October is a big month on SyFy, with premiere horror movies every week. Two of the newbies for this season were creature features, but neither got me in the Halloween spirit as much as a horror anthology I streamed on Amazon Prime.
DAY OF RECKONING (2016)
A bunch of teenagers and one hot daddy have to fend off some of the worst CGI, prehistoric looking creatures in this SyFy mess.
I pretty much gave up when the hot daddy stands waiting with a pipe as a mountain full of stampeding video game creatures heads his way.
80s horror queen Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, Chopping Mall, From Beyond), plays a role in the film if that’s any incentive.
SHADOWS OF THE DEAD (2016)
This one is standard SyFy CGI monster goofiness. A bunch of kids goes into the woods for an “anti-prom” party, one of them is attacked by a black, smoking CGI monster with red hot eyes, and essentially becomes possessed by it.
The rest of the kids return home, discover marks on their bodies, and are soon being pursued by the monster…and each other! Like something out of Jason Goes to Hell, the monster in this one jumps from person to person to do its dirty work, so we end up with some scenes of the CGI monster giving chase, other scenes of possessed humans giving chase. Make up your mind!
On the bright side, there’s a (way too brief and badly lit) scene of this muscle boy showering.
But then the movie just gets worse. After figuring out the creature hates light, the kids somehow end up in sort of parallel universes in their school, being terrorized by various possessed people, and then the final girl takes on the light fearing monster…by running out of a well-lit school hall and onto a pitch black football field with a flashlight. WTF?
TERRORTORY (2016)
This indie anthology film delivers loads of cheesy popcorn film fun and a good number of short slashers. The wraparound features a couple (the guy is an adorable stud muffin) renting a house filled with creepy dolls. The lights go out, so they begin telling scary stories about legends that supposedly took place in the surrounding woods, also known as…Terrortory!
1st story – This one is very Twilight Zone trippy. A cute bald hunter goes into the woods alone and comes across a nearly naked woman who keeps asking him, “Did you bring me meat?” Pretty soon, things get meaty gross delicious.
2nd story – This is a short, sweet, and darkly comic backwoods slasher as an indie film crew is offed by a killer. There’s even a chunky man butt and some good gore.
3rd story – In this bizarre tale, a couple heads into the woods, seemingly to lure a killer with a plastic Jack ‘o lantern head by doing everything you’re not supposed to do in a slasher. I can’t say that this is actually a Halloween horror story, because the holiday isn’t referenced despite the pumpkin head…
4th story – This story rox. Four hikers – including a bearded stud – are terrorized by a fricking drone in the woods! A chilling way to show the horror movie aspects of an actual technological threat.
5th story – More filmmakers in the woods, and this time, they are faced with an urban legend about a killer clown that always leaves one victim alive. Devilish twist at the end of this one.
6th story – The final story is actually the wraparound! All the interludes between stories show that the couple is clueless to the fact that there’s a masked killer lurking around the house they’re renting. This one definitely delivers some last minute slasher fun—and a freaky mask removal reveal! Plus, the adorable stud muffin gets a great final line.
The icing on the cake – the song “Hold the Night” by Foret de Vin, which plays during the closing credits, is 80s throwback awesome.
Thanks for checking Terrortory out! Appreciate the review and have posted the link on our FB and Twitter.
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