STREAM QUEEN: kids and creeps on Netflix and Shudder

Posted on June 15, 2020 by Daniel

It’s a mixed bag of scares with this foursome—2 from Netflix and 2 from Shudder, but they all have kids and creatures in common.

IN THE TALL GRASS (2019)

The director of Cube, Splice, and a whole bunch of other horror gets stuck adapting a Stephen King novella that starts off like Children of the Corn, sucks you in momentarily with its concept, then becomes a repetitive snooze fest.

A brother and sister taking a road trip stop on the side of the road and hear a child calling from the corn stalks…I mean…tall grass.

They plunge into the maze-like vegetation to find the boy, immediately get separated, and then discover they can’t find each other no matter how much they try to follow the sounds of each other’s voices.

Eventually they come across the boy. Then his father. Then his mother. Even the sister’s ex shows up. Everyone’s stories begin to get caught up in a time loop; they’ve each gone into the grass because they hear the voice of one of the other characters calling.

There’s also a supernatural rock monument. And grass people. Yes, grass people.

The blatant theme of redemption as they all argue and their dirty secrets come out is pounded into our head, and that’s because one character literally walks around babbling about redemption. Unfortunately, nothing redeems this film.

DARK LIGHT (2019)

The director of Rites of Spring and The Devil’s Dolls delivers a movie that made me very impatient for everything to get sorted out. It finally happens in the last half hour, when this suddenly turns into a totally fun creature feature.

The majority of the film is tedious. There’s a mother, her daughter, and her ex-husband. I believe there’s a non-chronological narrative, but I’m not even sure. The mom is considered to be pretty damn crazy, so when she brings her daughter to live in her childhood home, the local law enforcement is keeping a close eye on her.

After she takes her daughter into the cornfields to play a game at night she becomes convinced there’s some sort of monster after them. Shit gets weird as the white trash background of this little family unfolds.

Finally the monster thrills hit when the family ends up in the house battling a cyclops type creature with a spotlight for an eye—a spotlight that will swallow your soul! It’s basic scary movie stuff, but it’s still a blast. At least for 30 minutes.

Z (2019)

I expected Z to be a derivative eye-roller, so I was pleasantly surprised by some highly effective scenes and totally off the wall twists that saved it from being just another “boy with an imaginary friend” horror movie.

A couple’s young son begins acting weird and having major problems at school as he bonds with an imaginary friend at home.

But then mom begins seeing things in the house and becomes convinced her son’s imaginary friend is real. So many eerie scenes and a creepy as fuck imaginary friend make this one a total joyride.

Sure there are some cheesy moments—including one flash of the monster that looks about as spooky as something coming at you in Disney’s Haunted Mansion, and even some moments that feel right out of The Ring, but overall the film is pretty damn insane with a refreshingly weirder than usual plot.

TERRIFIED (2017)

Sitting down to a Shudder double feature, I really did expect Z to be the disappointment and Spanish language film Terrified to be the winner. Believe me, it started out quite strong, with a handful of neighbors experiencing some hella scary shit.

But almost immediately after the first major incident, a group of detectives becomes the focus of the film. They already believe something supernatural is happening and basically work as a paranormal research group for the remainder of the film.

While the monster is quite freaky, it is overused to the point of losing its potency, and there’s excessive use of the same damn orchestral stinger raised to ridiculous decibels in an effort to ensure you get scared.

But the biggest problem is that the story is a mess. I can’t even explain it—it’s like you can follow the plot and understand what’s going on, yet at the same time it makes absolutely no sense, jumping all over the place and introducing a myriad of ideas that don’t fuse together to make a cohesive story. Honestly, this film was only 85 minutes long and quite fast-paced, yet it felt like it went on forever.

 

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STREAM QUEEN: three times the infection

Posted on June 10, 2020 by Daniel

I don’t know if it’s the whole Covid thing getting to me, but suddenly I’ve been dragging the hubby back into the zombie/infected world with a handful we’ve not seen before. So here are three more that had some aspects I liked…and some I didn’t.

MAYHEM (2017)

Joe Lynch (director of Wrong Turn 2 and one of the stars of the Holliston horror sitcom) brings us a dark comedy that you could describe as “The Crazies meets The Office”.

Glenn from The Walking Dead is part of the dog-eat-dog world of a law firm. He’s also reunited with the Governor’s sidekick Milton, and teams up with Samara Weaving of Ready or Not, who is made for movies like these. She’s once again a bitch that loses her shit when faced with extreme circumstances, so it is time to add her to my wicked women page.

As soon as a virus hits, the building is placed under quarantine. Everyone has the virus, and you can tell because it turns one eye red. But unlike The Crazies, these infected can basically turn their crazy on and off. They use that immoral willingness to murder to their advantage as they kill anyone who gets in their way of climbing the law firm ladder.

I simply did not find Mayhem as funny and entertaining as I was hoping it would be because there are no redeeming qualities to any of the characters. Rather than being metaphorical, it’s literally a movie about vile, entitled people clawing their way to the top.

Sure there are some funny moments, there’s some 90s nostalgia with references to the Dave Matthews Band and use of the hit “Ants Marching”, and there’s definitely plenty of zany killing, but I had no use for all these pieces of shit. Except Samara. She rocks.

AMERICAN ZOMBIELAND (2020)

 

It’s Redneck Zombies, Shaun of the Dead, and One Cut of the Dead all rolled into one silly, indie zomcom. Originally the film was titled Fat Ass Zombies—a much better name considering that’s what the filmmakers in this meta movie decide to call the movie they’re making.

I guess the powers that be forced the title change to cash in on the faux patriotic conservative movement destroying our nation right now. Or maybe the title wasn’t PC enough. Either way, the original title fits the tone of the film better, as does the original poster art. And hell, it still begins with hefty gun nut types running at the screen. He wasn’t waving his gun around, but this dude definitely had me craving areola big time.

Even though some of the humor falls flat, our four main guys in the movie know how to deliver the comic timing, so there are plenty of strong moments throughout the film. My biggest disappointment is that it moves into Troma territory with excessive, pointless fart humor.

As for the plot, a wannabe zombie filmmaker in a small town is rejected from a film festival, so when an actual zombie outbreak begins, he convinces everyone taking cover at the local bar to film their battles with the living dead in order to make a realistic zombie film.

It provides plenty of slapstick moments zombie fans can appreciate. Their decision is to only mess with fat ass zombies they can outrun, so again—the movie should have been called Fat Ass Zombies.

Other highlights include Big Daddy’s hot young wife from The Golden Girls as the filmmaker’s mother, a redneck getting his dick bit off, and the outbreak’s connection to patriotism and Independence Day.

And I can definitely say now that I like rednecks better than lawyers (especially when they have mondo areolas).

LAST ONES OUT (2015)

This well-made film is only 75 minutes long and has a few absolutely fantastic zombie sequences, but I just couldn’t get into the story arc of the main character.

An American man is about to go into appendectomy surgery in an African hospital when the virus hits. He joins up with some of the staff of the hospital to journey through the wilderness to a rescue location.

Along the way, they have some unnerving encounters with freaky zombies, the best part of the movie. Zombie encounters are used with restraint since this is not a zombie hordes situation, but many of the chases take place in daylight, and I just love me some daylight zombie scenes in foreign lands. Reminds me of late 70s/early 80s Euro zombie movies.

While the zombie action is great, the trajectory of the plot is the usual for a zombie film, and the privileged white dude is such a douche that even when he “redeems” himself I still didn’t like him! I like Rednecks better than him. And I definitely liked Fat Ass Z…um…American Zombieland best out of these three.

 

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When a queer horror short makes me a size queen that wants it longer

Posted on June 9, 2020 by Daniel

Innocent Boy is a strikingly sleek, disturbing yet tantalizing short film that runs just about 11 minutes long—and I imagine you’ll walk away from this one wanting more.

The characters and the concepts presented are such a tease, because they’re compelling enough to warrant a deeper dive.

I can’t go into detail without giving it away, but there’s so much packed into the short runtime that we barely get a chance to bask in the queer and social issues director/writer Brock Cravy takes on: trans lives, race, male prostitution, drugs, self-loathing Johns, and murder and mayhem—all in the middle of redneck nowhere!

It’s darkly mesmerizing (with glorious, Argento-inspired lighting) and could so easily be expanded into a full-length queer backwoods horror flick.

Let’s hope Brock Cravy has a full-length in the works, whether it’s an embellishment of this short film or a completely different queer horror story. The style, themes, and techniques used here demonstrate the kind of creativity I imagine when I think of someone, anyone, adapting my gay horror slasher Scream, Queen into a film!

The film is available to rent on Vimeo.

Check out my homo horror movies page for a complete list of full-length features.

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Modeling can be murder

Posted on June 9, 2020 by Daniel

It’s a double feature of pretty women falling victim to psychotic, artistic men as I take on Playgirl Killer and Double Exposure.

PLAYGIRL KILLER (1967)

I had to revisit this one because it was an oldie I watched on TV with my mom in the 1970s and remembered only two things about it—Neil Sedaka’s small role that includes performing an entire song, and the big body reveal scene.

 

Watching again I see why I didn’t remember much. It’s fairly boring until the macabre final act, and it also doesn’t have a main girl.

It’s one of those films in which the protagonist is the killer, making it hard to be scared for the poor women he murders since we know what’s about to happen each time and exactly when it’s going to happen.

The killer is an artist inspired by a dream he’s trying to recreate on a canvas.

But every damn woman that models for him moves while posing, ruining his work and pushing him to kill his subject.

Conveniently he takes a job as a handyman for a rich woman, and easy women just keep showing up at her door for him to seduce and kill.

The kills are tame, and the jazzy score is horribly 1960s. But the last few scenes deliver some good horror moments (for its day), and the zinger ending is delicious.

I do think this could easily have been compressed into a 30-minute episode of Tales from the Crypt and been better paced and more effective. The mere fact that there are two more full songs performed by other artists tells you all you need to know about the excess padding to make this an 85-minute movie.

DOUBLE EXPOSURE (1982)

Double Exposure is like The Eyes of Laura Mars with a male lead (The Eyes of Larry Mars?). It opens with a streetwalker being followed by killer POV (ah, the innocence of 80s horror) before being stabbed. There’s even a little surprise at the end of the scene.

Our main photographer is oddly intimate with his brother, who is missing a couple of limbs…

And yet, they make derogatory comments towards a gay guy that enters his trailer home.

Not surprisingly, considering the year the movie came out, this gay guy isn’t treated well by anyone. But he self-identifies as a perfectly normal gay person and comes right back at the homophobes. Awesome.

The film has some nice and sleazy kills with female nudity as the photographer has one nightmare after another about killing sexy women, often in unique ways. But it’s not all just in his dreamland, because women are actually getting killed and there are detectives on the case.

There’s also an exploitative scene in which the brother mud wrestles with a woman in a bikini at a Chippendales type club. Again…ah, the innocence of 80s horror.

And I do believe that’s Nick the Dick from Bachelor Party…

Unfortunately, the movie begins to drag for a while before we finally discover if the photographer is just dreaming or if he’s really a killer.

 

 

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The War of the Worlds vs. War of the Worlds

Posted on June 8, 2020 by Daniel

The H.G. Wells novel that grew to infamy thanks to an Orson Welles radio broadcast was made into a movie in 1953, and again by the one and only Steven Spielberg in 2005. The big question is, in a world so divided and hateful today, would we even be able to come together to fight aliens to save our own planet? Probably not considering a good chunk of us isn’t even interested in saving our planet as it quickly dies already. Anyway, time to take on this double feature.

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953)

A long narration opens the film, filling us in as to why the Martians have come to earth. So awesome that this is so old school they call them Martians. Then we meet locals in a town as they witness something streaking down to earth nearby.

In this predominantly Caucasian movie, the one poor Latino guy gets zapped because he makes the mistake of sticking around with two dumb white guys that just stand and watch as something hatches from the large object. A sort of telescope space ship comes out and shoots its lasers at them, turning them to dust. Great way to start a film.

And then in comes the military. Blah. So much of this film focuses on the military, making much of it boring. However, it should be noted that a priest with a God complex approaches the alien while holding up a Bible like he’s the man (foreshadowing Trump over 60 years ago), but all that dipshit manages to do is piss off an alien ship, so it zaps him and then the all the alien ships rise up and open fire on everyone. How poetic…religion started the war.

In the one truly fantastic scene, the leading man and woman hide out in a house only to have the aliens come in looking for them. After some great use of shadow, we get to see a freaky looking alien.

Time flashes forward, there’s an arrogantly American plot point about the White House and DC being the only places still immune from the alien invasion, and then everyone gathers in church to pray away the aliens. Ugh. How 1953.

Despite God getting credit for the ridiculously easy way the aliens are conquered, they suddenly just drop dead because they can’t handle our planet’s bacteria. That’s science, not God.

WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005)

Only someone like Steven Spielberg would have the power to fix everything wrong with the original and create a suspenseful two-hour film that is virtually a chase scene from beginning to end.

Naturally, Morgan Freeman is the narrator in this one. But he’s not God.

In a blue collar neighborhood ripe with symbols of American patriotism, Tom Cruise is spending the weekend with his two kids when lightning strikes the earth in various places, causing huge jellyfish spaceships to rise from the ground and begin frying the fuck out of fleeing people. They also destroy a church. I’d say God bless the aliens, but, you know, aliens are our god, we just haven’t figured it out yet.

So begins the chase with Tom, his teen son, and little Dakota Fanning as his daughter. The goal is to get to the house of his ex-wife’s parents (played by the leading man and lady from the original!).

One great scene after another unfolds as they hide from aliens and fight off desperate humans that are also trying to survive. But it wouldn’t be Spielberg if every dangerous situation didn’t conveniently work in the favor of his lead family.

Along with a load of new sequences in which Tom, not the military, kicks alien ass, Spielberg brings us a tight update of the home invasion scene. But I have to say…the aliens in the original movie are freakier!

 

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Ghosts and gays in Savannah

Posted on June 5, 2020 by Daniel


If you’re a fan of haunted house stories and scary movies and are looking for a gothic read with a gay protagonist, the upcoming short novel 324 Abercorn by Mark Allan Gunnells checks every box.

The story focuses on Brad, a horror author who moves into a house in Savannah, Georgia, which is where the true crime story behind Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is set (so naturally the novel and its famous drag queen are mentioned).

Soon after his arrival, Brad meets Bias, a haunted locations tour guide, and they soon begin dating in a bit of a May/December situation, which is handled playfully.

This is very much a romance with the ghost story as the backdrop. The novel also paints a modest picture of the historic city and some of its gay nightlife. Yet with all its attention to detail, it surprisingly features the protagonist and his black female friend going specifically to a Paula Deen restaurant without making any references to her problematic, racist comments! What can I say—these are sensitive times, so I had to point that out.

As for the ghostly aspects, the novel gives nods to plenty of classic horror films, both with name dropping by the characters and in the supernatural occurrences the characters experience. For instance, the house was built on a burial ground, there are the sounds of footsteps, moving items, mysterious noises, a visit from paranormal researchers, and even a cat scare! So dare I say horror fans will feel right at home?

As with Gunnells’ other novels I’ve read and covered on Boys, Bears & Scares, 324 Abercorn is a light, easy read, ideal for a day at the beach…if the beaches actually open this season. Check out Mark’s photographic journey through the setting of the book on his site.

Check out my blogs about Mark’s other fiction as well:

I interview him here.

I cover his novella Fort here.

I look at his slasher novel Sequel here.

And I cover his zombie novella Asylum here.

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Zombies that go for the brain…and heart

Posted on June 4, 2020 by Daniel

It’s been a while since I sunk my teeth into a really juicy zombie film with the hubby, so it was time to feast on these two features. Turns out both Redcon-1 and Blood Quantum deliver munching, meaning, a message, emotion, and men that are non- white as heroes. Let’s take a look.

REDCON-1 (2018)

Running a whopping two hours long, Redcon-1 goes from an action-packed military mission movie that plays out like a video game to a character-driven social commentary that is eerily timely, reflecting much of what is going on in this country right now.

The plot is familiar—military team is sent into a quarantined zone to rescue a scientist believed to be able to cure the virus.

As the team kicks zombie ass to a rockin’ soundtrack, there’s plenty of blood, cognitive zombies, and man bods on display. Quite a hunky cast.

The battles are fantastically choreographed and visually thrilling, but it does all become a bit repetitive, so of course I’ll say that the film could have been shortened. However, just when things begin to lose steam…

The focus shifts to the black leader of the team and the little white girl he forms a bond with and swears to protect until the bitter end, all while contending with turncoats on his own team and rogue gangs fighting over the territory they’ve claimed.

The finale echoes the current state of affairs in the U.S.—there’s infection everywhere, but the real threat to society is the white man in power. And that’s when the revolt begins.

BLOOD QUANTUM (2019)

 

Blood Quantum is another socially conscious film that has a lot going on—maybe too much.

We meet major players on an Indian reservation, including a sheriff and his sons, who begin to discover something is very wrong.

Members of the community are starting to get attacked and bitten by people that have turned into zombies!

It’s a tight little zombie outbreak film, with crazed zombies, loads of great gore, suspense, and scares. And then…

We jump ahead 6 months. Now the zinger plot point comes forth. The outbreak has spread, and for unknown reasons the Native Americans on the reserve are immune to it.

They make their land a fortress to keep threats out (including the white man), and they have to decide whether or not they should risk allowing those seeking refuge to come in.

It’s a refreshing, thought-provoking plot, but it’s barely established when they leave their community to scavenge for supplies, making a long stretch of this film feel like many of the other zombie films out there.

However, there are plenty of other aspects to the film, for it juggles exploration of family issues, moral dilemmas, some oddly Tarantino-esque flashbacks, and even animated moments.

The pacing was a little slow to me, and I felt the goal of addressing serious subjects concerning Native American life got lost in the zombie shuffle for a while before the ending brought back the humanity at the heart of the story.

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STREAM QUEEN: there are boys and bears, but are these horror comedies funny?

Posted on June 3, 2020 by Daniel

They all have some man meat and at least a couple of laughs, but three of these horror comedies dragged on with plodding dialogue, while the fourth one was nonstop action and humor. Let’s take a look.

CORPSE (2019)

Based on clips on the internet, I thought this black and white, 70-minute movie might be a campy queer film about a gathering of gays that gets drunk and wakes up to find a dead body on the floor.

Now that would have been a movie. Unfortunately, these guys gather after one of them breaks up with his girlfriend. Ugh! They’re straight. If they hadn’t referenced girls I would not really have known.

Sooooo…this is not a horror comedy. These guys sit around and talk about relationships for about half the film, then wake up, find a dead body on the floor…and talk about that for the second half of the film.

The guys are cute and some of their reactions are funny at times, but mostly nothing happens and there’s not enough humor. And while the music is reminiscent of sixties horror movie scores, It always seems to be poorly implemented both in timing and intensity.

SUBFERATU (2020)

If you’re going to make a horror comedy that is virtually all dialogue (which you shouldn’t), it has to be funny dialogue. Sitting through one lackluster script was bad enough, but Subferatu was like watching Corpse all over again.

A group of boaters not unlike the cast of Gilligan’s Island ends up on a Nazi ship from the past when their boat sinks, and eventually discovers there’s a vampire on board. Again—sounds like a plot ripe for comedy.

Instead, the two captains have a verbal standoff…and then everyone talks and talks and talks.

One guy discovers the vampire on the ship and is apparently bitten, because in between all the talking he pops up as a vamp for a split second (53 minutes into the movie) but is immediately taken down by the crew.

There’s another scene that’s visually thrilling of a guy being approached by the vampire, and eventually everyone stops talking long enough to splash holy water on a vampire.

That’s it. That’s all the vampire action you get in this one. The cast does what it can with the material to make us laugh, but the material doesn’t support them back.

PSYCHO-THERAPY (2020)

Only the final 20 minutes save this 70-minute movie from being another all talk, no action or laughs horror comedy.

I can’t imagine why the last twenty minutes wasn’t used as the plot for the entire movie. Hey, I get character development, but for 50 minutes we listen to a variety of patients speaking with their therapist: a wife beater, a throuple, a guy afraid of a clown, a lesbian and her sexually confused girlfriend, etc.

Finally, the therapist takes the patients on a group therapy retreat. Within minutes all hell breaks loose. Yay! And this crazy bitch totally steals the show.

She reminds me of funny actress Edie McClurg, who was in Elvira: Mistress of the Dark and played Nurse DeFarge on an episode of The Golden Girls.

There’s an absolute bloodbath as the patients start hacking each other to pieces. I really can’t imagine how the writer overlooked the potential of weaving their mental backstories into the group therapy sessions at the retreat house—which would have created interpersonal tensions to serve as a catalyst to a full-length slasher.

There are also some beefy boys, and yes, the clown does show up, but his minuscule appearance doesn’t support his use on the poster art.

GIRLS WITH BALLS (2018)

I’ve saved the best for last. If you’re looking for a bloody good backwoods time with plenty of humor, Girls With Balls is a the perfect choice, and it’s available on Netflix both in French and very well dubbed in English.

This campy girl power film isn’t, however, much of a “horror” film. A female volleyball team and its beary coach stop at a lodge for the night and immediately have a bad encounter with the skeevy dude running it.

They leave and park in their RV for the night, but when they wake up, the lodge dude and his group of masked rednecks is waiting to chase them down through the woods…using guns.

Yes, a majority of the gore revolves around people getting body parts shot off. The very funny interactions of the girls and the macabre humor rock, however, the girls do eventually have to resort to melee weapons to do damage.

The film is fast-paced, there’s a “Greek chorus” cowboy dude singing ditties about the action taking place, a hilarious scene in which “YMCA” ignites gay passion (landing this one on my does the gay guy die? page), and a slapstick dog vs. man fight that shouldn’t even bother the most sensitive dog lovers because it’s so goofy and over the top.

The film doesn’t even try to explain the motivations of the baddies, although they do appear to be some sort of religious cult, but it doesn’t even matter, because it’s more about the girls as they step up their game to kick ass…with the help of their beary coach, who totally rox.

To put these four films into perspective, this film is actually the longest of the bunch, yet it felt like it flew by.

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A foursome of Asian horror flicks

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Daniel

There’s a variety of monster insanity to be found in this quadruple feature of Asian horror films. So let’s get a little glimpse at what you can expect if you dare to check them out.

MONSTRUM (2018)

Monstrum was getting some hype on social, and I’m always looking for a good monster movie my horror-lite  hubba hubba can appreciate as well, so I gave this one a try.

He liked it better than I did.

Mostly because I didn’t like it.

It takes 35 minutes of talk for a group to organize a hunt for a giant monster that is supposedly infecting people in the kingdom. Even some slapstick comedy couldn’t keep me engaged.

The monster finally attacks 49 minutes in, and I’ve seen better cutscenes in a video game.

It’s just sad that this form of special effects is the norm these days and people think it’s cool. The monster looks absurd, tossed bodies look like cartoons, and as always, the programmers can’t manage to keep the size of the creature consistent. I guess on the bright side it looks cool when it’s not moving.

The battle with the beast at the end is definitely action-packed and entertaining. It would have to be since that’s really all this movie with a thin plot and basic characters is going for.

MON MON MON MONSTERS (2017)

Either this film is terribly mismarketed or I totally misread the marketing. I got the impression it was going to be one of those fun and campy Asian teen horror flicks.

Instead, it’s quite reminiscent of the repulsive concept of the film Deadgirl. After we’re introduced to a pair of cannibalistic humanoid underground girls (CHUGs?) we meet our main boy, who is terribly bullied by his shitty classmates while his teacher stands by and does nothing about it…until she forces him to spend time alone with them to learn how to get along.

After terrorizing the elderly, they see one of the girl humanoids get hit by a car, so they abduct her and then continuously torture her.

Sure the movie might be trying to show us that humans are the real monsters, but there is no redeeming value to any character here. It’s no fun when your moral compass is forced to choose between man-eating monsters and sadistic adolescents.

It’s unfortunate, because the CHUGs are terrifying. Yet…I sided with them in the end. It was just so satisfying when the free one comes to save the captured one and slaughters a school bus full of kids while she’s at it.

INHUMAN KISS (2019)

Asian horror film Inhuman Kiss will remind those who lived through the 1980s immediately of Mystics in Bali, because both films are about floating female heads.

However, most of the good head here is packed into the final act. This film runs a whopping 121 minutes (way too) long. Much of the movie is spent building a sort of love triangle along with the mythology of the Krasue, as these female heads are called.

A young woman who experienced something terrifying as a child is now working as a medic in a small town. She has a boyfriend and a close male friend who pines for her. Personally, I’d go for the pine scent…

Meanwhile, there is rumor of a Krasue running loose in the town and eating cattle. Hunters come to the town and offer to help hunt her down.

Because of what the main girl experienced as a child, she and her two male friends become drawn into the terror that is gripping the town, and both boys are determined to do anything they can to keep her safe. It really is a love story at…um…heart.

We see very little of the Krasue for most of the film, but the mythology gets even more complex at the end with insane mythological male monsters suddenly appear on the scene. They’re sort of flying demon creatures and they’re awesome, delivering some wild monster wars in the sky.

But be warned. This is a heartbreaking love story in the end, giving it more depth than your usual horror flick.

O.O MHz (2020)

Blend teen horror with Asian hair horror like The Ring and possession films like The Exorcist, and you have this time waster. To me it also brought to mind the Fatal Frame survival horror video games.

There’s absolutely nothing new here, but if you’re itching for some Asian horror and can’t get enough of ghost and/or possession films, you’ll probably enjoy it.

A ghost hunting group of kids called 0.0 MHz goes to an abandoned village where a girl was killed in a house…and then an exorcist was killed in the house.

Their plan is to do an experiment involving the interaction between dreams and ghosts, so they perform a ritual with dolls to channel the ghost. What they get is a ghost girl that drags them underground with her CGI hair. The hair effects are really cheesy.

The one refreshing twist is that when it’s time for an exorcism, which includes levitation, puking, and head spins (the usual), not only is one of the girls possessed, but so is the exorcist! Nice.

There are also some bad CGI ghouls, like a weird demon bird and a witchy floating face, but this film is mostly just a retread of classic Asian horror from two decades ago.

 

 

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SHUDDER & SHRIEK: four sleek and stylized slashers

Posted on May 27, 2020 by Daniel

From throwbacks to thought-provoking, this Shudder selection hit my watchlist just when I was really in need of a good slasher fix. So which ones did the trick?

PARTY HARD, DIE YOUNG (2020)

This German language film is available in an English dubbed version on Shudder if you don’t feel like reading.

The director of Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies brings us a slasher with a post-Scream era feel that’s loaded with horror lighting, pretty people, some man butt, and dance music (including a cover of the Gigi D’Agostino classic “I’ll Fly With You”). It’s also so derivative that even one of the kids references their dilemma as an I Know What You Did Last Summer situation.

A group of friends is away at a party island when a masked killer begins picking them off one by one. As the friends wonder where their missing friends are, the main girl keeps getting texted pics of the missing friends with an X through their faces.

There are a couple of suspenseful scenes and some brutal gore, but there aren’t actually many kills before the killer faces off against all the survivors, so this really doesn’t satisfy much as a slasher.

It’s not even much of a whodunit, even though it tries to throw numerous red herring into the mix. Plus, there are way too many details glossed over that demand way too much suspension of disbelief.

There is some gay stuff. Early on it’s derogatory “fag” slinging, but right before the end there’s a pointless coming out that isn’t even used as a plot device during the film, not even to shine suspicion on the character. Leave it up to the gay to make the slasher all about him at the last second. It does land this one on my does the gay guy die? page.

***WARNING SPOILERS*** There is also a non-explicit, double anal rape with a bottle.

RUIN ME (2017)

Ruin Me had me right up until the end. A couple joins a “slasher sleepout weekend” in the woods. A small group of people is dumped in the middle of nowhere after signing a waiver and then gets to experience living (or dying) in a backwoods slasher. The final guy or girl takes all.

The group includes a big geek, a goth couple, and a bearded cute guy. Of course everyone has issues, including the main girl, but they mostly work cooperatively at first. There are some tits, furry man chest, and some cheap masked killer scares. My kind of movie.

But then the main girl starts to believe they’re really being chased and killed off. Of course no one believes her…until it’s too late. Shit gets crazy for a while with some good slashing action, and even goes into Saw style, self-serving decision dilemmas.

I can’t say which movie, but as the film nears the end it did what I feared it was going to do—it uses the twist from an absolute classic 1980s slasher. And because any slasher fan will see it coming from a mile away, it tries to undo the twist, but that effort falls totally flat, making for a bland denouement. Even so, the fun part was super fun while it lasted, which was almost until the end…

THE FURIES (2019)

This movie is an example of why I usually like my slashers to be mindless, simplistic fun. They can be clever and have some twists (for instance here, where each girl is being chased by a different killer), but when they try too hard to be totally unique or more complex than the usual, I just get a headache.

The good—a bunch of girls is dumped in the woods to be chased by a load of freaky-assed killers, and the practical gore effects are bloody awesome. The entire movie dares to take place in full daylight with that washed out look where only very few colors—like blood red—stand out in contrast to the bright whites and dark blacks.

Also, the girls don’t fuck around as they go from working with each other to turning on each other—whatever it takes to kill their killers.

The plot is the nightmare. I don’t want to give too much away, but what is so annoying to me is how ridiculously capable the main girl is of figuring out exactly what is going on and how to take down the powers that put her and the other innocent women in this position to begin with. Hell, she figures it out better than I did, because I was left with plenty of questions when it was all over.

LAKE BODOM (2016)

Inspired by actual killings of teens in a tent in 1960, this one initially sounds like it’s going for a basic Friday the 13th plot. But there’s no masked killer, and it quickly becomes more complicated when it focuses on only 2 guys and 2 girls camping at the scene of the crime, with the boys determined to recreate how the original murders could have happened.

As we get the sense someone is watching them in the woods, we learn the main girl went through something traumatic, so she seriously has trust issues. She begins to think all three of her friends are up to no good.

And then the killing begins. With so few characters it’s hard to imagine how the movie is going to fill the time. So naturally, it has to go off the rails! Just when you think shit is going in a High Tension direction, it takes another completely exhausting turn. There are definitely a lot of detours in order for this film to avoid being a straightforward slasher…which it would be without all the turns since it circles right back to where it was originally heading! Does that make any sense?

While there’s excessive exposition, there’s not much in the way of gore, and not much in the way of scares or suspense, yet Lake Bodom is still atmospheric and entertaining. Not entertaining enough that I’d ever feel the need to watch it again, though.

Yes, I know. I have mixed emotions about this one.

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