Good thing there were dependable classics to watch in between watching these three new films on Halloween weekend, because they were mostly duds. Let’s find out why.
DR. GIFT (2025)
I have been waiting for this one to be released for a while due to Danielle Harris being in it. I kind of wish she hadn’t been in it…
There are some great visual moments of horror in this film, but perhaps the director would have been better off saving them for a video for an indie goth band or something, because they are kind of out of place here. This is simply a mess of a horror “comedy” that loses its way early on, with such an inept script (if there even was a completely developed one), that I gave up trying to figure out what was going on. Be warned that the audio is muffled and hard to hear, which doesn’t help matters.
The opener takes place in 1918. Cops bust into an insane asylum and discover that Dr. Gift has been experimenting on patients. There are some enticing horror visuals here, but the scene is shot in black and white and looks like home video quality. An aged film filter would have masked that a bit and captured the spirit of the tone better.
In the modern day, two brothers are opening a bed & breakfast in the old asylum. At first, I thought they were a gay couple, and it feels like such a cop-out that they weren’t. I mean…it’s a bed and fricking breakfast, and one of the brothers is virtually portrayed as gay.
Anyway, there are moments of humor as an assembly line of guests come to stay at the B&B, but way too much of it falls flat. We get a mysterious couple, a group of mediums looking to do a séance, a team of redneck ghost hunters that look like escaped convicts, a girl band led by Danielle, a biker gang, and a couple of inspectors, not to mention the pair of chefs that works in the kitchen. There are too many damn characters, so no one gets enough screen time, and no one feels significant. There’s also no plot. They all just get little vignettes of goofy behavior and banter.
Eventually (55 minutes in), Danielle becomes possessed by Dr. Gift, commits one murder, and is then gone and replaced by the doctor himself. There also seems to be a cult, there are a few apparitions, and there’s some sort of demon girl. It’s just a bunch of chaos with no rhyme or reason.
Thing is, the moments of horror feel like they were inserted from a much better, authentically scary and disturbing horror movie. There were opportunities to go two ways here, humor or pure horror, but instead we get them both, and they aren’t blended together as in a good horror comedy, so the two tones just completely clash. I was feeling little blips of the humor, but not enough, but I was really feeling the gruesome, practical effects, kills, and horror imagery. Not to mention, if it was a fake penis used in this scene, that’s one realistic looking fake penis. It’s also, like…a really pretty fake penis.
GLAMPING (2025)
For a movie that uses loads of thumping club music as its soundtrack, you’d think this one would be more exciting. Unfortunately, you also know that when a movie opens with a major kill scene that isn’t going to occur until much later in the plot’s timeline, there’s a good chance nothing is going to happen for a long time. 59 minutes in this case. Sigh.
We meet an aspiring influencer. Suddenly everything begins to go great for her. That is until one of the products she promoted harms a follower that tries it. Then her career crashes.
After way too much exploration of her career trajectory, she joins her friends for a trip to a cabin in the woods. On the way, they see stick figure dolls hanging from a tree. They find another one in the cabin. Therefore, they decide to stay. Naturally.
There’s relationship drama and infighting until finally the lights go out, and a masked figure appears and badly harms one of them. They all manage to get away, but as their friend lies bleeding, they…start fighting about relationships again.
There are only four characters, so death scenes are few. There’s a gay subplot, but it wasn’t the one I expected. My gaydar was way off on this one….as was that of the six other people I watched this movie with.
The twist basically just puts a little twist on the most obvious twist you could have expected, but that ends up making it a pretty weak twist. This wasn’t one of the better Tubi originals.
KILL ME AGAIN (2025)
If Happy Death Day was really boring and featured the killer repeating the day instead of the main girl, it would be this movie.
A killer enters a diner, spends a little time there, and then kills someone. And then he starts doing the same thing over and over again.
The film tries to inject humor into the situation to make it a little more interesting each time, but it doesn’t try hard enough. It takes way too long for the recurring sequence to become more playful and more like a slasher. The killer seriously uses a gun to kill victims half the time. Yawn.
Eventually, the killer gets bored, so he begins having fun mixing things up each time he returns, but it’s not until 52 minutes in that he ups the body count in a big way. That’s the best part of this 108-minute movie. That and the use of Air Supply’s “Here I Am” for one scene (but only once).
The big reveal moment at the end is clever, so it’s a shame it wasn’t attached to a more thrilling version of this movie.
