Two Halloween horrors for the 2023 season

Posted on August 28, 2023 by Daniel

I liked one better than the other, but they both got me itching for October and earn spots on the complete holiday horror page.

COBWEB (2023)

This Halloween season movie is like Lady in White, Parents, The Ring, and Barbarian all rolled into one.

Always awesome Lizzy Caplan (who portrayed Annie Wilkes in Castle Rock) and hunky Homelander from The Boys play an odd couple that seems to know more than they’re letting on when their young son starts hearing sounds in his bedroom wall.

Bullied in school, the son befriends his new teacher, a young woman who becomes concerned that he is experiencing some sort of abuse at home.

Loaded with holiday spirit and a few notable nods to the original Halloween (whether intended or not), this suspenseful fright fest takes us for a thrill ride thanks to intense performances and fantastic camerawork that establishes an eerie tone.

Best of all, the plot seems to go off in new directions several times (which does leave some unanswered questions in the end), leading up to a Halloween night house of horrors as the young boy finally finds out what is behind the walls. Eek!

This will be an insta-buy for me when it hits Blu-ray.

1962 HALLOWEEN MASSACRE (2023)

Apparently this movie is based on an urban legend that was born on the internet—a pretty good urban legend. The movie tries its best to draw that tale into a Halloween slasher, but it only really picks up steam in the final 20 minutes.

The original tale is about a photo that shows a bunch of kids gathered together for a Halloween party photo in 1962 while wearing their masks. It seems a dude in a black mask made it into the photo, but no one knew who he was. But he got their attention fast when he somehow locked the doors and windows from the outside and began slaughtering everyone in the house.

The first issue you’ll have to get past is that this is supposed to take place in the 1960s yet totally feels like actors from contemporary times. Not the biggest deal since the whole movie takes place in one location, which means not much effort is needed to mask the time period.

Next, a group of friends drives to a house in the middle of nowhere for a party, and everyone is wearing masks for the whole ride. This is the part that annoyed me the most, because no one would sit for a whole car ride with their mask on. It makes it feel like these kids are about to go all The Strangers on their party.

In order to create some intrigue early on, there are some mentions by characters of seeing someone in the woods, and we even get to see someone watching the house. Unfortunately, it’s not enticing enough to fill the void of horror action for the first hour. The movie is loaded with dialogue, and uninteresting dialogue at that. Considering this is a movie based on a fictional internet urban legend, they could easily have spaced out some kills instead of focusing predominantly on an instant massacre moment near the end, which is mostly what was done here.

I really did like the atmosphere created in the house though. Old school horror lighting and claustrophobic shots definitely set a tone.

In order to break up some of the monotony, there are a few random kills before the final act. Then the killer slips into the party, and we get those moments of suspense when no one knows who is under the mask, but they just go with it and welcome the “guest”.

The rapid fire succession of kills is satisfying, but then we are subjected to a bunch of conversation between FBI agents that show up at the house the next morning, drawing out the conclusion of the film.

I do give the movie credit for doing what it could with the limited source material. I didn’t actually hate it, and I’m glad I saw it because it exposed me to a creepy urban legend I’d never heard before.

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STREAM QUEEN: Black horror, sharks, and an exorcist

Posted on August 24, 2023 by Daniel

There was just one winner for me in my latest marathon of three movies.

BLIND WATERS (2023)

From the director of all the Sharknado movies comes a shark movie that wants to be taken seriously but is riddled with asinine moments like something out of Sharknado. Dude, just give us another Sharknado.

A straight couple is on vacation. A thief tries but fails to steal the woman’s purse.

The thief ends up on a boat with some other people. A shark comes along and just eats them all right off this big boat, yet the thief gets away on a lifeboat.

Meanwhile, the couple goes scuba diving and gets attacked by the shark, which torpedoes their big boat and capsizes it.

She hits her head and goes blind. He gets bit by the shark and is now useless…although his sweet little booty is still working overtime.

Their effort to get to a small, deserted island takes up a good chunk of the movie. Once there, they then have to try to get off the island…at which point the shark returns.

The shark is mostly CGI, the lead guy has a hot bod, but it feels like his dialogue has been dubbed, and the main girl ignoring his plea to just get on the fucking boat near the end is so infuriating I wanted her to die. And that’s just one of a series of dumb ass decisions she makes in like the last ten minutes of the movie.

THE POPE’S EXORCIST (2023)

The cool news about The Pope’s Exorcist? It uses a handful of 80s alternative songs for a soundtrack:

“She Sells Sanctuary” The Cult

“We Care A Lot” Faith No More

“Gone Daddy Gone” Violent Femmes

“(I’m) Stranded” The Saints

Also cool? The kid who plays the possessed boy looks like he’s having a blast doing it.

Everything else is mostly a clone of The Exorcist. There’s way too much religious crap (I know…the title should have tipped me off), and Russell Crowe plays a real life priest who used to perform exorcisms for the Vatican.

It’s hard to take any of this seriously, and by the final battle, I felt like I stepped into some sort of bombastic comic book adaptation about a superhero exorcist—while watching a movie based on an actual person.

The film begins with Crowe performing a faux exorcism and brutally sacrificing a pig in the process. WTF?

As he argues with the Vatican over his unorthodox ways, a woman inherits an abbey after the death of her husband. While it’s being restored and renovated, she moves in with her rebellious teen daughter and her young son.

The movie speeds up the whole first part of The Exorcist. The kid is quickly possessed, quickly gets an MRI and other testing, and the mother quickly calls Crowe.

After that, it’s like I said—the possessed kid is loads of fun if you’re just itching for the usual demonic possession zaniness, and the rest feels like an exorcism movie on autopilot—spider crawl, writing on kid’s belly, demon claiming to have encountered the priest before, etc. It has been 50 years since The Exorcist was released, and I still say just watch The Exorcist again instead.

THE BLACKENING (2022)

Considering conservatives had a fit over a show called Black-ish, if you see them commenting on or reviewing a film titled The Blackening anywhere online and screaming about it being woke, you know they are just looking to troll and play victim. Personally, I wish the film hadn’t been titled The Blackening because the tagline “we can’t all die first” is way better for a Black slasher–and appears to be about 4 times bigger than the actual title on the poster art.

It starts off strong, with a couple at a cabin in the woods waiting for their friends to arrive for a Juneteenth celebration. They find a game called “The Blackening”. It asks them pop culture questions and warns that if they answer wrong, they die. You can imagine how that turns out.

Next, the rest of the group shows up, and among them are Bernard’s boyfriend Hector of The Upshaws (playing gay here as well, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page), and Grace Byers of Empire.

The lights go out, they find the game, and they begin playing. The plot unfolds sort of like a comedic Saw movie with plenty of playful commentary on race, black-on-black discrimination, conservatives, a Black woman, queers, and many more current day issues.

We even get Diedrich Bader as the token white character (named Ranger White), and a little dig at the whole Friends/Living Single controversy. If you’re really white and take offense to hearing any satire on your white-centric world, this isn’t the movie for you.

We have a masked killer, and there’s even a moment when one guy borrows a line from Stu from Scream: “I’m feeling a little woozy here”. You have no idea how often I quote that line to my hubby.

The only disappointments I have with the film are that a) the weapon of choice is a crossbow, and b) the body count is low. However, I imagine the low body count is intentional, as it plays into the satire about Black people never lasting in a horror movie.

 

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Influencers beware!

Posted on August 22, 2023 by Daniel

It’s a triple feature of flicks about influencers falling into a rabbit hole of horrific situations, so let’s get right into it.

INFLUENCER (2022)

I was pleasantly surprised at all the twists and turns in this movie, which taps into the vibe of early 90s thrillers with a modern update focusing on an influencer and the girl who wants to be her.

I won’t even get into it much because I don’t want to spoil it, but basically, an influencer on a trip to Thailand alone befriends another girl who has ulterior motives.

There are plenty of unexpected developments, and we see that even the best laid plans of psychos can go wrong.

Just check it out it if you haven’t seen it. It definitely keeps you watching. Plus, the closing credits use the awesome song “Getup” by Nicholas Franchise.

CABIN GIRL (2023)

This movie annoyed me. For starters, it is loaded with fake scare setups and false music cues galore. For instance, ominous music plays as it look like a dude with an axe is creeping up behind our main girl. He swings—cut to her totally unaware—cut back to see that axe dude is somewhere else knocking a padlock off a door. Ugh.

Anyway, an influencer decides to get away from it all by renting a cabin in the woods, where she meets a really cute guy.

He tells her about a girl who jumped off a bridge in town and lived in the very cabin in which she is staying.

She becomes obsessed with the girl. She researches her story. She sees visions of her and has nightmares about her, giving us some early 00s ghost girl action.

She uses a Ouija board to speak with her and becomes convinced she was murdered.

It’s all very generic and typical…until our main girl becomes so crazed about what happened to this girl that she starts stalking men with an axe in the final act.

The twist is both somehow surprising and a total eye-roller.

#NO_FILTER (2022)

This is a supernatural slasher for the new millennium, with most of the action taking place over video chats as an influencer is terrorized by a presence in her house.

While on a vacation in Bali, the main teen girl (talk about privileged white girls) meets her influencer idol, who is known for his scare pranks. She helps him play out one of his pranks, which involves wearing a freaky mask.

And right there is where this film feels like it leaves out a major plot point. By the time the film ends, we have to assume the teen girl brought some sort of supernatural presence home with her. Did it come from the mask? We will never know. And if it wasn’t the fault of the mask, then what was the cause? Did it enter their phones as they filmed? There are some meta comments about The Ring between the two influencers in Bali, so maybe the whole point of that reference is to clue us in that a ghostly presence is using phone video instead of a VHS tape to terrorize a new generation. Again, we will never know…unless a sequel is made that explains it.

You just have to go with it and enjoy the thrill ride. The girl ends up alone in her home when her parents go out, making for some good suspense scenes as weird things begin happening and freaking her out. Problem is, since she is attempting to create a scare prank channel just like the guy she met, that effort begins backfiring on her.

She’s not sure if she’s part of a scare prank or if the craziness is really happening, and on top of that, when she calls a friend for help, the friend think she is pulling a prank for her channel and refuses to help her.

It’s fun, it has a bit of a throwback to early 00s teen horror, and there are several bloody kills and some black demon eye action.

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STREAM QUEEN: delving into a trio of Asian horror flicks

Posted on August 17, 2023 by Daniel

My latest triple feature weekend included three Asian horror flicks in a variety of subgenres, and I had fun with all three of them.

ZOM 100: BUCKET LIST OF THE DEAD (2023)

Adapted from an animated film, this Japanese zombie flick reminds me of the Asian zombie movie I Am a Hero, which means there’s a good time to be had. However, it does suffer from one major issue…it is 129 minutes long!

Neither quirky cute characters nor fast-running zombie action can keep up the momentum, so the center of the film gets bogged down by repetitive scenarios of migrating from one invaded space to another to escape zombies.

The story involves a young man who is all excited about getting his first office job…until he starts work. Discovering the daily grind truly is a grind, he is thrilled when a zombie outbreak interrupts his 9 to 5.

As he learns to live and survive in a world filled with zombies, he makes a bucket list of things he wants to do and also teams up with an old high school friend and a girl who kicks zombie ass, as well as a bunch of disposable survivors.

As they have various zombie encounters, what’s interesting is that no one figures out how to take down the zombies. There’s not one mention of shooting them in the head.

The pace finally picks up when the group decides the safest place to be is an aquarium. I did not see this coming, but the last half hour or so becomes Aquarium of the Dead, with all the survivors fending off a zombified great white shark that walks on land.

Talk about shift in tone. But it’s the best thing that could have happened to this movie, because it’s a blast.

NIGHT OF THE KILLER BEARS (2022)

This may be a Thai film, but the vibe is totally sleek American slasher. No Asian horror feel or tone at all, and the template is mostly paint-by-numbers, with a few wild surprises to keep things fresh:

–it begins with a tense opening kill that delivers some unexpected turns

–next, a group of estranged friends gathers together for a sort of reunion at a hotel

–we get a shower kill early on

–the killer wears a teddy bear head and uses a variety of sharp weapons

–as we learn more about the main cast, it becomes clear it’s the old “we did something bad and swore never to speak of it again” situation

–there are plenty of juicy, over-the-top CGI kills to satisfy gore hounds

–there’s more to the horror than just the killer

–there are plenty of chase scenes

–we get a final boy instead of a final girl

–the killer delivers a Scream-esque motivation monologue at the end

If you’ve been itching for a dose of simple slasher fun, this is the way to go.

SLEEPING BEAUTIES (2023)

This English language, Indonesian horror flick is possibly my favorite so far of all the Tubi originals I’ve seen. It’s a mashup of Asian ghost girl horror, backwoods family horror, and abduction horror.

After consulting a psychic who helps her communicate with her deceased husband, a financially desperate, recently widowed pregnant woman takes a job as a maid for a snooty white man and woman. The pair is odd, they make strange demands, and the woman is more compassionate towards her pregnant employee than the man.

Meanwhile, the maid starts getting haunted by several jerky-moving, long-haired, Asian maid ghost girls. Eek!

She decides she has to just quit and get the hell away from the house, but doing the smart thing in horror movies is never easy.

The final act gets crazy! It’s pure horror weirdness, violence, gore, and ghosts—not to mention some camp when the psychic shows up to save the day. This one is a winner for me.

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Queer thrills, kills, ghosts, and gills

Posted on August 16, 2023 by Daniel

It’s four uniquely different queer titles, including a forced sex change abduction film, a gay Black murder mystery show, a gay ghost comedy, and a queer manfish movie!

VICTIM (2010)

Of course Sleepaway Camp is a classic that delves in the forced sex change subgenre, but the 2000-teens had its fair share of movies with that concept, including The Assignment with Sigourney Weaver and Michelle Rodriguez, The Skin I Live In with Antonio Banderas, and this one.

What’s interesting about Victim in current times is that it taps into phobia and paranoia about transgenderism and involuntary gender reassignment controversies created by right-wing nuts. While it could be seen as offensive to some for feeding into those phobia, it can also be an eye-opener for others if they just took the time to give it some deeper thought. On the surface, it’s obviously terrifying for a cisgender person to imagine having their physical body altered so it doesn’t match what they feel inside. Yet right there lies the key to what many cisgender people don’t want to even try to comprehend—the turmoil that transgender people experience because they don’t feel that their outside matches their inside.

Sex change angle aside, this is a traditional “abducted and experimented on” plot. After striking out with a pretty blonde woman, a young man leaves a bar, where he is attacked and abducted.

When he wakes up in a cell he is immediately abused and tortured by a mad doctor and his mute goon assistant. This eventually leads to the doctor doing a series of operations on the lead to turn him into a woman. The whole goal for viewers is to get to the end of the film to find out why exactly the doctor is doing this.

In the meantime, we get the usual abduction plot points: the young man tries to escape, he tries to call for help, a detective shows up to snoop around the doctor’s mansion, etc.

But what’s most compelling is the process of breaking the young man so he forgets his past and starts to accept his new gender identity. While a forced sex change might not be a reason to call this a queer film, there is a queer element—the mute goon seems lustful for the young man from the very start, to the point that he makes the young man feel uncomfortable and objectified—the way cis straight men are known to make women feel.

And since this is a horror/thriller, you can expect that the mute goon is eventually going to act out on his desires in a violent way.

Victim is short and simple in its general structure, but there is definitely some notable exploration into variations in gender identity, sexuality, male/female roles, and what physically constitutes being male or female. If I have one gripe, it’s that the final step in completing the young man’s transformation includes makeup, a dress, and a wig!

They had this guy imprisoned for quite some time, during which his real hair would have grown long and could have been styled and colored to get the look the doctor wanted. The wig takes the sex change into drag queen territory and kind of negates the whole trans operation narrative.

TRACE (2021)

This 5-episode series runs about 2-1/2 hours in total, so it’s easy to binge in one sitting.

Focusing primarily on Black characters, it has plenty of sexy bodies and sexy scenes, several drag performances, and murder.

The problem is that this low budget effort doesn’t give us enough killer thrills. Even a couple of mysterious delivery moments turn out to be bogus promises.

I would have more than welcomed a dick in a box.

The very first death scene has a classic slasher feel with horror-esque lighting, but that’s all we get beyond a bloody body reveal in a later episode.

The show does a lot of character development using flashbacks that tend to make the flow of the narrative a bit confusing (for instance, murdered people suddenly appearing on screen all alive again).

Exploring queer Black identity, white queer privilege, and how the two collide, the idea is that the murderers link a variety of different closeted, married white men and the men of color who sleep with them.

I’m psyched that this is a Black, erotic thriller mystery show, but I just wish they had ramped up the murderer and kill aspects to bring more tension and suspense.

It wouldn’t have been hard to add some intense chase scenes to the mix as well. Not to mention, the whole story revolves around the idea that closeted white gay men are being murdered, but there simply aren’t enough murders.

MARRY MY DEAD BODY (2022)

This gay Taiwanese ghost comedy is the perfect blend of romantic, sexy, funny, and heartwarming, and it even has a great car chase scene and fight scene.

A homophobic cop suddenly finds himself “married to a male ghost” thanks to some grandmotherly magic. Grandma supported her grandson in fighting for marriage equality, and promised to be there for his wedding. But then he tragically got hit by a car and died.

So when grandma has an encounter with the homophobic cop, she curses him and says his life will be hell unless he agrees to marry her grandson’s ghost.

What transpires is a charming comedy in which the living cop and dead grandson not only learn to live with each other, but also work together to determine who was in the car that killed the grandson.

It’s a sort of gay, supernatural buddy movie that at times brings to mind the relationship between Oda Mae and Sam in Ghost.

The 130-minute runtime is a little excessive, so the film does slow down in the middle.

However, once the “couple” gets closer to solving the case and gets tangled up with an organized crime gang, the action picks up and offers up a whole lot of fun.

And as cute as the guys are, and as sexy as some nude scenes are, this film doesn’t rely on any actual sex scenes to entice a gay audience.

MANFISH (2022)

This can easily be looked upon as a male-on-male version of The Shape of Water, but it’s a little more complicated than that…and it also leaves us with a lot of questions by the end.

In an opening scene that takes place in 1991, a man is dragged from the shore into the ocean. Is this supposed to imply that he becomes the manfish years later? I’m not sure.

Next we meet Terry, a dude with a bitter wife and a miserable brother.

With little fanfare, Terry discovers the manfish on the beach. His wife decides they’re going to take it home and then sell it to make money.

The film is sort of slow at first, yet the plot moves quickly with little time taken to develop the plot points. Before you know it, Terry and the manfish are sleeping together!

We also learn in passing that dogs have gone missing in the neighborhood, and it’s implied that the manfish ate them. He’s also capable of tearing humans to pieces when he feels threatened, but that also gets handled fleetingly.

Running only 80 minutes long, the film is charming, with some light humor and some dark undertones, but I really feel like more time was needed to expand on the storyline.

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There’s nothing to fear but 13 episodes of Fear Itself

Posted on August 14, 2023 by Daniel

This short-lived, 2008 series, considered by many to be an unofficial 3rd season of Masters of Horror, comes from some of the same creators, with each episode directed by a different director of the genre. Slightly toned down because it aired on a commercial station rather than on premium cable, the series still delivers a good number of satisfying episodes and features plenty of familiar faces. Here’s the breakdown of each episode with mention of which are my faves.

Episode 1 – The Sacrifice
Director: Breck Eisner (The Crazies remake)


Four criminals hide out at an isolated location in the snow, where three sisters care for them. However, the men soon discover there’s a freaky creature hungry for their blood. It’s a strong episode to start the series.

Episode 2 – Spooked
Director: Brad Anderson (Vanishing On 7th Street)
Eric Roberts plays a P.I. who gets hired by a woman to stake out her cheating husband from an abandoned house across the street. Turns out something sinister is messing with him and forcing him to face his past. The varying plot points are a mess and totally disjointed, making for a really weak narrative.

Episode 3 – Family Man
Director: Ronny Yu (Freddy vs. Jason, Bride of Chucky)


This is a familiar plot. After a car accident, a man ends up swapping minds with a serial killer! He has to figure out a way to save his family from the killer before he is executed in the serial killer’s body.

Episode 4 – In Sickness and in Health
Director: John Landis (An American Werewolf In London)


Right before her wedding, a bride gets a note saying her groom is a serial killer. This is a fun one.

Episode 5 – Eater
Director: Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator)


With master of horror Gordon behind the wheel, it’s no surprise that this a horror rollercoaster ride right from the start. Along with two other cops, Elisabeth Moss is a rookie cop responsible for watching over a cannibal serial killer that is brought into the station. Pretty soon Moss becomes convinced he is inhabiting the bodies of her peers, leading to some great suspense.

Episode 6 – New Year’s Day
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman (numerous Saw movies)
This one is like the plot of Cloverfield with zombies. On New Year’s Day, scream queen Briana Evigan attempts to get across town to be with her boyfriend, played by the late Cory Monteith of Glee. This episode also has one of the best twists of the series.

Episode 7 – Community
Director: Mary Aharon (American Psycho)
A couple moves into a gated community that turns out to be a totally privileged dictatorship, where the neighbors mind everyone else’s private business, control how they live their lives, and punish people after exposing their dirty secrets. It’s a frighteningly timely story considering the rise in fascism in the U.S.

Episode 8 – Skin and Bones
Director: Larry Fessenden (Stake Land: Origins)


In the snowy plains, a missing man (played by horror legend Doug Jones) returns completely starving and thin. He is frighteningly possessed…and hungry. Doug Jones makes this one fantastically grisly and gruesome.

Episode 9 – Something With Bite
Director: Ernest R. Dickerson (Bones)
After being bit, a vet starts turning into a werewolf and discovers he’s not the only one out there. There’s some cool werewolf action and some light humor in this one.

Episode 10 – Chance
Director: John Dahl (Joy Ride)
After seeing his doppelgänger in an antique store mirror, a dude goes on a killing spree. The writing is an absolute mess on this episode—while it gives the illusion that the mirror is supernatural, I think this is just a story about a guy with a split-personality or schizophrenia.

Episode 11 – The Spirit Box
Director: Rob Schmidt (Wrong Turn)


Anna Kendrick and her friend use a spirit board on Halloween to contact a fellow student that died of suicide. The spirit board says she was murdered, so they try to solve the mystery of who killed her. What’s kind of trippy about this episode is that Kendrick’s friend is named Becca…the name of Kendrick’s character in the Pitch Perfect movies.

Episode 12 – Echoes
Director: Rupert Wainwright (The Fog remake)


A young man buys a new house and begins having visions of violent murders. He soon realizes he and his girlfriend had a history in the house in a past life—and it involves horror hottie Eric Balfour.

Episode 13 – The Circle
Director: Eduardo Rodriguez (Fright Night 2 remake)


On Halloween, a jilted woman puts a curse on her ex, played by Johnathon Schaech, who is spending the weekend at a cabin in the woods with his new woman and their friends. Soon, people are turning into blood thirsty demons. Naturally, Evil Dead will come to mind, so this is a good way to end the series on a high note.

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Killer alligators, a vengeful tick, and a horror anthology

Posted on August 8, 2023 by Daniel

It’s another random trio of movies I plucked from my streaming watchlists, so let’s get right to them.

THE FLOOD (2023)

Crawl meets Deep Blue Sea as a flood draws alligators into a prison facility in this cheesy fun creature feature.

Convicts are being transported to the facility by horror hottie Randy Wayne.

Among the criminals are Casper Van Dien, horror daddy Mike Ferguson, and Bear Williams, whose name says it all.

With just one main female character working in the facility, this is definitely a movie for the sausage fest scares page. Hell, the shot of the muscle bound convicts walking through the rain in their T-shirts tells you all you need to know.

As the convicts are brought in and the waters rise in the building, another group of baddies shows up to bust Casper out.

Sure the CGI alligators suffer the usual issue of never staying in the same size proportions from one moment to the next, but there are plenty of cool underwater shots, loads of victims getting torn apart, and enough unintentionally funny scenes to make this a popcorn movie treat if you’re itching for a new nature strikes back flick.

And best of all, the various groups with different motivations do not all come together peacefully to escape the situation, which means tensions rise as fast as the water, and there are a good number of fight scenes.

NOCEBO (2022)

This is a pretty unique take on the voodoo/black magic revenge genre. Think Drag Me To Hell with a sweatshop worker getting revenge with the help of a tick…

Let me explain. A fashion designer has a weird, delusional experience where a dirty dog comes into her boutique and shakes a bunch of ticks off its body—one of which penetrates the fashion designer’s neck. Ew.

As a result, she contracts something on par with Lyme disease. She doesn’t even remember having called for a caretaker when a Filipino woman shows up at her door. The creepy performance by actress Chai Fonacier in the role is what saves this film for me.

Using unorthodox practices, the caretaker starts healing the fashion designer, but the husband in particular begins to think she has darker ulterior motives.

If you like movies with mysterious voodoo practitioners ruining a family’s life, this one has that vibe. I found the whole tick aspect unique, not to mention quite odd. Especially when the wife sees a giant tick crawling over her body at night. And yet, as bizarre as that moment is, it’s my favorite part of the movie because it’s generally the most excitement the film has to offer.

DEAD BY MIDNIGHT: Y2KILL (2022)

This anthology is a curiosity, because there’s a 2018 title with the same name (although subtitled 11pm Central) that includes several of the same directors and actors, but is listed as a series with episodes—none of which is a story in this movie. I would love to see those tales as well, but I can’t find that show on the internet anywhere. Also confusing is that the title of this film makes it sound like a New Year’s movie, yet the description references Halloween (a holdover from the description of the other Dead By Midnight), and there’s only one or two references to Halloween in this film.

It begins with an internet reviewer covering the other Dead By Midnight! What a tease considering that one is nowhere to be found to watch as of this writing.

Hannah Fierman of V/H/S is the hostess introducing each story. There are also faux advertisements in between each tale, including Kane Hodder for a pill that prevents you from murdering people, a PSA about dangerous substances in Halloween candy, a satirical Republican vampire election campaign ad, a commercial for a cleaner that washes away all evidence of a crime, a commercial for an extreme version of Alexa, an ad for ordering a bag of dicks, and a clip of Satan calling into a conservative news program.

As for the stories, I didn’t find any of them incredibly compelling—the episodes in the episodic Dead by Midnight sound better to me. Here’s what you can expect from this movie:

1st story – a woman abducts a televangelist and makes sure he gives to other people like he claims he does. Clever concept.

2nd story – a lesbian cartoonist must save her wife when her creation becomes a real-life cartoon killer. As you would imagine, it’s campy and silly.

3rd story – a sloppy slacker is terrified by a monster made by his own mess. There’s bit of gross out bathroom “humor” here, but overall it’s a fun quickie.

4th story – a medieval video game is presented with real people as friends play a virtual reality game. This tale feels really out of place in a horror anthology.

5th story – two young guys step into a hellish gym class where they have to wrestle a demon.

This is another quirky, silly tale. In other words, there isn’t much in the way of scary horror here.

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Getting a holiday horror fix in August

Posted on August 7, 2023 by Daniel

It’s never too earlier for Halloween, so I’m covering two Halloween horrors, along with holidays that are less likely to get the horror focus: Easter and New Year’s Eve! It’s four new ones to add to the holiday horror page.

THE INVOKING 4: HALLOWEEN NIGHTS (2017)

I’ve seen this indie franchise floating around streaming services for a while, but it took a jack-o’-lantern incorporated into the art and the word Halloween in the title for me to cave and watch one. I was pleasantly surprised that it’s an anthology. I also didn’t expect it to be halfway decent, but it is. However, there’s one down side…the Halloween angle is all trick, no treat. The holiday is never mentioned, and there isn’t a pumpkin in sight. Title cards introduce each story, informing us where they take place on Halloween night. It’s clear this was not intended as a Halloween installment—they simply manufactured the idea to garner interest in the series. What a bummer.

I fell for it, so here are the five stories:

1st story – a young woman is dealing with a little sister who suffers from trauma after they got separated in the woods one day. The little sister claims she saw something in the woods and it followed her home. Eek! One of my favorite tales in the bunch. Of note is that the older sister is queer.

2nd story – a family gets a flat tire on a road at night. When a stranger climbs into the car and offers an ultimatum…one family member must agree to be a sacrifice for the devil to let the others live. The dark outcome of this tale may have had more of an impact with a larger budget.

3rd story – this is a sinister satanic cult tale complete with a pregnant woman giving birth as part of a ritual. The ending delivers on the horror.

4th story – not my thing at all, this is a tale of a grotesque, baby manufacturing facility, where women are kept in cages…until they break free and get revenge. Figures this disturbing story is the longest of the bunch.

5th story – intentionally cheeky and cheesy, this final tale is about two friends watching horror movies and then applying what they know to fight off an intruder. It’s quirky meta horror, but it’s too goofy for my tastes.

NATTY KNOCKS (2023)

Director Dwight H. Little calls upon his friends from Halloween 4 and Phantom of the Opera 1989 to appear in this witch themed, Halloween slasher. I love the overall tone—it has a more teen-centric vibe of 80s and 90s slashers, complete with kids getting into mischief while riding bicycles around town.

My big disappointment is how little it focuses on the holiday. Halloween is mentioned, there are some decorations, and one scene involves the kids going through a haunted attraction, but the film takes place on the days leading up to the holiday, not actually on October 31st.

There are other issues as well. Danielle Harris plays a single mom with a son and daughter. However, they have a “babysitter” who looks about the same age as the son, and who also looks like she could be Danielle Harris’s daughter.

It’s very confusing considering she’s barely referenced as a babysitter and seems to “babysit” around the clock, to the point that I thought she was living with the family.

Next is the fact that there are just too many plot elements. A witch is burned to death in the 1970s (huh?) and vows revenge. There’s now an urban legend about Natty Knocks coming back from the dead if you say her name nine times—or if you knock on a door nine times? Or if she knocks on your door nine times? The film seems to imply all three at different points. But Natty Knocks isn’t quite the threat. The problem is Bill Moseley as a dude who is motivated by horror movies to do bad things.

After the main kids try to Natty Knock on Moseley’s door as a prank, they suspect he’s a killer, so they start doing their own investigation.

Robert Englund shows up long enough to deliver a monologue about how Natty Knocks came to be.

The Natty Knocks vengeful witch ghost and Bill Moseley psycho killer aspects result in a messy narrative that does eventually tie together, so you just have to go with it and have fun.

There’s Moseley in a creepy mask, there’s a witch ghost, there’s a haunted attraction, and there’s Danielle Harris and Robert Englund. How could you not have fun?

FAMILY DINNER (2022)

It’s an Easter horror flick that combines M. Night’s The Visit with folk horror like Midsommar and The Wicker Man. Perfectly paced for this subgenre (aka: slow), the film is well-produced, well-acted, and delivers building tension. However, this easily could have been a shorter anthology story, and it’s also fairly predictable with few surprises.

An overweight girl comes to her aunt’s farm for the Easter holiday. The aunt is a professional nutritionist, and the main girl wants to ask her for help losing weight.

As is common in these types of films, the aunt runs hot and cold, leaving us wondering if she’s merely eccentric or if she has an evil side. Especially since she appears to be starving the main girl.

The main girl also has to contend with her male cousin, who taunts her and treats her poorly, as well as the aunt’s new man, who seems both more normal than the rest of the family yet also kind of creepy.

The film delves into the parallels between craving food and sexual desire, but gives up on that theme before the film is through.

Instead, the main girl begins to see signs that things aren’t what they seem at the farm. Unfortunately, we’re just dragged along through very little excitement until the pretty obvious shocker moment near the end. And since this is folk horror, there is the obligatory monument made of sticks…

In recognition of the holiday, there’s also a bunny…getting slaughtered and skinned. Happy Easter!

TIME’S UP (2022)

This little indie slasher has a lot of fringe benefits. We can always use more New Year’s Eve horror. There’s holiday spirit. There’s a good Father Time killer mask.

The gore is done with practical effects. There are plenty of familiar horror faces, including: Hannah Fierman of the very first V/H/S story; horror king Damian Maffei of Christmas With the Dead; Sleepaway Camp stars Jonathan Tiersten and Felissa Rose; and horror cutie Dave Sheridan.

 

Problem is the script is all over the place and causes some pretty good actors to under perform due to lack of substance. Most of all, it feels like it was written by someone who grew up watching Scream era slasher movies and decided they could make a movie just like that.

After a bullied student commits suicide, the faculty at a high school gathers together to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

Before long they are haunted by a disembodied voice a la Saw and pushed to admit the errors of their ways.

Despite some simple slasher death scenes, this film just tries too hard to be complex, with flashbacks, distracting branching plot points that aren’t fully developed, and an odd decision to almost immediately split the characters up, with some of them ending up at a library. Huh?

Just watch it for the kills, the killer, and the horror veterans.

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Did the Hammer House of Horror series nail it?

Posted on August 1, 2023 by Daniel

Shifting from period pieces and leaving Frankenstein and Dracula in the past, Hammer Films tried to start the 1980s with an anthology series. But with the Creepshow films and television shows like Tales from the Crypt and Tales from the Darkside on the horizon, did this short-lived show set the stage or nearly close the curtain on the resurgence of anthologies? I’d say horror anthology shows succeeded in the 80s despite this show. I found most of the episodes slow, boring, and predictable, yet there are some standouts. Let’s go through each episode briefly.

Episode 1

Shocking that the first scene of this TV series from 1980 has killer POV and heavy breathing as a naked woman gets dressed. Were the rules about nudity on TV different in England than the U.S. back then? Anyway, this episode stars Patricia Quinn of Rocky Horror as a witch from the 1600s who returns to her farmhouse to terrorize the couple that now lives there. Not particularly frightening, but fun thanks to Quinn’s presence.

Episode 2

A female reporter is sent to a weight loss center with cruel and abusive practices. Her investigation turns up something much more sinister. I found this episode to be rather bland after an initial intriguing setup.

Episode 3

A real estate agent wants to dump his wife for his secretary. He has fantasies about the wife being murdered in a house and the secretary, always with a completely different look, telling him to go find the house in waking life. As he gets stuck in the cyclical situation, he doesn’t know if any of it is real or if he’s trapped in a dream. For me, a wrecking ball chase scene is the highlight of the whole episode.

Episode 4

I noticed on IMDb that most of the reviews say this episode is the worst of the bunch and a totally forgettable rip-off of The Omen…the very reason I personally find it to be the only really good episode so far. A scientist and his wife lose their son, so they adopt a new one. This boy is quite evil and even has a dog companion…which the dad has to “take care of” after it does something vicious. Things only get worse when the couple’s dead child appears to come back from the dead…along with the dog.

Be warned—there is a lot of cruel rabbit slaughter in this episode. That alone makes it anything but forgettable to me. And not for nothing, but so does the twist.

Episode 5

Another juicy episode, this one is even bloodier than the previous one. A couple moves into a rundown house with their young daughter, and immediately blood starts flowing from pipes. There is a gruesome death of the family cat (this show hates animals), and there is a great, bloody kid’s birthday party scene in this macabre tale.

Episode 6

After inheriting a fetish doll, a man begins stabbing it every time he gets angry at someone, not realizing until too late that doing so actually kills them…and that the doll is set on getting him, too. Fun, familiar storyline and there are some violent kills, but why even do a fetish doll story if you’re not going to deliver fetish doll horror that exceeds the level of that in the classic anthology Trilogy of Terror?

Note that this episode features an interracial couple, which was a big deal on TV back in 1980…at least in the U.S.

Episode 7

Hammer alum Peter Cushing stars as the owner of a pet shop who keeps a secret zoo of exotic animals. He offers an ex-con a job feeding them, but then imprisons him to do experiments on him. This tale has a Nazi element to it, and that’s always terrifying. The story also has a classic horror anthology zinger ending.

However, this episode once again reminds us that this show hates animals. Ugh.

Episode 8

A couple’s car crashes, so they walk to a mansion where a woman welcomes them for the night. There are numerous children around the house that just happen to be werewolves, which threatens the couple’s future together, to say the least. Definitely one of my favorite episodes of the series.

Episode 9

This is a fun tale of a murderous seductress that steals the hearts of the men she beds. Most notable is that the detective on the case speaks with a suspect who is both an immigrant and a cross-dressing performer, is quite respectful of him, and even scolds his partner, who makes derogatory remarks about the performer.

Episode 10

Heavy occult situations permeate this episode about a glass mirror that devil worshippers want to get their hands on. Like most satanic cult themed shows, it’s no surprise this is a slow burn with little in the way of horror action. But the series does keep up its trend of animal cruelty with a rooster sacrifice.

Episode 11

After a former mental patient shoots a home invader, her man buries the body in the woods so she won’t get sent away again. But then the woman starts seeing the corpse of the man everywhere she looks. Is he back from the dead to get revenge, or is she really losing it? This is a classic and cliché horror anthology plot, so most horror veterans will see the ending coming from a mile away.

Episode 12

This take on the “body snatcher” theme is by far my favorite episode. It’s not only creepy, it’s fast-paced and suspenseful as well. A family picks up a hitchhiker in the rain. Cloaked in a raincoat, the hitcher immediately attacks the father and the car crashes. When the wife awakes in the hospital, she learns her husband is unresponsive…and she is asked to identify the attacker. To her horror, the man looks exactly like her husband! As a result, when she takes home her husband, who lost his voice in the accident, she begins to suspect that he is actually the hitcher. Eek! The tension just keeps building in this one.

Episode 13

A dude who works in a morgue begins to think his colleagues are out to get him and that the number 9 is being used as part of a cult to signify the devil. As he goes into a state of paranoia and becomes convinced the cult is trying to draw him in, this becomes very reminiscent in style to the original Rosemary’s Baby.

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PRIME TIME: aliens, exorcism, and a slasher

Posted on July 31, 2023 by Daniel

This trio of films from my Prime list for a movie marathon worked out for me, because there was satisfying horror to be had in all three flicks.

ALIEN INVASION (2023)

Running 73 minutes long, this little alien flick gets to the point and delivers some creature feature fun, with an alien that looks like Alien and moves with a very SyFy CGI style.

A group of friends sneaks into a neighbor’s house, finds a mysterious egg in a glass case, and opens it.

Before long, they’re being terrorized by a giant alien. It must have been cramped in that egg…

In a totally silly scene, the neighbor comes home, sees that the egg has hatched, and then starts speaking to the alien (which he doesn’t even see because it’s hiding), explaining to it in English how it came to be in his house, thereby giving us the backstory.

It becomes a cat and mouse game through the house as the alien kills friends left and right. Eventually the survivors run to a church, where one girl’s father is now a priest. Wait until you see him box with the alien.

There’s a cool scene with some of the girls trapped in a car by the alien right before the movie ends with a UFO arriving but no definitive conclusion. It just kind of cuts short.

THE POSSESSION EXPERIMENT (2016)

This is an earlier film from the director of Bad Candy. If you can’t get enough of possession films but would like something a little different, this fits the bill, even if it is a little hokey at times. Personally, I had a blast with it because it isn’t just another possessed girl tied to a bed movie.

However, it begins that way, with Bill Moseley as one of the priests, and the scene totally rocks. The exorcism is being documented on video, and the possessed girl wreaks havoc on those in attendance.

Years later, a cute college dude decides to do a project about the deaths at the exorcism for his world religions class. He’s considered a geek by his friends, who nag him to lighten up and score some pussy. He’s also (sort of) playfully called a fag by his hot, asshole roommate.

Anyway, he convinces a friend to sneak into the abandoned house where the exorcism occurred. They find a Ouija board, and he decides he wants to live stream himself welcoming the supposed demon into his body.

This is where the film gets a fresh twist. The possession attempt seems to be a failure at first, but then the action kicks in, and a possessed host goes rogue, even running through the streets jabbing people with…Freddy Krueger razor fingers! Awesome.

Of course it wouldn’t be a possession film without an exorcism climax, and this one definitely breaks the mold, with some fun surprises and plenty more deaths.

HOUSE OF INEQUITY (2023)

It’s not often that a film delivers so much on the horror aspects yet suffers from trying way too hard to offer character development and plot, but that is the case with House of Inequity. Excessive exposition through dialogue does nothing but make the premise of the movie get more and more murky.

The opening scene feels disjointed from the rest of the movie. A serial killer on the run sneaks into a house and commits murder for the purpose of an occult ritual apparently. Don’t expect to ever understand why he does so or how it causes what the main characters experience afterward.

We meet a teen being raised by his brother with the help of some hot friends. The teen is being bullied at school and is also fascinated by true crimes, so his sexy support system offers him a chance to sneak into the house where the serial killer murder took place.

Once inside, they are soon split up by supernatural forces and then get killed off one by one by some ghoulish and masked fiends who all look human to me.

But I’m not sure if they are or if the occult ritual at the beginning of the film had something to do with releasing otherworldly fiends into the house.

Either way, the kills are brutal and violent, and the fiends are nice and freaky. Problem is that in the final act the leader of this creepy clan has to explain that everyone’s deaths were based on their fears. Not a new concept, but those fears are never clearly expressed despite all the dialogue and insight into the characters.

Some fears are obvious (a guy thinks his dad hated him), but others are pretty out there (fearing someone is going to chisel out your teeth then stick a needle in your eye?). I guess it could be argued, however, that exploring really deep, dark, twisted fears (like being set on fire when you are paralyzed) is a cool idea, but not knowing that’s what we’re witnessing until after all the kills have happened kind of takes away from our opportunity to truly feel the terror the characters are.

Despite the flawed execution and a runtime that needed to be trimmed for pacing, this flick really does deliver some great horror sequences.

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