I selected the films for my latest triple feature simply because indie horror queen Sadie Katz is in them. They offered different doses of Sadie, so let’s find out if I was satisfied by the scares even without much Sadie in some cases.
DEATH CLUB (2023)
This 72-minute supernatural movie has a direct-to-DVD early 2000s vibe. If nothing else, I was totally feeling it for that reason, because these days I’m feeling anything that doesn’t feel like now. Meanwhile, Sadie Katz only plays a ghost that comes in for what essentially amounts to a cameo 52 minutes into the movie.
The movie is about a haunted, abandoned dance club, so the opening credits feature a montage of sexual debauchery and queer characters that had me longing for the days of the 90s New York City club scene.
More importantly, although it takes until the end of the movie for the truth to come out, a gay couple appears to be the reason for tragedy that occurred at the club in the first place, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page. Awesome.
Other than that, this is a flat, low budget feature. A group of friends breaks into the boarded up club, which is surprisingly clean inside, and starts to party.
Then, they begin to split up, and in doing so, each friend is confronted by a ghost that forces them to admit the wrongs they’ve done in life. We’ve seen this one before, and this adds nothing to the concept.
Even worse, and this may be considered a spoiler, but there ends up being literally no punishment for any of these people for the things they’ve done, making the whole movie–and the mysterious masked figure that is presented through mask POV–rather pointless.
On the bright side, there’s a gay kiss in the final scene.
END TIMES (2023)
While most of this film feels as derivative as the zombie genre gets these days–our main survivors trek through the post-apocalyptic country encountering both zombies and monstrous groups of humans–it’s the final scene that really adds dimension and something quite fresh to the genre. That surprise, however, is spoiled because the filmmakers chose to open the film with a clip from the end, totally spoiling it.
The other problem is that the film runs an hour and fifty-two minutes long. Ugh.
Like I said, the majority of the film feels familiar, kind of like a season of The Walking Dead compressed into one movie.
Indie horror queen Jamie Bernadette awakens to find the world has gone to shit, and after some freakish encounters with both a gang of rapists and some lumbering zombies (awesome–it’s back to slow moving zombies for a change), she meets a survivalist guy, and they stick together to survive.
They get to know each other, there are montages of him teaching her to fight, there are a few zombie encounters (although not loads of zombies), and several conflicts with other groups of survivors.
Sadie shows up 64 minutes into the movie as part of a sort of religious cult group of survivors, and she has a slightly bigger part than she does in Death Club.
The real star here is Jamie Bernadette, who gives a great performance in the end, when we are presented with one character being infected. It is so sad and tragic watching them as they are able to describe what they are going through and feeling as they slowly turn. I’ve never quite seen such intimate exploration of the experience of the infected and the person that cares about them listening to how they are suffering during the change.
KILLER CONNECTION (aka: Hybristophilia) (2022)
I looked up Hybristophilia (the original title of this movie), and it’s all about getting sexually aroused by serial killers and other criminals.
This 76-minute movie takes on that theme with a major focus on lesbianism, bullying, and homophobia, with absolutely no subtlety in the messaging. It’s totally a lesbian horror flick, starting with lesbian sex and ending with lesbians having a happily ever after–for all the wrong reasons.
It’s also the one film of this trio in which Sadie is one of the stars. It’s a far cry from her fun and funny roles in movies like Party Bus to Hell, the kind of roles that got me hooked on her. Instead, this is a serious role in which she plays a pregnant woman.
However, that’s not the reason I wasn’t thrilled with this movie. It’s simply not very thrilling. A small group of documentary makers or content creators (not sure which) comes to a house where murder occurred, called there by the killer, who offers them a once in a lifetime chance for a one-on-one interview.
The lack of thrills is immediately established when the group passes out in the house, wakes up tied to chairs by the killer in a mask…and then the killer immediately takes off the mask and unties them. Like, what was the point of that elaborate entrance?
From then on, the killer just talks mysteriously about what led up to the murder in the house while giving the group a tour of all the spots where captivity, spousal abuse, sexual abuse, violence, and inevitably the murder took place.
At 67 minutes, the killer puts the mask back on and starts chasing and killing members of the group. Fear not–literally–because the chases and kills are bland. It all leads up to the “happy lesbian ending”. Even so, as dry as the film is, it does try to indulge in exploration of how family dysfunction and childhood trauma affected a young woman’s gender identity and sexual orientation. Not to mention, even the gay guys are thrown a bone when a shirtless hottie is targeted by the masked killer.
