Cleaned out my Hulu watchlist, and here are my brief thoughts on what I got out of the six flicks in it.
BEAST OF THE WATER (2017)
Once in a while I need a SyFy level creature feature with some beefy guys that I can watch with the hubby, and this one delivers.
It’s a tale as old as horror movie time. Native Americans are protecting our natural resources, corporate white man sweeps in to take-take-take, supernatural monster comes out to make him pay.
In Beast of the Water, a college professor’s search for the fountain of youth is taken over by big, bad, greedy bastards. Out pops the awesome creature, which materializes in water and begins tearing apart members of the expedition.
It takes a while to get the ball rolling, but once the monster appears, it’s good old cheesy monster movie fun that features wrestling hunk Michael Hutter and wrestling slab of beef Tyrus.
HUNTING EVIL (2019)
This low budget ghost/demon girl movie is almost passable as a throwback to bad direct-to-video horror of the 80s and also delivers some gore. However, it’s such a mess even Corbin Bernsen in a minor role appears to have no idea what is going on…or why he suddenly seems to act as bad as the company he keeps.
A man with a troubled past is released from prison and is visited by a computer-generated demonic ghost girl apparition that takes his son.
Seven years later Corbin Bernsen has the same problem. Conveniently, his character doesn’t seem to care too much about his missing son, which helps limit his presence to a cameo. So the first dad steps in with his crew of ghost hunters to find the boy.
Poltergeist it isn’t. The ghost girl kills random people, and eventually the man has to pull an Insidious; he enters another plane to face her and save his own son. I really should have skipped this one.
OUT OF THE DARK (2014)
It’s my own fault for being lured into a 6-year old movie I never heard of because it stars familiar faces. It’s also my fault for continuing to watch after the first “suspense” scene—the little daughter wanders off in a market and everyone panics until she’s found seconds later.
Julia Stiles and Scott Speedman have come to Africa so she can work for her father (Stephen Rea). Soon, ghost children are on the prowl.
They spook a babysitter. They spook the family. The daughter gets taken by them. The wife and husband run around talking to all different shaman and witch doctors to find out what is really going on.
It ends up feeling like The Ring with too many kids and not enough well.
WOUNDS (2019)
Speaking of…The Ring in a bar?
Wounds is probably deep and metaphorical, but I don’t have the time or patience for so much talk. A guy who works at a bar breaks up a fight…while some other people film it. Someone leaves their phone behind. He takes the phone. He starts seeing weird things, like bugs. There are morbid Ring-like videos on the phone.
His woman, played by Dakota Johnson, becomes comatose while literally looking at a Ring-like well image on her computer screen that is accompanied by that humming tunnel echo bass chord. WTF? She also ends up in a tub of gunky water with her hair all around her. WTF?
Meanwhile, the dude starts…getting pit rash?
None of it seemed to want to come together, but like I said, I may have been too bored to pay attention. Eventually he visits his confederate flag loving beefy buddy with a confederate crack.
There are more bugs, and I believe this is the pinnacle of what the film was building towards, but I didn’t get it.
THE REMAINS (2016)
This is a well-made but drastically derivative haunted house film if you’ve been around the horror block for as many decades as I have.
It begins in the 1800s with a séance gone wrong. Cut to modern day, and Todd Lowe from True Blood moves into the same home with his little daughter and son, and his teenage daughter, who looks like a young Debbie Gibson.
There are scary ghost children, a scary psychic medium ghost from the 1800s, a nice neighbor who knows something is wrong with the house, and a chest fully of creepy stuff in the attic that causes the kids to act weird once they dig into it.
Before all is said and done, the dad goes into The Shining dad/Amityville Horror dad mode for a while. It is definitely creepy enough and fast-paced enough to keep your interest if you’re into this type of movie.
PURE (2019)
I put off this September installment of Into the Dark because it didn’t have any obvious holiday theme—I assume it’s some sort of dance of the virgins/fall harvest calendar date or something? Who knows. Doesn’t even matter.
Directed by a female, Pure actually has a pretty good feminist theme intertwined with what promised to be a fun tween girl horror film loaded with some cool songs, cheesy jump scares, and ghost girls. There’s even some nice bashing of male dominance and religious control…but it simply fizzles out rather than ramping up.
The story is about a white dad, his blonde teen daughter, and the black teen daughter he just discovered he has. Scandalous…especially since they’re on their way to a religious cult camp for one of those father/daughter purity dance/ceremony/retreat things.
The girls banned together and get rebellious by inviting teen boys to have some fun, yet all the while I was wondering why the girls weren’t going for the sizzling hot, homophobic asshole cult leader instead…because you know he’s hit it with underage girls…
Anyway, the black girl keeps seeing flashes of veiled ghost girls. That’s pretty much it all the way until the final scene at the purity dance.
Imagine if Carrie had it out for domineering daddies and lacked pyrokinesis and that’s the boring climax you have here.
