The game that took years off my life

Posted on April 25, 2024 by Daniel

As a zombie game lover, I have to say Dying Light was such a blast to play through…until it wasn’t. What a devastating experience this proved to be. It’s such a vast game, and I chipped away at it from February 2020 through April 2024, only to discover that I couldn’t finish it. So what went wrong? Let’s find out.

Having hacked my way through first-person zombie games like Left 4 Dead and Dead Island in a relatively short amount of time, I wasn’t expecting this to be such a huge undertaking. However, as far as zombie games go, this one is more immersive than either of those games. You play through two huge cities overrun by zombies…and then even get a chance to tackle the rural countryside with DLC called The Following.

Dying Light is so much more than a run, shoot, and slash game. There are endless missions and side quests to tackle as you run through and fend off hordes of zombies on the streets while an awesome horror score plays periodically to set the tone and gorgeous landscapes and architectural structures serve as eye candy. You have to collect supplies that are hidden all over the place to craft new items, including melee weapons, health, throwing weapons, and more. Your weapons eventually break and can either be repaired (if you have the right parts on hand) or dismantled to use the parts to craft other supplies.

You gain points to level up by doing numerous tasks, including finishing missions, saving survivors, coming across “random encounters”, completing optional challenges, and more. But beware. While you basically have infinite lives, every time you die you lose a chunk of your precious XP. The XP upgrade system is divided into four categories, each with trees you have to unlock as you gain more experience. These trees include a mix of “passive” powers (nice power-ups that work automatically) and “active” powers that require remembering some sort of button combo to pull off. You may memorize two or three crucial active powers, but you’ll most likely not use a majority of them…although you will sometimes accidentally trigger one while button mashing in a panic, and always at the worst time.

Scavenging consists of digging into garbage, cabinets, dumpsters, boxes, and trunks inside, outside, and on top of buildings in this very open world environment. Some chests can only be opened with lock picks (which can be found or crafted), and the jimmying technique is a bit tedious and ranges in difficulty level, sometimes causing your lock to break and forcing you to use another one (or more) to continue picking. Also, when you’re in the lock pick screen, the game does not freeze, so you are susceptible to enemy attacks. EEK! During all your scavenging you will also acquire blueprints, which are needed in order to build new items. The blueprint menu is a bit complicated, but there are no work benches to go to or anything like that—you make items on the fly in your inventory. I mostly found myself crafting throwable weapons and health the most, only occasionally crafting new weapons when a more powerful blueprint presented itself or the few weapons I could carry were all broken. The good news is, when you go into the menu to do anything, the game pauses, so you can’t be hurt.

There are so many aspects to the controls, so you will want to focus on the most crucial ones over those excessive extras you can build up in your upgrade menu. There are quick keys on the d-pad for your flashlight, throwable items (you can place 4 in there at a time and swap them out in the main inventory menu), melee weapons (again only 4 slots at a time), and health. The biggest issue with this is when you eventually get the grappling hook, which allows you to shoot your way across rooftops without having to take to the streets where the zombies keep getting harder and faster. Problem is the grappling hook is linked to the same d-pad key as the throwable items. I can’t count the number of times I was trying to grapple my way back up to safety only to realize I’d forgotten to switch back to the hook after throwing an item, causing me to toss and waste another precious throwable item. Not to mention, many of those throwable items are explosives, and when you throw explosives it attracts more zombies, including these crazed fast zombies that can scale buildings to come get you when you’re up above. And what’s ridiculous is that if you’re standing on a rooftop and toss a grenade down below to kill enemies, somehow these damn crazed zombies come directly for you, even though the explosion happened like ten stories below where you threw it from. WTF kind of zombie sonar psychic power is that?

Your movement is purely parkour. You get a training session early on to teach you the basics of running, jumping, and scaling buildings. At first it feels daunting, and timing really matters when you leap across chasms between buildings, but eventually it becomes like second nature and it’s fantastic. That is until you start being forced to climb massive towers, and never in a straight line. As someone who hates heights, these segments nearly destroyed me, forcing me to do things like hang out over thin air and try to angle my character in the right direction to leap to a fucking 2×4 jutting out over nothingness. Ugh.

There are numerous safe houses sprinkled throughout each city, and they’re clearly marked on the map, but most of the time you actually have to go to the location and fight zombies and a major enemy to clear the space before it can become a safe house. These major enemies include huge monsters with giant hammers and even bigger monsters that pick up giant slabs of concrete and toss them at you. Really challenging at first, they become easier to defeat as the game progresses and you build up your stats and weapons. The safe houses are usually very comforting, populated by other survivors who will ask you to do side missions, offer to sell you supplies, buy supplies you don’t need, and give you points in exchange for major supplies you collect that are dropped off by passing planes every once in a while. However, these drop-offs, noted on the map, are only temporary, and you usually have to battle armed dudes who are not your friends to get to them. In the safe houses you can also put supplies you can’t carry anymore in your supply bag (which works like a Resident Evil item box, so it’s accessible at every safe house), and you can go to sleep to instantly jump from night to day or vice versa.

You want to spend most of this game doing missions in daylight, and get your ass to a safe house fast once you see the light dying (get it?), because at night enemies are more aggressive and there are these damn vicious night hunter monsters that will ruin your life, killing you almost immediately if they get you. Unfortunately, this cruel game does force you to do a few nighttime missions, and they’re terrifying…and one of them involves collecting a damn night hunter flesh sample. Sigh.

Even though you can die an infinite number of times, you really don’t want to, because you need those precious points to build up your character. You also have a stamina bar, so you can’t just run and jump like crazy. When you get exhausted you slow down and need to back off until you catch your breath.

The map looks daunting, but you can set waypoints for missions, and things are usually never as far away as they seem. At other times, they are really fucking far away! But you can break up the journey to your new destination by doing side missions that are on the way or checking out random encounters, which are challenging but offer some payoff when completed successfully. Be warned that there are also underwater missions in which you have to come up for air in between diving for items or to new destinations. The good news is that there aren’t any underwater monsters. And speaking of water, there are also plenty of sewer segments. Ugh.

You begin the game in a city called The Slums, which is pretty manageable. When you eventually move over to the upper class city Old Town, shit hits the fan. I thought I was going to have to quit, because the enemies get much harder immediately and the crazy zombies much more relentless. This is where you also acquire the grappling hook, and it becomes your best friend. It is best to do most of your traveling in Old Town on the rooftops, where zombie encounters are rare (plus you can kick those fuckers off the roof). The only challenge is that the grappling hook needs a moment to recuperate between uses. Argh.

Here is a special note for those who may have begun this game on their PS4 and want to switch over to finishing it on the PS5. There’s a glitch on the PS5 when you try to do side missions that include battling armed men who work for the main human enemy Rais. These side missions, which are all stealth and sniping based, lead to a lot of on screen action, and as you work your way through blowing away baddies, the game glitches and boots you out. Each time you choose continue, it starts you at the beginning of the mission, and you can try to work your way through the battle again, but you’ll get the same result every time. I was near completing the game when I switched over to PS5, so I just skipped those few side missions, especially since they’re always marked hard and I play these damn games to fight zombies, not ammosexuals.

Just as the game and its side quests start to feel very repetitive, the final segment of the game offers less side quests and makes the main story missions much harder. Zombies are more prevalent, more aggressive, and take more hits to kill. Your destinations are also much farther apart on the map, leading to loads of very long backtracking.

There’s also a lot of underwater swimming in the final few missions, and it’s very easy to get turned around and lost, with air supply very limited if you don’t find your way back up. One of the major underwater journeys gets you into a museum Rais has taken control of, and you have to battle an onslaught of his men and then an onslaught of enemies. Once you’ve made your way through the museum successfully, pay very close attention when prompted to retrieve your bag—it’s very easy to think you have gotten it, but in reality you didn’t pick it up. Check your inventory to make sure it’s there before exiting. I didn’t, and when I stepped back onto the streets, I had no weapons, no health, no grappling gun…and you can’t turn around and go back into the museum! What a shitty thing to do. You have to run as fast as you can back to a safe house, where you’ll find all your items in a storage bag. Don’t get hit by any enemies while journeying to the safe house or you can die with no health.

For a game that is mostly manageable, it really takes a toll with all new challenges near the end. There’s an irritating platforming segment when you are experiencing hallucinations. There’s also an infuriating enemy addition—a screaming child zombie. Whenever you come across him in a room, his shrill scream depletes your health fast, makes you unable to perform tasks or fight him because you’re covering your ears, and worst of all, it summons tons of zombies you have to fight while trying to shoot the baby from a safe distance in order to shut it up.

There’s one last segment that takes place at night, and the clock doesn’t continue to move ahead, so you can’t even wait somewhere safe until daylight to do the mission. You have to hit up several small areas filled with zombies and some of the biggest, baddest enemies to search for a particular item to advance in the game. It’s set up so the item you’re hunting down is at the last section you reach. Bastards.

And now comes the devastating moment I realized I couldn’t finish this game. I always carried loads of health with me, so when I reached a door warning that I was heading to Rais’s tower for the final fight and couldn’t turn back, I was feeling quite confident. Note that in this day and age of single slot autosave, where you don’t get to choose save slots so you won’t overwrite a previous one, this feature destroyed my life. When I walked through that last door, I found myself in a yard confronted by loads of running zombies and every big enemy the game had been throwing at me all along. Assuming I had to fight the fuckers and clear the area, I kept getting my ass kicked and using up my health supply. Idiot that I am, I didn’t get the message when Rais kept taunting me over a loudspeaker, mocking my bravery and telling me to, “Run! Run!”

I was supposed to run.

By the time I realized it I was out of health and caught in a mad dash obstacle course with enemies everywhere. I just kept dying over and over again. I had no option to load an earlier save. I had to give up on the game I’d been playing for four years.

There’s one sort of bright side that was a bit of consolation. I watched the rest of the game on YouTube. The obstacle course was only the beginning. I still would have had to climb and jump up walls and girders way up high and fight my way through multiple levels of enemies before even reaching Rais at the top of the tower…all with no health supply. And once I reached Rais I would have been hit with an all new game mechanic not previously used in the game—a fucking  quick time event. WTF? I have no regrets about not finishing this game.

However, I decided to jump into The Following DLC, where I thought I’d just be picking off zombies in cornfields in between spying on hillbilly pig fuckers.

Nope. Even on the easiest mode, this extra game was hard as hell. You come into it with all your stats and items from the main game, even if you didn’t finish it. But you know what that means? I entered the game with no health. And there are very few places to scavenge in the country. Somehow, despite this being a rural area, there are zombies everywhere. And, you get to drive around in a buggy that you constantly have to collect parts and fuel for to maintain it…while avoiding all the zombies. The buggy is crucial for completing missions, so juggling its health and my lack of health was impossible. I quit that bitch.

Unfortunately, I purchased Dying Light 2 based on the assumption I’d eventually finish the first one. So you can expect a post in five years or so in which I describe at exactly what point in Dying Light 2 I quit.

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Big hairy werewolf movies

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Daniel

My latest triple feature included three werewolf flicks, and I had a favorite of the bunch, so let’s get right into them.

HUNTER’S MOON (2020)

This home invasion/werewolf hybrid flick has several familiar faces, so I was expecting something a bit better and a little less predictable.

A family, including Tina from Elm Street, Jay Mohr, and their three daughters, moves to a house in the country. The girls immediately meet some rednecks at a convenience store, and talk turns to a serial killer that lived in the house the family is moving into.

Oddly, the mom and dad immediately leave the girls alone to go on vacation. One of the girls invites the red necks to stop by to party…but the rednecks have something else in mind. Adding more to the mix, Thomas Jane eventually shows up as the local sheriff. If you’re hoping Jane gets a David Naughton caliber hairy butt werewolf transformation scene like I was, forget it. Never happens.

Everyone in this flick acts weird. No one seems phased by the disturbing events that unfold, secrets abound, and loyalties appear to constantly shift. So it’s sort of like a mystery in which we the viewers have to figure out who the werewolf is.

 There’s some tension as we wait to see what ‘s going to happen (most horror veterans will figure it out early on), and the misty atmosphere outside adds some creepiness, but unfortunately, the werewolf only makes one brief appearance with just 15 minutes left. It’s a cool werewolf, but sadly it’s not the focus of the film.

BYTE (2024)

I never miss an indie horror flick from director Eddie Lengyel, and this time around he takes on werewolves. Plus, the horror begins on Halloween night. I wish it would have stuck to Halloween night, because Halloween werewolf movies need to be a thing.

The opening werewolf attack scene is a hoot, with a good view of the werewolf and some funny shots of bloody rubber body parts bouncing into focus from off screen as the werewolf attacks.

On Halloween night, a group of kids goes to a cemetery to do a ritual they find on an app that is supposed to turn you into a werewolf.

Pretty soon, people begin dying from vicious werewolf attacks. The general plot is that the kids realize the app ritual really worked and one of their friends is a werewolf. So they have to find out more about the app in hopes of curing the friend of the werewolf curse.

The pacing is slow at times and the movie definitely has that low budget indie feel, but the attack scenes are quite satisfying, and the person in the werewolf costume absolutely steals the show. It is so clear they are having a blast in the role, and it’s always a treat to see a monster costume instead of a CGI monster.

SHAKY SHIVERS (2022)

While it takes a little while to get going, this werewolf comedy finds its groove and is very charming, especially thanks to the comedic performances of the main characters.

It takes place in 1993. Two girls work at an ice cream shop. A creepy woman comes in and appears to curse one of the girls. Believing she is going to become a werewolf, the girl asks her friend to take her into the woods and shoot her if she turns into a werewolf.

It becomes a comedy of errors as the two girls use various incantations in hopes of making things right. The best part is that this funny flick doesn’t stick to the werewolf theme. The girls end up dealing with a zombie (which looks more horrific in a comedy than most look in serious zombie flicks), a witch, a cult, Bigfoot…

However, despite the horror detours, there’s even a werewolf transformation that is also pretty damn cool for a light horror comedy. This is definitely the winner of these three for me

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Three from 1977 that get filed under C

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Daniel

Looking for some retro action, I dug up several flicks from the 1970s to watch. Coincidentally, they all come from 1977 with titles that get alphabetized under the letter C.

CATHY’S CURSE (1977)

If The Bad Seed met Audrey Rose and was made into a terrible 1970s possessed little girl movie…actually, it was. Cathy’s Curse is that very disaster.

The opening scene is camptastic. A dad comes home to find his daughter alone. She says the mom took off with her brother. Dad calls mom a bitch and they drive off then get killed in a car accident because the daughter grabs the wheel to save a bunny in the road. Camp.tas.tic.

Decades later the son returns to the family home with his depressed wife and his daughter Cathy, who, as in most of these scary little girl movies, is already creepy. Where do they get these young actresses?

Cathy finds a doll and sees a portrait of her father’s sister (that sometimes gets glowing green eyes), which triggers her to become a bad seed. Conveniently, one of the neighbors is a medium, which also helps ignite the paranormal events.

Basically Cathy is possessed by her doll. She clings to it each time she magically terrorizes people. She tosses an old woman out a window. She immobilizes an old drunk dude and infests him with snakes, spiders, and rats. She causes blood to run from her mother’s tub and covers her mom’s back in leeches. The raucous score is the only thing that adds any weight to the horror.

For the big finale Cathy chases her mother rather violently, which leads them to the portrait for the lackluster conclusion. This really feels like a made-for-TV movie.

THE CHILD (1977)

It’s another scary girl movie, but this one has a nice twist. It also has that classic warped 70s horror vibe that makes you feel like you’re tripping, with a melodramatic horror score, whirling camera angles, and distorted zooms. If I have to watch a horror movie from the 1970s that isn’t a classic, this is the kind I prefer to get sucked into.

The gothic opening in a cemetery involving a kitten, a tombstone, and a monstrous hand feels very old school, like a Hammer Films flick of that era, but we’re quickly, brought into a more contemporary situation.

A young woman comes to a house to be the nanny to a girl who looks way too old to need a nanny. The girl is weird, but so is everyone in the home.

The first juicy horror is delivered when monster POV terrorizes the old lady neighbor, who ends up getting a gory facelift…

Meanwhile, the nanny begins noticing the girl’s odd behavior, including her slipping out of the house at night to visit the cemetery.

Things get eerie on Halloween. There’s apparently a party outside, but all we get to see is the girl in a witch costume and a jack-o’-lantern she leaves behind, which haunts the nanny a bit.

It’s a slow burn, but finally people start getting killed off in the last half hour. With 20 minutes remaining we finally learn who the girl has been visiting in the cemetery!

It’s a very unique direction to take and leads to a very cool, Night of the Living Dead kind of final act. You’ll either appreciate the mixed genre approach or be disappointed that the plot didn’t choose one direction and stick with it.

THE CHOSEN (1977)

I might have appreciated this one more if I’d seen it back in the day since “child of Satan” films were all the rage back then. This modern society meets ancient evil flick dragged for me.

Kirk Douglas plays an industrialist planning to build a nuclear power plant in the Middle East against the wishes of those who live there.

He soon makes some shocking discoveries. First, his adult son is the spawn of Satan. Second, the structure he is building bears a striking resemblance to a mythical beast predicted in the Bible. Ugh. Religious horror. Wouldn’t you know the son needs the dad’s power plant to facilitate bringing on the apocalypse.

A few people in positions of power fall victim to tragedy (there’s a cool death by helicopter propeller moment), and Douglas suffers from symbolic dreams, but this is generally a boring melodrama. However, a scene near the end in a padded cell is psychotic and saves this one from being forgettable.

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The ghosts of 2023

Posted on April 17, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of flicks from 2023 that feature protagonists dealing with varying levels of paranormal activity, but there was only one winner here for me.

BAGHEAD (2023)

It is so satisfying to be getting some fresh approaches to horror in the sea of generic flicks coming out these days. Baghead is sort of like a different take on the Talk To Me concept, where talking to the dead becomes a deadly addiction.

A young woman inherits a pub…that looks like a fricking castle to me. Didn’t quite get that part.

However, this flick doesn’t waste any time in getting to the good stuff. It turns out her now deceased father was keeping a “woman” called Baghead locked away in the basement. This ghoul has the ability to let you speak to a dead person of your choice, but there are conditions.

You can’t speak to the dead person for more than two minutes. Baghead comes out of a hole in the wall when you call on her, and you are never to follow her back into the hole (my gay ass is safe because I’d never follow any woman into any hole). You need to take off her bag to speak to the dead person, and then you need to cover her head back up to cut off communication. And finally, you are to never let her leave the basement, so you must strap her to a chair to keep her from getting away.

It’s actually a cruel story, the idea being that you literally have this woman imprisoned in a dungeon and use her for your own selfish needs. Of course that’s why it’s so delicious when she starts creeping into your mind, leading you down a slippery slope where she becomes stronger and you become…doomed!

The film manages to stay focused thanks to a minimal number of characters. There’s the main girl, her friend, and some dude who is willing to pay money to get a little alone time with Baghead. Eventually, the film does start to become a bit repetitive, and the pacing falters as the trio gets ensnared in Baghead’s web, but there are really some great twists in the plot right through to the end. The only part that was a bit hokey for me was the presentation of a ghost that gives a ridiculous monologue to one of the characters as a device to provide exposition on Baghead’s origins to the audience.

DEAR DAVID (2023)

It’s irrelevant to me, but this movie is apparently based on some actual social media story. What drew me in was that it is an evil ghost kid movie where the main protagonist is a gay guy, which lands this one on the homo horror movies page.

We go all the way back to 1996 to start the story with a boy being bullied online. Damn. 1996 is like ancient history when it comes to being online. Seriously, barely anyone had a home computer at that time, let alone the internet at their fingertips on a phone.

In the present day we meet Adam, who works for Buzzfeed, which is run by Justin Long. Adam’s articles aren’t doing so well, but his luck changes—for better and for worse—when he begins having sleep paralysis, during which a little ghost boy appears on a rocking chair in the corner of his bedroom. Those encounters become his new online serialized story.

Things start off strong, with a classic ghostly death scene when two boys are bullying someone else online. The concept of the little boy from the beginning getting revenge on modern day cyber bullies is awesome, and Adam ends up being targeted because he chooses to feed the trolls with nasty vitriol rather than ignoring them.

Terrorized by the ghost kid, Adam starts investigating what led to the kid turning into a vindictive ghost that connects with victims through social media threads. It’s all very The Ring without the videotape. There’s also a catch presented at the beginning that doesn’t get much needed exploitation—you’re supposed to only be able to ask “Dear David” two questions or else. Even David’s backstory is pretty cool and very dark. The problem is the film focuses solely on Adam, so we’re just constantly bombarded by nightmare-like sequences that have no payoff beyond Adam waking up sweating. Sure they’re creepy clips, but you never feel a sense of dread while watching them because you know Adam is going to survive to carry us to the conclusion of this tale.

There are no other victims here after the first bully dies, making that death scene seem out of place. Adam has friends and a boyfriend, and it would have been nice if they also got drawn into the horror (and them dying would have been even better). It also would have been great if there had been a clearer parallel between Adam being gay and the boy being bullied. It’s hinted at—I think—but never fully realized, making Adam’s sexuality virtually irrelevant. Instead it feels like the whole point of the movie is for Adam to recognize that he doesn’t open up to those closest to him. At the same time, the movie is also making a statement about our fixation on social media, how anonymous likes and followers are more important than having actual people in our lives, and how it has overtaken our ability to interact in the real world.

THE HANGED GIRL (2023)

This one was a huge disappointment for me as a horror hound. Things start off promising, with nuns hanging a girl as a witch in the 1800s.

In the present day, a white man and his Muslim fiancé are going on vacation with his friends and his sister to a beautiful guesthouse in the country.

I should have known this one was going to skimp on the horror when an elaborate run-in with a cult in red robes and masks proves to be a nothing burger. Ugh.

And we just get more helpings of nothing burgers after that. The Muslim fiancé keeps having visions and dreams of ghostly apparitions. However, that’s the least of her problems. She begins getting treated like shit by everyone else because she’s Muslim. The bullying becomes the central theme of most of the movie.

And you can forget about a hanged ghost girl being the real threat. This is one of those movies that pulls the rug out from under your feet before all is said and done. Even the mid-end credits scene is a letdown.

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Murder time at a cabin, on a movie set, and at a haunted attraction

Posted on April 11, 2024 by Daniel

I’m always up for body count flicks, but does this trio of films deliver? Let’s find out.

DEATH CAMP (2022)

This movie probably should have just been shelved if all the roadblocks it came up against during filming as mentioned on IMDb are true: shooting was hampered by the COVID pandemic, the director almost killed most of the cast and there was legal action taken, in an effort to release the unfinished film they just scraped together whatever footage they had and edited it into some semblance of a movie. I definitely believe that last part. There is a generally simple, supernatural slasher plot, but that eventually gets lost in the shuffle as random elements are forced into the mix to pad the running time.

Horror king Bill Oberst Jr. plays an ex-military man who snapped, holed himself up in a cabin, and thrived on conspiracy theories, like believing children were being led from innocence into evil. He killed a load of kids twenty years ago at his cabin, kept one girl captive, and then shot himself when the cops came for him.

In the present day, a group of teens comes to the cabin for one last high school bash. In other words, this isn’t a death camp so much as it is a death cabin. I did really like the early 2000s teen slasher vibe the movie gives off, but it most definitely falls apart fast. The main girl fancies herself a witch, so she gets everyone to do a séance in the basement, where they also find a body part, troublesome letters, and a fricking VHS tape with video of the murders. Apparently the cops from 20 years ago really sucked at gathering evidence.

It seems the kids unleash Oberst’s evil spirit, and in between supernatural kills we get some backstory via interspersed scenes of him interacting with the girl he was holding captive 20 years before. In other words, Oberst isn’t in the film all that much.

Kills include impalement on a tree branch, death by vines, a swarming insect attack that leads to an asthma attack, and a girl being levitated then dropped. It’s all fine enough for a supernatural slasher, but then a bunch of random plot points are tossed in that completely confuse matters, like some sleazy redneck dude with a knife forcing one girl to show him her tits…after which she roundhouse kicks him then finds a can of beer on the ground, shrugs, and opens it and drinks it. It suddenly felt like I was watching a totally different movie. Not to mention…the ending is abrupt and kind of explains a final act instead of actually giving us one.

All I can say is that the filmmakers should have called it a loss instead of trying to piece together the disjointed end result to market to an audience. I do wonder how the actual finished product would have turned out, because there was promise here.

EVERYBODY DIES BY THE END (2022)

This is a mockumentary style flick about a film crew documenting the making of a promised “masterpiece” by a famed horror director. Bill Oberst Jr. appears in this one as well, but he gets only one scene in the beginning as an interviewer questioning the director.

The interview doesn’t go well, so the director decides to hire the documentary crew to create hype. The director is played by Vinny Curran, who should have a bigger indie horror career because he’s both a good actor and nice to look at.

He kind of has to carry the movie, because it’s not much of a horror film—it’s really a mockumentary in which the cast and crew get interviewed and the documentary team films the director’s antics as he makes his movie. It’s made pretty clear from the start that the director is a nut, so you kind of know where this is all going (the title says it all).

The director goes to some unconventional lengths to get the performances he wants out of the actors, and eventually some of them start to revolt, which is when the killing starts. But this isn’t a slasher. It’s more like the director is making a snuff film, for the actors die while filming so that the director can get the most realistic footage. This all happens in the final act, with no suspense, scares, or gore.

Even a prop mask is introduced early on, so you would think it would play an integral part in the murder proceedings. But alas, it’s just not what this film was going for. So you have to decide whether you want to watch a fairly predictable plot with the horror theme being merely a backdrop for the events that unfold.

TEDDY TOLD ME TO (2023)

What a relief! A Halloween haunted attraction movie that just goes for that good old midnight movie feel with loads of practical gore, tits, and more!

Two friends decide to resurrect a haunted attraction that has been closed since the 90s. Halloween is never specifically mentioned, but there are fall leaves, mention of being in business until November, and jack-o’-lanterns galore at the attraction, so this one earns a spot on the complete holiday horror page.

The two main characters buy the place from a realtor, played by Lisa Wilcox of Elm Street 4 and 5. The caretaker is CJ Graham, who played Jason in Friday the 13th 6. He’s one hot daddy.

There’s a montage of the leads holding auditions, including one guy who does his best Tarman impression. There’s also a haunted attraction set up montage to a cover of Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend” with rewritten lyrics about haunting. Awesome.

The attraction’s newly hired crew comes together to sit around a fire, which is when we get the story of murders that occurred years before, when a crazy dude in a bear mask slaughtered a bunch of people. Shown as flashbacks, it features Felissa Rose as the killer’s mom, Trent Haaga, who played Killjoy after he went white, as the dad, and delivers grindhouse fun and gore.

Once the attraction doors open, we get a haunt montage and then the killing begins.

My only complaint is that it’s always choppy edits, flashing lights, and shaky cam, but it’s definitely a splatterfest, and the body count is stacked! There’s even a chainsaw fight, and one character was as excited about it as I was. This one is the winner for me in this trio of films.

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BOUGHT ON BLU: an 80s Italian horror double feature

Posted on April 10, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a double disc release of 2 horror movies from Italian director Marcelo Avallone, neither of which I had ever seen before purchasing the set. Both of them have enough whacky 80s Euro horror elements to leave me satisfied and offered plenty of nostalgic vibes, but they’re not really good movies overall.

SPECTERS (1987)

In this one, Donald Pleasence plays an archaeologist working at a mausoleum location in Rome. A wall caves in and unleashes a demonic entity.

There are random characters killed in random places, and each time there is a death scene, we mostly see just a monstrous hand and some blood.

There’s a rat attack scene when a group takes a tour of catacombs, a guy dies gruesomely at a restaurant, a guy gets attacked in his bathtub, a woman gets dragged into her mattress…

None of it makes sense, but when the main couple gets chased by the demon in the catacombs in the final act, which is when we finally get to see the full monster Monty, it provides some last minute horror fun.

As a bonus, the final frame is as cheesy as you’d expect and hope for from an 80s horror movie.

MAYA (1989)

Ages ago a wizard king learned how to slip between the worlds of the living and dead. An archaeologist knows he can bring the king back if he sacrifices himself at the bridge to the two worlds, so he does just that.

His daughter then comes to town to find out why her father died. She gets some help from the leading man, a total fox who is often shirtless and is also a total man whore. Awesome.

In fact, there are plenty of classic sleazy, sweaty dudes in tank tops and bandanas. Ah, the 80s.

As with Specters, random people get killed, this time supernaturally.

There’s a tribal exorcism scene in which a dude pukes up little snakes (so nasty), a girl gets brutally killed in her tub, and a woman gets killed by fishing poles.

It’s another hot mess, but unfortunately, the ending fails to deliver the horror party that Specters gave us.

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Women take the Writing and Directing Wheel!

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Daniel

It’s all about the girls in this trio of light horror flicks that are all written and/or directed by women and rely on hot pink to make their poster art pop…

LISA FRANKENSTEIN (2024)

I kept my hopes for this one low because it was getting way more hype on social media than most movies end up deserving. I was definitely excited that it is written by Diablo Cody of Jennifer’s Body fame (one of my hundreds of favorite horror movies), and I was also looking forward to a movie immersed in the 80s (the film takes place in 1989). Unfortunately, despite its dark theme, Lisa Frankenstein feels more like a cutesy Frankenstein with an Edward Scissorhands vibe than a horror movie.

I’ll start off by saying the 80s soundtrack is great, going for deeper cuts rather than the obvious, including tracks by When In Rome, Blue Peter, The Chameleons, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Flatmates, The Pixies, Galaxie 500, Jeffrey Osborne, and even the main character covering REO Speedwagon. Visually it looks like the end of the 80s because it mimics Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands style and colors.

We meet Lisa, who hangs out in a cemetery and is drawn to a grave statue of a young man who died ages ago. She’s trying to cope with her life turning upside down after the death of her mother. Her dad remarried, her stepmother hates her, and she doesn’t fit in at school.

However, her stepsister treats her kindly and takes her to a party…at which she is basically roofied. Lisa stumbles home using the cemetery as a shortcut. There’s no logical explanation for what happens next beyond Lisa having been shocked by a faulty tanning bed, Lisa making a wish, and lightning striking. As a result, the young man whose statue she adores in the cemetery returns from the dead and follows her home.

From there, the film really drags as Lisa gets to know him while keeping him hidden. This is sort of like one of those monster romance flicks from the late 80s/early 90s (My Demon Lover, My Boyfriend’s Back, etc.), but Lisa is pretty self-centered. She finds her rotting friend gross most of the time, she talks to him about the guy in school that she likes and wants to have sex with, and she uses the monster to get revenge on people that wronged her—although in return it scores him some of the body parts he’s missing. He even gives her a makeover as well, turning her into Madonna circa 1984, which you would think would make her more popular at school, but that plot point doesn’t really go anywhere beyond making her act even weirder than she already was.

Despite the gothic, morbid theme and great performances by everyone, the movie is incredibly flat. It runs way too long, takes forever to get to the moment when the monster actually kills someone, is pretty sterile in presenting its more gruesome aspects, and is a little bit too charming in its humor, making it feel more like a tween comedy than a horror comedy. Even the “dirty” parts feel quaint rather than raunchy.

COURTNEY GETS POSSESSED (2022)

This is one of those horror comedies that has a really fun premise, but the writing doesn’t completely rise to the occasion. The talented cast does the best they can to create a vibe, but inevitably there’s just a special spark missing.

Courtney is about to get married, but still has unresolved issues with her sister (played by the co-writer and co-director of the film), who always used to steal her boyfriends. Even so, the sis is in the wedding party, and the girls gather together in a house for one last hoorah…which involves Courtney asking them to do a chant with candles. Uh-oh.

There’s a knock on the door, and it’s one of Courtney’s exes. It also turns out he’s the devil and isn’t willing to give her up. Awesome.

So much potential here. Courtney gets possessed, they tie her to the bed, the men of the wedding party show up, they call in a priest…so much fun to be had, but the movie never quit gets there despite having its moments.

Like I said, the cast is excellent and gives the movie all its charm. Plus, there are some nice twists in the final act.

FESTIVAL OF THE LIVING DEAD (2024)

Although this zombie film is directed by the Soska Sisters, don’t expect anything as dark or twisted as their usual output. They didn’t write this film, and I’m guessing they were just hired for name recognition to direct a Tubi original.

The interesting aspect is that this is supposed to be a sequel to the original Night of the Living Dead. It takes place 55 years later, when kids are going to a festival celebrating the original outbreak…including a young woman who is a relative of original NOTLD hero Ben.

However, don’t expect much explanation as to how the original outbreak ended or why a new one begins. You just have to go with it.

There’s nothing very original here, and it comes off feeling like another cash grab based on a classic—think the Return of the Living Dead sequels that were SyFy originals in the early 2000s (which most people hated, but I am a fan of).

We get a group of teens, some good zombie makeup, plenty of gut munching, and other zombie movie tropes. Of note is that most of the heroes in this one are the girls.

The focal point in the final act is a big burning man monument that comes into play as the group of teens attempts to fend off all the zombies attacking an outdoor concert. Despite the derivative nature of everything that unfolds, it does give you a sense of nostalgia for simple zombie flicks from two decades ago.

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TUBI TERRORS: zombies, ghosts, and an exorcism

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Daniel

I watched this assortment of indie horror flicks so you don’t have to…unless you like what you hear.

SHIFTED (2022)

I did not know what to expect going into this film that at first felt like it was going to be strictly about a group of neighbors all trapped in one house while a zombie outbreak we never witness is going on outside. I thought I was in for some torturous Pontypool shit, but although this is a slow burn, it succeeds in making you more interested in what’s going on inside with the characters than outside. And yet it even manages to actually deliver some intense zombie action.

We are thrown into the middle of an outbreak during the wintery, snowy time of year. I’m a sucker for zombie outbreak movies that take place during the day while it’s snowing.

Anyway, this group of neighbors is struggling to survive with limited resources. We slowly learn what each of them experienced before arriving at the house. They also welcome new people to their safe haven, but they do tend to treat them with suspicion and interrogate them.

There are a few fleeting struggles with some seriously nasty looking zombies outside, but things get complicated inside the house when one of the survivors is found murdered in the bathroom!

Trapped with each other, the group has to deal with the fact that there’s a killer among them, which of course leads to heightened tensions, distrust, and eventually survivors turning on each other.

It’s all quite compelling, and there are some unnerving moments when zombies infiltrate the house. Plus, there’s a hunky as hell zombie. I’d eat him before he could get his teeth on me.

However, one thing really kills the whole mystery behind the plot: ***SPOILER*** the opening scene shows one of the main characters murdering someone before coming to the house. I kept telling myself this person couldn’t possibly be the killer of the victim in the house, too, because it would defeat the point of the mystery, but alas that person is indeed the killer! WTF? That first murder scene is completely unnecessary, and I don’t understand why the creators of the movie didn’t choose to remove it other than the fact that they wanted to open with something shocking and bloody. As if there weren’t some other kind of horrific opener they could have come up with in a movie about a zombie outbreak…

THE HEADMISTRESS (2023)

One thing about this derivative ghost movie saved it for me…a gay couple that lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

Ghost movies in general don’t particularly scare me, so all the tropes we get here had no effect on me. After a woman in serious debt inherits an inn in the woods from her father, she takes a small group of interested buyers to see it. We have a misogynistic douche, two different female characters that are pretty indistinguishable other than their hair color, and the cute gay couple that proudly owns a pizza shop.

Once in the house, the group splits up to explore. One woman sees a ghost girl in the basement and “help me” written on a closet wall. The other woman sees a dark figure moving closer to her every time she lifts her old school camera to take a picture. There are fleeting glimpses of ghosts in the shadows, there are some jump scares, ghosts start messing with everyone’s minds, and the ghosts appear to start manifesting in the flesh.

The group slowly begins piecing together the history of the large house, which involves an old boarding school and children being tortured. One thing that definitely has a lot of embellishment here is the backstory.

There is a final confrontation between the main girl and the ghosts, but that just gives us one cool appearance of a demonic looking main ghost.

The gay guys are the most interesting of the bunch. One of them dreams of buying the place to make it into a haunted hotel, so he’s also the most prepared to deal with the ghostly insanity. Best of all, the gay guys get the last line, and it reminds us of just how adorable they are together.

THE DEMONS WITHIN (2023)

I watched this movie for one reason—80s sweetheart Deborah Foreman of Valley Girl and April Fool’s Day was listed in the cast. Turns out she has about a 20-second appearance as a nurse and is not a good reason to sit through the movie.

I’m not going to spend much time on this. For me, the fact that a movie like The Exorcist exists makes it barely worth it for major studios to throw money at inferior exorcism films, let alone for low budget indies to go there.

So this girl Izzy doesn’t get along with her parents. She goes to a therapist where it appears demons are transferred into her phone. Ah, a comment on phones taking over our lives in modern society.

This kicks off cheap versions of typical exorcism movie tropes. With 20 minutes left, the parents, who are atheists, cave to organized religion and call in a priest, who performs an exorcism on the living room floor, because family TV time is surely the most important part of the day.

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These slashers are the stuff of children’s nightmares

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Daniel

British directors are pumping out slashers almost faster than I can find them on streaming services to devour and then cover on my site. The latest trio I binged takes on classic children’s nursery rhymes and beloved stories. Each one also happens to feature a British scream queen named May Kelly, but I’ve decided to anoint her as Lindsay Clonehan because she is a total Lindsay Lohan clone, right down to the vocal fry. She’s racked up roles in movies like Nutcracker Massacre, The Killing Tree, Easter Bunny Massacre, Curse of Humpty Dumpty 2, and Sky Monster.

MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB (2023)

This British nursery rhyme slasher is as templated as a backwoods family horror film can be, but it mostly does a good job of creating atmosphere, plus it has a great killer—my favorite of killer of this bunch.

Lindsay Clonehan stars as a true crime podcaster about to be out of a job because she’s not garnering enough listeners. So she decides to take her team to an area where people go missing all the time for a real juicy story.

They discover a house in the middle of nowhere…and a bunch of fog machines that seem to only work intermittently, leaving us with an inconsistent, patchy, foggy setting for the rest of the movie.

An older woman named Mary lives in the house. She says her son is upstairs. The group convinces her to let them stay for the night (so they can do some podcast investigating). Being true crime experts, they literally suspect this whole situation with this woman and her unseen son is bizarre in a place where people have gone missing, and yet…well, we know what happens next.

Slowly but surely they split up and start getting killed off by the “son”. You may think he’s wearing a lamb head as a mask, but this dude has an actual lamb head and growls like a bear. Therein lies the big problem with this film. There would be only one acceptable backstory for this lamb man…the mother was fucked by a sheep. How they could pass up this twisted opportunity is beyond me, but they do.

There are some great chase scenes and tension (the fricking lamb man runs really fast!), but the kills fail to make contact…meaning you can always tell the actors are not actually getting struck by the weapons being used against them. It’s a glaring issue in an otherwise tightly made flick. It packs in all the clichés we love–murders, chase scenes, the crazy mom, a gruesome dinner party, and…a Texas Chainsaw copycat conclusion that brings the film to an abrupt end that feels very unfinished. I sense a sequel. Maybe then we’ll get the sheep fucking angle?

THREE BLIND MICE (2023)

The opening scene of Three Blind Mice is a goodie, but it also ensures there’s no mystery in this movie. A girl and a dude in the woods end up in an abandoned underground lab where they are attacked by three mice men, which we get to see in their full glory immediately.

Lindsay Clonehan is our lead once again. She plays a druggy, and her family and friends take her to a house in the woods for an intervention.

Soon, the mice men are killing her friends and family left and right. The film definitely delivers on the gore, but it’s not quite scary and there isn’t much suspense, although there are several cat and mouse chase scenes…where, ironically, the mice men are the cat.

The first time Clonehan gets abducted and taken to the lab lair she gets away and goes back to the cabin. The mice men invade the house, leading to more of her friends and family becoming victims, and then she ends up back in the lab lair for the final act. It all becomes quite boring for a while, but she does conveniently find a video to watch that explains how the mice men came to be. Not to mention, she deserves the title of scream queen, because her screams rock.

The biggest disappointment for me is that none of the mice men have their tales cut off with a carving knife. Weren’t nursery rhymes just so cute?

WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY (2023)

Rhys Frake-Waterfield, the director of this more commercially successful childhood horror flick, has directed numerous other indie slashers I’ve covered on my site (including The Killing Tree and Sky Monster starring Lindsay Clonehan), so I’m happy for him finally getting a higher profile release. Although this is the most popular of the three flicks I cover here, it suffers from the same mid-movie slowdown the other two do.

We first get a dark animated backstory involving the famous Winnie the Pooh characters. Basically, human boy Christopher Robin deserted his furry friends to go to college, causing them to turn into blood-thirsty murderers. Robin comes back when he’s older and ends up getting abducted by Pooh and Piglet. Pooh is quite a sadist. He keeps Robin chained up and whips him.

Meanwhile, a bunch of girls heads to a cabin in the woods. Here’s the bummer. Lindsay Clonehan gets lost on the way and becomes the first victim. Blah. What a waste of final girl material. However, she gets a good chase scene and a gruesome death.

Pooh and Piglet kill a minimal number of victims before the remainder of girls work together to try to stay alive. The movie really slows down for a while once Pooh and Piglet invade their home.

However, the final act is a blast. A group of rednecks shows up on the scene to try to help the girls, making the body count skyrocket instantly. Awesome. The majority of the blood (and honey) is definitely saved for the last 20 minutes or so.

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A double feature of killer bunny Easter slashers!

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Daniel

It’s two more killer bunny flicks to add to the complete holiday horror page. There’s even a drag queen in each movie, landing them both on the does the gay guy die? page as well. But are these two movies a basket full of fun?

EASTER EVIL (2024)

Be warned, this is a loooooow budget film intentionally filmed with a 1970s campy trash quality…while looking like it takes place in the 1960s.

A hooker named bunny and her erotic dancer friend Trinity (played by a drag queen) hang out in a hotel room for a majority of this 72-minute film. Their dialogue about their jobs, aspirations, and men fail to bring any humor, so it’s not entertaining at all. Bunny does have one dream about a guy in a bunny costume to break up the monotony.

Eventually the girls go out to get Easter eggs. While they’re gone, a pervy room service guy comes into the room and is killed by the bunny man.

The girls return for some more filler—exercise, dance, and pillow fight montages. Eventually they discover the bunny man is in their room and some fighting ensues.

No body count, no comedy, no scares…not even the kind of crass material you might expect from a movie about a hooker and a drag queen erotic dancer in a sleazy hotel. The simple premise just begs for over-the-top absurdity, but we don’t even get that.

EASTER BLOODY EASTER (2024)

This big killer bunny has little red-eyed minion bunnies and is trying to take out a town full of churchgoers. Yay!

Our leading lady and director of the film is Diane Foster, who was the star of The Orphan Killer and its sequel. As the town prepares for its big Easterpalooza celebration, her husband goes missing and people start turning up dead.

One redneck who seems like a conspiracy theorist is actually right…it’s the work of supernatural entity Jackalope, first conjured by a woman decades before when she merely wanted her kids to experience a visit from the Easter bunny.

As the main girl and her friends put the pieces together and try to hunt down the bunny, Easterpalooza goes on. The big dance starts with a Bunny Hop montage led by the town’s gay boy dressed in Playboy bunny drag. In fact, this little redneck town is shockingly colorful and diverse…

The rest of the segment at the dance slows the otherwise fast-paced film down for a while, as do some dream sequences the main girl has. The film didn’t need to be 103 minutes long. But things pick up when an Easter egg hunt turns into a massacre! The big bunny looks awesomely evil, and his minions are good for a chuckle (they give off Critters vibes).

All the main characters end up battling bunnies in the woods in the final act, but then the film drags on for a bit too long after it, with nothing really happening. Not sure what they were trying to accomplish with the few final drawn out scenes. Even so, this is mostly a good one to watch if you’re doing a killer bunny movie marathon on Easter weekend.

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