My latest Netflix triple feature delivered plenty of cheap thrills and gave me a horror fix for sure. Even so, they all have their issues and I’m not sure if I’d be compelled to add them to my personal horror collection. Let’s take a look.
A CLASSIC HORROR STORY (2021)
To make a cliché movie about movies being cliché and then even have a character point out that your movie is cliché only to continue being cliché is kind of unfathomable to me, yet…here we are. But, I guess it’s spelled out in the title, huh?
The purpose of A Classic Horror Story seems to be to spit in the face of all the anonymous armchair critics and horror fans online that make or break movies these days by making a movie that…checks off every box of every criticism you’re criticizing?
Whatever.
Tell me if you’ve heard any of this before. People in an RV get into an accident and one of them is hurt. They find a creepy cabin in the woods to shelter in.
They also find a car graveyard and freaky, blatant as hell signs of serious occult rituals and sacrifices. So…they remain in the cabin.
When they do try to leave, they can’t seem to get away from the cabin.
Every time a siren sounds as if Pyramid Head is about to show up and go Silent Hill on their asses, a cult appears looking for sacrifices.
One by one, the main characters are abducted by the cult and tortured and mutilated…without any graphic gore…which is a complaint that’s mocked in the movie. Fun.
And just when it looks like there’s a chance for escape, it becomes clear the police aren’t going to be of any help.
As you, the viewer, are mocked as the closing credits roll, take solace in the fact that you at least had fun making a list in your head of all the movies that seem to be hinted at in this film: The Wicker Man, Race with the Devil, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, every cabin in the woods movie ever, etc.
THERE’S SOMEONE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE (2021)
Wahoo! This is just what I needed. Another typical teen slasher with sleek and stylish kills…that I’m totally going to complain about, thereby proving the makers of the previous film nailed it in mocking me.
There’s Someone Inside Your House starts off strong, with a suspenseful and brutal opening scene in which a male is the victim. And he’s a hunky jock. Yay!
Our main group of friends consists of people of various colors, a trans character, a privileged white kid, and even a gay football player (add it to the does the gay guy die list).
I haven’t looked at any comments about the film online, but I assume the anti-woke crowd is having a field day with a hate-filled tirade against this movie.
Other than them, I can’t see fans of sleek, post-Scream slashers of the late 90s and early 2000s disliking this film. It has excellent death scenes and a creepy concept in which the killer wears masks of the faces of the victims about to be killed. Eek!
There’s a deep dive into the characters by way of a party in which everyone’s dirty little secrets are revealed.
There’s also a fricking vent scene, and eventually a trip to a cornfield maze for the final act.
And that’s the problem. For a slasher, it’s all over the place instead of focusing on one location. It should have been called There’s Someone Everywhere You Go.
In a sense, this is also like the many teen slasher TV series these days that usually deliver on the kills but are also overburdened by teenage soap opera antics and tired motivation throwing shade at the youth of today.
NOBODY SLEEPS IN THE WOODS TONIGHT 2 (2021)
It’s crazy that only a year ago I posted about the first Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight, because I don’t remember a thing about it. So I checked out my blog to discover I really liked it and there’s a gay character.
The sequel picks up with the survivor of the first film in jail. The sheriff decides to take her back to the cabin to go over the details of what happened to all the victims.
That doesn’t go very well.
And so this turns into a total sequel mess, with a bunch of cops showing up at the cabin to be slaughtered by deformed humanoids in the woods. And just for the hell of it, some white trash and a prostitute also end up in the vicinity.
I honestly do not remember the “killer” being creatures in the first film, but basically this is a backwoods splatterfest that feels like Wrong Turn meets Hatchet.
There are loads of cheap thrills as victims are slaughtered and creatures leap through the air, and then the film just goes off the rails.
A female mutant turns a male human into a mutant by skull fucking him with her tongue. I don’t remember if that happened at all in the first film.
Following that, this turns into a campy meta movie as the fall in love, have sex, and she shows him the ropes of being one of these creatures. The best part of all this nonsense is that we get to see from the perspective of the “killer” as they plot ways to terrorize victims just for the fun of it before mutilating them. It’s all definitely kind of ridiculous, but it’s also a whole lot of popcorn and cherry cola movie fun.
