CAUGHT ON CAMERA: oh, the horrors!

These three films from my streaming watchlists borrow elements of found footage horror, but none of them fully commits to the subgenre’s rigid POV, allowing for some flexibility in the way the stories are presented. I’m not saying that makes them good, but I did have a favorite.

DON’T MAKE A SOUND (2024)

If you like sleazy, ugly, gritty serial killer movies with little plot that look very homemade, almost to the point of feeling like snuff films short of some bad acting in places, you might get into this movie about a psycho who abducts and violently kills people while filming it. Not only is the footage rough, but the audio is terrible, with the volume level dropping so much at times that you can barely hear what’s being said even if you crank up the volume on your television. From what I saw—and didn’t hear—you’re not missing anything crucial by not picking up the dialogue.

Much of the footage is shown through the killer’s camera lens. The first twenty minutes consist exclusively of footage of one person after another being taunted, terrorized, and then murdered by the killer in his “lair”.

While the killer does make cameos in his own videos once in a while, he’s usually in rain wear and a mask, but that’s not half as creepy as he is when he shows his actual face and makes disturbing expressions. Definitely good casting of the killer. With a face that freaky, who needs a mask?

After the long montage of murders, we get the simple story. A young girl is trying to cope with the death of her mother. She’s being sent to live with her aunt and resents her older sister sending her away. That anger translates into a stretch of silent treatment for us to sit through as they go on a road trip so the sister can drop her off. Unless it actually wasn’t the silent treatment and I just couldn’t hear the audio.

The car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and then the little girl spends the rest of the movie roaming through the woods trying to avoid the killer. In between hunting her, the killer mutilates anyone else unlucky enough to be in the middle of nowhere at the wrong time.

It’s slow and drawn out, and the best part is when the little girl goes manic on the killer, beating and stabbing the hell out of him at the end.

THE GLENARMA TAPES (2022)

I think there might be a whole lot of paid reviewers out there on the internet covering this one. I read some pretty eloquently written praise of it, and then I watched it, only to find nothing but chaos and disappointment.

The movie doesn’t solely stick to found footage, but even much of the footage that is supposed to be found footage is shot like it was recorded on high-quality film. I guess you could argue that using modern day HD digital devices wouldn’t result in the kind of rough, shot-on-video quality we grew used to starting over 25 years ago with Blair Witch, but this film even breaks the rules of found footage more than once with some funky editing and camerawork, as well as moments featuring music that is used to establish tone!

The premise isn’t terrible. A jaded college student having his film student buddy make a “documentary” about his life comes up with a different theme for their movie. Hard to believe he could get past his own ego and decide there was a more interesting subject to focus on. That’s some major character growth in a short time.

After overhearing two teachers discussing sneaking off to an isolated location together, the buddies gather some other friends and follow the teachers to the country in hopes of catching them in the act.

On the way, a convenience store clerk warns them to beware of Harry the Half-Headed Man in the woods. How I wish Harry had been the actual threat. I was so stoked for a half-headed dude. Instead, the students witness a cult performing a sacrificial ritual.

The action finally kicks in, and I had no idea what I was witnessing. People are running and screaming through the woods, cameras are shaking and spinning, and then I simply had to conclude that most of the main cast was selfishly dead within a matter of minutes without having treated me to any suspense, scares, or gore. However, the masked guy with the hot bod who ties up shirtless men to torture them definitely made for some enjoyable horror.

The movie shifts away from found footage for the final act, in which the lone survivor is convinced police are hiding something and not bothering to investigate what happened in the woods. This one is a serious head scratcher.

THE WILD MAN: SKUNK APE (2021)

Me thinking that a movie with the words Skunk Ape in the title and starring Michael Pare is the best of a bunch totally tracks. It’s goofy and messy, but it does something most found footage films fail to do…it delivers loads of monster payoff in the final act.

Turns out the Skunk Ape is an actual legend and is sort of like the Bigfoot of the Everglades in Florida. Horror teaches me something new every day.

The big difference is that this hairy beast is known for being stinky. That’s not all that scary. Haven’t we all encountered a stinky, hairy beast at least once in a locker room or public restroom? Unfortunately, the hairy beast in this movie is attracted to bait soaked in period blood. No, I’m not joking.

Following a string of missing persons cases in a small town near the swamps, enthusiastic filmmakers come to do some investigating, at which point we shift mostly into found footage mode.

They begin by interviewing locals about the legend. They end up hooking up with a conspiracy theorist who leads them into the wilderness to look out for the Skunk Ape. This segment features a lot of talking to give us some character development. In other words…the boring part.

46 minutes in we get the first major Skunk Ape attack. The excitement is quickly ruined by some sort of military team stepping in, led by Eddie of The Cruisers.

Our filmmaking team escapes the monster and the military and then asks some shady dudes to help them sneak into a secret government facility. Totally absurd, right? But I don’t care, because it leads to the fun part of the movie.

Conveniently, there seem to be cameras everywhere to catch the action, including body cams on the soldiers. This movie really made me think. Yes, I said this movie made me think. It made me think about how the hell they get so much camera time in these found footage films. Like how do the batteries last so long, and how do they seem to have endless storage space for their videos? My brand new iPhone has the latest battery technology and massive storage space, and still doesn’t allow you to make a full-length porn in one take. Not that I’ve ever tried…

So anyway, once they’ve infiltrated the facility, the group is caught immediately by the soldiers (shocker), and then the movie goes into 1980s mode. Awesome. Everyone is running through industrial hallways drenched in red and blue neon light as they are terrorized and torn apart by Skunk Apes. Double awesome. The final act and the cheesy message about humanity make this one all worth it. Even the part where the main girl reasons with a Skunk Ape to prevent it from killing her friend adds to the midnight movie silliness of it all.

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The horror of Bugs Bunny & Friends

Nothing deserves the name Looney Tunes more than the scary episodes of Bugs Bunny and his friends. I went through all my Looney Tunes DVDs and Blu-rays to pick my ten favorite scary episodes, which make for a perfect Halloween marathon. Quite a few of them were incorporated into Bugs Bunny’s Howl-Oween Special from 1977, which was my inspiration for this post. The holiday special is comprised of clips from several episodes I cover here, strung together with some new scenes to make a cohesive narrative. Even though I watch that special every year, it’s always fun to see the full-length episodes, plus a few extra episodes I’ve included in my list.

BROOM-STICK BUNNY

An official Bugs Bunny Halloween cartoon, this one features Bugs trick or treating in an ugly witch costume. That doesn’t sit well with Witch Hazel, who prides herself on being the ugliest witch of them all. Despite Witch Hazel doing everything in her power to kill Bugs to eat him when he shows up at her door, the part that scared me most about this episode as a child was the pervy genie in Witch Hazel’s mirror, who becomes predatory when she accidentally turns pretty. Witch Hazel appears in other Bugs Bunny episodes, but they are based on Hansel & Gretel and Macbeth rather than being specifically “scary” episodes.

A-HAUNTING WE WILL GO

Another Halloween episode, this one features Daffy Duck’s nephew trick or treating…in the same witchy costume Bugs did! He also ends up at Witch Hazel’s door. He runs from her house in fear and tells Daffy he saw a witch, so Daffy heads off to investigate. Meanwhile, Witch Hazel wants to go out for a while, so she turns Speedy Gonzalez into a mirror image of herself to take her place temporarily, so he is the one who actually deals with Daffy’s arrival. This is an odd episode that feels rushed and incomplete.

WATER WATER EVERY HARE

This episode terrified me when I was a kid. Bugs Bunny’s rabbit hole gets flooded, and he is washed away to a spooky castle where a mad scientist with a green face is creating a robot that needs a brain. Eek! The mad scientist unleashes our favorite furry monster Gossamer to track Bugs down, but the part that freaked me out comes at the end, when the mad scientist is chasing bugs in slow motion.

HAIR-RAISING HARE

The image during the opening credits of this episode is haunting, featuring just evil eyes and gnarly hands. For the story, we once again have a freaky scientist (in the likeness of actor Peter Lorre), who lures Bugs to his castle so he can feed him to his pet monster Gossamer.

HYDE AND HARE

This one ruined me as a child. Bugs is brought home from the park by a kindly, soft-spoken scientist…who keeps turning into Mr. Hyde and chasing Bugs around the house! The freakiest part is when Bugs hides in a closet with the scientist to keep them safe from the monster…and we see nothing but eyes as the man turns into the monster in the dark!

HYDE AND GO TWEET

Both the scientist and his alter ego Hyde make a cameo at the beginning of this episode, although drawn slightly different than in Hyde and Hare. This time around, Tweety hides in the scientist’s potion bottle to escape Sylvester, turns into a giant monster bird, and chases Sylvester around. His evil laugh rules, and it’s hilarious how every time he turns back into little Tweety, single-minded Sylvester starts chasing him all over again without a second thought.

TRANSYLVANIA – 6-5000

Bugs accidentally burrows his way up to a vampire’s castle in Transylvania while on a trip to Pennsylvania. He thinks the castle is a hotel, and the count is more than willing to allow him to stay for the night. The count has every intention of making a meal out of Bugs, but Bugs reads out of a magic book he finds in his bedroom, which drives the count batty…

SCAREDY CAT

Porky Pig moves into a creepy house with his cat Sylvester, and Sylvester is absolutely terrified by all the classic haunted house tropes…as well as murderous mice. These are some seriously macabre mice. Sylvester tries desperately to protect Porky from the killers, but Porky thinks he’s acting crazy.

CLAWS FOR ALARM

Porky Pig and Sylvester are back in what is basically a sequel to Scaredy Cat. This time they are on a road trip and stop at a hotel in a ghost town. Sylvester is well-aware of the green eyes of evil mice watching them from dark corners and shadows and once again goes to great lengths to keep Porky alive, yet we never actually see the mice. Which begs the question…are mice really the threat lurking in the shadows?

CASE OF THE STUTTERING PIG

This oldie is in black and white. Porky Pig and his family members gather in a house on a stormy night for the reading of his late uncle’s will. Little do they know their lawyer turns into a monster after drinking a potion…and family members begin disappearing one after the other. He is more menacing than any monster that came in the full-color episodes.

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Three holiday horrors and a gay horror flick!

My latest weekend marathon featured two Halloween-themed horror flicks, a killer bunny flick good for an Easter horror marathon, and a mainstream gay horror flick that premiered on HBO MAX, making for a bunch of new titles for the holiday horror page and one for the homo horror movies page.

KILLER WITCHES FROM OUTER SPACE (2024)

This is good gateway horror that can be watched with kids, with a home-brewed, small town indie vibe and special effects that range from cool creature designs to classic, cheesy 80s visuals.

The plot plays it straight and simple—”alien witches” send their big spiders down like meteors to wreak havoc before joining in on the Halloween party themselves.

The spiders are a blast and mostly steal the show, but the alien witches are virtually replicas of Pumpkinhead, which means they’re awesome…and also in an actual Halloween-themed movie, unlike Pumpkinhead. Sorry, but it always irked me that his movies didn’t take place on Halloween considering the word pumpkin was in his damn name.

Naturally, some teenagers are the first to realize there’s been an invasion (very 1980s), and soon a pastor, a priest, police, and redneck farmers are joining in to put an end to the enemy.

It all leads to a Halloween dance at the high school, where a campy battle with the baddies takes place and the cast is at their funniest. The alien witches even shoot webs from their wrists like Spider-Man. This is definitely a flick that 80s kids will appreciate.

Keep an eye out for a mid-credits scene and an after credits scene.

FULL MOON FEVER (2023)

 

David Lee Madison writes, directs, and stars in a little indie werewolf movie that perfectly captures the spirit of the fall season, because it clearly was filmed in autumn.

We get a pretty good opening attack scene as a couple sits in their car at night watching the stars. If only we’d gotten more attack scenes like this.

Instead, the film focuses on the main man, who recently lost his wife to COVID. As a distraction, he begins decorating for Halloween a month early (my kind of man) and makes plans with his daughter for her to return from college to celebrate with him.

And then he gets bit by a werewolf while on a walk at night.

Rather than this being about the werewolf terrorizing the town, it’s about the man dealing with his grief while he’s starting to change, which involves “spooky” nightmares and bizarre delusions. It’s a very slow, moody, and minimalistic movie that only runs 73 minute long.

It’s not until 65 minutes in that the main man transforms into somewhat of an old school Wolf Man. He then attacks only a couple of people before chasing his daughter to a very anti-climactic and abrupt ending. I wish we’d gotten a bit more of the old school Wolf Man action, because as it stands, the Halloween vibe is definitely the star of this one.

THE BUNNY MAN (2021)

As usual, this isn’t an official Easter horror movie, but since there are so few of them, what better time to watch slashers about killers in bunny costumes? Not to mention, why even don a bunny costume if you’re not going to hack people up for Easter?

This also has no connection to the Bunnyman trilogy. It’s a 71-minute long indie written and directed by the star Bobby McGruther. The plot is straightforward. 20 years ago, he was the cop who took down a serial killer called The Bunny Man, but he was unable to save the final victim, which still haunts him. Oh…and now a copycat killer is on the loose.

With a very low budget, hometown production feel, the film is dark and gritty with a shadowy VHS horror look, and the sustained music score captures that 80s style, plus there is a constant stream of kill scenes. While not exactly suspenseful, scary, or gory, they definitely give the film a certain retro vibe.

There’s some character exploration, but it really isn’t all that deep and doesn’t provide much entertainment. At least it didn’t for me. I was just in it for the killer bunny.

THE PARENTING (2025)

This is how you do a gay horror comedy. Sure, it has more straight characters than gay characters, but the whole premise is that a gay couple rents a house for the weekend so their parents can meet for the first time, and the campy humor is off the charts.

It begins with the gay couple on their way to the house, and their loving relationship is adorable, playful, and comes complete with a kiss right away, so there’s no shying away from expressions of gay intimacy. One of them is cutie Brandon Flynn, who also played gay in Hellraiser 2022.

The parents arrive, and the mothers are played by Edie Falco and Lisa Kudrow. Edie is a natural at comedy, and Lisa always brings her usual funny self to the mix, which I can never get enough of. The dads are also familiar faces, and it felt really cool to see mainstream actors in a gay horror comedy with some edge to it.

We even get Parker Posey doing what she does best as the weird manager of the property.

Pretty soon, the family is experiencing creepy shit, and it escalates quickly, after which it is nonstop insanity. One of the dads gets possessed and hurls raunchy, derogatory comments at the gays, the humor gets crass and gross, there are various rotting corpse ghosts roaming the halls, and there are some doggies in the house that meet brutal endings.

I can say as a dog lover who hates when dogs die in movies that I found the doggy deaths to be over-the-top funny and not cruel or disturbing in the way they are presented.

It’s purely mindless entertainment with a very Evil Dead 2 meets House vibe, and I really hope it gets a physical media release at some point so I can add it to my collection.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: a werewolf flick and a gay psychological thriller

The two latest additions to my movie collection check off a couple of my must-own boxes, each for a different reason: Frank Grillo in a horror movie, and gay horror. So, in essence, two horror movies for the gays. Let’s get right into them.

WEREWOLVES (2024)

Director Stephen C. Miller, who brought us Automaton TransfusionUnder the BedScream of the BansheeSilent Night, and Margaux, delivers a fun action horror flick with mostly practical effect werewolves. Awesome.

This is how you start a horror movie—hottie Frank Grillo in a tank top securing his family’s home as protection against the night of the “super moon”, a recent occurrence that has been turning people into werewolves. People have been ordered to stay locked inside, not only as safety from those who turn, but to avoid turning themselves.

There’s a side story about Frank’s family trying to survivor in their home while it’s under siege, but we really don’t have any time to connect with those characters. Besides, they’re not his nuclear family, they’re his sister-in-law and niece.

The juice is in Frank teaming up with a female scientist at a lab where they are working on a cure. Things go horribly wrong, there is a werewolf outbreak, and Frank and the scientist have to make it through the empty city to get back to his family.

The werewolves look awesome, there’s lots of shooting and plenty of gore, and the idea of transforming just by getting hit by moonlight adds a new element to the usual werewolf plot.

There is one aspect of the film that really pissed me off though…

***SPOILER*** in the very last scene, Frank turns into one of those hulking werewolves temporarily until the sun rises. As soon as he begins to transform back, I said to the hubby, “We’re going to see Frank naked!” This is some bullshit. Instead, he’s in his tight jeans, which never would have stayed on him once he transformed. Worst.Plot.Hole.Ever.

THERE’S A ZOMBIE OUTSIDE (2024)

I picked this one up because I like to collect any gay horror flicks that are available on disc. I will say right up front that this is more of a psychological thriller about a filmmaker who is basically being haunted by the horror movie he created, but it still earns a place on the homo horror movies page.

The film feels sort of like a therapeutic project for writer/director Michael Varrati, who has been in this business for a while. Much like the handful of Stephen King stories in which the monster a writer has created comes for him in reality, this is like Varrati exorcising his demons as he reflects on his own career and abilities. The main character essentially is him, for the movie within the movie is There’s a Zombie Outside. The script is even loaded with meta references to what could be considered flaws in the movie by viewers that come into it with preconceived expectations of what they will be getting and then criticizing it for not living up to those expectations. That in itself becomes a challenge to viewers…how do you criticize a movie when your own criticisms are so predictable and being called out in advance? Clever.

The movie begins like a horror movie. Four gay guys are renting a house. The main guy begins seeing a zombie outside. There’s a bit of a slow burn until we get exactly what any gay horror fan could hope for…dick eating and zombie sex, of course.

And right there is where we are taken out of that movie and the film becomes an exploration of the main character questioning what is real and what isn’t, and how his creativity is stifled because of demands from producers and agents about his art and his queerness.

The film is short, there are philosophical conversations rather than standard thrills or chills, and you’re likely to not quite understand what’s going on if you’re approaching the movie pragmatically and anticipating a basic gay horror movie. Michael has written plenty of queer, campy, midnight horror movies, but that is not what he was going for here. However, he leaves you itching to see the full-length version of the There’s a Zombie Outside movie that we get a taste of here, which leaves Varrati wide open to making that another project if he so wishes.

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A foursome of zombified flicks

This was a mixed bag of zombie types and zombie subgenres, and the satisfaction level for the hubby and I varied, but we definitely agreed on which ones worked for us and which ones didn’t. We also had an absolute fave of the bunch. Let’s get into them.

ZOMBEEZ (2023)

It’s like a killer bee movie with a zombee twist. It opens with a punk rockin’ “Zombeez” theme song that I totally want for my Halloween playlist. In fact, as much potential as the film itself had, the theme song proved to be my favorite part.

Director and co-writer Elesia Marie also stars as a coroner in a small town. When bees turn up dead in her father’s bee farm, and then people start turning up dead of bee bites, it seems pretty obvious what’s happening…but the likable characters don’t see it that way in this SyFy style movie that even makes a Sharknado reference.

I expected nothing more than the campy flying bee overlays on the screen, which totally fit the tone of the film. The problem is the excessive focus on the science of how to handle the zombeez, with way too much dry talk that kills the pacing and leaves the humorous moments few and far between. I could have told them what exactly was happening in minutes instead of hashing it out for ten minutes at a stretch.

The film is bogged down by discussions of how people are dying, why bees are attacking, why bees are eating meat, how they can be stopped, and why they are growing bigger. That particular plot element is the highlight here. There was so much cheesy opportunity to play up the big zombee concept, but it barely made any buzz.

Even the final battle, which is totally on par with the best of the worst of SyFy originals from back in the day, is not as thrilling as one would hope. The energy level is just too low throughout the movie.

I do have to point out the representation here, with several Black characters and even a janitor that gives off a gender queer vibe. My favorite is the deputy sheriff. He is yummy, with beard and booty for days.

GLOWZIES (2023)

Neon green zombies that radiate like glow sticks at a 1992 rave? I was so ready for it. This film has all the ingredients to be a blast, but for some reason, it never quite gels. There are several issues that hinder the fun.

First, while there are hints of quirky humor, it’s not enough to make this a memorable party flick. How do you not seize the chance to exploit the fun of glowing zombies? Also, while the characters are all likable, it never quite feels like they are working together or playing off each other. The sense of camaraderie needed to make this a midnight movie is sorely lacking. And finally, the “backstory” and main story both feel like they are meandering all over the place.

The highlight is absolutely the glowing zombies—or glowzies. They look wicked cool, and they turn other people into glowzies by projectile vomiting neon green slime all over their faces.

The focus is on a group of older male friends that experienced something while working in the town’s now abandoned, off-limits mill years before but can’t remember what it was. When aspiring young filmmakers pop into the local diner and announce they want to go make a documentary about the mill, the older men decide to tag along.

There’s plenty of glowzie action, and sprinkled between it are convoluted flashbacks as the older men begin regaining their memories of what happened in the past. As the group becomes trapped in an office with glowzies all around them, they discover the glowzies can be stopped in their tracks when music is played, most notably surfer rock.

Despite the lack of chemistry between the characters, the film keeps moving, but it then does the thing I loathe…it brings in the military. Ugh! The action takes off in a new direction in desert hills as we learn how the glowzies originated, and the main group once again finds themselves trapped by the glowzies, this time in the diner. The final battle is pretty basic, but we get to see the hunky chef from the diner fight glowzies after ripping off his shirt. Yahoo!

WORLD ENDS AT CAMP Z (2021)

If only this were the zombie outbreak at a summer camp movie it sounds like it will be. If only it were a fun zomcom as the title and poster art suggest. Instead, this is a serious movie about a camp being sold during a pandemic, a plot that is hurt by a messy script and slow pacing.

I’ll say for starters that the Canadian location shoot is beautiful—one of the highlights of a movie with an otherwise low budget presentation.

It begins with a dude coughing outside his car on the side of the road. There’s blood on the mouth mask he left in his car, and the radio is reporting about how to stay safe during the pandemic—all of it a haunting reminder of what we went through in reality several years ago. COVID is never mentioned, but the film definitely dips into the details that made the pandemic such a disaster, from conspiracy theories to non-believers endangering everyone.

Is the pandemic the reason for the zombie outbreak? Maybe. The cast members at the camp don’t seem to be too concerned though. We have a Native American man who is selling the place, the young man who works for him, and a young female lawyer that works for the new buyer. The trio spends a lot of time talking, and the owner tells a campfire story about the Wendigo, which turns out to be nothing more than a tale. It has no bearing on the rest of the movie.

Personally, I would have been more invested in the film if this hottie working at a convenience store had been one of the main characters. I’d even overlook the man bun.

The guy buying the place arrives with his friends, and they hang out and party. We also learn they plan to scope the land out for money-making resources, even though the Native American owner warns them the land is hallowed ground and not to be tampered with. Is that the cause of the outbreak? Not likely, because all they do is take a sample of water to test.

Eventually the group finds signs of a sacrificial ritual. Is that the reason for the outbreak? No idea at this point. My money is on the pandemic being the cause, which makes all the other possibilities mere distractions that add nothing to the plot other than making it drag.

56 minutes in, we finally get a zombie attack. The action picks up from there, the zombies look cool, and there’s even a brief character redemption moment, but it is all as paint-by-numbers as zombie movies get and is hampered by a major distraction. For some odd reason, the tone, film quality, and lighting start shifting drastically from shot to shot, and it happens throughout the final act when all the excitement finally kicks in. I’m not sure what the issue is, but it’s almost like they were using film and perhaps ran out of money and switched to video or digital.

THE CLEARING (2020)


This is what I’m talking about. Bringing zombie horror back to basics—single location, limited characters, relentless zombie suspense, no explanation for why this chaos has erupted.

Even better, virtually the whole movie is about this super hottie trapped inside a camper while zombies swarm him.

It starts off with the initial attack—he wakes up in the camper, goes outside, and a vicious horde assaults him.

Then we get some backstory. His wife insisted he take his daughter camping to work on their strained relationship.

There’s a bit of exploration of the tension between father and daughter, but eventually the focus is solely on him trying to survive in hopes of getting out of the camper to go find his missing daughter.

The zombies are fast and furious, there’s gore and action galore, loads of suspense, and did I mention…the leading man is a hottie? Props to the actor for all the strenuous physical work he did to bring realism to his predicament.

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NETFLIX AND CHILLS: a trio of Asian horror flicks

I was due for an Asian horror ghost girl fix, and since Asian horror seems to be all the horror Netflix carries these days, finding three was easy. Let’s get into them.

SUMALA (2024)

 

This Indonesian film isn’t your usual vengeful ghost girl horror flick. As freaky as the entity Sumala is, this engrossing tale of family, prestige, and female subjugation actually has you siding with the “monster” instead of scared of her.

It opens with a creepy sequence of kids staying out too late and ending up in a cornfield, where one of them is gruesomely killed by Sumala, a ghost girl of legend.

We then go back in time for her story. The matriarch in a well-to-do family needs his wife to have a child in order to retain ownership of his home, but she has been unable to conceive.

She goes to a witch doctor woman for fertility help, which involves making a deal with the devil—she will have two children, one good and one evil, and must care for both of them until they are ten years old, when the devil will come to reclaim the evil one.

The horrific aspects of this movie start up right away. One of the twins is born deformed, so the father gruesomely kills it. The other twin, named Kumala, soon proves to be somewhat handicapped as she grows, so she isn’t perfect either.

A lot of this movie is hard to watch, for it involves torture and abuse of a child. The father hates his daughter, and the women in his life can only stand by and watch as he inflicts horrible punishments on Kumala.

The horror kicks in when the dead twin Sumala finally comes around and befriends Kumala, and this becomes somewhat of a supernatural slasher with loads of vicious kills.

The girl who plays both twins is great and sinister in both roles, but like I said, this isn’t exactly frightening, because you’re rooting for Sumala to get revenge for her sister. And even more satisfying is that almost all her victims are men and boys that have treated her badly.

With a near two-hour runtime, Sumala is a long flick, and while some of it is hard to witness, the slasher revenge portion is a lot of fun and makes this one worth a watch if you’re itching for some Asian ghost girl horror.

DEATH WHISPERER (2023)

This Thai film builds a great family dynamic, is loaded with ghost girl action, delivers cheap jump scares, and even has oodles of gore, but it runs too long and never gives you that stomach-turning feeling of dread like The Ring or The Grudge.

We meet a family with three sons and three daughters. The oldest son is just back from the military, and he is also a slice of Heaven. Actor Nadech Kugimiya is absolutely gorgeous, and the filmmakers even find an excuse to get him shirtless. Every time I look at him, I get a little gayer.

The trouble begins when the girls walk to school through the wilderness and pass an old, abandoned tree shrine. Soon after, one girl begins acting all weird and possessed. Mesh mosquito nets that surround everyone’s beds serve as the creepy novelty as a ghost girl starts to terrorize the family at night.

This film also delivers one line that, when translated in English in the subtitles, includes the words I always long to hear in horror…”shut the door and light all the lamps”. Finally someone says what I’m always thinking.

There’s also a witchy woman, and the family eventually calls in an exorcist. There’s a freaky scene in a cornfield of a woman running with her head hanging off her neck, and the film just goes all out and delivers a host of ghost girls blocking the road as the family tries to get to a hospital in the final act.

Aside from the 2-hour runtime, the biggest letdown is the climax, when there’s literally a gun battle with the ghost girl on the side of the road…and she’s the one wielding the gun. Ugh.

DEATH WHISPERER (2024)

Like the scripts for so many sequels, this one is a fucking mess as it tries to give a backstory. What does the backstory turn out to be? In 1854, the ghost girl spared a dying war soldier by sticking her tongue down his throat, so she’s been looking for her tongue ever since. W.T.F.?

Our family is back and still traumatized, our hottie is trying to hunt down the ghost girl to end her once and for all, and the runtime is again near two hours long.

So it’s three years later, and the hottie teams up with some other dudes that want revenge on the ghost girl for what she did to their families.

The group heads into a haunted forest to find her and is terrorized by other ghouls for a good chunk of the movie.

Eventually the ghost girl gets her tongue back and heads back home to take out the hottie’s family. Lots of horror chaos ensues, but the highlight is when the youngest daughter stabs the witch bitch from the first movie in the face with an umbrella.

The bigger highlight is that for the final battle, the hottie looks like a gay go-go boy doing Bruce Campbell Army of Darkness cosplay, earning this one a spot on the stud stalking page.

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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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