Each of the films in my latest selection of flicks for a movie marathon had something that kept me watching, but was it worth it in the end? Let’s find out.
NIGHT OF WRATH (2025)
This is an all-around cliché-riddled, 73-minute flick that doesn’t deliver any thrilling takes on any of those clichés. The most confusing part to me is that it takes place in a haunted attraction and there are plenty of jack-o-‘lanterns around, but there is absolutely no mention whatsoever of it being Halloween, and the holiday has no bearing on anything.
However, Sleepy Hollow gets a random mention as well, and therefore, I’ll add Night of Wrath to the holiday horror page since it gives off visual Halloween vibes inside the attraction.
We meet a group of kids in a series of melodramatic, dialogue-driven exposition for each character. They are then invited by some sort of secret invitation to a haunted attraction.
They’re the only ones there. An animatronic figure talks to them and gives them a very Saw-like ultimatum—do what it tells them to do or their darkest secrets will be revealed.
The group walks around the attraction a lot trying to figure out how to escape, however, it doesn’t look like much effort was put in to making it feel like an authentic attraction, probably due to budget constraints.
We don’t get anything in the way of horrific things the friends are required to do to survive, there are very few juicy secrets revealed, and there are no death scenes. Not to mention, the person behind the plot is revealed at the 43-minute mark, so there isn’t even much mystery here. Just a really underdeveloped script and plot all around.
GOD OF PAIN (2023)
There’s plenty of disturbing imagery, eerie visuals elements, and gore in this flick, but rather than an actual plot arc with main characters, this is basically a series of vignettes featuring various people being sentenced in purgatory for their crimes against humanity.
Sort of like a horror anthology of people just doing bad things and then getting tortured. It runs its course quickly, but a few twists in some of the “cases” add a hint of interest, although not enough to make this an approach to telling a story that I’d want to see again.
The funniest thing to me was that the “god of pain” is literally wearing the same exact mask I use on a mannequin that stands in my bushes for Halloween. It’s definitely a freaky mask—I purposely bought it to scar trick or treaters for life—so it should creep out most viewers of the movie, but for me it will always be a Halloween prop I bought online.
Who wore it better? Top image: movie. Bottom image: my house.
Top image: movie. Bottom image: my house. Who wore it better?
Anyway, here’s a breakdown of the baddies on trial:
— a dude who kidnaps and kills women, and his opening case is perhaps the creepiest of all, partially because we don’t actually yet know the premise of the movie
–a dude that dismembered and buried bodies
–a woman who cracked under the pressure of motherhood and killed her own kids
–a guy who killed his whole family
–a woman who killed people who did bad things (one of the twists)
–a guy wrongly accused of crimes and the guy who accused him (the second twist)
My absolute favorite part of this movie was when the god of pain kills a dude by breathing fire on him. Awesome.
WHAT THE WATERS LEFT BEHIND: SCARS (2022)
This is a sequel to What the Waters Left Behind, and it comes from the same director. However, the first film was in Spanish, and this one is in English…sort of. We have a rock band that speaks English and ends up in the same desert ruins of a town that the characters in the previously film did, and they encounter the same “backwoods” style, crazy family.
However, the family speaks Spanish, and there are no subtitles for them, at least none available on Tubi, where I watched this. I’m not sure if that was intentional to make English-only speaking viewers feel fear due to the characters’ inability to communicate with the crazies, but it made me more frustrated than frightened, because I felt like I missed like half the movie because I couldn’t understand it.
Even so, there’s not much to miss, I guess. Just like the first film, this is the same crazy psycho family formula, just with a new group of victims. And as with the first film, all the classic elements are included, but it’s all missing any edge, so it wasn’t very scary, suspenseful, or disturbing. For instance, when the family members first abduct the members of the band, they have animal skull masks on, but once they’re all tied up in the family’s lair, there are no masks, just hillbilly-looking crazies.
This sequel has a weird, homoerotic vibe to it, with lots of a flesh, sweaty man bods, tattoos, beards, and arm pits.
There’s also an implied male rape (one of those instances when the film holds back instead of actually showing us anything fucked up), landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page. Oddly, the prettiest male member of the band also calls one of the family members a faggot, which felt very out of place.
The kills and battles are quite generic, and even the surprise at the end isn’t all that surprising. This one simply doesn’t take the psycho family subgenre anywhere new.