I’ve covered director Bruce Wemple’s movies before, so it was time to catch up with his latest releases, and it turned out there are three of them I hadn’t yet seen, and they feature an assortment of creepers and monsters.
ISLAND ESCAPE (2023)
The basic premise of this movie is familiar—a team is sent to a research facility on a remote island as part of a rescue mission after communication is cut off with the scientists.
There’s a refreshing twist here. As the team begins to discover dead bodies while searching the island (with some nice, gnarly gore), they also encounter what are basically super-sized zombies, and eventually notice something distinct about them. These towering zombies look like pumped up versions of each member of the rescue team. Yikes!
There’s an element of sci-fi in this horror to offer a deeper story than just the usual “experiment gone wrong creates mutant humans” plot. It’s a cool if not slightly confusing premise, and the super-size zombies are awesome, but the film is oddly low energy despite all the zombie encounters. The most glaring issue is the absence of prominent sound effects (it’s notably hollow and lacking audio cues at times), and part of it is a lack of atmosphere and suspense despite plenty of action sequences.
There is, strangely enough, a sex scene in the last twenty minutes of the movie, not to mention a shirtless guy with a rockin’ bod.
FIRST CONTACT (2023)
This is a very brooding and moody take on the alien encounter genre, but rather than take a more common approach like movies such as Fire in the Sky or The Fourth Kind, this goes for more of a satisfying horror feel, with an evil entity element and a sort of possession angle. Having said that, it’s still a slow burn, but has a great, isolating vibe.
After their father’s “abduction” in the first scene, a brother and sister return to his home as reports of alien sightings are growing on the news. The sister is interested in continuing the work of her father, who was researching alien invasions, so she begins to watch his video tapes of his findings.
In the meantime, a straight couple the siblings know has an encounter on a deserted road at night, after which the male begins to have eerie episodes and then slowly starts morphing into something else. Which begs the question…why is his woman acting like it’s not a big deal for most of the movie?
As the siblings investigate, the morphing dude begins killing people. It’s mysterious and atmospheric, but don’t expect a thrill ride.
THE HANGMAN (2024)
The opener with two druggies in a cabin sets the scene for an awesome throwback to the supernatural slashers of the early 2000s. The Hangman is a great specter and does indeed lasso your head and hang you. Awesome.
However, this film fails to exploit it supernatural baddie, instead complicating matters with a whole lot of other stuff.
We meet a widowed Black man and his son, who make the horrible decision to go camping in the middle of white trash, redneck hell. After a curious conversation in which the son asks his father if he’s sleeping with a man (say what?), they go to sleep in their tents.
Next morning…the son is gone! The dad goes for help and is soon being chased by a cult of hillbillies. This is where the film just starts going off the rails. There’s plenty of action to keep the pace moving, but The Hangman gets totally lost in the shuffle…even though he’s an integral part of the shuffle.
Even the possibility of backwoods, racial terror is pushed to the side as the focus turns to, well, not focusing. The movie is all over the place, but at least the dad does finally face off against The Hangman in the end.
