Although their plots may falter at times, these three flicks delivered death and carnage that totally satisfied me.
TED BUNNY (2026)
I watched this one because Dee Wallace is in it, and because I thought it was going to be a basic “Bunny man” kind of slasher. I figured the title was just a play on words and didn’t realize the plot was going to stem from the actual true crimes of Ted Bundy.
And yet the few Ted Bundy kill sequences we get are the best part of the film. They are truly chilling, as is the performance by the actor playing him.
Five decades later a foursome of friends is doing a documentary on Bundy. They’ve discovered a lone survivor of his murders and go to interview her, and it’s Dee Wallace! And she’s a crazy bunny lady instead of a crazy cat lady. Awesome.
Dee recounts what happened between her and Bundy in flashbacks. Then two of the guys making the documentary begin sneaking around her house. This flick was really starting to work for me.
A big dude wearing a bunny mask sack appears, killings begin, and then…one girl gets away and calls the police. What the hell?
Dee is written out of the movie (her intriguing bunny mania goes with her), and the main girl teams up with a detective to help track down the killer, who is suddenly just out murdering random people. It turns into a generic and predictable slasher, and while it’s fun as such, it feels like a letdown after the first part seemed to establish a compelling premise that would have incorporated Dee Wallace more.
THE MANNEQUIN (2025)
This one has an early 2000s feel and a pretty interesting premise at first.
In a black and white intro, it’s the 1950s, and a female model is being sexually harassed by a pervy male photographer, who then proceeds to hack her up and use her as a model for his photo shoot after that. Yikes!
Then we meet a struggling fashion designer in contemporary times. She scores a loft apartment in an empty building at a great price. It also includes a creepy mannequin that looks so real it even has nipples.
The fashion designer’s sister ends up finding her dead and decides to move into the apartment. She butts heads with her friends, who think she’s crazy for moving there.
Yet they all decide to sleep over. They each begin waking up at night, seeing ghosts, and then falling under some sort of spell that leads them to physically harm themselves. And yet, they continue to stay there.
Inevitably, the self-harm gets gruesome, so they finally call in a dude who knows a thing or two about ghosts. This movie becomes kind of ridiculous as he proceeds to do some sort of cleansing/exorcism ritual, but that does unleash the best, most violent and gruesome part of the film, and it involves an axe. The opener and the final act are definitely the highlights for me.
MAN IN THE FIELDS (2024)
Despite running a bit too long, which causes pacing problems, this Italian-made, English language flick becomes a wild throwback to Euro horror of the 80s by the final act.
After an intriguing and ominous opener that draws you in but doesn’t have much relevance to the rest of the flick, we meet a cute guy who seems to be stuck in a rut. Yeah, there’s definitely an “I want to be stuck in his rut” joke there.
That changes when he makes a horrific discovery while walking his dog at night. Skeletal remains! Lots of them. He also finds what look like some old texts at the scene, which he takes instead of handing over to the police.
When he gets together with some friends (30 minutes into the movie), he admits what he did. He shows them the ritualistic texts, and they read them out loud.
There’s a rather trippy, surreal sequence in which the main guy is dragged out to a clearing by the “man in the fields”, after which he begins to change.
EEK! 52 minutes into the movie, he transforms into an awesome creature and goes on a murderous rampage. He begins by targeting his friends, but that eventually ends in a dark little twist that leads to a total massacre at a club. The second half of the film definitely has me leaning towards adding this one to my collection if it gets a Blu-ray release.
