HYBRID HORROR: a home invasion, ghosts, a witch, possession, and trans representation

Posted on June 3, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a trio of indie flicks with various subgenres within subgenres. Does that make them more intriguing or just create chaos? Let’s find out.

THE WRAITH (2025)

This one begins with a woman getting burned as a witch and vowing revenge offspring in the 1940s. WHAT? We also learn later that the sheriff at the time was Black. WHAT?

Those anachronisms aside, the film moves to 1985. Four ghost-hunting friends head to a rural home to help a couple with a haunting and the disappearance of their daughters.

The couple lets the ghost-hunting team stay in the house and leaves. The four friends begin to experience weird occurrences, but the first scare is a nightmare sequence. Sigh.

They investigate the history of the woman burned as a witch, and not much else happens for quite some time, but eventually one of the main girls becomes possessed. From that point on, things get complicated. There are plenty of horror aspects, but the plot is all over the place.

We get a scary ghost that tries to help the sole survivor, gut-munching, someone killing people, witchcraft, and a backstory that unfolds in flashbacks, but the plot about the haunting and the missing daughters is totally forgotten. Meanwhile, I was totally eating up the eye candy…

CRYSTAL LAKE (2023)

It’s unfortunate that indie filmmakers continue to try to capitalize on massive movies and franchises using a deceiving title that will perhaps get the movie watched, but will inevitably lead to harsh backlash online, thereby denying the film the chance to stand on its own laurels.

Crystal Lake not only steals its title from the infamous camp we all know, love, and in some cases worship, but the film even has a young boy named Tommy, a character named Jason, and a moment referencing a “Jason” movie tie-in to the murders that happened, which features someone in a hockey mask. Sigh.

So, with this not being a Friday the 13th film, does it stand on its own? I have to admit, I was growing bored with the film, for it’s loaded with dialogue, even if much of it is kind of campy, often controversial, and mostly sexual, but the final act completely turns the tables for an unexpected denouement that was quite refreshing and more intriguing than everything that comes before it.

A group of friends comes to stay at a cabin in the woods where there were some murders a few years before (depicted in gory clips during the opening credits). The killer was never caught, so the friends decide to start their own little investigation.

At the same time, we get scenes of two local cops on the beat and discussing the same case to fill in the details (or lack of them) for viewers.

In between talking about the murders, the friends discuss sex a whole lot, and there’s major trans/non-binary representation with one character played by one Emily Meissner. Thing is, the trans character’s identity is sort of played to be both bold and in your face, yet challenged by the other characters, which some viewers may find offensive, while others might think it’s an attempt to be realistic and balanced. I also was not able to verify whether or not Emily Meissner is indeed trans or a cisgender person playing the role.

The trans issues actually become the focus when screams are heard from the cabin, leading to the two cops showing up to check out the report. The shit really hits the fan, the film delves into how horribly trans people are treated, particularly by law enforcement, and there’s a shift in tone that does not paint cops in a good light and even delivers some commentary on headline-making cases about police brutality. So basically, the movie attempts to be highly offensive to both the left and the right. Pretty sneaky…cis (that’s a Connect Four commercial reference from the 1980s, for you young ‘uns…).

I was really feeling the out of the box approach to the final act, even if it shifted the film away from a straight-up horror concept. I just think the first half needed something more to hold viewers’ interest.

GHOST GAME (2024)

This one tries a different take on the home invasion subgenre with a bunch of twists. It didn’t work for me, and quite frankly, I was confused by the end.

A dude finds out his girlfriend and another guy take part in this video challenge in which they sneak into people’s homes and live there without the owners finding out while filming every moment.

Despite seeing video of his girlfriend and challenge partner doing something awful, the boyfriend decides he wants to participate in their next home invasion.

There’s a supposedly haunted house they sneak into with a dark, murderous past that has just been bought by a new family—a father, mother, and young daughter.

The family gets unsettling feelings around the house, and while the scenes are set up to create tension and suspense, how can it be any of those things when we know who’s hiding in the shadows? I guess we’re supposed to be on edge that the unlikable main characters are going to get caught?

While a majority of the runtime is uneventful, eventually all the twists are tossed in for the final act. Just when I thought there was a really clever twist involving ghosts (a twist that I personally think would have brilliant–probably because I thought of it), there was another twist that I not only didn’t fully comprehend, but it also negated my thoughts about the ghost twist.

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HULU HORRORS: don’t go in the water!

Posted on May 29, 2025 by Daniel

This triple feature revolves around sea scares, but they’re all totally different in plot, making for some nice variety. But is variety always the spice of life? Let’s find out.

THE LAST BREATH (2024)

The hubby and I are always ready for new shark movies when the summer nears, so we got an early jump on it with this cliché take on the subgenre.

We meet a group of friends looking to party in a tropical location. One guy has recently helped the late Julian Sands discover a sunken WWII battleship.

He hasn’t told anyone about it, but after lots of uninteresting talk between the characters as they party on the beach, he decides to take his friends diving.

The group becomes trapped down in a warship by a shark, with one room having an air pocket they can hide out in safely in between trying to escape.

And yet they still keep getting attacked. And they also conveniently end up in an underwater room full of like 70-year-old medical supplies when one of them needs to be stitched up.

The initial appearance of the shark had such an opportunity to be an amazing jump scare, but bad CGI made it a blip on the jump scare radar instead. The shark scenes are all CGI, so once you get past that, you just have to use your imagination to pretend it’s real.

The group does all the typical things wrong, but at least there’s plenty of bloody water. The two best moments include a scene in which one guy almost makes it safely back to the boat, and the scene in which the final girl fights back and takes on the shark head-on.

DEAD SEA (2024)

Even though it has a terrifying concept, this film is totally thriller lite. The events that unfold are so simplified that there is little in the way of suspense.

Our main girl and her female friend and two male friends go jet skiing, and there’s a really bad accident. One of the two guys simply disappears, the other guy is badly hurt.

For a moment it feels like this is going to be an Open Water situation, for we naturally get shots of sharks in the water. Luckily (or not), the trio is picked up by a sexy fisherman.

Almost immediately they are all held captive, and this turns into an organ harvesting and human trafficking movie. It’s definitely the most chilling aspect of the film, but it all just plays out so basically with no hitches in the escape plan.

Even the final rescue is hokey and buttoned up tight. Funny thing is that the simplification of the survivors’ trajectory comes down to them essentially making no mistakes…which goes to show you that scary movies would be pretty boring if characters didn’t do stupid things.

Meanwhile, the hot fisherman is shirtless for the final battle, so that’s a plus. He also pulls a Silence of the Lambs at one point by sending supplies down to his prisoners in a basket.

THE DAMNED (2024)

This is one you should probably check out if you like those unsettling period pieces like The Witch, where it’s all about the vibes rather than the visuals.

In terms of horror eye candy, the most you get in this movie is essentially all contained within the screenshots I’ve included here.

In a fishing village near the shore, the residents are contending with a brutal winter when they see a ship crashed on the rocks in the distance.

They argue over whether or not to go save any possible survivors. This is when the savagery of olden days is on full display. Actually, pretty much nothing has changed in today’s “civilized” society.

Anyway, after a boat trip to the ship that turns barbaric, the villagers place all the dead bodies that wash up on shore into coffins.

After that, the guilt begins to eat away at them and they start suffering visual delusions, getting violent, going crazy, and even killing themselves. It is pretty much up to the viewer to decide if they are actually experiencing anything or suffering from mass hysteria.

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Monsters of California and Australia

Posted on May 27, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a triple feature of movies including a Bigfoot, ghosts, aliens, a giant boar, and a zombie kangaroo. Is it all as fun as it sounds? Let’s find out.

MONSTERS OF CALIFORNIA (2023)

This flick has so much going for it, but it doesn’t deliver enough on the title, and the plot absolutely crumbles, running on fumes with no sense of motivation or story arc by the time it reaches the final act of it’s too-long runtime.

The vibe is straight out of an 80s Spielberg film, and I was loving it. We meet a dude and his two best buddies, who are always chasing paranormal experiences. The first sequence has them in a haunted house and encountering a ghost, and it’s 80s awesome, like something out of Ghostbusters. As a bonus, one of the dudes even gets stripped down to his undies.

Then we get a bunch of plot points. The main guy’s dad disappeared while studying something paranormal for the government. His mom is a religious fanatic. His uncle is a military man, played by Casper Van Dien.

His two best buddies are somewhat of a comic duo, and there’s this odd thing going on with them—one friend is somewhat obsessed with the other friend’s crotch. The crotch lover actually absolutely steals the show with his comical delivery. Meanwhile, there’s so much potential for a bromance turned homomance angle, but it never fully develops.

Instead, the main guy gets a female love interest, and I’m not being biased when I say that their intimate hetero moments destroy the pacing. There was no need for this romantic element other than to add to the 80s feel. In fact, if the romance and the religious mom aspect had been dropped, the pacing would have been so much better, because those two side stories add nothing to the already struggling main plot.

There’s only one other major “monster” in California, in another great sequence involving Bigfoot, which goes from suspenseful to hilarious thanks to the crotch lover.

Eventually, the group of friends gets entangled in a government coverup, and we even get a UFO sequence in the end that feels like a total nod to Close Encounters.

It’s a bummer that as much as this feels like an 80s comfort movie, it really falls short in both monster action and script strength.

BOAR (2017)

I wasn’t surprised to see numerous comments online comparing this movie to Razorback. It is another good old monster movie about a giant boar tearing people apart in the Australian wilderness, so it’s impossible not to read that description and think of the 80s classic.

For a majority of the film, the giant boar is presented without CGI, which is amazing in this day and age considering how big this beast is. However, it’s mostly closeups of the mouth and head for some great gory attacks.

In the final act, a decision is made to show the entire boar as it snaps victims up, which is when some seriously hokey CGI is used. Still cool attacks, but it does change the feel a bit.

The other issue with the movie is the messy flow. Early on, we meet Bill Moseley and family on a road trip to visit a super hunky, bald uncle…but then they disappear for a major portion of the middle of the film.

The focus turns to random people getting attacked and locals hanging around and talking in a diner. What they never talk about, however, is how this damn boar got so big. Therefore, you just have to go with the horror action, which delivers plenty of blood and guts. There are some delicious glimpses of man bods as well.

For the final act, the focus is once again on Moseley and his family, which is when the attacks shift to CGI. Even so, the whole sequence with the family trying to survive is a blast.

RIPPY (2024)

Would you believe it’s another Australian creature feature? And would you believe the hunky baldy from Boar also appears in this one? That was totally unintentional on my part when I selected these three flicks for a triple feature.

Rippy simply isn’t as horror-loaded as Boar, and many of the kills are essentially cutaway kills. Also, Rippy the killer kangaroo, who I think is supposed to be a zombie kangaroo, is pretty much exclusively CGI.

On top of that, each of the main characters (including Michael Biehn) gets their own little backstories, most of it concerning some form of PTSD. None of it adds anything to the plot, but what it does do is slow down the pace.

This just isn’t a very energetic monster movie, and there are large gaps of “character development” between the kills. It’s only in the final fifteen minutes that Rippy leaves the wilderness and comes to town to terrorize the main cast in a bar. This final battle is so disappointingly low key and over in the blink of an eye.

Finally, there’s one last scene that makes it look there could be a sequel focusing on human zombies.

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Horror queen Sadie Katz made me do it

Posted on May 23, 2025 by Daniel

I selected the films for my latest triple feature simply because indie horror queen Sadie Katz is in them. They offered different doses of Sadie, so let’s find out if I was satisfied by the scares even without much Sadie in some cases.

DEATH CLUB (2023)

This 72-minute supernatural movie has a direct-to-DVD early 2000s vibe. If nothing else, I was totally feeling it for that reason, because these days I’m feeling anything that doesn’t feel like now. Meanwhile, Sadie Katz only plays a ghost that comes in for what essentially amounts to a cameo 52 minutes into the movie.

The movie is about a haunted, abandoned dance club, so the opening credits feature a montage of sexual debauchery and queer characters that had me longing for the days of the 90s New York City club scene.

More importantly, although it takes until the end of the movie for the truth to come out, a gay couple appears to be the reason for tragedy that occurred at the club in the first place, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page. Awesome.

Other than that, this is a flat, low budget feature. A group of friends breaks into the boarded up club, which is surprisingly clean inside, and starts to party.

Then, they begin to split up, and in doing so, each friend is confronted by a ghost that forces them to admit the wrongs they’ve done in life. We’ve seen this one before, and this adds nothing to the concept.

Even worse, and this may be considered a spoiler, but there ends up being literally no punishment for any of these people for the things they’ve done, making the whole movie–and the mysterious masked figure that is presented through mask POV–rather pointless.

On the bright side, there’s a gay kiss in the final scene.

END TIMES (2023)

While most of this film feels as derivative as the zombie genre gets these days–our main survivors trek through the post-apocalyptic country encountering both zombies and monstrous groups of humans–it’s the final scene that really adds dimension and something quite fresh to the genre. That surprise, however, is spoiled because the filmmakers chose to open the film with a clip from the end, totally spoiling it.

The other problem is that the film runs an hour and fifty-two minutes long. Ugh.

Like I said, the majority of the film feels familiar, kind of like a season of The Walking Dead compressed into one movie.

Indie horror queen Jamie Bernadette awakens to find the world has gone to shit, and after some freakish encounters with both a gang of rapists and some lumbering zombies (awesome–it’s back to slow moving zombies for a change), she meets a survivalist guy, and they stick together to survive.

They get to know each other, there are montages of him teaching her to fight, there are a few zombie encounters (although not loads of zombies), and several conflicts with other groups of survivors.

Sadie shows up 64 minutes into the movie as part of a sort of religious cult group of survivors, and she has a slightly bigger part than she does in Death Club.

The real star here is Jamie Bernadette, who gives a great performance in the end, when we are presented with one character being infected. It is so sad and tragic watching them as they are able to describe what they are going through and feeling as they slowly turn. I’ve never quite seen such intimate exploration of the experience of the infected and the person that cares about them listening to how they are suffering during the change.

KILLER CONNECTION (aka: Hybristophilia) (2022)

I looked up Hybristophilia (the original title of this movie), and it’s all about getting sexually aroused by serial killers and other criminals.

This 76-minute movie takes on that theme with a major focus on lesbianism, bullying, and homophobia, with absolutely no subtlety in the messaging. It’s totally a lesbian horror flick, starting with lesbian sex and ending with lesbians having a happily ever after–for all the wrong reasons.

It’s also the one film of this trio in which Sadie is one of the stars. It’s a far cry from her fun and funny roles in movies like Party Bus to Hell, the kind of roles that got me hooked on her. Instead, this is a serious role in which she plays a pregnant woman.

However, that’s not the reason I wasn’t thrilled with this movie. It’s simply not very thrilling. A small group of documentary makers or content creators (not sure which) comes to a house where murder occurred, called there by the killer, who offers them a once in a lifetime chance for a one-on-one interview.

The lack of thrills is immediately established when the group passes out in the house, wakes up tied to chairs by the killer in a mask…and then the killer immediately takes off the mask and unties them. Like, what was the point of that elaborate entrance?

From then on, the killer just talks mysteriously about what led up to the murder in the house while giving the group a tour of all the spots where captivity, spousal abuse, sexual abuse, violence, and inevitably the murder took place.

At 67 minutes, the killer puts the mask back on and starts chasing and killing members of the group. Fear not–literally–because the chases and kills are bland. It all leads up to the “happy lesbian ending”. Even so, as dry as the film is, it does try to indulge in exploration of how family dysfunction and childhood trauma affected a young woman’s gender identity and sexual orientation. Not to mention, even the gay guys are thrown a bone when a shirtless hottie is targeted by the masked killer.

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The horror of listening to the radio

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Daniel

It’s a perfect trio of horror anthologies to watch as a marathon. Each focuses on a DJ hosting a scary story call in show, and even the poster art for each movie has a similar vibe. Luckily for me, I actually unintentionally watched them in the perfect order—from the least impressive to the most satisfying.

NIGHT TALKERS (2024)

Horror icon Bill Moseley plays a late night radio show host in this anthology, and he opens the phone lines for callers to tell scary stories—but gets tired when they keep feeling stories that are simply movie and urban legend plots, so he demands original tales. As far as horror goes, callers probably would have been better off just recalling great horror movies, because these stories are bland and uninspired.

Before I get into the tales, I have to note that there are two aspects of the wraparound that seem like they were meant to deliver on something bigger at the conclusion, but instead, neither of them amounts to anything, so I’m not even sure why they were included. The first is a radio announcement about a missing man. The other is a package that comes in the mail for the radio host. Therefore, all the weight is placed on the three tales to terrify us. Unfortunately, they can’t carry it.

1st story – a guy with a great beard goes hunting in the woods and encounters this creepy mutant dude. I’m convinced this ghoul has appeared in another movie, I just can’t think of which one. Does he look familiar to anyone?

Either way, there’s simply no tension or suspense at all.

2nd story – it’s a familiar live streaming in a haunted house plot. The cast uses a Ouija board and the people begin to die. No atmosphere, no scares, no climax.

3rd story – a city planner gets enmeshed in investigating a murder when he discovers a body in the woods. Eventually he encounters a monster, which looks like an old school rubber mask creature, but we never really get a good look at it. This final tale is way longer than it needs to be and isn’t intriguing at all.

It feels like the whole budget of this movie was spent on having Bill Moseley in the wraparound.

NIGHTMARE RADIO: THE NIGHT STALKER (2023)

Oddly, this movie simply drops you right into a woman’s chaotic nightmare in her home, and there’s no telling what’s going in.

However, it has a very 1970s acid horror vibe and is freaky as hell. I think it’s supposed to be a story our radio host was telling.

Next, we meet the radio host, and she’s kinda punk, edgy, dark, and cool. She wants to hear real, wild stories from callers. In between each story, she gets obscene phone calls that sound right out of an 80s erotic thriller. Awesome.

The five stories have a much higher production value here, and I found them all pretty damn effective.

First story – this is about an unhappy photographer who finds herself drawn to foxes that keep appearing in her yard. The minimalistic approach to this tale really works, and if you appreciate movies where what you don’t see is the most frightening, you’ll really appreciate this one.

Second story – a guy in an apartment building is terrorized by a killer in a sack mask. It’s creepy and really straightforward. Kind of a cheap thrills tale, and I’m a sucker for cheap thrills.

Third story – this takes the familiar plot of people entering an abandoned, haunted mental hospital and compresses it into a short story that really delivers on the usual ghost scares. Very atmospheric.

Fourth story – two sisters driving at night pull into a rest stop and one of the sisters gets abducted. The second sister gives chase in her car. What she finds when she catches up to the kidnapper is horrific, but I can’t say I understood what I was seeing.

Fifth story – a family with a vineyard needs victims to add a special ingredient to add to their wine. I like the dark tone and vibe of this one, but it wasn’t all that exciting.

The film closes with the stalker, who has shown up at the radio station, having a standoff with the radio host, and it’s a refreshing change of pace from the usual outcome of stalker tales.

A NIGHT OF HORROR: NIGHTMARE RADIO (2019)

This one is so tightly produced and loaded with tales. Even the opener about a witch hunt, which again appears to be a story the DJ is already telling, is visually stylish, sets the tone, and draws you into the movie.

We meet the DJ, who, ironically, gives off a Bill Moseley in The Devil’s Rejects vibe. There are also two different radio commercials about Valentine’s Day during the course of the film, which is kind of odd, because the holiday is otherwise never capitalized on or mentioned by the DJ. Instead, he revels in the stories he tells while criticizing the stories callers try to tell.

1st tale – this period piece is so fricking eerie. It has a young girl assigned to making the corpse of a recently deceased child look real for the funeral, and the treatment of the body is freakishly graphic, detailed, and the sequence is super suspenseful. I was reminded of the creepy corpse woman from the classic anthology Black Sabbath.

2nd tale – this is a brief, disturbing tale about a “hair stylist” teaching a vain woman a lesson for choosing greed over using her power of beauty for good. Eek!

3rd tale – another disturbing tale, this one is about a criminal in prison slowly having parts of his body removed surgically before being forced to make appearances in front of classrooms to show young people what happens if you “misbehave”. Another eek!

4th tale – I could be reading it wrong, but this subtitled, Spanish tale appears to be a metaphor for how an unwanted pregnancy is a real horror and can rob a woman of fulfilling her dreams. Awesome.

5th tale – a girl with balloons is terrorized in her home by a freakish ghoul. Another eek-worthy tale.

6th tale – a man hunts a naked woman through the woods, but there’s a delicious and monstrous twist.

7th tale – this one is more about the scares than the story. Basically, a woman comes home and is terrorized by a ghost or demon girl.

In between stories, the DJ begins to get calls from a young child begging for help. He thinks they are prank calls, but the conclusion of the wraparound reveals what’s really going on. It’s always good to end a horror anthology with a wraparound that continues to deliver the horror.

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A haunted attraction, purgatory, and a psycho family

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Daniel

Each of the films in my latest selection of flicks for a movie marathon had something that kept me watching, but was it worth it in the end? Let’s find out.

NIGHT OF WRATH (2025)

This is an all-around cliché-riddled, 73-minute flick that doesn’t deliver any thrilling takes on any of those clichés. The most confusing part to me is that it takes place in a haunted attraction and there are plenty of jack-o-‘lanterns around, but there is absolutely no mention whatsoever of it being Halloween, and the holiday has no bearing on anything.

However, Sleepy Hollow gets a random mention as well, and therefore, I’ll add Night of Wrath to the holiday horror page since it gives off visual Halloween vibes inside the attraction.

We meet a group of kids in a series of melodramatic, dialogue-driven exposition for each character. They are then invited by some sort of secret invitation to a haunted attraction.

They’re the only ones there. An animatronic figure talks to them and gives them a very Saw-like ultimatum—do what it tells them to do or their darkest secrets will be revealed.

The group walks around the attraction a lot trying to figure out how to escape, however, it doesn’t look like much effort was put in to making it feel like an authentic attraction, probably due to budget constraints.

We don’t get anything in the way of horrific things the friends are required to do to survive, there are very few juicy secrets revealed, and there are no death scenes. Not to mention, the person behind the plot is revealed at the 43-minute mark, so there isn’t even much mystery here. Just a really underdeveloped script and plot all around.

GOD OF PAIN (2023)

There’s plenty of disturbing imagery, eerie visuals elements, and gore in this flick, but rather than an actual plot arc with main characters, this is basically a series of vignettes featuring various people being sentenced in purgatory for their crimes against humanity.

Sort of like a horror anthology of people just doing bad things and then getting tortured. It runs its course quickly, but a few twists in some of the “cases” add a hint of interest, although not enough to make this an approach to telling a story that I’d want to see again.

The funniest thing to me was that the “god of pain” is literally wearing the same exact mask I use on a mannequin that stands in my bushes for Halloween. It’s definitely a freaky mask—I purposely bought it to scar trick or treaters for life—so it should creep out most viewers of the movie, but for me it will always be a Halloween prop I bought online.

Who wore it better? Top image: movie. Bottom image: my house.

Top image: movie. Bottom image: my house. Who wore it better?

Anyway, here’s a breakdown of the baddies on trial:

— a dude who kidnaps and kills women, and his opening case is perhaps the creepiest of all, partially because we don’t actually yet know the premise of the movie

–a dude that dismembered and buried bodies

–a woman who cracked under the pressure of motherhood and killed her own kids

–a guy who killed his whole family

–a woman who killed people who did bad things (one of the twists)

–a guy wrongly accused of crimes and the guy who accused him (the second twist)

My absolute favorite part of this movie was when the god of pain kills a dude by breathing fire on him. Awesome.

WHAT THE WATERS LEFT BEHIND: SCARS (2022)

This is a sequel to What the Waters Left Behind, and it comes from the same director. However, the first film was in Spanish, and this one is in English…sort of. We have a rock band that speaks English and ends up in the same desert ruins of a town that the characters in the previously film did, and they encounter the same “backwoods” style, crazy family.

However, the family speaks Spanish, and there are no subtitles for them, at least none available on Tubi, where I watched this. I’m not sure if that was intentional to make English-only speaking viewers feel fear due to the characters’ inability to communicate with the crazies, but it made me more frustrated than frightened, because I felt like I missed like half the movie because I couldn’t understand it.

Even so, there’s not much to miss, I guess. Just like the first film, this is the same crazy psycho family formula, just with a new group of victims. And as with the first film, all the classic elements are included, but it’s all missing any edge, so it wasn’t very scary, suspenseful, or disturbing. For instance, when the family members first abduct the members of the band, they have animal skull masks on, but once they’re all tied up in the family’s lair, there are no masks, just hillbilly-looking crazies.

This sequel has a weird, homoerotic vibe to it, with lots of a flesh, sweaty man bods, tattoos, beards, and arm pits.

There’s also an implied male rape (one of those instances when the film holds back instead of actually showing us anything fucked up), landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page. Oddly, the prettiest male member of the band also calls one of the family members a faggot, which felt very out of place.

The kills and battles are quite generic, and even the surprise at the end isn’t all that surprising. This one simply doesn’t take the psycho family subgenre anywhere new.

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Been there, done that, but did these three make it worth doing it again?

Posted on May 12, 2025 by Daniel

I’m all for familiar frights, but none of these films hit the mark for me. Let’s get right into them.

CHEAT (2023)

I was at first totally engrossed in this throwback to girl ghost movies of the early 2000s.

After we see a man sacrifice a girl in the old days (no, I don’t mean the 1980s), we meet a young woman in the present who is going away to school in a small town. She soon begins seeing a girl in a white dress wherever she goes.

She learns from her new school friends about a town curse—a high rate of suicides, and anyone who has a cheating affair is doomed to death.

Cue the cheating and affairs.

There were some plot points that had me intrigued. For instance, adulterers find themselves bleeding from their private areas. Now that’s the kind of terrifying, supernatural revenge I’m talking about.

Unfortunately, that’s not at the heart of the horror, and this turns into another basic ghost girl in white horror movie that steals from The Ring but simply isn’t very scary. It’s the typical premise of the main cast of characters investigating the backstory of the ghost to learn how to vanquish her.

There’s a hella confusing chase scene in which one of the terrified characters just breaks off from her friends for no reason and ends up alone, running through a bunch of locations that make no sense—for instance, she runs into the ground level of a building, runs up approximately ten flights of stairs, gets to the top…and then runs out onto a ground level street. What the hell? Was this building supposed to be built into the side of a mountain?

The final battle with the ghost is so silly that I actually laughed, and the final scene basically has our main girl just doing what most other people would have done before all their friends began dying…she just leaves town…and leaves a trail of dead bodies behind. Awesome.

WHEN IT RINGS (2023)

This is a plot you’ve seen before, usually in bigger budget films, and it’s longer than it needs to be, with little in the way of chills and thrills.

A young man returns to his home with his dad when it’s time to sell, because his mother, who still lives there, has pretty much shut down ever since their daughter died at a young age in the family pool…or so it seems.

The son finds a toy phone that used to belong to his little sister and is very quickly plagued by nightmares and visions of the phone and his (still alive) mother terrorizing him.

The house definitely feels haunted, but this isn’t a very haunting experience. The phone keeps popping up and ringing, the son is struggling to remember his life in the house, and the dad and mom both seem to be harboring secrets.

As the son and an old female friend from the neighborhood reconnect and try to uncover the truth of what happened to his sister, things at last pick up in the final act—but not much. The plot starts to feel like a mashup of elements of The Grudge and The Sixth Sense, only without a ghost in sight.

MALICE (2024)

This film comes across as an homage to both the original Evil Dead and the remake and is loaded with the kind of trippy, surreal, freaky setups and sequences of nasty, low budget, direct-to-video era horror that gave genXers nightmares in the early 80s. It’s also the staple style of the creators, the Crum brothers. I’m a fan of their movies, but I have noticed their films have been getting more and more nonsensical, leaving me to just revel in the horrific elements the craft while putting up with the painful deficit in plot and cohesion. I was also disappointed that the cutie Crum brothers, who usually star in their films, stayed behind the camera this time.

The opening scene absolutely sets the tone and draws you in. An adult man in a rundown house is talking to his mother, who we never see…until he opens her bedroom door to see her on fire. Total horror chaos ensues, and for no logical reason, the sequence keeps cutting to clips from the classic Carnival of Souls. I can only assume it’s supposed to be playing on a television somewhere in the house, but we never actually see the TV, so the clips are jarring, distracting, and pointless.

Next, two girls come to the same house, apparently a family house, to meet contractors to fix it up. How they don’t know about the mother and son that were living there is never explained. The contractors show up, tour the house to see what work needs to be done, and find a body. Insanity immediately breaks out.

There’s a demonic female presence just beyond a dark doorway, and characters scatter, coming in and out of the cabin with no rhyme or reason. They also react in the oddest, most unfazed ways to horrific situations—like a demon woman riddled with razors blades giving one girl a gruesome lap dance (awesome) while a guy who could very well help her just sits and watches.

In true Evil Dead fashion, individuals begin getting possessed and going after others, and that horror was all I had to cling to as any other hint of a storyline went out the window. Unfortunately, just when I was willing to let go of all but the visual horror aspects, a talking goldfish puppet came on the scene and absolutely destroyed any credibility Malice had as a horror film. Sigh.

Highlight of the film for me? A fricking blender scene. Eek!

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A horror and humor foursome

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Daniel

An invisible dinosaur, a weredog, zombie bug spray, and Lovecraftian lunacy. Do these four flicks live up to the horror comedy label?

THE INVISIBLE RAPTOR (2023)

With a title like The Invisible Raptor, I kind of assumed the hubby and I were in store for a throwback to SyFy crap like Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus or Piranhaconda. Instead, this is a creature comedy camp fest loaded with gore, guts, and crass, tasteless humor. Its only flaw is that it’s 114 minutes long. Not even something this much fun can support a nearly 2-hour runtime.

We immediately meet the invisible raptor in its cage in a secret lab. You know those raptors. They are smart. And this one outsmarts Sean Astin and escapes.

Next we meet our main characters at a dinosaur park—a paleontologist, his ex-girlfriend, and an insecure security guard with a small dick.

Pretty soon, the invisible raptor is terrorizing the town, breaking into suburban homes and chomping the heads off children, dogs, cats, old ladies, and the disabled. It’s old school offensive fun, with the biggest piece of evidence being a huge pile of invisible raptor shit.

There are loads of references to classic sci-fi and horror flicks, like Predator, Gremlins, Jaws, and of course, Jurassic Park. Action scenes are bloody and funny. There are crazy massacres at a stoner party and a house party. There’s a cameo by Jeff Goldblum’s daughter from Jurassic Park 2. Mr. Heckles from Friends has a cameo and totally delivers a line that is a nod to his sitcom character.

And in the end, sex humor abounds as the heroes decide to use sexual desire to lure the invisible raptor into a trap.

This one is definitely a party movie for those who like flicks like Cocaine Bear.

THE YORKIE WEREWOLF (2024)

I’m not even going to spend much time on this one. You’d think with a title like The Yorkie Werewolf this would be a totally watchable, silly, hot mess. It runs only about 73 minutes long, but it felt like forever because it’s virtually all talk…and no humor.

The plot is about a teenage girl pitted against her mob boss dad after he kills her witch mom. This is only after the mom’s coven does a sacrificial ritual that results in the main girl being cursed as a Yorkie werewolf that looks exactly like an Ewok.

The main girl teams up with a young vampire dude to take on the mob boss dad, who is known for killing creatures of the night and was responsible for killing the vampire’s parents.

Lots of nonsensical goodness going on, right? Wrong. Like I said, it’s mostly all talk with no humor that works, there’s barely any fighting, and there’s barely any Ewok action. I mean…Yorkie werewolf action.

ZOMBIE REPELLANT (2025)

This 73-minute indie has several clever plot aspects—a straight couple heading to Vegas gets stuck in a small town where the locals happen to know that zombies occasionally appear. The problem is that it’s so occasional that the movie ends up being dialogue heavy with few zombies.

The dialogue is where the humor is forced to reside, but it is very dry, flat humor with no energy, and it remains at that level. It’s as if the slow drawl of the locals of the town is reflected in the humor, so you won’t find any laugh-out-loud moments here.

If only there had been more zombie action, this one really could have taken off. The couple arrives in the town, finds lodging in the home of a creepy woman, there’s a cowgirl who likes to kiss girls, a backstory about a mining disaster, a creepy fisherman portrait that is highlighted yet never develops into anything, and a simple solution for contending with the occasional undead—cans of zombie repellent spray! Awesome.

However, we only see zombies mostly in groups of…um…one at a time: 30 minutes in, 45 minutes in, and 57 minutes in. Yikes.

It’s a bummer, because the twist at the end of the film is such a goodie and perfect for a horror comedy.

HOW TO KILL MONSTERS (2023)

Stewart Sparke, the director of The Creature Below and Book of Monsters, is becoming the king of pseudo-Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and How to Kill Monsters lives up to the genre most of all.

It begins at the end, with a monster massacre at a cabin in the woods on Halloween night and only one girl surviving. As a sort of meta in-joke, the final credits begin rolling. In fact, the film has a load of fun with its meta awareness.

After the credits, we jump right back into the movie. It’s still Halloween night, landing this one on the holiday horror page, and our main girl is tossed in jail with a bunch of other girls in costumes. As she tries to explain that she and her friends accidentally summoned a monster with a sacrificial dagger, the dagger is being examined as evidence, and the monster is released again!

We are treated to nonstop practical effects as a monster reminiscent of Audrey II and some Critter-like minions terrorize the police and prisoners in the police station…which ends up getting lifted up into the air in another dimension like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz.

It’s action and humor-packed energy as the group works together to try to send this monster back to hell, and the film takes an awesome detour in the final act, refreshing the whole premise somewhat without cutting back on the thrills and fun.

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An occult drug experiment, a kid-killing mother and son duo, and undead Danny Trejo

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Daniel

This was a fairly fun triple feature I selected from my Tubi watchlist, with movies in a variety of subgenres.

THE RITUAL (2024)

The Ritual is like Flatliners with occult, body horror, and slasher aspects. There are some really good horror elements, but the pacing has issues, the film runs too long, and the plot gets too complex for its own good as it continues to unfold.

The super strong opener shows a shirtless dude in a creepy mask doing some human sacrificing. Delicious.

Then we meet our main girl, who is suffering from PTSD following the death of her father…yet she decides to take the same college class he taught in the same lecture hall in which he died.

She has a teacher who is enthralled by something her father was researching—a drug that is supposed to open users to a gateway to hell.

Somehow, he convinces her to join him and several students in a series of experiments with the drug, despite her being a recovering addict. She also has a hot husband who is a religious fanatic.

They start their secret meetings to try out the drugs. While tripping, the first human Guinea pig that takes the drug sees the main girl’s dead father, who looks like he’s wearing the fakest beard ever. Not sure if it is real, but it just looks so weird…which makes me wonder if mine looks fake, since I currently have like the same style beard.

Naturally, the main girl now wants to try the drug to see her dad once again.

Each student has nightmarish experiences with a creepy masked killer (best sequences in the film). Meanwhile, the main girl begins getting weird breakouts on her face.

Complicating matters, 70 minutes in, the main girl’s mommy issues are introduced, and her husband, who seemed to be just an out-of-touch religious fanatic who was unsupportive of her, steps up to basically become her hero.

A cheesy ghost girl with bad face paint enters the picture, which is a shame, because the creepy mask dude is a much more ominous threat. It all culminates in a confusing denouement complete with another sacrificial ritual scene. Definitely an inconsistent script that couldn’t really decide what it wanted to be.

THE CANDY STORE (2025)

It’s back to basics with this low budget flick, but there are some surprisingly nasty bits. What I really like about this indie is that it’s reminiscent of direct-to-DVD Black horror flicks of the early 2000s like Killjoy and Leprechaun in the Hood.

Kids have been disappearing in a Black suburban community for years, and it’s no secret to viewers who is responsible—a crazy woman and her big goon of a son.

However, the town apparently doesn’t realize how weird that little family is. In fact, it doesn’t even seem like the locals are aware this crazy lady has a son. Instead, her house is considered a candy store, where kids stop regularly to get treats.

They also get eviscerated and eaten in some nasty scenes. This movie pulls no punches when it comes to mutilating kids on screen. Yikes!

The plot is kind of weird. The crazy mother appears to actually be possessed by a demon. There’s a campy scene in which she asks a kid to come in and help her get something off a high shelf, and every time he turns away from her, she gets white demon eyes and begins approaching him menacingly. Pretty funny moment.

As kids keep getting abducted, gutted, and eaten, a detective is on the case, and there’s a confounding moment when the mother of one of the missing boys is finally like, “There’s this crazy candy store bitch I used to live next to as a kid, and the last time I saw my friend years ago, she was going to the candy store and was never seen again, and I know this crazy lady has a psychotic son nobody knows about, and I’m sure they have my son.” Why the hell did she wait this long to point out something that has been so obvious to her since she was a kid?

The final act is the highlight, when basically everyone still alive ends up sneaking into the house of the crazy mother and son. The film suddenly taps into a more atmospheric vibe than it managed to bring for most of its runtime. However, when the movie concluded, I still didn’t understand what was up with the mom and her demon eyes, which was the most compelling part of the movie for me.

SEVEN CEMETERIES (2024)

The director of the whacky and wild Feast movies gives us a film with Danny Trejo in the leading role instead of relegated to a mere horror cameo as he often is these days. The surprising thing here is that for someone responsible for a crass, nasty, gory, action-packed splatterest franchise, the director has toned his style down a lot in recent years.

A drug lord plans to take a ranch from a husband and wife, and part of that plan includes killing the husband immediately. However, it turns out the husband has set it up so Danny Trejo, who is just getting out of prison, will come looking for work at their ranch, so the wife can hire him as her protector.

Danny immediately gets shot up by the local authorities when he arrives at the ranch, but he is whisked away by a witch who has supernatural plans for him. She has him shed blood at cemetery plots to resurrect a dead mini-army to get revenge on the baddies.

The sequence of him gathering up his army is loaded with campy, dark humor, and the first battle with authorities is a blast. However, there are noticeable CGI special effects.

After being set up for over-the-top humor and gore, the film ends up becoming surprisingly low-key and loses focus, turning into what feels like more of a series of vignettes about each undead member having individual encounters with the enemies rather than a team effort to stop the baddies.

Eventually it all leads to another pretty big battle, which basically saves the final act by bringing it back up to the level of the earlier part of the film. Danny Trejo gets the final frame scene, and it’s so perfectly a Danny Trejo moment.

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A hunky killer, a haunted lesbian couple, and hillbilly horror

Posted on May 2, 2025 by Daniel

As a triple feature plucked from my Tubi watchlist, these three indie films actually worked well together in terms of look and feel. As for the level of horror they delivered, it’s a mixed bag.

DEATH’S SONATA (2024)

Landing this one on the stud stalking page, hunky hot director/co-writer Douglas Downing III also plays the hunky hot psycho killer Charles in this low budget slasher that tries to go deeper with its portrait of a serial killer and a commentary on mental illness. However, in the end, it really feels like an unfocused, direct-to-video indie that runs way too long at 103 minutes.

This is the basic premise. Psycho Charles has the grim reaper sitting on his shoulder–actually standing by his side–coaxing him to kill people.

So he does. Lots of people. Nameless, irrelevant people. He just keeps going around killing locals in a rural town while dramatic organ music plays. There’s some nasty gore, but occasionally you see his rubber axe bounce during kills. And although there’s a gritty vibe, there’s no suspense, tension, or scares, especially since the mask doesn’t hide any surprises, because Charles takes it off whenever he’s done killing. But dang does Charles have nice arms to go with that face.

Anyway, the therapist who worked with Charles wants to catch him and help him more since he did such a bang-up job the first time. So…the therapist asks his young male bipolar patient with a drug problem to help him track down Charles. Huh?

It is a bizarre plot idea that takes quite a while to unfold. Meanwhile, there’s a detective that suspects the therapist of being involved in the murders, but like all of the characters here, the detective isn’t well developed. However, Charles’s arms are.

There are a few odd twists in the final act that paint mentally ill people as seriously sick in the head, and then Charles gives us a heavy, philosophical monologue at the end.

Did I mention that Charles the killer is a really hot hunk?

BACK ROAD (2021)

No new ground is broken here, but if nasty, sleazy, gory, low budget backwoods family horror is your comfort fear, this one might just work for you.

It wastes no time in showing you what you’re in for…a dude gets his dick bit off. For reference, this is what it would look like if you followed through when someone told you to eat a dick.

Next, we meet a group of friends heading to a cabin in the woods on 4th of July weekend, which lands this one on the holiday horror page. Although they never get around to celebrating, if I’m not mistaken, one of the members of the hillbilly psycho family they encounter actually has an American flag hat on (that totally tracks these days).

Anyway, the group stops at a gas station, and the muscle goon of the bunch quickly shows himself to be a fucking douchebag (also tracks). He is abusive to a pregnant woman, uses racial and anti-gay slurs excessively, and pretty quickly allows his temper to get the group into an I Know What You Did Last Summer situation.

As soon as they cover up their mess and get to the cabin, the hillbillies come crawling out of the woods to terrorize them. It’s kind of horrible what the group of friends is put through, but they also aren’t painted in the best light, so it’s hard to feel bad for them.

The proceedings are familiar and predictable with no scares or suspense, but a fetus is torn out of a woman and eaten, there’s running and screaming through the woods, there’s a severed head and rape (literally at the same time), a dinner table scene, vomiting, a bear trap, heads blown off by shotguns…you know, the usual.

The dialogue audio volume is very uneven, the blood and gore use practical effects, and the look and tone are very grindhouse, so I do think fans of the subgenre will find something to like about this one.

COMING BACK FOR YOU (2022)

Seriously, this is a lesbian love story with only psychological horror elements, and our main lesbian couple makes for the worst representation for lesbian love ever.

It opens with the couple arguing. One is having a mental breakdown, wielding a knife, and accusing the other of cheating. She leaves the house, and I assume based on the sound effects during the opening credits that she gets into a car accident.

Flash forward two years, and the alleged cheater picks her accuser up from jail! What? I guess it was a really bad car accident.

The couple decides to stay at a summer home to escape it all. Their conversations and bickering are so whiny it makes me glad to be a gay man. Yeesh. Are female-female couples really like this?

We get lesbian strip tease and lesbian romance montages, and the couple gets themselves–would you believe this–into an I Know What You Did Last Summer situation!

Soon, the guilt is eating away at them and haunting them. There’s pill-popping, nightmares of a dead body drenched in red horror light and lurking around the house, and a nosy detective. But mostly, there’s more lesbian whining and bickering.

However, there are some interesting twists from a non-horror perspective because, well, this is mostly not a horror movie at all.

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