It was a big year for made-for-TV horror flicks. Unfortunately, I missed the one film I really wanted to see and it wasn’t repeated. So I had to settle for three other flicks. And they had me wishing that 1970s made-for-TV horror flicks were still being produced….
THE FRIGHT NIGHT FILES (2014)
TV One black horror anthology The Fright Night Files is a good reminder that Tales from the Hood is still the go-to black horror anthology.
Every story is also a cautionary tale for black men that all black chicks are angry black women who will fuck you up.
There’s a God-awful Jamaican voodoo fortune teller host who sounds like an actress putting on a bad Jamaican voodoo fortune teller accent.
The first two stories are predictable and lame tales of voodoo and witchcraft loaded with black soap opera melodrama…and hot guys.
The third and final story is about a feisty, horny radio talk show host who starts getting creepy calls from the men of her past. Great premise, but in the end, it could have gone for a more ghoulish, macabre, Creepshow/Tales from the Crypt style.
Watched it with three friends, so I can tell you, 4 out of 4 white people think it sucked.
FINDERS KEEPERS (2014)
SyFy’s answer to Annabelle is a terrible Child’s Play knockoff in which you never actually see the doll walking around. Tragic, because it’s one hideous looking doll.
Jamie Pressly and her daughter move into a new house, daughter finds the doll, weird shit starts happening, daughter becomes obsessed with the doll, people begin dying—and not only at the house. This doll gets around (but we never see how).
Tobin “Jigsaw” Bell has a role as a psychiatrist to give the movie some horror cred. Doesn’t help. It’s a generic piece of garbage. But the doll is still creepy as hell.
THE DORM (2014)
MTV scores Alexis Knapp, the slut from Pitch Perfect, as its main girl in The Dorm. She plays a plain Jane who moves into a new dorm…and immediately starts noticing strange things. As she befriends a group of dorm mates and they dabble in mysterious practices, her life starts to change—and she begins to get prettier.
The Dorm is quite intriguing for quite a while, pointing at hints of some sort of occult activity in the dorm. But the whole thing peaks along with her when her hot dorm mate/new boyfriend gets her off under the desk in their classroom. Then it just dissolves into cheesy teen horror territory, leading all the way up to the one moment of special effects when black ectoplasm oozes out of one chick’s orifices.
It’s definitely not pitch perfect, but 4 out of 4 white people agreed it was the best of this bunch.
