Even if they are not the greatest films, this is another trio of indies that offered some standout moments for me.
THE CLOCK (2024)
If you just need an old school, low budget style movie about a family that buys a haunted object from a tag sale, this is your kind of movie.
It begins by showing us what we’re in for later. Men are carrying a grandfather clock out of a house and onto a priest’s truck. The men suddenly get glowing demon eyes and chase the priest as he drives away and back to his church.
A few years later, a straight couple buys the clock from a church sale. Once they place it in their home, they notice what looks like blood on the face, and we get red clock POV. Awesome.
Strange occurrences begin in the house, but the real star of this movie becomes the self-proclaimed, pervy, straight couple that lives nearby, who even gets a couple of montages of them living their pervy lifestyle, notably dancing at a strip club and taking erotic photographs. Why can’t I have neighbors like that?
Anyway, it seems possession is being passed around to all their neighbors to build an army to get to the clock. Simple, creepy effects and camerawork give this one a particular nostalgic charm as more and more people connected to the main couple get drawn into the possession chaos.
There’s a séance, a Ouija board, a psychic medium, a backstory about the main woman’s mother being into black magic, and eventually some chaotic old school ghostly special effects for the final battle in the couple’s living room. There’s a brief, creepy clip of what I can only assume is the devil, and then suddenly the dust settles and everything seems okay again, and the family has been saved from the evil clock.
The hubby and I were convinced the filmmakers like…left out a scene that actually showed how they defeat the evil. Weird. Even the psychic medium’s reaction when she comes out of her trance is campy.
BE OUR GUESTS (2019)
The trivia section for this movie on IMDb says it all:
“The movie was made as a front for a collection of Z grade musicians associated with the production company. As a result the movie awkwardly cuts between a generic slasher film and a series of poorly made music videos.”
It’s a shame, because aside from a weak script loaded with plot holes, the co-writer/director of this film did a great job of creating solid slasher elements that, unfortunately, get very little screen time due to the endless montages of that music mentioned above.
For over an hour of this 110-minute movie, we watch a bevy of young, undefined characters in montages—boxing, working hospitality, recording music, ballet dancing, getting tattoos, sunbathing, and attending a concert. You can watch the first part of the movie for preliminary storyline until the music montages start, then jump to the 56-minute mark and you’ll get a tightly paced slasher about kids getting knocked off at a bed and breakfast.
Despite two cool killers worn creepy masks and perfectly executed kill scenes, plus some suspenseful chase scenes, the plot is a mess. We first meet parents called to school because not one, but both of their sons have violent tendencies.
15 years later we meet several characters that aren’t really characters. They’re just extras that get knocked off to set the stage for a slasher.
Then we meet a bunch more college kids. Then we get all those music montages. In between, it is established that the two violent kids from the beginning are grown up, wear masks, and kill off people that come to their family’s B&B.
Once we hit that 56-minute mark, the killers start terrorizing the characters we never had a chance to know, so just watch it for the kills, because you won’t care about any of the characters. Too bad the filmmaker wasn’t given a chance to actually make a full-fledged horror film.
Adding to the weirdness of this production, if you watch past the credits, there’s this bizarre scene of a campy drag queen talking directly to the camera about the movie, briefly summarizing the plot and then claiming she didn’t understand it. It’s almost like they plucked an audience member from a screening of the film and said, “Just tell us what you really think about the movie.”
THE BEEHIVE (2023)
The final 20 minutes of this alien movie serve as a sign of what a suspenseful sci-fi/horror movie it could have been if it had delivered on more of that level of suspense—and more of the monster, which we only get about three glimpses of.
So much of what happens here that fills the first hour of the film feels like incomplete thoughts. A young girl lives with her father and her older brother in their rural house. She is interested in bees. She finds what she thinks is a beehive attached to a tree in the woods.
Their mother died, but we never find out how—or why it seems like it’s taboo for anyone in the family to speak about it.
The father discovers the city is trying to take over part of his property. We don’t know why, but in the end, it seems like it’s just an excuse to have a city worker’s body part turn up.
There’s a very weird scene of a friend putting his arm around the brother, and the brother looks at him like it doesn’t feel right, but there’s no explanation for or exploration of this incident. So why was it made so obvious?
Bees keep turning up everywhere, and it’s almost like they hold some significance. Only…they don’t.
The aunt of the kids believes aliens are coming after reports of weird lights in the sky, yet despite seeming to know more than she’s letting on, she doesn’t play any major role in the end.
There is a nasty scene of people eating lobster at a picnic. The sights, the sounds…I could almost smell it, and I wanted to hurl. I only mention it because it was so gross.
When anyone touches the hive, it oozes slimy goo and appears to do something to them. At first I thought maybe it was going to turn them into creatures, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Finally, we get the could-have-been part of the movie, a short sequence of intense monster thrills that deserved to play a larger part in the film. It’s not exactly a giant bee, but it does look like some sort of bug larva.
