Halloween is behind us, and it’s back to basic horror while I’m busily finding Christmas horror to cover for 2022 on the side. So let’s get into this trio I checked out on HBO Max and Prime.
BARBARIAN (2022)
Barbarian is as frustrating as it is fun.
It’s a pretty simple plot complicated by time jumps. It starts off with edge-of-your-seat tension. A young woman comes to an Airbnb she rented only to find there’s a guy already staying there (Bill Skarsgard).
The main girl seems very cautious and smart at first…and then proceeds to make every absolutely stupid decision a character possibly can in a horror movie. We’re talking discovering sleazy secret rooms behind hidden passages and then continuing to travel even farther into them rather than get the fuck out of there, which eventually lands her in a hellish underground lair.
Meanwhile, Justin Long also ends up at the Airbnb, and before long he’s in a similar predicament.
The upside of the film is that it is fast-paced, super suspenseful, and uses first person perspective in the dungeon-like basement, which gives the illusion of found footage even though it isn’t.
On the other hand, we are delivered one red herring after another, most of which not only disguise the most simple and obvious of explanations for what is going on in that basement, but which also end up leaving the film with some glaring plot holes.
But you just have to let that go, because the final act is a great, wacky denouement. The horror ends up on the streets of a forgotten town—a moment that felt reminiscent of playing a Silent Hill game.
MUMMY DEAREST (2021)
When I see names like Lou Ferrigno, Michael Pare, and Tara Reid as top billing on a horror movie, I’m so there…and so assuming they’re going to be in the movie for like five minutes.
Mummy Dearest proved me right.
Michael Pare appears briefly as a chiropractor at the beginning. He gives a woman an adjustment and paralyzes her in the process.
The woman goes to live with her daughter and the daughter’s weird, Jesus looking boyfriend, who seems to be on drugs.
But it’s the mother’s medication which causes hallucinations of a mummy woman around the house. This is mostly a movie about the mother rolling her way around in a wheelchair being paranoid.
There are also some weird insights into the boyfriend’s past as the mother, a hands-on healer, does sessions with him. Why can’t she just heal herself while she’s at it?
Actually, her touching therapy brings out all the boyfriend’s dark experiences as a child, which is where Ferrigno and Reid get their cameos—and where the weird story of the mummy that barely appears in the movie comes into play.
To be honest, this isn’t even much of a horror movie.
UNHUMAN (2022)
Brianne Tju (the I Know What You Did Last Summer series, the Light as a Feather series, the Scream TV series, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, The Crooked Man) is becoming quite the scream queen as she headlines yet another horror flick.
A good chunk of Unhuman is a kick ass zombie flick. Brianne and her high school friends (and enemies) are going on a field trip, and we get The Breakfast Club vibes on the bus as clique lines are drawn, the in crowd and out crowd are clearly defined, and the man chaperoning the students brings some humor as an inappropriate ass hole.
Then the bus crashes. A radio report warns of a chemical attack, and a zombie comes knocking on the bus window, kicking off a nonstop chase scene as the kids escape the bus, end up in an abandoned building, and are endlessly pursued by relentless zombies. These fuckers will just bust through walls and shit. Eek!
The movie sucks you in with its heart-pounding pacing, and then…takes a turn that ensures that it isn’t just another zombie flick.
And there lies the problem. The unexpected plot elements are so out there, leave a bunch of plot holes, and desperately try to help the audience make sense of it all with excessive exposition through dialogue that basically explains the whole purpose of the script—including all the social commentary about bullying that is blatantly presented from the start and needs no explanation whatsoever.
It was quite a disappointment to be so enamored with the horror journey this movie was taking me on and then having what could have been a distinctly refreshing take on the zombie genre get crushed by the weight of its effort to be unique. Even so, I would highly recommend checking it out, because when it’s good, it’s really good.
As far as I understand, Daymare 1998 started as a fan remake of Resident Evil 2, but then the Resident Evil 2 remake happened so no one else could steal Capcom’s thunder. Rather than scrap the project, the developers transformed Daymare into a love letter to old skool survival horror games.
By the time I got around to playing it, there had already been a number of updates. I should have done my research before starting the game, because one of the updates lets you choose between classic style or “modern take”. I mistakenly assumed classic style was the way to go. However, it features a game mechanic that is so fucking bad and was never an aspect of any survival horror game I ever played, so I can see why they ended up offering another option. Unfortunately for me, you can’t switch modes in settings once you’ve already started a game, and I was too deep into it to start over by the time I learned that I’d made a really bad choice.
So what is the awful game mechanic? Loading your gun. Remember how in Resident Evil you pick up bullets then load your gun by either hitting a button or doing it in your inventory screen, which pauses the game action? Well in classic style Daymare, your bullets don’t go in your gun. They go in clips, which you then have to load in your gun. That’s right. Two steps to reload. Oh, but there’s more. If you accidentally quick reload your gun with another clip (fast button press) instead of slow reload (hold the button down), you drop the old clip then have to pick it back up otherwise you lose a clip you desperately need to have on hand. You need to constantly make sure you’ve combined the clips in your inventory with bullets during quiet times so they are full, that way you can just swap out clips instead of having to both refill and change them during the thick of a battle. Also, you can’t combine bullets with a clip that is not fully depleted—you have to empty it first.
Do realize that holding onto clips and bullets means taking up more space in your inventory. On top of that, you have to carry clips and bullets for multiple types of guns in your inventory. Also fricking annoying? Although all your inventory slots are on one screen, they are in two separate blocks, and you have to hit a button to jump from one block to the other rather than just scrolling up or down from one to the other. Ridiculous, especially considering the game keeps playing while you are in your inventory. You don’t ever want to have to go into your inventory while fighting monsters.
Many people say the game is too easy in modern take, but all modern take does is load your bullets directly into your gun without clips…just like classic survival horror video games. Not to mention, you eventually get a shotgun, and even in classic mode bullets go directly into the gun. Once I got that baby I barely ever used my other guns. Modern take also does something that would definitely make the game easier; it lets you skip over puzzles. I would never, but I have to say, many of the puzzles in this game are infuriating because there are absolutely no clues as to how to solve them, and you are forced to look them up online. Perfect example—there’s a puzzle on a computer in which you have to answer a series of questions using the Greek alphabet. There is no note or file giving you the conversion chart for the alphabet, so you have no choice but to go online and look it up!
The map is not assigned to a quick key, so you have to enter your inventory then tab over to it, and it’s also not even very useful. There is, however, a quick button to see your health status on screen, because there’s no permanent HUD on screen. There are also D-pad quick keys for guns and health.
You can mix various forms of health in your inventory, and there are other stimulants and mind enhancers that allow you to see through walls temporarily, but chances are you’ll never use them, so it would be nice if more health was scattered around, because it’s hard to come by. There are, however, rooms you can get into that have extra items in them. Doing so requires having hacking cables in your inventory. The unlocking technique is the basic “hit the moving marker at the right time as it passes through a gap in a line” challenge, but there are varying difficulties. If you fail you lose the cable.
You’ll find files that are long and boring to read, and making it worse is that the writing is extremely small and the typeset is awful. There’s a whole screen available to fill with text, yet it’s all squished in the center, and often the white text has a light visual behind it, making it even harder to read. Makes no sense. Even on a 65-inch television I couldn’t read that shit.
Another frustrating game flaw? When you approach an object you can pick up, an arrow symbol points to it. That symbol isn’t a prompt to pick it up. That symbol is a prompt saying “keep poking around right in this exact spot until the X prompt appears so you can then pick up the item”. WTF? Seriously? A 2-step pickup prompt process???
The game offers basic old school movement, with an over-the-shoulder POV and semi-tank controls. You can shoot and move, strafe, run, and quick turn, so it should be quite familiar to survival horror veterans. But the downfall is the combo button run feature on PS4. You hold the L1 button to “jog”, but to run faster, you have to press straight down on the left thumb stick (L3). Unfortunately, it rarely registers, which is a problem during many of the most insane battles. Later in the game it is crucial for a one-hit death chase scene and simply will not come through. If you’re going to get past this particular boss, it will be by pure luck (more on that below).
Also be warned that the auto save feature failed several times, which became obvious when the symbol showed up on screen and didn’t go away after a few seconds as it should. It would just remain a spinning symbol in the corner, and each time it did, when I quit the game and started again all my progress was lost and I was brought back to the previous checkpoint.
The game is split into five chapters in which you play as several different characters, each with a very different feel.
Chapter 1
This takes place in a typical facility with labs. You play as a total douche bag who needs to clear the place out. Even so, the first time I encountered a wounded guy who offered up some information, it was followed by a weapons tutorial I couldn’t exit…because in no way did the game make it clear that part of my tutorial included fricking shooting the guy!
Aside from solving puzzles, you encounter several different types of pretty easy zombies in this chapter. However, at the end of it there’s a timed segment in which you have to stay alive until a door opens. If you are low on supplies at that point as I was, you don’t have to fight the zombies that attack. Simply keep away from them until you can make your escape.
Chapter 2
This chapter is much more nerve-racking and creepy than the first, and you also play as two different characters. First you have an oxygen mask on and must find a way into a building while running through a town full of zombies. You can enter open houses along the way to rejuvenate your mask capacity, but there are some zombies inside. Eek!
The other character you play is on medication that keeps wearing off, causing him to have frightening hallucinations. Oh joy. However, this is when you get the shotgun and don’t have to reload clips.
You spend most of the chapter in a creepy hospital, and there’s a new feature added—secret rooms that are noted when your wrist watch beeps by certain walls. You simply have to click until you find the secret door in the wall. Sometimes a secret room has a terminal that lets you exchange items for other items, do an old skool manual save in slots on your hard drive (wahoo!), and store items.
Chapter 3
This is perhaps the longest and also the most boring chapter. In essence it most closely resembles classic survival horror games, but the lack of any variation is what makes it so bland. You do get to explore the city a bit as in Resident Evil 3, but you also spend a lot of time in drab buildings that offer little visual distinctions. As a result, any sense of dread or fear is lost.
The good news is you score a magnum you’ll desperately need for a boss battle that’s only made easier if you realize there are more magnum bullets tucked away in the forest arena in which you fight. You are up against two mutated creatures, and the only way to kill them is to drop them to their knees with heavy firepower and then shoot them repeatedly in specific spots on their backs. They are always in hot pursuit, often split up, and there’s plenty of debris lying around on the ground for you to get stuck on as you run in terror from them.
Chapter 4
You’re back playing the guy suffering from hallucinations as you try to make your way through the city. The hallucinations are infuriating because it appears you’re just wasting bullets if you shoot the apparitions, yet it also seems your health takes a hit if they make contact with you! Double standard much?
The boss is just a single version of the duo from chapter 3, but there are annoying zombies thrown into the mix to get in your way and really trip you up.
Chapter 5
Back to the guy with the boring chapters. At least the first boss is rather entertaining—once you realize that blowing him away isn’t the answer. Instead of using up all your ammo, you actually have to lure him onto a platform in the middle of the room, avoid his swipe at you, which temporarily stuns him, and then press a button on a console nearby to electrocute him. This procedure needs to be done twice.
You’re near the end of the game, and this is when that combo button run feature destroys your whole game. The idea is to run down a corridor, opening doors using a sequence of button pushes as an invincible boss is pursuing you. At first he moves slowly, but once you open the third door, he begins running for you. This is also when zombies start blocking your route. There are only three of them on the way to your destination, but if you don’t shoot them they will grab you and the boss will catch up with you.
Meanwhile, because the run feature keeps failing, he catches up to you anyway and tears you apart. If you can get lucky enough to make it to the end of this corridor, you have to press a button to call the elevator then kill time avoiding the boss until it comes. The only way to do this is to run back the way you came, and there is no way to pass the boss in the hall without getting grabbed. Sooooo…you have to try to blow up one of the explosive tanks along the sides of the corridor just as he is near it. This will stun him, and that is when you can run by him. And guess what! You have to do it again to pass him in the other direction to return to the elevator once it opens. But of course there’s an issue. The hallway is so dark and murky as you wait for him to show up that even with the brightness cranked in settings a) you literally can’t see him until he’s right upon you, and b) you can’t see the damn tanks you need to shoot to stun him. Sigh. I came very close to doing the whole damn thing perfectly once, and just as I was nearing the open elevator, the run button completely failed. I finally got into the elevator, turned to hit the button to close the door, and found myself face to face with the monster…right before he ripped my face off, taking my whole head with it.
Well, fuck you game, because there is a glitch I found online that eventually worked in my favor thanks to my persistence (aka: doing it over and over and over until the glitch worked). Occasionally as the boss pursues you, somewhere way back in the hall he gets stuck on something. You won’t see it happen, but you will bask in the glory as you press the elevator button and then just stand looking down the dark corridor and realize the boss never materializes from around the corner. For good measure I remained absolutely still for fear my movement would unglitch him. After what felt like forever, the door opened, I ran right to it, and I left that horrible section behind me forever.
This brings us right to the final boss. The same boss. Now you have to fight him in a parking lot. He chases you relentlessly, he spits acid at you, zombies come out of nowhere to chase you as well, and…there’s another glitch. A nice pile of debris sits on one side of the lot, and if you circle it while the boss is following you, he will get stuck on it. You just stand on the other side of it and blast away until he’s dead. And if you need bullets, there’s literally a box with an unlimited supply right beside you. Kind of makes up for all the annoying aspects of the game you had to get through to arrive at this moment.
It was a smorgasbord of streaming services and subgenres with this trio of films I was looking forward to seeing, so let’s get right into them.
GRIMCUTTY (2022)
Throwback time! The retro early 2000s tween horror wave is growing, and Grimcutty goes in hard, with kids being terrorized by a supernatural entity after passing around a meme faster than you can get a friend to watch a video of a girl climbing from a well.
Grimcutty is a damn memorable name for this internet monster, and his look is unforgettable, too…because it’s as funny as it is freaky. His face is great, but his body when he’s running around chasing victims, well…my hubby, who was watching the movie with me, described it best: “He looks like Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Grimcutty has a big freaky head that kind of reminds me of Danny DeVito’s version of The Penguin, but his gawky body when he runs is this stick figure puppet looking thing reminiscent of the body of Jack Skellington. It’s just odd, which in a way works to make it weird and eerie.
The plot is typical of these films. One girl being terrorized by the meme is determined to break the chain, so she runs all over town trying to figure out the source of the horror and how she can stop it. I got a thrill out of the scenes in which he chases her through houses, especially since it’s one of those situations in which she can be at a party full of people who don’t see him, yet he’s still there and coming for her.
It might be just a cheesy, cheap joyride popcorn flick, but Grimcutty does manage to send us a little message about how easily influenced kids are by social media…and how addicted they are to their devices.
V/H/S/99 (2022)
When this retro 90s installment opened with some faux infomercials and an annoying stop motion toy soldier segment as a wraparound, I had a feeling this wasn’t exactly going to live up to previous entries in the series.
With the movie having a total running time nearing 110 minutes long, it’s disappointing to discover that in almost every case the setups take up the bulk of each tale, and all the exciting stuff is rushed in the last few minutes.
Here’s the breakdown of the stories:
1st story – a punk band sneaks into a building where another band was believed to have met a tragic end, and pretty soon that band makes a ghoulish appearance. If nothing else, at least the dead band rocks the rot.
2nd story – this one got under my skin because it involves sorority sisters burying their latest pledge alive in a coffin. Ugh. This shit gives me claustrophobia…especially when spiders, water, and fricking ghouls find their way into the coffin with her.
3rd story – I really hate sadistic game show stories, especially when they’re done in that flashy cartoonish style, and that’s how this one starts. It only gets worse from there when a family that was on the show decides to get revenge on the show’s host by subjecting him to some torture porn. And then it goes totally off the rails and I have no idea what the hell was going on…but it’s definitely monstrous.
4th story – this is the ultimate example of these stories being all build-up with brief payoff. It’s a whole lot of footage of teen boys spying on pretty girls and then a super quick conclusion of a hot girl next store showing up to really make them hard.
5th story – the only story that’s like one big money shot, this final tale also has a humorous edge to it as two guys attending a Y2K coven ritual get sucked into a hellish dimension and encounter numerous demonic creatures. Not much of a story but definitely the horror eye candy segment of the anthology.
Interestingly, as I was watching it I was having Deadstream flashbacks, particularly due to a nagging scream that was running through the action…little did I know until a friend called it to my attention that this was directed by the Deadstream guy and he’s in it. He really needs to start distancing himself from his own scream or he’s going to become a literal one note horror creator and character.
TORN HEARTS (2022)
Torn Hearts is a throwback to held against their will thrillers of the late 80s/early 90s like Dead of Winter, Misery, and Boxing Helena.
Naturally Katey Sagal is the highlight as a reclusive country singer who dropped out of the limelight after the death of her sister/partner.
Another duo of young women is trying to break into the business and one of them is Katey’s biggest fan. So they pay her a visit at her estate to convince her to come out of retirement and do a song with them.
It’s quite clear right away that Katey has issues, but the fangirl doesn’t see it…even as Katey starts pitting the two girls against each other using the tensions and jealousies that exist between them.
What makes this one frustrating is that the fangirl refuses to believe her idol can do any wrong. The legendary bitch is clearly a psycho and the other girl wants to get the fuck out of there, but no matter how extreme shit gets, the fangirl is like, “I wanna stay!” It’s one big commentary on the obsessions young people have with idolizing celebrity and wanting to be famous themselves.
If you’re familiar with these types of thrillers, there’s not much new here, so just watch it for the suspense and Katey’s performance…and an appearance by Josh from The Blair Witch Project if you’ve been missing him in horror.
It’s thrilling to have a series focusing on queer horror produced for a major horror streaming service, and I even discovered a few movies and books that I simply had to add to my collection after watching Queer for Fear on Shudder. Yet in an odd way, the 4-episode series feels somewhat hesitant to fully bring horror out of the closet while arguing that horror has always been queer.
Just a very brief background about this project from what little I know. The creative team behind it changed hands after interview videos had already been gathered from dozens of queer horror creators, including myself. All of our footage was scrapped and the documentary went in a different direction. There’s a whole community of queer horror influencers that know each other and have helped bring together a large queer horror fan base through social media and various in-person events, so it’s kind of sad that instead of using interviews with all of these people who are in the trenches every day exploring, discussing, discovering, and creating queer horror, the production team behind this series opted to drag out many of the same old generic queer faces like Lea DeLaria, Bruce Vilanch, and Michael Feinstein (really?), as well as queer “scholars” most people will not recognize but who throw around all the right collegiate vocabulary and just repeat the textbook queer horror theory arguments that have been made a million times before.
Add to that directors with no background in horror (and in some cases, no background in directing at all), and it at times feels that this is more of a pandering project made by Shudder to cash in on a movement that’s actually happening despite no input from the people involved in putting this project together.
Even so, hang in there, because it gets better after the first episode, with more notable horror names chiming in later on, as I’ll outline in my breakdown of what you can expect from each episode.
Episode 1
Episode 1 covers the coding of queerness in classic gay fiction by authors such as Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde, and explores the monster as the symbol for the queer. Naturally it delves into the real or imagined queer identity of these authors in order to fit the narrative of queers being the founders of horrors. Sigh. It’s okay to just be honest and identify that there were actual queer contributors to the horror genre alongside the likes of Poe and Lovecraft just as there are queer contributors to society in general instead of making a claim that queers created horror.
Cassandra Peterson proves to be the most famous horror face in the first episode, and she gets much less screen time than anyone else. There is also a drag queen injected into the mix for some camp value, but because everyone else is so damn sterile and stiff, her shtick feels jarring and out of place.
Episode 2
If episode 1 and episode 2 had been streamlined and edited down into one episode, it would have been a really strong start for the series. Episode 2 is a much better installment, but only covers two directors in an hour’s time. First there’s a look at how director James Whale (The Invisible Man, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Old Dark House) embeds queer camp into his films and how queer viewer’s identify and sympathize with his ostracized monsters.
Then the focus turns to Alfred Hitchcock having worked with lots of queer talent and brazenly yet subtly presented queer characters in his films. He is also considered for portraying queer men as loathing women, which naturally pivots the conversation to his ultimate queer identity issue film—Psycho. Most interesting is Anthony Perkins’ son discussing how that role as Norman Bates affected his father’s career and life, how that extended into his resurgence as Norman Bates in the 80s sequels, and his eventual death of AIDS.
Episode 2 is notable for going a little more high profile horror with some of its speakers, including Don Mancini (creator of Child’s Play) and Heather Matarazzo (Scream 3, Hostel 2).
Episode 3
This episode is one of my faves. It’s all about transformation horror and how being terrified of something inside of us we can’t control, usually sexuality we can’t suppress, simply has to be read as queer horror. Thing is, this could be applied to the sexual awakening in everyone, regardless of gender identity or orientation. When our hormones begin to rage, we change, we transform, we perhaps no longer recognize ourselves, and we are even made by society to feel shame about our desires, no matter where we land on the sexuality scale.
Even so, this episode beautifully explores the parallels between queer identity and monster transformation. There’s a segment on the Cat People franchise being totally lesbian (I couldn’t believe no one made a comment about cats being pussies). The string of “I Was a Teenage…” films is looked at as grooming films in which the older scientists convert kids into monsters. Invasion of the Body Snatchers films are wonderfully dissected as fear of conformity. And this episode notably covers plenty of the great 80s transformation creature features. Awesome.
Episode 4
The final episode focuses on women owning their sexuality becoming the monster simply because femininity as power is frightening to the mainstream.
It begins with a discussion of the real Elizabeth Bathory and movies and novels based on her…and the possibility that she desired women and therefore consumed them. One interviewee even finally uses the cheap cat as pussy joke. Yay!
The episode explores lesbian desires in films like Rebecca and The Haunting, quickly covers all the softcore lesbian vampire flicks of the 1970s that were meant for the male gaze, and then moves into the lesbianism and bisexuality of 80s horror females in films like The Hunger, The Lair of the White Worm, and Vamp.
What’s refreshing here is that there are more interviews with women of color, including Rachel True (The Craft), Rutina Wesley (True Blood), and Tawny Cypress (Yellowjackets).
While I really like the approach to films from the 90s and beyond focusing on queer female characters wanting to take over the bodies and lives of straight characters in this final episode, it does exactly what I feared the series would do…strays from queer fear. In an effort to fit its narrative while relying on well-known film titles, it walks the line by dipping into suspense thrillers and then strays even farther away from the horror genre, making the second half of the final episode come across more as a show about the portrayal of lesbians on film at the turn of the millennium rather than a queer horror documentary.
Fortunately for me, that makes for a perfect segue into my final thoughts. While this was a “history” of queer horror, what the world could use is a “we’re here and we’re queer for fear now” series that celebrates the genuine representation of queers in horror in the past 50 years, both in mainstream and indie horror, and not in coded form. Just browsing the homo horror movies page and does the gay guy die? page on my site, both of which focus solely on films with gay male content, it’s staggering to me how many films with blatant gay content went unmentioned in this series. How about a series focusing on how queer characters are represented in more contemporary horror films, whether as the monsters, the victims, or the heroes? The movies are out there—this series just wasn’t ready to tackle the task of amplifying the prominent queer voices in horror now.
And since all the questions I answered for the original vision for this documentary were left on the cutting room floor, I decided to upload my video responses to YouTube just for fun and so everyone might get a sense of the other direction this documentary could have gone—although there’s also the possibility my answers would have been rejected for clashing with the angle that documentary was going for as well. Heh heh. I would encourage other queer horror contributors who participated in that original plan to do the same. If you do, shoot me a link to your video or channel on YouTube and I’ll share them on my Boys, Bears & Scares social media. Here are my clips, broken into two parts.
Sure the big deal this year was Hocus Pocus 2, but what other family and family-unfriendly treats did the season have in store? I’m covering everything I’ve seen so far this October, with a few more are yet to be released, so I’ll add them to this list as they hit on the way to Halloween. And don’t forget to check out my complete list of Halloween horror movies on the holiday horror page.
CURSE OF CROM: THE LEGEND OF HALLOWEEN (2022)
If you just want to revel in the holiday spirit while watching a group of kids being terrorized by a demonic creature created with practical effects, this charmer is the movie for you. I really hope it gets a physical disc release so I can add it to my Halloween movie collection.
The opening street shots make it clear that the filmmakers wanted autumnal authenticity and waited until the actual season to film these crucial setup moments.
Our main girl works food delivery and has a very strange old man customer. Little does she know that his “family” issues are going to become her problem.
When a freaky creature begins appearing outside the windows of her and her friends at night (shrouded by plenty of eerie Halloween color lighting and fog machines), they must uncover the truth behind a curse placed on the old man’s family that is now going to terrorize their whole town unless they can put a stop to it.
And it involves doing a ritual on Halloween night to send the demon back to where it came from…
An instant Halloween fave for me. Doesn’t hurt that this cutie looks like a younger version of The Rock.
THEY SEE YOU (2022)
This one comes from the director of the gritty Halloween slasher The Wicked One. I almost did a blind buy of They See You on DVD, but I’m glad I rented it instead, because it’s really not a Halloween winner for me.
It attempts to capture the spirit of 80s horror flicks and Halloween horror flicks, but it’s incredibly dull for a majority of its running time. A major problem is that the main characters are simply not charismatic–they seem like a bunch of uninterested, bored kids living in a small town (which is what they are). As a result, every scene, every word of dialogue, and most interactions and reactions are just flat.
Three brothers are left alone on Halloween, and in a classic 80s moment, hop on their bicycles to the sounds of a synthesized score. They run into their bullies, and then decide to steal a mysterious magic board from a shop owned by two monster hunters. These two monster hunters are the highlight of the film and bring all the personality, but sadly they’re underutilized.
As you’d imagine, the brothers and their friends use the board. This unleashes some ghouls from another dimension…who are just guys in masks. Neon Maniacs this isn’t.
That brings us up to this problematic timeline, with little going on in between:
40 minutes in the ghouls show up at their house
57 minutes in the ghouls remove their masks and aren’t all that ghoulish underneath, so they’re even less frightening once they put the masks back on for the rest of the movie
77 minutes in there’s a gory kill–the first gory kill
With only about twenty minutes left, the only real highlight of this film proves to be a brief but awesome massacre when the ghouls crash a Halloween party. Bummer.
CURSED FRIENDS (2022)
If there’s one thing this movie does right, it’s tap into the nostalgia for crass comedies of the early 2000s. References to the era abound, fart and male genitalia jokes offer hit and miss funny moments, and the soundtrack offers up songs like “I Want You Back” by *NSYNC and “I Wanna Be Bad” by Willa Ford.
The film is also ripe with problems. The first is that so much of the humor doesn’t land. There is some funny stuff here, but not enough to keep up the pace and energy. As a result, the cast tries to overcompensate by being even more colorful and charismatic with their performances, which just comes across as loud and obnoxious at times because the material they’re delivering doesn’t back it up.
But the bigger issue is the inability of the film to stick with a plot. Our main girl comes home to try to land a job and reconnect with her friends. In a flashback we see that 20 years ago they scored a weird book that predicts the future from none other than Kathy Griffin as a witchy woman whose doorbell they rang while trick or treating .
In the present day, they find the book and suddenly things start going wrong for each of them. They begin to realize they are cursed and have to figure out a way to break the curse.
Sounds pretty straightforward, but the movie is all over the place. Scenes most often feel like a string of skits rather than a cohesive storyline with a trajectory. The cast moves from one location to another merely to give us nods to a variety of horror subgenres (slasher, possession, cult, etc.) with no real relevance.
It’s quite tedious, and not even the Halloween theme, some campy moments with special guest star Joey Fatone as himself (who reminds us every time he’s in a comedy that he should be cast in more comedies), and a few horror comedy elements can bring it together.
This is a Comedy Central original, and it most definitely feels like a messy TV movie. The diverse cast will most likely annoy the woke-whiners (Black girl, gay guy, etc.), but the fact is this type of casting has been a thing for at least two decades and has only become an issue since conservatives made woke a dirty word. If anything, the woke-whiners should be cheering on the fact that the minorities are presented with the traditional, tired stereotypes conservatives can appreciate.
I just find it tragic that the film sets up this whole scenario where the gay dude ends up in an occult ritual surrounded by naked men–and then seems to demonstrate that the scene was not written by a gay guy, because the raunchy comedy places it could have gone if it had been. However, it still lands this film on the does the gay guy die? page.
SPIRIT HALLOWEEN: THE MOVIE (2022)
Going into Spirit Halloween: The Movie, you need to realize that this isn’t an adult horror movie. This is a Disney/RL Stine style Halloween spook flick with a family friendly vibe, and as such it definitely succeeds. It could easily become an annual viewing selection along with the likes of When Good Ghouls Go Bad, Hocus Pocus, And Ernest Scared Stupid.
And of course, it’s also a treat for Spirit Store fandom. Surprisingly, it’s not much of an advertisement for the store’s products, mostly because the store has become heavily focused on movie licensed products in the past few years (It, Halloween, Hocus Pocus, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Trick ‘r Treat, etc.). It would be promoting everything but its own brand if it fully stocked the store in the movie with its current inventory.
The premise is basic and perfect for this kind of flick. Christopher Lloyd was a greedy developer who intended to kick a woman off her land, so she worked some magic on him.
The film then does just what these throwbacks to the vibe of 80s kids movies do–shows a trio of boys riding their bicycles through a town drenched in fall foliage. Awesome. The boys are on the verge of relinquishing their grip on childhood, and trick or treating is for kids, so they decide to sneak into a Spirit Halloween store that pops up in a creepy lot and spend the night on October 31st.
The fun begins when they unleash Christopher Lloyd’s spirit and he begins to terrorize them by possessing one store display monster after another.
It’s definitely a blast watching Lloyd voice a bunch of animatronic ghouls, and the kids are all capable of carrying the film. Not to mention, the film delivers just the right amount of Halloween scares and suspense the whole family can appreciate.
Adding to the fun is Marla Gibbs as a creepy grandmother, and Rachel Leigh Cook, who doesn’t look like she’s all that much older than 20 years ago yet is playing the mother of a teenager. Weird.
THE CURSE OF BRIDGE HOLLOW (2022)
It’s like Netflix heard Spirit Halloween was going to make a movie in which all the figures in their store come to life and decided they would do one better by making a movie in which all the figures on people’s lawns came to life for Halloween.
The Curse of Bridge Hollow is the absolute best Halloween movie of 2022 for me. It does Spirit Halloween one better. It has all the holiday magic Hocus Pocus 2 lacks. It stars Marlon Wayans, who tones down his A Haunted House style of comedy just enough to not steal the show from everyone else, particularly the girl playing his daughter, who totally kicks monster butt.
Halloween spirit abounds as the family moves into a new house in a small town where everyone loves Halloween. The daughter soon learns of an urban legend that haunts the town…and accidentally unleashes it, which causes the decor on neighbors’ lawns to start coming to life.
Loads of humor, chase scenes, Halloween spirit, and monster battles keep the pace racing as father and daughter try to track down a spell that will put the curse they’ve unleashed to rest.
The variety of ghouls and creeps is fantastic, the soundtrack includes 80s tracks like “Somebody’s Watching Me”, “Freaks Come Out at Night”, and “Highway to Hell”, there are plenty of familiar comedy faces in supporting roles, Kelly Rowland gets a chase scene, there’s an awesome haunted maze chase scene, and there’s a perfect reminder that the zombie cry of “Brains!” never gets old.
I want this movie released on Blu-ray immediately. And I was also reminded that Marlon Wayans has become such a DILF I need to pull out my A Haunted House Blu-rays and watch his sweet ass bang Annabelle again.
TERROR TRAIN (2022)
Any remake these days has a conundrum. If it strays too far from the original plot, fans revolt. If it is a basic scene-for-scene remake, people say, “Why did they even bother?”
Terror Train essentially goes for a rubber stamp remake that just mixes things up a bit during the denouement so fans of the original won’t guess the killer.
The major changes? This is a Halloween party on a train instead of a New Year’s Eve party, landing this film in a different section of my holiday horror page. There are more people of color as compared to the mostly white cast of the original, and there’s a fleeting gay kiss just to piss off the anti-woke crowd…which also earns this film a spot on the does the gay guy die? page.
And instead of a Groucho Marx mask, which would mean nothing to a young modern audience, the killer opts for a menacing clown costume. Eh. They really couldn’t come up with something a bit more original?
Speaking of costumes, most of the standout costumes from the original film are represented in the remake.
Every major memorable scene from the original is recreated. And even the car in which Jamie Lee Curtis battles with the killer at the end of the original is replicated for the remake.
The suspense scenes and kills are pretty good, but if you’ve seen the original film they don’t quite have a major impact because you’ve get that “been there, done that” feeling. It’s the final chase and battle—the only time the film somewhat changes things up—that stood out to me, in large part because the killer gave a campy good psycho performance.
I even discovered a new now wave song for my Future Flashbacks show: “Neon Affair” by Splize.
10/31 PART III (2022)
I was a big fan of the first 10/31 anthology, and Part 2 had its moments, but there’s a noticeable downgrading in quality with each new installment. This third entry has little in the way of unique or intriguing tales, there are no quality scares or suspense, and there’s not much in the way of atmosphere or even Halloween fun.
The movie runs 85 minutes long, and the first 8 minutes are comprised of some fun faux horror movie trailers. Then the horror hostess form the previous two films introduces four new tails.
1st story – a guy setting up a Halloween haunted attraction in his house buys a mummy figure from a thrift shop, and it comes to life and goes on a murderous rampage.
2nd story – every time people move into a particular house, they are killed by a figure all in black.
3rd story – adult friends in costume decide to sneak into the home of a mean old man and terrorize him. Instead, they are killed off one by one by someone in a mask.
4th story – this is the only story that doesn’t simply line up a bunch of victims to be killed by a threatening figure. Okay, it does do that, but at least the plot is slightly more interesting than the others. A group of female friends gathers to kill something they’ve captured that we can’t see. It escapes. It’s the shortest tale, but it’s nice and gory.
Overall, the tales feel more cheaply produced than the previous films with little effort made to write anything that would stick with you.
HALLOWEEN ENDS (2022)
I don’t usually cover blockbuster horror flicks and franchise titles, but considering this controversial installment literally made me laugh out loud a few times despite taking itself very seriously, I figured I’d jump into the fray.
For starters, there will most assuredly be true lovers of this bizarre latest final chapter of the never-ending saga, there will be diehard Halloween and Michael Myers fans who will adore anything with those names attached to it, and there will be Jamie Lee Curtis fans who believe she can do no wrong so therefore Halloween Ends will be a perfect film by default. But there are also sure to be a bunch of outspoken, online voices with oh so edgy opinions that will be contrary just for the hell of it or to gain attention and hits on their social media platforms by praising this installment to high heaven, claiming it’s daring and innovative and not just another recycled Michael Myers plot.
It’s not innovative whatsoever. It essentially dumps Jamie Lee Curtis into a Rob Zombie white trash Halloween installment (there are even loads of inbred kids that look like the offspring of Rob and Sheri Moon Zombie running around Haddonfield) then mashes it up with Satan’s Little Helper. Indeed, Michael Myers, indiscriminate killer of anyone who gets in his path, takes pause this time around and decides, “This one who has invaded my lair is different. This one shall be my apprentice!” Meanwhile, when Freddy Krueger made a body/brain agreement with Jesse almost forty years ago, people shit all over it. Really, what hope is left for the world of horror when Michael Myers is like, “I’m getting too old for this shit. You do it”?
Halloween Ends also seems to give a lot of nods to Halloween 4, which has been escalated to the level of masterpiece thanks to this newest trilogy showing us how to really ruin a franchise. The house Laurie now lives in with her granddaughter Allyson is reminiscent of the house from Halloween 4. And considering Michael has been MIA for four years, perhaps the old blind man who snagged him from the river at the beginning of Halloween 5 is the one who tucked him away in a sewer pipe for all that time…yet no one is the wiser to his presence in Haddonfield…except for an old homeless man that reminded me of the old blind man from Halloween 5.
Anyway, Laurie is determined to let go of the past and not feed the evil–she’s so zen, even if everyone in town is like, “Bitch, this is all your fault!” Laurie seems to be really coping with all her Halloween tragedies of the past and not even concerned that Michael is still out there somewhere (neither is anyone else). Laurie is all smiles, totally in the Halloween spirit, has not a single booby trap in her Halloween 4 house, and even welcomes Lindsey Wallace into her home to carve pumpkins like it’s 1978 all over again. Sadly, the script was written before the creators discovered that Kyle Richards rox, so they gave her about five lines total in this whole movie, most of which are delivered while she’s at work in a loud bar.
A majority of the film is about a dude Allyson is dating who has a messed up past just like her (which serves as the opener and one of the only thrilling parts of the whole movie). We kind of get the message the residents of Haddonfield make people into monsters by clinging to anger, grief, and violence and passing it on. The filmmakers seriously decided to jump on the elevated horror bandwagon for the newest final installment of this long-running franchise (I guess being horror trendy has become a trend when you consider H20 followed in the footsteps of Scream back in 98). There’s a load of character study here as we see that no one can keep their shit together in this once quaint, quiet suburban town–the same exact chaos that plagued Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2. And believe me, as much as I thought the Zombie films were crap 15 years ago, I just rewatched them in both theatrical and director’s cuts back-to-back to give them yet another chance (twice the chance, actually), and none of that helped. They’re still mostly a disaster, so I can guarantee I will feel the same about this installment in another 15 years, despite the insistence online that this is going to be worshipped as a cult classic in years to come.
Perhaps Halloween Ends should have been called Haddonfield, not only because the town is once again the star, but also because the film has strayed so far from celebrating the holiday season while delivering its horror experience that it has completely lost its identity. There’s also a clear effort here to fully separate the franchise from Laurie Strode at last in hopes of making the horrors go on without her for years to come. It’s reminiscent of the way they tried to hand the responsibility off to Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4, first making her the final girl then having her re-enact Michael’s childhood clown costume kill so she could be groomed to grow up to be Miss Myers, an idea they scrapped when it was time to write the script for Halloween 5.
But back to this trailer trash in a town tragedy. All the trauma porn eventually leads to a few kills that I rolled my eyes through because Michael had his apprentice trailing behind him. And when Laurie finally confronts Michael, you once again have to marvel at how many fucking stupid mistakes she makes for a final girl who has been planning for this moment for forty years.
Even so, their final battle really does kick ass. However, I lose all respect for Laurie’s sense of judgement when she makes some speech about Michael being just a mortal man, not the boogeyman. Bitch, this dude was left in a burning basement in 2018 and climbed out to slaughter a calendar worth of hunky firemen, got sliced and diced by the whole damn town in the middle of the street later that evening, got back up, killed them all, killed your daughter, and became a sewer rat for four years.
Remember when the creators of this trilogy insisted Myers wasn’t going to be some supernatural powerhouse in their franchise then barely made it through the first half hour of Halloween 2018 before proving that idea was an impossibility?
The finale bringing together the whole town once again (except Lindsey. WTF?) to finish Michael off for good is as logical as it is laughable, but I’m disappointed the creators didn’t just flip us one last bird and have the whole town chanting “Evil dies tonight!” as the screen faded to black for the final frame.
When it comes to horror movies, I inevitably judge them on whether or not I can go back for them again and again like the sweet saltiness of chocolate covered potato chips. Yummy. I’m talking about the kind of movie that sucks me in every time as scene after scene keeps me looking forward to what’s coming up next as the film progresses. Does Halloween Ends do that? Hell no! I waited over a damn hour for even a hint of horror thrills as I was forced to wade through the emotions of a bunch of miserable people who refused to just let it go like Laurie Strode.
You know what moment still sticks with me and packed more of a punch than anything that took place in this latest trilogy? That instant in H2O when Laurie comes face-to-face with Michael for the first time in 20 years with just a thin pane of glass between them. Still gives me chills every time. Not once did a scene in this trilogy grab me like that.
Picture it. Octobers future. I want to get in the holiday mood with a Michael Myers film. One thing I know for sure…it ain’t ever gonna be Halloween Ends.
And now…on to the bonus. A look at the novelization of the movie!
HALLOWEEN ENDS NOVELIZATION
When I was a tween in the early 80s, I adored the novelizations of Halloween and Halloween II because they added more scenes, more characterization, and more background story that you didn’t get from the movies.
The novelizations of Halloween 2018 and Halloween Kills had hints of that, but both felt mostly like simple prose adaptations of the film scripts.
Now we come to Halloween Ends. Even though I wasn’t a fan of this trilogy at all, and especially this final film (to be honest—I’d be fine if they never made another Halloween film again, yet I’ll totally keep watching if they do!), I couldn’t wait to read this novelization. I was really hoping it would fill in so many of the gaps I felt made Halloween Ends an absolute mess. I am thrilled to say it totally delivered. It also offers more focus on Michael and more kills by him than the movie does. Whether you loved the movie or hated it, I’d highly recommend reading this book. However, if you aren’t a reader and just want to know what you’re missing, I’m going to give you a basic breakdown of the additions to the plot. In other words, you need to have seen the movie to read on, because there are assumptions that you’ll understand the references I’m making in terms of how they apply to the film. Not to mention, they’re loaded with spoilers for the movie. So let’s get into it.
-the book begins at the end of Halloween Kills with a little more coverage of how Allyson’s night ended, and includes Michael murdering two sanitation workers the next morning so he can take their garbage truck to escape.
-there’s a bit more of Corey’s backstory to further demonstrate that he has a dysfunctional family and lives on the wrong side of the tracks compared to the couple for which he was babysitting. His mother also has more influence on him throughout the main plot.
-there’s more transitional information as to how Laurie went from mad Michael hunter to totally at peace.
-there are Michael Myers conspiracy theories spread by the DJ who later dies in the movie, and they are a total nod to the story of Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers.
-there’s a flashback to a mental patient that was used by crazy Dr. Sartain from Halloween 2018 to awaken Michael in Smith’s Grove…and how that mental patient escaped when Michael did on the night the bus crashed in 2018. That mental patient then becomes the man who discovers Michael in the sewer and cares for him. When Corey falls off the bridge, this mental patient (who just appears to be a homeless man in the movie) takes him to the sewer to sacrifice to Michael (we’ll get to that later).
-in her writings, Laurie recounts communications with Dr. Loomis, who worked with another young male patient inspired to kill by the film Roadgames (a Jamie Lee Curtis film from the tail end of her early slasher days—wink wink). He ended up in Smith’s Grove and Michael’s evil spread to him.
-in a flashback to the manhunt for Michael in 2018, he escapes to the woods and encounters a little girl being held captive by her abusive father. She is then inspired to kill her father using Michael’s knife. Michael then goes and hides in a meatpacking plant.
-flashback to Halloween 2019. The girl who tried to steal Allyson’s boyfriend on Halloween night 2018 at the party goes to the meatpacking plant with her new boyfriend to park and have sex in his Plymouth Fury. Believers in the conspiracy theory that Halloween Ends is a remake of Christine rejoice. And by the way, those people are so wrong. Halloween Ends is clearly a remake of Grease 2. Think about it. Anyway, the couple discovers a decaying body of one of the sanitation workers then Michael Myers appears and chases them into the meatpacking plant…a chase that ends in his sewer pipe lair. It is there that the escaped mental patient reconnects with him and begins feeding him victims like Seymour satisfying Audrey II’s needs. Obviously this is a remake of Little Shop of Horrors.
-the passing of the evil from Michael to Corey when they meet in the sewer is more descriptive and better defined so the idea that Corey has taken on a new “Shape” is more believable. The idea of “The Shape” and taking on a new “shape” is stressed repeatedly throughout the novel. However, this is the point where the idea that Michael wasn’t supposed to be supernatural in this trilogy’s story arc is proven to be bullshit. If Michael Myers feeds on the energy of his kills to stay alive and can pass his evil on to others…He’s. Fucking. Supernatural.
-Michael thinks of the first night he killed in 1963, and Laurie thinks of Ben Tramer fleetingly. We also learn one of the bully punks is related to Ben Tramer (remember, in this timeline Halloween II never happened, so Ben Tramer didn’t die).
-Lindsey has a few more interactions with both Laurie and Allyson, plus she gets a brief suspense scene, which she totally deserved in the movie after delivering one of the best scenes in Halloween Kills. Most importantly, she’s present for the grinder ending, whereas she was missing from it in the movie.
-flashback to 1982 when Frank, the cop Laurie likes, was in a competition with another cop to win her affections. The other guy took her home, but she only went along with him so she could ask him to kill Michael Myers at Smith’s Grove. He refused.
-there’s an unnecessary brief scene of kids holding a séance to resurrect Michael Myers at the site of his old house, but it does play into the idea that evil is attractive and infectious.
-it’s spelled out that Michael kills Corey in order to take back all the evil he gave him so that he’ll be better equipped to fight Laurie.
-Since it didn’t happen in the movie, I was hoping the book ending would change to have Laurie dive into the grinder. Instead, the book implies at the end that the evil transfers to Laurie and she will be the new Michael. Do they really think Jamie Lee Curtis would come back for another trilogy as the killer? Do we? Should we start a GoFundMe now?
And yet despite all the wonderful embellishments, added plot elements, and inner thoughts of characters that enrich this story, I still couldn’t buy it when that first kill came with Corey and Michael working as a team. Even more amplified in novel format is the fact that after they start killing together they just totally split up and go off and do their own things. It’s rather sad how quickly their relationship gets to the point where they don’t need each other anymore!
Better question, why do people keep going to houses and cabins in rural locations? So we have more horror movies to watch, of course! So let’s get into these three.
DEADSTREAM (2022)
This is essentially a horror comedy found footage one man show, co-written and co-directed by the star. The first half is all fun and goofy humor, but at the 40-minute mark the comedy tone blends with traditional found footage horror elements and plenty of jump scares and freaky creeps. This is definitely not just a tour of forest leaves like The Blair Witch Project.
How much you enjoy the comedy depends on how much you like the leading man. Some might find him a bit shrill…especially when he screams. And he screams a lot. Throughout the entire movie. The first few times I thought it was funny, but when it turned out it was part of his shtick for the full 90 minutes it became tedious, and it’s really the biggest complaint I have about this film, which is a blast otherwise.
So this dude is an online celebrity who fell out of favor after making some bad mistakes with his live stream. For his comeback he decides to spend the night in a derelict, haunted house in the woods.
The first forty minutes has him killing time trying to entertain the audience with a tour of the creepy house and stories of those that have died there. He also responds to viewers as their comments scroll up the side of the screen.
When the ghouls in the house suddenly begin terrorizing him, it’s no joke. It is scary fun straight through, and the main ghost girl eventually becomes reminiscent of Deadites in Evil Dead. Her frightening companions are freaky enough to give the monsters from Silent Hill a run for their money as well. Fun fun fun.
MONSTROUS (2022)
Monstrous comes to us from the director of All Cheerleaders Die, and while this works visually as a frightening supernatural specter film reminiscent of PG-13 horror of the early 00s, it’s the writing that just completely falls apart. The hubby and I tried to piece it together after it was over with no success, and even consulting some of those “ending explained” sites online, I discovered they made ridiculous errors in trying to make it all make sense.
The worst part of it is that there’s a turning point in the film when I saw a great and different twist being set up perfectly. Unfortunately, somehow the writer completely overlooked the opportunity and instead went for something we’ve seen before, tried to complicate it so it wouldn’t seem like it was so obvious, then just made a mess of the twist in the process.
Anyway, it’s the 1950s, and Christina Ricci and her little boy run away from their life to live in a rental house in a rural area. It becomes clear she is trying to escape her husband.
Then the son begins to see some sort of monster coming out of the pond by their house on a nightly basis. He begins to beg Christina to just take him home, but she insists at first that he’s just imagining it.
That all changes when there are a few freaky encounters with the ghoul. Awesome.
That’s when the film falls apart. Bummer. You’ll most likely figure out the ending, yet still have so many questions after you do.
3 DEMONS (2022)
I really don’t know how to feel about 3 Demons. It has that classic setup of one man dealing with a demonic presence at a cabin in the woods, but it’s also a film that deals entirely with abstractions, so you’re never sure if the man is really experiencing any of the horrors or if they’re all symbolic of his own deeper issues. And for me, that just always equals a lack of fear. I just can’t feel frightened for a character when I am convinced they’re not actually dealing with tangible horror.
The whole premise is built around a wraparound of our main man telling his story to a psychiatrist. Clips of this session are interspersed throughout the film and add nothing to the overarching story.
And that story is…this deputy is assigned to “protect” the body of a dead woman under a sheet in the woods by a cabin.
Left alone with his thoughts about a personal loss, he spends the movie in a sort of multidimensional reality being haunted by shadowy specters in the woods, along with the sheeted body, which tends to move around a lot.
There is definitely plenty of eerie visual stimulation to go around here, so I enjoyed that aspect of it, but don’t expect any concrete explanation to why any of this is happening to him (or not actually happening to him).
The soundtrack sets the tone for sure, with tracks by a-ha, Tiffany, Rockwell, and Culture Club, and the main girls make plenty of precise 80s pop culture references.
As for the film, it ends up feeling like a tween cross between the new Evil Dead and The Craft…without any of the edge of either.
A bunch of friends goes to a cabin by a lake to party. While exploring the woods at night, the two main girls come upon a creepy tree-like thing in a cabin, and something happens to one of them. When the others find her, she’s…different.
Conveniently, they all go to a religious high school, so her odd behavior is exacerbated by her surroundings. Her best friend begins to believe she’s possessed, so she hires a musclehead evangelical dude to help perform an exorcism.
There’s just not enough funny stuff going on here to really grab your attention, and the horror elements are also kept to a minimum. It’s kind of a yawn fest.
GOODNIGHT MOMMY (2022)
Naomi Watts stars in this remake of the Austrian film, which I covered here. This is in no way an exact remake, and in the end it feels much more like a tragic drama about grief and mental illness than the original, although that one covered those issues as well. This remake just doesn’t quite capture the unnerving tension and sense of dread that builds throughout the original.
The story is about twin brothers dropped off by their father to live with their mother. When they arrive at her house her face is totally bandaged up like a mummy and she just tells them she had a procedure.
But they begin to notice that she is acting totally different and unloving. They become convinced she is not their mother at all, but an imposter who has replaced her.
There’s lots of creeping around in dark shadows at night spying on her and suspense sequences of her suspecting she’s being watched. She starts to come across as abusive. Some dream sequences are also injected to create some horror moments.
However, the mere fact that I know Naomi Watts is under the face wrap makes the mom much less mysterious and ominous than she was in the original. Hell, every time she spoke, I expected one of her sons to call her Rachel and start ranting about the girl in the well.
Eventually, this moves into Misery territory for a short time. That is when the plot makes some drastic changes from the original final act, quickly watering down the more terrifying aspects of the storyline to focus on the tragedy. There’s even a change in one crucial aspect of the plot line that will just totally drive right wingers up a wall because they will take it as a personal attack on their constitutional rights…
TERROR TRIPS (2021)
The initial setup of this film makes it seem like it’s going to be a meta lover’s dream. A guy plans to start a terror tour business in which he brings people to famous horror movie locations for screenings of the films. So he asks a group of friends, each of them a diehard fan of a specific horror subgenre, to do a test run.
The first surprise for me is that this isn’t a found footage film, because it really feels like its establishing itself for the format. The second surprise is that this great premise is just completely wasted on what becomes nothing more than an astonishingly generic. low budget organ harvesting plot.
The group goes to hike into the woods for their chosen location, they get abducted one by one, they escape one by one, they get abducted again one by one…all by a ring of Russian organ thieves. Eye roll.
There’s simply no worthy horror here, which is dumbfounding considering the whole point of the movie is that this whole group consists of horror experts. However, the catch, and it would be clever if the film were fun, is that as many horror movies as these dipshits have seen, they fall victim to every obvious trope.
The only highlight for me was having the main girl played by Hannah Fierman, best known as the creepy-eyed girl from the original V/H/S. She’s so refreshingly different here as the paranoid, panicked, cautious character in the bunch.
I checked out three horror flicks on Hulu dealing with women in peril, and although I expected nothing from any of them, one was a satisfying surprise.
THE ACCURSED (2021)
This bewitched family film ends up feeling like it would have the most impact on the tween market except for one factor…it’s kind of boring despite the cheap, weak scares.
Two sisters are cursed by another woman at the beginning of the film, so they kill her and get rid of the body using a ritual that’s supposed to bury the body and the curse.
22 years later, the son of one of the sisters is getting married, and the curse claws its way back from the dead to destroy the family.
Ugh. Other than a bunch of attack vines in the garden, a lot of talking, and family members glaring at each other suspiciously, not much happens here.
There are some cutaway kills that make this feel like a pre-slasher horror flick from the early 1970s, and when there are about fifteen minutes left, the buried bitch from the beginning finally returns from the dead to offer some tame terror. There’s even a hokey final frame scare.
It’s not the worst witchcraft movie, but it probably would have been better if it were a movie in like 1972…
HATCHING (2022)
This Finnish film is an odd little blend of a variety of subgenres, so it very often feels like you’ve seen it all before…yet, you’ve simultaneously seen nothing like it. The basic premise is familiar, but the presentation is kind of out there and rather brilliant.
A tween girl is being pressured to be a successful gymnast by her mother, a vlogger who has created this illusion that she has the perfect family.
The girl finds an egg out in the woods, brings it home, and secretly nurtures it in her bedroom. It begins to grow…very big. And then it hatches. Let me just say that there are a lot of metaphors about becoming a woman, having control of your own body, being a mother, and being a controlling mother in this film. The good news is that all the messaging doesn’t get in the way of the fact that this is a horror movie. See? You can elevate horror without letting the doors close before the horror can get on board.
Anyway, out of the egg pops a surprisingly large, nasty looking bird that needs to learn to fly. And our young girl is going to help push it out of its nest. This is where we get the good old concept of a child whose secret monster friend begins to kill off anyone it feels is a threat to the child. Wahoo!
And yet there is so much smart exploration of the life trajectory of being a female weaved throughout fast-paced chills and thrills.
And then the film morphs…just like the bird. Would you believe it turns into a body horror flick? And it’s pretty damn fun and freaky…without leaving the elevation down in the lobby.
ROOM 203 (2022)
This movie was a dud.
It’s about two female friends that move into a creepy apartment together, and one feels very protective of the other because she already helped her get over a drug problem.
There’s loads of walking around in the dark and stinger sounds to make the movie “scary”, because all you get otherwise is an intriguing stained glass window and a dark hole in the wall with a mysterious necklace in it.
The former druggy starts acting weird and sleepwalking, the other girl begins investigating the history of the apartment, this starts to feel like The Toolbox Murders remake for a while, and then it starts to feel like just another possession film for a while, only without any suspense or scares.
I kept things interesting with a mix of oddities when I chose my latest triple feature, so let’s see how that worked for me.
HOLLYBLOOD (2022)
This Spanish teen romance horror comedy is cute and charming, but you definitely have to hang in there a little too long before it finally kicks into high gear. It starts off strong with some sort of creature attacking teen boys by the school pool.
Then we meet our main boy, new to the school and attracted to a girl obsessed with a Twilight-esque franchise. To get closer to her, our main boy goes to a premiere of the latest movie (clips of which are deliciously homoerotic).
Through a series of unplanned circumstances, he convinces the girl that he is a vampire. Little does he know that a) there’s a geeky vampire hunter kid determined to prove he’s a fraud, and b) there’s an actual vampire that has no intention of allowing a fraud to overshadow him.
The characters are charming and funny, and there are plenty of gay humor jokes, but the actual vampire action doesn’t kick in until 61 minutes into the film, with only 26 minutes remaining.
With lots of time to make up for, the cast of characters combines forces quickly to go on an action-packed and quite funny vampire hunt.
So much great horror comedy energy is crammed into the last twenty minutes it leaves you wanting more.
THE MUNSTERS (2022)
It’s easy for me to be more lenient on this Rob Zombie film than many others because I had absolutely no expectations and was more than willing to give him a chance at trying his hand at something new…a silly, colorful, family-esque remake of a classic black and white monster comedy series.
Visually this take on the beloved show was total eye candy, from the sets to the setup shots. I couldn’t get enough of what I was seeing. Zombie truly captures the look of cheesy, campy horror-themed children’s comedies of the 90s and early 2000s for sure.
However, if you’re expecting the TV show translated into a full-length feature, forget about it. This is a prequel story in which Lily falls for Herman despite Grandpa’s objections.
Therefore, there’s no Eddie, no Marilyn, no Spot. The family doesn’t even get to the house on Mockingbird Lane until the last half hour of an overblown 110 minutes, the first of many problems that plague the movie.
The other major problem is that this has an absolutely hollow plot. I just kept waiting for some significant storyline to take hold, but nothing ever did. Lily falls for Herman, a semi-famous rocker with a very alternative look, they date, Grandpa objects, and eventually they move to the house on Mockingbird Lane.
There’s very little more to it than that…and it’s stretched out to nearly two hours. And I can’t help but wonder if this new backstory is somehow a bit of a biographical look at the relationship between Rob and his wife Sheri Moon.
In general, all three main actors (including Sheri Moon as Lily, of course) pull off their roles well, without doing mere impersonations of the original characters. However, as vibrant and cartoonish as they are, they simply lack the charm of the original characters. They’re just not lovable. They feel flat and stiff, due in large part to an absolutely dull script that offers very little in the way of laughs. My guess is that there’s not even enough silly humor or situations here to mesmerize children.
Having said all that, there were a few highlight for me beyond the visual presentation. The love between Herman and Lily grows during a montage of them singing “I Got You Babe”. Some other classic movie monsters make guest appearances. The final act takes place on Halloween. And Cassandra Peterson plays their real estate agent. Yet even that perfect casting is wasted. She tells Lily over the phone that when they meet she’s going to be in costume so they shouldn’t be shocked by her appearance. You’re probably thinking what I was—the jokes would practically write themselves with her dressed as Elvira and looking like a Lily clone in the process. Well forget it. It doesn’t happen. She’s dressed as a witch instead. It’s a huge missed opportunity for Cassandra Peterson to save this whole damn movie.
PIRANHA WOMEN (2022)
If you come to a film directed by Fred Olen Ray called Piranha Women with this poster art looking for anything other than those teeth tits coming to life, then I have no interest in your opinion about Piranha Women.
I came for the teeth tits and I got them.
Piranha Women runs less than an hour long and gets right to the points. A really gorgeous guy meets a chick at a bar, she takes him home, and she takes him for a dip and a dick in her pool. Ouch.
Next we meet our main girl. She has a fatal disease so she goes to a scientist doing experimental work with fish DNA. Uh-oh.
Meanwhile, her man becomes the main suspect when his boss turns up dead. He also has to become his own detective to figure out who killed his boss and where his woman has disappeared to.
The teeth tits are the best, but if I have one complaint it’s that they don’t get enough action. The body count is disappointingly low, but the final battle with the piranha women is low budget fun.
Ghost hunting brothers are back for more, cheerleaders must die, and victims go out on a high note in this trio of flicks. Were any of them worth a watch?
ANNA 2 (2019)
The Crum brothers, who collectively write, direct, and star in their movies, are back for this sequel to their film Anna, in which ghost hunters stole a haunted doll with dire consequences. It’s referenced very briefly at the beginning of this film, which, despite hanging onto the same title, doesn’t focus on the doll at all.
This time around the boys join forces with another team of paranormal investigators to start their ghost hunting business up again. At first they are totally setting up a scam scenario, but the possession case they encounter seems frighteningly real. This early segment of the film features the Crum brothers dabbling more in the humorous side of their horror.
They then move on to their main goal…an abandoned amusement park. This is where the film takes us into darker Crum territory—totally nightmarish surrealism with no clear plot line but oodles of horrific visual stimulation as each member of the group is almost immediately drawn away to have his or her own hellish, trippy experience.
Essentially that’s the plot, if you can call it that. The Crums truly are masters at low budget, horrific eye candy, and knowing that’s what I should expect from them, I don’t go in with any hopes of a meaty narrative.
As I’ve said before, their films tend to feel like you’re trapped in Silent Hill, which is always enough for me. Although it would have been nice if there had been some bare Crum buns again as there were in the first Anna.
BRING IT ON: CHEER OR DIE (2022)
Not only is this a slasher installment of the long-running cheerleader franchise, it also manages to squeeze its way onto the Halloween horror movie page…barely.
In classic slasher movie tradition, there’s an opening bullying and death scene revolving around a cheer squad in 2002.
20 years later, the high school cheer squad wants to practice on Halloween weekend, but the principal won’t let them do it on school grounds.
Sooooo…they decide to break into an abandoned school to have a slumber party and practice.
Foreshadowing in the shadows…
But someone dressed as the school mascot has other ideas for them.
As far as the teen vibe and teen humor go in the first half of the film, I was left wishing the writers of the original Bring It On had been hired for this first horror installment, because it totally misses the mark—very flat with a cheap tween TV show tone.
On the bright side, the kills kick in promptly once the kids split up, and they come rapid fire. They’re also never simple. For instance, the first death is by noose…oh wait…by pom-pom…or is it by falling lamp? This killer never settles on just one weapon per victim.
And yet despite the complex kills, there’s a low energy feel to much of this movie. It’s also disappointing that a movie that takes place on Halloween weekend barely taps into the holiday. There are pumpkins scattered around the background of scenes before the kids get to the abandoned school, one brief scene of trick or treaters, and two kids show up at the abandoned school in costume, but that’s it. Considering this is premiering on SyFy as an original for October, I imagine tying Halloween into the plot was a requirement so they just did the bare minimum to accomplish that.
The film does finally become a load of silly fun in the final act when all the surviving kids begin running around the school screaming and using cheerleading moves to dodge killer attacks and eventually to fight the killer. It’s a shame the campy tone was all jam-packed into the finale instead of sprinkled throughout the runtime. Even the obligatory gay cheerleader kid saved his most fabulously funny behavior for the final act, landing this one on the does the gay gay die? page as well.
At least we got a slasher version of Bring It On at last, but how amazing would it have been if instead we got Gabrielle Union as the killer, finally back for her ultimate revenge, hacking up the little white bitch daughters of Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku?
REQUIEM FOR A SCREAM (2022)
I’m all in for kids getting hacked and slashed at a cabin in the woods, and this Tubi original delivers on that. Requiem for a Scream isn’t the scariest flick you’re going to see, but if you ate up all the direct-to-DVD slashers that were pumped out in the early 2000s following the Scream craze, it delivers the basic elements needed to keep you entertained.
After an opening scene with some torture, some murder, and a masked killer making a girl sing for her life, we meet our main girl and her friends, who sneak away to party at her family house in the woods.
The main girl is essentially running away from her problems…she is in the midst of a conflict with her father, who is suffering from grief over the death of her sister and is pushing her to become a singer as her sister was going to be.
There’s definitely a bit too much filler—including a game of “Never Have I Ever” used as a vehicle to paint a picture of each character. Since there aren’t a lot of kids at the house and the kills take a while to kick in, this ends up feeling more like a home invasion film than a slasher. Plus, the singing aspect of the killer’s motivation is a little underplayed considering the movie description makes it sound like it’s the focus of the kills. Even so, the killer action does deliver.
However, there is one thing that’s quite frustrating about the film, and it involves gay stuff and spoilers concerning gay characters, so don’t read ahead if you don’t want to know…
**SPOILERS** – the film has a diverse cast, but here’s the problem. The 2 gay guys, one Black and one white, the only guys at the cabin, admit they’re gay for each other with a kiss. Awesome, right? Well, minutes later the Black gay guy gets killed, of course. Worse? When there are only ten minutes left in the film, the white gay guy steps up to fight the killer, and does a damn good job of appearing like he’s going to be one of the heroes and one of the survivors…but how often does a mainstream slasher let that happen?
This is why I write gay horror books with no straight characters in them. Sure, gay guys die in my books, but there’s still a whole city full of gays left over when they do…
Foreshadowing in the shadows…
