking 52 minutes into the movie), and there are some ghostly attacks, but both the hubby and I were losing interest. But then…something happens. Something so unexpected that we were both totally invested all of a sudden. We were both like, “This is fricking awesome.” We were both like, “Shit, we have to watch this movie again to better appreciate it.”

And that’s all I’m going to say.

NFT: CURSED IMAGES (2026)

This was just the kind of low budget, cheap scares, early 2000s digital entity effects bonanza I needed in my life right now. It’s a basic throwback to J-horror (and their remakes) ghost curse era, and aside from a slow start, it is nonstop, spooky silliness.

Updating the premise, the film focuses on a group of friends that deals in one of those crypto scams—NFTs, those supposedly rare, expensive digital image files people are gaga over, while my Gen X ass won’t even buy music or a movie unless it’s a tangible hard copy to add to my cherished media collection.

Anyway, these suckers—I mean—brilliant business people end up scoring what is supposed to be a cursed NFT. It’s a creepy demon face, and pretty soon (well, as soon as they’re done with a loooong scene in which they explain NFTs to a friend), they begin encountering digital demons in reality.

It’s pure popcorn movie fun as we are bombarded by shadowy forms in dark rooms, scary, flickering NFTs come to life (with faces that all look like they were borrowed from early 2000s horror movie digital effects), and disjointed, contorting, crawling ghosts. Awesome. We also get some shirtless man action. BONUS!

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BOUGHT ON DVD: 3 purchases so worth it that I wish they were on Blu-ray

Posted on May 5, 2026 by Daniel

I don’t buy many DVDs anymore thanks to Blu-rays and 4k UHDs, but when I do, it’s because I really want the movie, and DVD is the only format on which it is available. As was the case with these three that I recently added to my movie collection.

METAMORPHOSIS: THE ALIEN FACTOR (1990)



Unfathomable that I missed this one at a time when I had HBO and was working at a mom-and-pop video store, but here we are. But after catching it on cable on a snowy Saturday afternoon this past winter like it was 1990 all over again, I had to add it to my movie collection.

This is a sci-fi/horror flick with gore and creature practical effects. While totally formulaic based on its era of origin (mutant creature gets loose in some sort of contained scientific environment), it is a treat for those looking for something to bring on the nostalgia feels.

Experiments with alien matter from space go horribly wrong in a lab. You’d think the scientists would learn to be more careful once they have cages full of mutant animals, but no. One of the researchers is bitten and begins a gruesome good metamorphosis into a nasty creature.

Meanwhile, his grown daughter comes looking for him since he never came home the night before. Little does she know her younger sister has followed her there. Little do any of them know that monster daddy has escaped and is killing lab faculty left and right.

There’s a classic chest burst, attack tentacles, spitball leech thingies, smaller mutant creatures running around, research baddies thwarting the main girls, hilarious fights, both between humans and between monster and humans, and a final battle to get the creature into a machine of some sort to give it a good jolt, with perfectly cheesy electrical effects.

To top it all off, we get to see the dad naked when he’s not in monster form, and the closing credits song, “Baby You’ve Changed” by Peter M. Stoller, is possibly one of the best unknown, unreleased 80s soundtrack songs ever.

OFFICE UPRISING (2018)



I accidentally learned this movie exists because the hubby and I are on an Alan Ritchson kick and trying to check out as many of his action flicks as we can. He isn’t as beefy here as he is in his show Reacher, and he’s also not in the film much, but I wish he was, because he nails his office dude bro role.

Anyway, the movie has several familiar faces, was nowhere to be found streaming, and is only available on DVD, so I blind bought it due to the fact that it’s probably going to become a rare film to find. Glad I own it, because it fricking rocks.

Our main dude works at a weapons factory, so there are plenty of jabs at gun nuts and conservative nationalism mindsets. There are also plenty of guns around to use as defense when an energy drink the company sells begins turning all the office employees into crazies. Awesome!

For starters, we get some typical office movie shtick and banter. Then, poking fun at corporate culture, we see our main dude not even noticing that there are dead coworkers all around him as he makes his way to his cubicle in the morning.

However, he very quickly discovers that those still alive have become running, jumping, infected crazies! The film delivers just the kind of fun characters, comedy, action, and violence needed to keep the pace moving at a fast clip.

Jane Levy of the Evil Dead remake appears as the main guy’s love interest, and Zachary Levi is his asshole boss. Kind of sux, because Levi is really good in the role, probably because he’s an asshole in real life.

Along with all the excitement, action, and kick-ass fight scenes as the main characters try to escape the office building alive, there are even clashing teams of crazies within the company, showing how vowing loyalty to a corporation is psychotic.

This is definitely a goodie for a watch party…especially if you invite your coworkers and serve energy drinks.

ICK (2024)



In the tradition of movies like Slither, The Faculty, and Night of the Creeps, Ick is fricking awesome! I accidentally stumbled on the trailer on YouTube, and since it’s not available to stream anywhere, I had to buy the Canadian DVD release because it wasn’t released anywhere else on any format. What the hell?

Ick gives us what’s been missing in movies these days—nostalgia for 20 years ago. It begins in “2000 something”, but you will be catapulted back to the exact time by the awesome soundtrack, which includes the likes of The All-American Rejects, Good Charlotte, The Killers, Hoobastank, Yellowcard, Fountains of Wayne, Paramore, Creed, Blink-182, and Plain White T’s. This is the new millennium throwback wave we haven’t gotten to ride in film.

It also stars Brandon Routh of Dylan Dog. The high school opener has him and Mena Suvari de-aged and dressed in early 2000s style. Here is the film’s one big flaw. The two are dating, and he’s a high school football star…until a small “ick” tentacle pops out of the ground during a game, which ends up leaving Brandon in a leg brace for life, ruining his chances of getting out of his town.

The backstory could have just had him breaking his leg simply from playing the game, because introducing the ick so early is just weird. When we flash forward to modern times, the town has actually been infiltrated by ick, which is an ugly, invasive plant the locals have just come to live with. Why would they be so surprised when the ick finally begins turning on them and possessing them, transforming them into zombies? This same thing could have happened if a meteor had landed on earth and released the ick in classic sci-fi creature feature fashion, making its sudden appearance an actual surprise to the town.’

Instead, Brandon, whose high school sweetheart dumped him after his football career ended, has been studying the ick, and is the one who suspects it’s taking over. His motive for the rest of the movie becomes to convince everyone the ick is dangerous and to rescue his ex’s teen daughter when the ick crashes a pool party.

The film is pure creature feature fun, with zombified people and ick tentacles growing everywhere. There’s a funny queer jab at JK Rowling, along with some jabs at small town conservative conspiracy theories. Best of all, when the military rolls into town to save the day (which always ruins a horror movie for me), the locals force them to leave so the prom won’t be canceled. Awesome.

Naturally, the prom is where the boss battle with the quickly growing ick kicks off. The final act is a total blast as Brandon teams up with some teens to kill the ick once and for all.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: a lost 80s anthology and two Fulci flix from the early 90s

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Daniel

80s completist that I am, I had to purchase the Blu-ray release of super indie anthology The Basement. And Fulci completist that I am, I had to purchase two of his films that I didn’t yet have on disc. All three were blind buys because I’d never seen any of them. Let’s find out how that turned out for me.

THE BASEMENT (1989)



This low budget anthology is only 69 minutes long, and the reason I’d never seen it back in the day is because apparently no one had. It seems it was never completed back then, but someone dug it up, restored it, and created a completed audio track with a score and sound effects as well as all the dialogue. The original audio is included as a bonus on the Blu-ray, and there are no embellishments—just white noise between actors’ lines.

Not surprisingly, it’s a sloppy feature, but it sure is gritty, and it perfectly serves as a time capsule reflecting how shot-on-video movies looked and felt back then.

The wraparound has a foursome of people in a basement with no idea how they got there. A ghoul in a robe appears and tells them they must pay…for sins they haven’t committed yet! I guess the four stories are supposed to show us what their sins will be….

1st story – A woman sitting by a pool keeps luring people she has a beef with into the water, where something with tentacles kills them…including a silver daddy in a Speedo.

2nd story – One of my favorite tales here, this one has a “Halloween Scrooge” being visited by creeps and monsters on Halloween night, including the kind of awesome witch that was so rare in 80s horror movies.

3rd story – While filming a hard rock zombie movie in the wilderness, the cast and crew is attacked by real zombies. This has a classic, 1970s zombie movie vibe and has embellished with rock music to enhance the retro vibe.

4th story – A young dude buys an allegedly possessed house and soon discovers there definitely are killer creeps haunting the place.

The writing might be weak, but the 80s nostalgia is through the roof, and the practical special effects are fantastic.

VOICES FROM BEYOND (1991)



This Fulci film was released during my days of working at the video store, but we didn’t carry it, so I’d never seen it before. In true throwback fashion, cheesy is the only way to describe it.

The opener promises so much. We see a man and wife in bed together before he gets up and goes to stab a crying kid to death. Awesome.

Next, we witness that man hemorrhage to death in a hospital. After that the plot becomes a classic trope. His family descends on his home because there’s money involved.

And here’s where we get the extra cheese spread. His daughter returns home, and his ghost visits her to tell her she must figure out the mystery of who hated him enough to kill him before his body rots in the ground.

There are ghostly voice overdubs as he keeps urging her to solve the mystery, and we even get a few shots of his body starting to deteriorate in his grave.

The horror is relegated to nightmare sequences his hateful family members have, including a mortuary zombie scene and an eyeball cake scene. It’s nowhere near the level of Fulci horror you’d expect, and in the end the daughter uncovers the truth and then walks off while smiling at the camera. Groan.

A CAT IN THE BRAIN (1990)

This is Lucio Fulci being totally meta about his own movies. He plays himself, and we follow his “character” as he directs scenes from some of the films he’s directed or produced—meaning, a good chunk of the gore and sex in this flick come from actual movie clips inserted into the plot as if they are being created at that moment.

Fulci begins to see the horrors from his movies in real life, and fearing that his mind is being warped by his own sick imagination, he goes to a psychiatrist. Here’s the sneaky part. While Fulci thinks he’s starting to go crazy, it turns out his psychiatrist is a fricking psycho killer.

Almost awesome, but the film is so over-the-top campy that the whole concept gets bogged down by the movie clip scenes, which mostly serve as ads for other Fulci films more than anything else. The psychiatrist plays a giddy psycho perfectly, and his kill scenes deliver classic, cheap-looking Fulci practical effects gore, but I just wish his terror tour had been the focus of the film.

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TUBI TERRORS: indie slashers that deliver something different

Posted on April 29, 2026 by Daniel

This trio of movies offers up a variety of styles, tones, and production quality, which I found quite satisfying. Things never got boring, and I found something to like about each of them.

THIS WAY TO HELL (2023)



This odd, 78-minute indie flick feels like a mob/revenge/supernatural hybrid horror. The initial hit man scene is actually kind of funny, as a dude comes to kill an older lady and they get into a gun fight. You’d think a hit man would know when he walks into a house and all the floors are covered in plastic that things might not go his way.

The guy heads home wounded after the shootout, only to be murdered by an ominous masked dude, who then chases his pregnant wife in a gritty, slow-motion scene. She’s killed, but as she’s dying, a devil in a plague doctor mask comes to offer her life in exchange for her soul.

She accepts, then goes on a rampage, taking out all kinds of lowlife criminals in her search for the guy who killed her man. What’s weird is that it feels like this film takes place in a rural, small town, so how did it become a haven for so many baddies?

The main woman’s vengeance kills aren’t all that interesting, but she does get visited by yet another demonic dude at one point. She then learns the identity of the killer. He’s known as The Butcher, and apparently, he’s also supernatural. He has a great onscreen presence, I just wish the focus had been on him slashing more than on her going around killing people.

BLUE MURDER (2026)

 

Despite the weakly branded title, this one lands on the holiday horror page because it’s a festive and fun Halloween comedy slasher! It also gives off a total early 2000s era, direct-to-DVD vibe with some nods to the 80s as well. The soundtrack even consists of retro synthpop tracks by Blaklight, a band I often play on my Future Flashbacks show.

It opens with a young woman going on a murderous rampage, killing what I assume are sorority girls.

Next, we meet a nurse who decides to dress as a sexy nurse at her hospital’s Halloween party. The killer from the opening scene has been captured, and she’s wounded, so she’s admitted to the hospital. Lightning strikes when the nurse is tending to the psycho patient, causing her to become possessed by the killer.

That’s the gist of it. The sexy killer nurse goes around using conventional means to kill anyone she comes across, including the most deserving victims of all, a couple that celebrates Christmas on October 31st because they think Halloween is Satan’s holiday.

The film unfolds more like a bunch of mini skits, jumping around between silly scenes of sorority girls, trick or treaters, an adorable, comedic cop investigating each murder scene, and a bunch of bro dudes, who are the ones that eventually have to battle the sexy killer nurse.

It’s hokey Halloween fun and humor, with some playful kills (including a crotch attack), so it’s definitely a good one to put on to set a tone at your Halloween party. The only part that didn’t really work for me consisted of occasional sequences inside the sexy killer nurse’s mind as she communicates with the killer possessing her.

NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU SCREAM (2025)

This one delivers some brutal kill scenes, has a cool premise, and perfectly celebrates the late 1980s lag that carried us into the 90s, with arcade games, mixtapes, hair band music, and a synth score.

During the 1990 World Cup in Buenos Aires, someone in a dark mask and hoodie appears to be using the distraction of the games to violently kill people, often by bludgeoning them to death. Shit gets bloody and gnarly at times.

Our main girl works at a record store, and she soon discovers another killer connection. She makes and sells mixtapes to customers, and it turns out that each of the victims has bought one of them. Eek!

Needless to say, our main girl has to take a deeper dive into why her taste in music might be triggering a psycho slasher, and if it means she will become a target herself. She also has to ensure her friends don’t become casualties of the killer in the process.

I wanted to be in Smile.

Along with the well-executed kill sequences, the main girl’s final fight with the killer at the record store rocks, and the final act takes an uncommon turn that promises—actually, demands—a sequel.

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PRIME TIME: one out of three goes hard on the horror

Posted on April 22, 2026 by Daniel

One takes place at a Halloween haunted attraction, one is about the aftermath of a Christmas murder, and the third one, which has nothing to do with a holiday, delivers all the horror.

BLOOD BARN (2025)



If you are a fan of Evil Dead homages like me, especially the kind that try to capture the 1981 look and feel of the original, Blood Barn is one to watch.

The film only runs 76 minutes long, so the most notable issue with is that it’s 39 minutes in before anything really happens, but once things start, they get crazy. None of it makes much sense, but the immersion into retro horror style makes up for it.

We meet a group of friends that drives to a farmhouse in the woods. They go swimming in a lake even though it looks cold and gray, there’s some man butt, there’s a volleyball montage, there’s some partying—all classic horror tropes.

The “possession” element seems to come from squirmy wormy creatures that come out of a trunk in the house. There is Evil Dead shaky cam POV and a torn Jaws poster on the wall (if you know, you know), as well as a nod to the forest attack scene—only this time a guy is the victim. There’s even a moment when a girl keeps repeating Nancy’s “This isn’t happening, this isn’t real” line from Elm Street.

There’s also a video tape that suggests that something tragic happened at a child’s birthday party, the girl whose family owns the house seems to be hiding something (although we never get a clear picture of what), characters start having hallucinations of horrific things, and eventually, they start turning Deadite.

Like I said, there’s no logic to any of it and nothing is explained, so it’s like a fever dream of horror as both the Deadites and the wormy things terrorize the group of friends. It’s totally entertaining, and it totally nails that old school Raimi style.

THE HAUNTED FOREST (2025)

 

This one, which lands on the holiday horror page, feels like one of those movies that probably made more sense in the filmmaker’s mind than it actually does on screen.

It definitely captures the Halloween spirit big time, so that’s a plus. It focuses on a high school student who takes a job at a haunted attraction leading up to Halloween night.

A good portion of the movie focuses on the main guy getting to know a variety of characters that work at the attraction while learning more about the legend of Native Americans slaughtered and buried on the land, who supposedly still haunt the place.

Then, a few inexplicable accidents happen. By Halloween, the main guy is having bad dreams about the tragic occurrences. But this is an hour into the movie. In other words, not a lot happens for a good portion of the movie beyond the horror-loving staff coming to terms with whether they should go on with the show after the horrific incidents that took place.

They do go on with the show, and in the last half hour, there are a few rapid-fire murders, an unexpected reveal of killer and motivation, and an unfolding of some confusing events. It fleetingly feels thrilling, but it’s just not enough horror payoff. In the biggest twist of all, this Halloween movie ends on Christmas!

SPLINTER (2021)



This film is short and well-acted by the leading actor, who carries the movie playing a man that becomes a recluse after coming home dressed as Santa for Christmas only to find his wife and son have been murdered.

So, is it a Christmas horror movie? I do think it earns a place on the holiday horror page, because there is Christmas décor, Christmas lights, and a Christmas tree in his house for the entire film, plus he sings Christmas tunes and drinks from Christmas mugs. The catch is that it’s six months after the holiday, and he simply hasn’t taken any of the holiday décor down.

This is a psychological horror flick that focuses on the main guy’s mental state, his meetings with a therapist, and his belief that someone or something is in the house with him. A few characters stop by the film and seem to confuse the plot, but they each carry some significant symbolism that makes more sense by the end.

There are some ghostly and creepy visuals, however, they are few and far between, and there’s one bloody flashback to the night of the murders, so don’t expect a whole lot of horror thrills here. The film is dark and moody though, and there is a twist. It’s just that none of it is exciting enough to lift the film from an intentionally somber, flatlining energy level, and the twist isn’t all that shocking to horror veterans.

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Halloween horrors and a creature for Christmas

Posted on April 14, 2026 by Daniel

Time to take on a foursome of flicks to add to the holiday horror page. Consider this a post about three for the halfway to Halloween season with a short Christmas flick as a bonus.

SUPER HAPPY FUN CLOWN (2025)



I couldn’t look away from this odd and quirky portrait of a crazy girl, which also has plenty of autumn and Halloween atmosphere.

We meet a young girl obsessed with clowns and horror. Her mother despises her interests and punishes her for indulging in them. Naturally, the trauma of being denied what she desires means she carries her fandom into adulthood.

Now she’s all grown up and still dresses like a clown, entertaining people in the park in “whimsical” clips that make it clear she’s not right in the head.

She first snaps and kills someone at the 25-minute mark, so the film doesn’t waste time in bringing her over to the psycho side. Yay!

She then gets invited to a Halloween party, which triggers a gleeful need to kill. There’s even a nasty scene of her masturbating with the blood of a very relevant victim.

Come Halloween night, this turns into a long, fun, devious montage of her going on a killing spree, beginning at the Halloween party. Once she’s done there, she continues to live her best Halloween, heading over to a haunted cinema event and haunted attraction, where she starts taking out all the haunting actors before having a standoff with law enforcement.

If you’re going to make yet another movie about a killer clown on Halloween, this is how you do it. It’s a unique, indie treat that is a perfect watch for the Halloween season.

THE SPACE RODENT (2025)



When you make a horror comedy called The Space Rodent about giant alien rodents with glowing eyes invading earth, and you even have a campy cool rodent design, you need to exploit your creative creature. Unfortunately, this film instead leans heavily on banter between its main characters to fill the time, leading to an 80-minute movie that will give you a chuckle now and then but starts to feel more like a 150-minute movie.

It begins with rodent aliens speaking in their own language (with subtitles) about having no resources left and having to escape their planet. This sets up the humorous tone perfectly, even if the rodents themselves are never funny again.

We next meet two main dude bros and their girlfriends. The girls are getting dressed in costumes for Halloween, but the guys aren’t into it and don’t even want to answer the door for trick or treaters.

The girls hit the road, the guys stay home, and this movie makes the huge mistake of having the two pairs spend most of the movie apart contending with the space rodents every now and then…in between all the talking.

The few alien rodents we get are introduced early on, but the guys and girls don’t actually begin battling them—at separate locations—until about 54 minutes into the movie. The girls eventually end up back home to team up with the guys to escape the alien invasion, which amounts to a mini alien home invasion.

The comedy has its moment, like a space rodent jerking off and cumming all over one guy’s face, and the cast is spot on with their comedic timing, but the material they have to work with just isn’t strong enough fill the gaps in between the space rodent action. And the space rodent action isn’t strong enough to make this one a good time. If the guys had been the focus, the film could have gone harder with a buddy comedy routine, especially since there is an underlying sexual tension to their friendship that could have been explored for laughs.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN (2024)



It may be a fairly typical holiday slasher, but this one is loaded with fantastic Halloween atmosphere and décor, has a likable cast, and delivers some tightly executed kill scenes. Its weakness comes from the fact that the story, back story, and character interactions are too complex for their own good and just aren’t interesting enough to propel the movie forward. It often feels like aimless filler to pad the runtime, which isn’t even that long yet feels like it should have been shortened because of the filler!

The opener totally grabs you, with a dude in a corn maze being targeted by a masked killer who gets a thrill out of carving victims into holiday displays. Awesome.

The Halloween season also marks the 300-year anniversary of the town in which the movie takes place. There’s supposed to be a big celebration, but I seriously never got the sense that there was one going on considering the only characters in the film were all the main characters. You never really see any background extras to demonstrate that there are other people in this town.

Our main girl is suffering PTSD from an attack by her ex-boyfriend a year ago. He’s in prison, and she’s trying to move on with her life. Her plan is to just party with her friends on Halloween. Why do these movies always have a final girl who has already suffered trauma on Halloween agreeing to celebrate the season again?

To fill the time in between the cool kills, the main girl and her friends are investigated as suspects in the string of murders, the details of what transpired a year before come out, the main girl’s friends have some conflicts with another group of kids from school, and there’s focus on a local election that has no bearing on the plot. The most enjoyable part to me was the main girl’s budding relationship with a big boy high school quarterback.

Finally, the friends head to a haunted corn maze attraction, where most of the killing takes place. The setting is great, but again, there’s no one else around! Where are all the townsfolk??? I guess it’s that pesky curfew.

The final sequence provides plenty of chaos, but it’s just that—chaos. The unfolding of the action is not well-executed, so the killer’s main rampage fails to much in the way of dread or tension.

MIND LEECH (2023)



This one takes place at Christmastime, and there is some Christmas décor around, but the holiday is not the focus of the film. However, there is plenty of snow, since most of the movie takes place outside.

This had so much potential to be a cozy little b-movie about a parasite turning people into crazies in a small, isolated town, and what we get totally works in a creepy way, but the film runs only an hour, so the horror moments just aren’t plentiful enough! I wanted more!

Two dudes dump a container of chemicals in the water in the woods, which results in a monster leech. This large leech first leaps out of an ice fishing hole and attaches itself to a dude’s head, making him into a mindless murderer. Awesome.

That’s it. That’s the plot, and it’s all we need. The leeched victim goes around killing people, and if the host dies, the leech latches on to someone else. The film has a great low budget late 70s/early 80s vibe, with an exaggerated leech model and some modest gore, but there just isn’t time to deliver enough kills or leech transfers. I’m talking only once does the leech transfer from one person to another. But it does look hella freaky when a victim is walking around like a zombie with a leech attached to its head—an old school, practical effects leech.

The face every bottom has made at some point in his life.

The story is straightforward, with a sheriff and his deputy following the trail of bodies in an effort to track down a killer, and it all leads to a simple shootout once they encounter the leech. It really is a tight production that was perhaps kept to only an hour long due to budget constraints. Whatever the reason, I’d love to see this one expanded into a full-length, more intense feature.

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Demonic entities everywhere

Posted on April 9, 2026 by Daniel

It’s a trio of dark flicks about the occult and possession, so it definitely made for a good, themed triple feature. But did the power of these films compel me? Let’s find out.

THE COVENANT (2017)



If you are itching for an exorcism, this is yet another basic, possessed woman movie.

After her daughter dies and her husband commits suicide, a woman moves into her family home with her estranged brother. Healthy.

Weird stuff begins happening around the house, and soon after, the main woman starts acting weird. Various people also seem to be trying to warn both the brother and sister to leave the house. They seem like either they know something…or are up to something.

The sister becomes more erratic, we get some flashbacks to the real story about her daughter and husband, and eventually she goes totally Linda Blair.

A priest is called in, and the usual bedside treatment is administered. The demonic possession makeup does its job, and there’s a nasty little birth-giving moment, so those are both welcome highlights in an indie film, but there’s really nothing outstanding or unique happening here—unless you count the house crumbling at the end like something out of Carrie.

THE MORTUARY ASSISTANT (2026)



I’ve never played the video game this movie is based on, so I can’t address how it works as an adaptation. As a movie, it’s just one of those flicks with a cheap funhouse of horrors approach, meaning everything thrown at us to scare us feels like a disjointed fever dream of delusions, making most of what happens feel not so terrifying.

The movie is about a woman working at a mortuary overnight. Naturally, she has emotional and psychological baggage that she has to contend with by the end of the film.

She also has a boss who reveals to her that the crazy shit she starts experiencing is the result of a demon that hides out in the dead until it can attach itself to the living. The boss offers up rituals that might contain it, but that shit just doesn’t seem to work as the main girl encounters various ghouls, creatures, and walking dead people as she tries to dodge possession.

It all ends with a creepy creature in the final scene, but honestly, the moment that was most chilling to me comes near the beginning when a corpse smiles underneath a sheet.

Eek! If only the rest of the film had lived up to that horror eye candy.

BLACK GOAT (2025)



This dark woods occult film has a banger of an opener—a straight couple camping in the woods encounters the black goat antagonist, and it levitates the dude before he’s torn in two…starting at the crotch. Ouch.

I’m not going to lie. The film is kind of tedious after that. Our main guy is an environmental investigator sent into the woods on a new project. He sees signs of occult rituals. He encounters a creepy dude. He is confronted by the black goat, repeatedly.

Much of this movie involves nightmare sequences that get little in the way of a reaction from the main guy, so despite some chilling setups and great atmosphere, you just never quite feel a sense of dread—although, the scenes shot in total darkness with light only appearing on the subject of the scene are incredibly effective.

Once the main guy brings a friend with him into the woods and they spend a lot of time basically reciting urban legends about the area, things really slow down.

There are some intense scenes here and there, but they all feel very trippy and surreal, right down to the final act. However, practical gore effects are mostly great, with just one really bad green screen scene. And the final battle is a good representation of the horror the film could have delivered all along if it had been better paced.

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The knives are out with this foursome of kiddie classics

Posted on April 2, 2026 by Daniel

One director is responsible for this batch of four flicks based on popular kiddie characters, continuing the public domain craze that’s going on these days. Let’s find out if these children’s faves work as frightening freaks.

MINNIE’S MIDNIGHT MASSACRE (2026)

This Minnie Mouse movie delivers a familiar slasher scenario, some good kills, a cute main guy, and a gleefully evil Minnie Mouse killer.

20 years ago, a group of bullies locked a young girl down in a basement to never be seen again.

Now, those same four friends are going to a cabin in the woods for the weekend.

Once they arrive, we get traditional killer POV and heavy breathing. The group sits around talking about their pasts, futures, and hookups, one of which includes a flashback to the only guy in the group getting pegged by one of the girls. Quite an interesting choice for character development.

Each of the friends begins getting glimpses of someone in a Minnie Mouse mask. Seriously, I have no idea if Minnie is supposed to be a ghost of the bullied girl or the actual girl still alive and wearing a mask.

There are some weird moments that make it seem like she was somehow “possessed” by (CGI) mice while trapped down there, and she never does take off the mask, so in the end I wasn’t sure what it all meant.

Pretty soon, Minnie abducts one of the main girls and kills her after doing something really nasty to her with a pile of shit.

Once the girl is considered missing, cops show up, mostly to ensure a higher body count. The kill scenes aren’t particularly gruesome, and Minnie always goes old school with a knife, but it still managed to scratch my slasher itch.

Naturally, there’s a twist, but again, the legend of Minnie isn’t fully developed at all. There is, however, a nod to Steamboat Willie, the cartoon that basically introduce the world to Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

BETTY’S REVENGE (2026)

Running only 75 minutes long, this one only has three main characters, and that simply doesn’t sustain even a short flick when Betty Boop is walking around with a knife looking to kill people. But that’s not even really what Betty is looking to do. In fact, my hubby and I weren’t even sure what she was looking to do when the movie concluded. Yes, I subjected my hubby to this disappointment for our Saturday night movie. My bad.

The opener promises a conveyor belt of kills, with a female being called to a giant mansion for a “wellness check”. Considering she dies, you have to wonder why there’s never any follow-up wellness check to check on her…

Anyway, two girls and a guy show up at the mansion, formerly a club owned by Betty, which is now abandoned, yet somehow beautifully and perfectly preserved. They are college students doing a story on the legend of the club closing down.

They are immediately welcomed in by Betty, played by horror queen Hannah Fierman. Hannah is great in the coy, squeaky-voiced role, she just deserved a stronger script. Hell, Minnie didn’t even talk, and she got to lean into her freaky feistiness more than Betty does.

The kids think Betty is weird, but what they don’t seem to think is why is this woman who looks like she’s from the 1930s alive and looking like she’s 30?

They somehow lose Betty in the mansion and spend most of the movie trying to decide if they should just leave. A storm hits, and they contemplate whether they should stay in place or hop in their car and go. Their car disappears, so that decision is made for them. They read Betty’s diary, and this is the part that’s supposed to give the story some depth.

It all leads to Betty tying the three main characters up and finally killing one of them at the 54-minute mark. They’re sitting ducks and there are only three of them, so this isn’t a slasher. The only good gore involves Betty plucking out a pair of eyes with a knife. And her big soliloquy in which she explains her motivation is the part that leaves you saying, “Huh?”

ALADDIN (2026)

Damn. This one is a mess. It begins with a bloody, medieval battle with a short narrative about the power of the infamous magic lamp.

Then a couple in modern times comes to a cabin in the woods because the woman has mental health issues and needs to “rest”. They invite another couple to come hang with them. They find a lamp that clearly looks like it will grant a wish if you rub it. So…one of them rubs it.

If you’re expecting a killer Aladdin to come out of the lamp, forget it. One of the girls wishes to be pregnant and gives birth to a demon baby overnight. We only get a fleeting glimpse of this devilish baby face, and the face later appears again on one of the adults. Is it supposed to be evil Aladdin reborn? I guess.

They do a whole lot of talking—about the lamp, its history, how they can reverse their wishes, etc. Eventually, they somehow reverse things to before they rubbed the lamp. It now requires a sacrifice, so the main girl who needed rest has to fight back against her man and her two friends as they hunt her down in the final act.

It’s a weak script and rather dull viewing experience, so naturally, I watched the sequel.

ALADDIN’S REVENGE (2026)

The nonsense of the first film just digs itself into a deeper hole with this sequel. Despite the lamp being tossed into a lake at the end, it shows up in the backyard of someone else’s house for the opener of this one, leading to a murder/suicide. This opening kill has no bearing on the rest of the movie.

The final girl from the first film somehow got cleared of any wrongdoing in the deaths of all her friends, but she has been ordered to seek group therapy at a large house in the middle of nowhere.

This group therapy includes her, another girl, a guy, and a therapist. Cozy group. The lamp somehow finds its way into the house, someone uses it, and then everyone starts acting weird and murderous, just as they did in the first movie.

One of the guys seems possessed, so the main girl calls him Aladdin and has arguments with him in a battle of wits. Lasers shooting from mouths come into play in the sequel as well, because, why not?

The demon face we saw mostly (but barely) on the baby in the first movie makes a few more brief appearances, and the main girl once again has to clean up the mess the wishes make and destroy the lamp.

An influencer girl finds the lamp at the end, but I refuse to watch a third movie. Minnie’s Midnight Massacre is definitely the only one I’d suggest giving a try from this bunch if you’re looking for another cartoon character slasher to watch.

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Revisiting Resident Evil: Code Veronica on GameCube

Posted on March 31, 2026 by Daniel

My journey through my old survival horror games continues. Code Veronica is the game that bumped the Resident Evil series up to the next generation of graphics. Awesome. Claire looks so much more defined than she did in the original RE2.

With this game, your cleared data only affords you the infinite rocket launcher, not infinite weapons across the board as in RE3. The rocket launcher takes up two slots, and you don’t have that many slots to begin with. Argh.

There’s also an infamous glitch you can use to make the item in one particular slot infinite at the beginning of the game. I don’t know how the hell anyone ever figured this out, because there are numerous steps that involve arranging your inventory in a certain way and then using certain items before it works. I followed the instructions to get infinite green herbs, but because my game began with the rocket launcher in my inventory and using the slot I needed for the item I wanted to make infinite, I couldn’t get it to work. Oh well. Luckily, I was able to hide behind my infinite rocket launcher the whole game to stay alive.

Since I just played RE3 on the GameCube, I was thrilled to find the controller layout was exactly the same for this game. I wasn’t so thrilled to find that once again, you can’t aim the rocket launcher up and down, just straight ahead. What felt really weird is that even when you have to go up short staircases, you have to press the action button to climb them. Not ideal when you’re trying to run from an enemy.

Beginning at an island prison, the game quickly thrusts a load of zombies at you in a cemetery. This whole section has a load of zombies, as well as a load of items to pick up…with only 8 slots (6 if you have the infinite rocket launcher), and no item box in sight. Dammit.

In fact, when you leave the starting area, you quickly pass a table with a typewriter and ink ribbon–that has only 1 save instead of the usual 3! I panicked, fearing that was going to be the norm in this game (it’s been so long since I played that I couldn’t remember), but the next time I reached a typewriter, it had the usual 3-save ink ribbon.

There’s a lot of running back and forth in this section, and lots of fun jump scares, plus some zombie dogs. In other words, tread lightly, because zombies and dogs pop up around corners. Also, beware of the patches of fire you encounter, because they will hurt you if you touch them.

There’s also a very unnerving section that forces you to put all your metal items in a box in order to pass through a shutter door. That includes weapons, first aid sprays, the lighter you always have on you in a separate item slot, and…ink ribbons! No! This means remembering what you left there, and hoping you can get them back before you leave this area for good. Seriously, I didn’t quite plan correctly and ended up leaving a few things behind (not my ink ribbons), including the handgun. But who needs a handgun when you have an infinite rocket launcher?

The next area, “the palace”, has dogs, zombies, and…bats. Here is the thing you wouldn’t know without a walkthrough. There are two rooms you enter in which there are bats and items to collect. If you equip your lighter before you enter them, the bats won’t bother you. Wow. Another part that will leave you having no idea what to do or where to go unless you read a walkthrough involves a guy yelling for help and you having to find him and save him from being crushed. WTF? Good news is, you finally find a save room with an item box. Yay! And you will also score two sets of ink ribbons in this section. Wahoo! Plus, you find an expansion pack for your inventory that gives you 2 more slots. Sweet!

One of the most memorable storylines of all the games to me is introduced in this section, because it has to do with siblings and gender identity. Awesome.

Next, you’re off to a military facility. Eek! The moment you enter it, you meet the dreaded, giant ground worm. Dreaded if you don’t have the infinite rocket launcher, that is. See, you run through this open area repeatedly and have to just dodge this bitch unless you have the infinite rocket launcher. Then you just shoot him a few times when he pops out of the ground, and he’s dead for good. Awesome.

You also meet the Bandersnatch in this area. This big lug’s stretchy arm whips out and smacks you upside the head from a distance. However, that arm couldn’t cover as much distance as my infinite rocket launcher!

But I didn’t have my precious weapon when I was suddenly switched over to Claire’s new friend Steve. You briefly play Steve with just a pair of guns, and you have to go through three rooms and clear out all the zombies with your limited ammo. Beware. The first door you go through has the most obscured view ever. You can barely see yourself and the zombie standing right in front of you. Basically, just start shooting immediately or you will get grabbed and bitten. Also, watch out for the exploding gas barrel right next to the gate. Sure, it takes out a few zombies, but it also knocks you down to danger level health if you hit it. And there’s no health for you to find in this short section, so if you are badly wounded, you have to drag your way through the next two rooms of zombies and kill them all without being bitten. Yeah. Learned that the hard way.

You also meet a new crawling life form in this level that electrocutes you if you run into it. The first time you encounter it is in a bullshit moment where you are warned you have to retreat back to the lobby of the area before a shutter closes you inside the contaminated area. You get 45 seconds, but the crawlers are all over the floor, which hinders your progress, plus, the fricking timer continues during the slow as fuck animations of doors opening! No fair! Realistically, you’d be throwing those doors open and running through them in seconds!

You eventually find a secret passage, which delivers a Bandersnatch jump scare, and this leads to a covered bridge that takes you across to a mansion, with an epic approach that is so fricking atmospheric. You also encounter two Bandersnatches right away. Walkthrough told me not to kill them, but I very vividly recall what happened to me the first time I ever played the game and they were still there later (I’ll get to that memory momentarily).

My walkthrough author also told me not to bother going into a certain side room when I first entered the mansion, because there’s a Bandersnatch in there and it’s not worth it to get some ammo and a fricking ink ribbon. I would die for more ink ribbon…but I didn’t have to because I took the Bandersnatch out with my infinite rocket launcher.

This mansion is where we first spy on the brother and sister twins, who are bourgeois creepy and are adults but still have the rooms of children. Eek!

After this, we get to explore some new areas while passing through some old ones that have new zombies in them. Argh. The biggest challenge is the “morgue” section, because it leads you into a room with a statue holding a sword. Would have been nice if the walkthrough had warned me to backtrack and save before this part, because even with the walkthrough, I didn’t know what to do. It turned out to be a lot easier than I realized. You take the sword, the door locks, and poisonous gas starts filling the room. My infinite rocket launcher wasn’t going to save me here. I died the first time and then watched a YouTube video to see what I was actually supposed to. It was simple…just spin another statue in the room 180 degrees and the gas stops and unlocks the door.

Things really pick up when you get the chance to get higher up into the mansion to learn the truth about the twins. This is one of my favorite parts of the game thanks to the big reveal, but it’s also the part that was a nightmare the first time I played, because the trip back to the mansion was now covered with zombies and Bandersnatches, and I didn’t have the ammo or health to fight them all. My entire posse of friends happened to be present for this segment, and we were laughing and screaming as I escaped this section dragging my way around lunging zombies and getting smacked from across the screen by Bandersnatch arms. It was one of the funniest and most terrifying moments in my video game playing history. This time around, I just fucked them all up with my rocket launcher on my way to the mansion, so they weren’t even there when I left. Suckers.

Soon after that, you encounter fricking Tyrant! I’d say eek, but one shot with a rocket and he was dead. Then I teamed up with Claire’s buddy Steve to escape this section of the game in a plane on a five-minute timer. Naturally, things don’t go smoothly, and Claire volunteers to backtrack and do what needs to be done to get the escape plane running. I would’ve had no idea what to do without a walkthrough. That includes how to kill Tyrant again when he shows up on the fricking plane after you take off. There’s no one-shot rocket launcher kill this time. You can shoot him a bit to weaken him, but the goal is to avoid him in the cargo hold, lure him in front of a bunch of crates, and then hit a lever that launches the crates at him and knocks him out of the plane. The catch is, if he’s not worn down enough, he leaves skid marks on the cargo hold floor as he stops the crates before they can knock him out. Fucker.

While I originally played this game on PS2 on one disc, the GameCube requires two discs, and this is the moment you have to switch them. I was so afraid my old console was going to fail during the disc swap, but thankfully, the game lets you save before the disc switch. Awesome. The disc switch went smoothly, and then we were in Antarctica! You can feel the cold in the facility you end up in. Steve leaves you alone to explore, and one of the first things you have to do is get the electricity working for light. The walkthrough I used made it very clear which doors to avoid going through, so I’d say a walkthrough is crucial at this point.

The bane of my Antarctic existence was the moth hallway. It is covered in cocoons and filled with moths that attack you, lay eggs on your back, and poison you every time you run through it. Worst of all, it’s the hallway that holds the only save room in this section. Oh. And if you kill all the moths, they just respawn the next time you run through the hall. Double oh. The blue herbs you need to heal after being poisoned? There are barely any in this section. There are, however, plenty of other items, but you are unlikely to be able to see them until after you get the lights working, at which point you might want to retrace all your steps and collect everything you missed. Antarctica tosses plenty of zombies at you, along with giant spiders and more zombie dogs. Definitely not an easy section.

When you finally get to leave Antarctica, you have to run through that damn moth hall again. Ugh. Here is something crucial. When you are in the save room gathering your things before this final exit, you absolutely must put anything crucial in the item box, because you are about to switch characters, and if you don’t leave things like, say, an infinite rocket launcher in the box, when you switch from Claire to her brother Chris for the next portion of the game, he will not have it.

Unfortunately, this means you do have to fight a boss without the infinite rocket launcher as Claire before the swap. You get a sniper rifle for this bitch of a battle, but I also took a grenade launcher and extra ammo I’d picked up along the way. This boss is on a platform with you. He has tentacles. If he hits you with a tentacle, chances are he’s going to knock you off the platform, which is instant death. Even with the grenade launcher, I had three instant deaths. Good news is, you get a “retry” option rather than being forced to load your last save. The point of the sniper rifle is to hit the boss directly in his heart, which delivers a one-hit kill. However, you only get seven bullets, it’s foggy, which means you have to wait for the boss to get close to you so you can see him, looking through the sniper scope takes time and now the boss is on top of you and about to knock you off the platform, and, most importantly, I fucking suck with the sniper rifle in video games. Therefore, I just ran up to the bastard with my grenade launcher and laid into him.

Once you defeat him, you are in Chris’s shoes. You only have a handgun, but luckily, a typewriter and a storage chest are nearby, so I immediately grabbed the infinite rocket launcher Claire left for Chris (aka: I left for me). I needed it, because in the next room you have to fight another damn giant underground worm. If you kill it fast enough (I did with one infinite rocket shot), he spits out a dude who gives you a lighter. Why is that crucial? Because you need that lighter to open a secret panel in the next room that scores you a submachine gun. Of course, if you have an infinite rocket launcher, does a finite submachine gun even matter? I can answer that. No. It doesn’t. At all.

Here’s one snag with changing over to Chris. You don’t have the expansion pack for your inventory, so you’re stuck with only 8 slots. Argh! Good news is, it’s not too long before you find another pack and bump back up to 10 slots.

There’s a lot of back and forth on multiple levels in this section, plus moving stairs that are manipulated by a shotgun on or off a rack, so I don’t see how you would get past this section without a walkthrough. We also meet up with the good old hunters, and there are surveillance spotlights in hallways. Run into them and hunters appear. We also meet poisonous hunters for the first time when we play as Chris, meaning you will need blue herbs to heal if they hit you.

This game always confused me, because there are certain points where you’ll like go through a door in a section and end up in a section from way earlier in the game, and it’s like…did I just go from one continent to another simply by passing through a door? This whole section feels like that. However, you do take a plane back to Antarctica as Chris, where you discover that those buggers in the moth hall are no longer around because the place has been overrun by the cold and they couldn’t survive. Yay!

You get to explore new areas of Antarctica with Chris as you solve more puzzles and collect new items. And oddly enough, you come to an area that is an exact copy of a room from the original Resident Evil. This game is so trippy. You also get to face something very big that you noticed moving under an ice pool earlier in the game when you were playing as Claire…an enormous spider! The walkthrough said to just avoid him and run onto the ice to grab the shiny object waiting there and get out, but fuck that suggestion. Since I had infinite rockets to spare, I blasted the fucker to smithereens with one shot. Awesome.

My arrogance about my infinite fire power was immediately squelched as I neared the end of this section. It’s a section I remembered well but not fondly, and it’s even worse than I remembered. It’s unfathomable how many instant death moments you are faced with before you finally get another save.

My walkthrough guy warned me to save right before the shit hit the fan, as if I don’t save every chance I get anyway. Even so, it’s important to note at this last save before moving on to a new area that you are about to play briefly as Claire, but do not leave anything crucial like the infinite rocket launcher for her, because you don’t play as her for long, and you don’t want to lose such crucial items to her when you revert back to Chris. As Claire, you can just grab a some shitty guns from the item box to kill the few zombies and tentacles she runs into during her very brief but very challenging return.

So, as Chris, you end up in what looks like a very familiar mansion, find Claire, and have to hunt down a serum for her since she’s been poisoned. When you get back to her and administer it, there’s a cutscene, after which you’re playing as Claire. Despite having been given a serum, your health is in danger mode. WTF? You are in a room with plenty of supplies (including herbs you will need to heal), a secret panel you can open for more supplies, an item box, and NO fucking typewriter. And you are about to encounter several instant kill challenges in a row.

First, theres a crushing cement block. You must trigger it by turning a handle, then run under it before it stomps you, grab a crystal on the other side, then run into a bright circle on the floor under the stone to drop the crystal there to be crushed. The good news is that you automatically step out in a cutscene before the crystal is crushed. The bad news is that you now have to get right back on that bright spot on the floor to pick the crystal up. Do it in time and the stone will not fall. Thing is, it is such a tight spot, and it is really easy to overshoot the bright spot and get crushed. Six fucking times I had to redo it. Thankfully, it’s a “retry” moment, however, it puts you back in the room without the save just to rub it in, and you have to recollect all the items you collected already.

What happens next? You go through a few doors, walk to the end of a corridor, and after a cutscene, have to quickly turn and run back to the exit while a monster with a huge axe is chasing you. If he hits you twice, you die. He doesn’t die if you shoot him, so you just have to run. My walkthrough told me to take numerous healing items and save every time he hit me. Seriously, this is not a long corridor, yet it feels miles long. I don’t know if you get a “retry” if you screw up, because I actually made it out the first time, but I did have to heal twice.

Next, you play as Chris again…right after a cutscene with a fiery boss only inches in front of you. If she touches you, it’s instant death. Good news for me was that I just panicked and immediately used my rocket launcher without creating space first (knowing my habit of letting terror get the better of me, I would have run directly into her if I tried to distance myself from her). One rocket took her down. YAY. I’m not sure if this moment would have offered a “retry” option, because if it didn’t, I would lose my shit if I was sent back to item room before Claire has to use the crystal crusher.

Finally, after going through a few more rooms, you end up in a save room with more ink ribbons. What a relief. After that, there’s just a bit more scavenging to get a few more items to progress to the final boss.

I was surprised out how fast I killed the final boss. The shitty thing is you only have five minutes, and the countdown begins before you even reach her. Then you’re on a platform with her and Claire. There’s a cutscene, and when it ends, you have to quickly shoot the boss once or she will immediately knock Claire off the platform and it’s game over. That didn’t happens to me thanks to my infinite rocket launcher. After I saved Claire, I just had to shoot at the boss until a nearby linear launcher finished charging. The idea is to grab the linear launcher, which has infinite firing power, and hit the boss twice with it. Problem is she’s now a flying bug, and every time you target her, the POV switches into sniper view, and the whole damn screen turns green, making her hard to see. You sort of have to shoot wildly and hope you hit her while also keeping on the move so she can’t hit you with her projectile powers. I couldn’t even tell if I was hitting her, but within a minute, she was dead. Wow.

After that, I gripped my controller in panic that every cut scene was going to put me back into control for something else. Shockingly, it doesn’t. There are like ten minutes of cut scenes that close out the game. No more fighting, no running to catch a helicopter during a countdown. Amazing and well deserved after that long stretch I had without any save.

For me, all the game completion rankings and stats don’t even matter. What made me most proud was that I finished the game with eight ink ribbons to spare.

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