Jack and Jill went up a hill with an urge to kill

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Daniel

I can’t resist watching all these low budget slasher franchises that keep coming out of the UK indie horror scene these days. The Jack and Jill movies even feature several of the same actors from the other franchises I’ve covered.

THE LEGEND OF JACK AND JILL (2021)

In the opening scene, young Jack and Jill literally go up a hill while running away from a man chasing them and their mother.

15 years later, a group of friends goes camping in the woods to mourn the death of their friend. There’s relationship drama as always in these friend group slashers, but the highlight here is that the cute main guy is gay and totally hot for the other, hunky guy in the group, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

There’s a bit too much sappy grieving dialogue, but generally the pacing is carried along by one friend after another going off into the woods and getting killed by Jack and Jill, who are now adults, feral, and looking kind of like zombies. However, this isn’t exactly a suspenseful slasher, and most of the death scenes are cutaway kills with little gore.

The survivors end up taking on Jack and Jill in their lair, with the promise of a sequel….

JACK AND JILL: THE HILLS OF HELL (2022)

This one opens with friends experiencing car trouble on the way to a concert. This establishing scene is more atmospheric and suspenseful than anything that happened in the first movie.

But alas, despite being from a different director, the rest of this film doesn’t feel much different than what we got in the first movie. Most noticeable is that a different actress plays Jill, and the horror makeup on both her and Jack is not good. It looks cheap. Also, there’s no hunk and no homo. Bummer.

We get a flashback to the first movie when the friends were discussing the legend of Jack, Jill, and their mother—details that play a crucial role by the end of this movie.

In this film, a search party goes camping in the woods to look for the missing daughter of one of the women. Soon, Jack and Jill are picking off more victims. Jill has a better grip on the English language, the kills are once again flat with no gore, and there are no chase scenes, which is disappointing after the strong opening scene.

In the end, the mother of the missing girl ends up in Jack and Jill’s lair and tries to reason with them. There’s an attempt here to build sympathy for Jack and Jill. It makes sense and is kind of sad, but it’s also a bit hokey.

JACK AND JILL 3 (2023)

Another new Jill, same Jack, different director again, but continuity remains pretty consistent.

This one starts out with clips of kills from the first two movies then moves into an odd lesbian sex scene between a teacher and her female student before Jack and Jill make their initial appearance.

It’s supposed to be 10 years later, and a live stream crew is looking to explore the legend, so they go to where the murders took place in the past.

Once again there’s some backstory as the cast of the show chats. There are some ego issues and more lesbian drama, but other than that, this one is slow until an hour in, at which point it starts to feel like an old school slasher, with a bunch of girls running and screaming through a house as the killers infiltrate, killing some and abducting others. Notable is that Jack finally finds his voice and does some talking.

Unfortunately, the whole Jack and Jill thing is getting repetitive, but I imagine that’s not going to stop them from making another sequel.

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Followers found me some found footage to watch

Posted on March 7, 2024 by Daniel

I recently posted on social media asking what everyone’s favorite found footage films are—I offered up Exists, Hell House LLC, Quarantine, The Pyramid, and The Monster Project as mine. Several responses consisted of titles I’d never heard of, so I hunted down the ones available on streaming, making for a 4 found footage flick marathon.

HORROR IN THE HIGH DESERT (2021)

As far as building an unsettling backstory goes, Horror in the High Desert does a fantastic job. However, depending on your appreciation of slow burns, you might lose patience with the mockumentary style of this one.

A majority of the film is presented in the form of interviews with friends, family, a reporter, and a detective trying to unravel the mystery behind an outdoorsman’s disappearance in Nevada. It all paints a picture of the character and his reasons for going into the wild.

We learn about his love of the outdoors, his popular vlog, and the online bullying he endured after his first trek out into the wild…which led him to go back out into the desert to prove to his viewers what he claimed to have seen the first time was real. There’s even a very specific detail in the interviews revealing that our main character was gay, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

The unfolding of events was intriguing enough to keep me interested, but the final 19 minutes, when we at last see footage of what the main guy experienced, could split the opinion of found footage lovers. The premise of the footage feels to me like it was inspired by the final scene of Quarantine, when the ghoul in the attic room of the apartment could hear but not see in the dark.

In the final footage of this film, our main guy goes back to a cabin he found during his first visit, and there he hears a super creepy voice talking and calling out. The camerawork is frustrating, dragging us into Blair Witch territory with him constantly pointing it at the ground. There are also too many cuts, and they are illogical. Every time he sees the ghoul that is sort of circling his position in the woods, he cuts the camera off! It naturally adds suspense because we expect a jump scare each time he turns it back on, but the night vision of the camera is supposedly the only thing allowing him to see the danger pursuing him, so turning it off makes no sense.

Quite honestly, the final freeze frame (indicative of found footage films) is not shocking or scary at all, and in the end it seems impossible that this decrepit thing that was chasing him would be capable of doing some of the things it supposedly did, such as moving his truck and planting his backpack in a different location. Even so, this one definitely delivered on the creep factor.

HORROR IN THE HIGH DESERT 2: MINERVA (2023)

Rather than focusing on the story of the first film—such as having a bunch of new vloggers show up to try to find out what happened to the guy from the first movie—the sequel focuses on a year later and suggests that the ghoul the first guy disturbed in the wilderness has now started to venture out into the desolate, desert town nearby.

To create a sense of the ghoul terrorizing the town, there are interviews with locals who experienced near encounters, including a couple that owns a farm and a man renting a house in an isolated area.

There are also two separate, main stories presented. First is the inexplicable disappearance of a college student from her locked trailer home. The other is the story of a young woman who disappeared after her car broke down on a desert road at night.

The two tales are creepy, but there are so many instances in which it doesn’t make sense that there would be a camera on hand to film. Most notable is what seems to be footage shot by the ghoul! It’s perhaps the creepiest footage in the whole movie, but it’s giving the ghoul even more human capabilities than it had in the first movie. It seems this sequel is really trying to expand on the mythos of this creep while delivering a body count, yet offers no explanations once again in order to leave us with the promise of a third installment.

Most surprising is the big encounter moment at the end. It focuses on a search party member who definitely gets into a Quarantine situation. He’s trapped in a mining building with the ghoul but doesn’t even notice it, because for some reason the camera he is carrying is picking up footage with night vision, yet he’s not seeing any of it.

He spends the whole scene groping around in the dark, never realizing the ghoul is lurking nearby. As spooky as the scene is, it’s shockingly anti-climactic considering the kind of money shot we expect at the end of found footage films.

THE CONSPIRACY (2012)

This is the kind of movie that reminds me of the most crucial thing you have to ask yourself before watching most found footage films….is it worth sitting through all the bullshit for over an hour just to get to some chills and thrills in the last fifteen minutes? Problem is you don’t know until you actually do it.

The Conspiracy is so not my thing. I have way too much anxiety about the state of the world right now to sit through an hour of having New World Order conspiracies laid out for me by two mock filmmakers doing a film on issues that are even more relevant now than they were when the film was made over a decade ago.

Our pair interviews a popular conspiracy theorist, who then disappears. So they begin digging deeper into the dude’s conspiracy about a secret organization of rich white men in hopes of finding out what became of him.

Would you believe the filmmakers eventually end up in the woods to witness some sort of cult ritual dealing with the indoctrination of young white men in masks?

The scariest part of this mostly non-horror found footage film is the idea of suddenly finding you really have dug yourself too far into a conspiracy better left alone. It’s chilling for a few moments at the very end while also being a very typical found footage horror sequence.

THE OUTWATERS (2022)

As a writer, my ultimate goal is to make my gay horror novels as comprehensible as possible (I think I mostly succeed), so it’s hard for me to sit through a movie—a 110-minute found footage movie no less—to find that someone decided to write and film an absolutely incoherent story.

Is it a metaphor for religion? Is it an acid trip film? Is it the tale of one man going mad and killing all his friends? Are there really hideous creatures? I have no idea.

So how is the plot presented? A bunch of memory cards are found with footage of a group of friends heading into the desert to camp (yep, another desert found footage film).

The first part of the film is like all these artsy, bohemian stoners just getting high on life. Lots of singing and posing for the camera. Then they go to the desert and do lots of exploring during the day. It’s all very sensory—almost like you’re listening to one of those white noise apps in order to relax and sleep easy.

At night in their tent they are haunted by what sounds like fireworks. Then everything goes dark, everyone runs and screams, and we’re left alone in the desert for 50 more minutes with the whimpering cameraman.

Footage jumps from day to night. There’s lots of blood. Night footage consists of a tiny circle of light in the center of the screen, usually capturing something red, so we have no idea what we’re witnessing. Each time the cameraman stumbles upon one of his friends in terrible shape, the footage just cuts to daytime again and he’s alone, no friends in sight.

He also witnesses flashing dots of light in the dark. He encounters squealing eels that come out of holes in rock formations. I got the impression he encountered a big, snorting creature at one point, but all we see is a red circle in the beam of his flashlight, so I can’t be sure what it was. He is targeted by a friend with an axe. And each time…the footage just cuts to him alone again. And he can’t seem to remember who he is. He just hides at night, runs around the desert during the day, and even films upside down at times.

Perhaps it’s a last ditch effort by the creators to make it all make sense, but he finds a “restricted area” sign that explains nothing while letting us know he should never have come there.


It’s exactly what you think it is…

The final gory, brutal, and disturbing moments would have packed so much more of a punch if we hadn’t grown so numb to the spastic stimulation we sat through for nearly 2 hours before it.

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SHUDDER AND SHRIEK: there’s something supernatural in the air

Posted on March 4, 2024 by Daniel

Demons, possession, ghost girls—this trio of flicks from my Shudder watchlist definitely deliver on the ghoulish tormentors, but are they worth a watch beyond the horror eye candy?

ELEVATOR GAME (2023)

If you’re looking for yet another film in the revival of ghost girl type of moves from the early 2000s, look no further than Elevator Game.

But be warned. This one is sloooooooow until the satisfying popcorn movie kills finally kick in at about the 45-minute mark.

So there’s an online challenge in which you ride an elevator to different floors in a certain order to release “the 5th floor woman”.

A group of recent high school graduates have a video channel on which they debunk urban legends. Thus begins the first forty-five boring minutes.

When they finally do the challenge, nothing happens until they all split up. This unleashes the elevator ghost, whose first kill takes place…in a stairwell.

There are really some fun and bloody kills, but they are all this movie has going for it and provide the only brief hints of suspense. Characters are flat, story is flat. The back story of the ghost is okay, though, and was giving me Fatal Frame video game vibes.

The silliest part of the film is when the ghost girl suddenly decides to chomp on a victim’s neck like a zombie.

SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET (2024)

I won’t even spend much time on this one. Somehow Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. star, and we get Sally Kirkland and Udo Kier as different psychic mediums, but the movie looks cheap and is mostly incoherent.

Howard’s wife starts getting scary vibes around her young daughter, leading to a movie plagued by choppy flashing edits of sinister visions. The girl has cancer. Howard loses his job. His buddy Cuba gets out of jail.

The wife has nightmares of a killer scarecrow and of some other creepy demon (the two highlights of the movie and what I guess are the “skeltons” in the mom’s closet). The wife consults a priest. She then consults Kirkland.

There are sightings of a ghost girl in white. The family eventually consults Udo Kier.

He is sinister and drags them into dark magic. It ends up as a ritual involving burying a book. The killer scarecrow appears in real life and chases them around. I understood none of it.

BLOOD FLOWER (2023)

 

This Malaysian film will be a satisfying ride for those who love flicks with contorting possessed girls, gory ghost movies, and demonic entity films.

It even has a main character with a personal internal struggle going on, as well as a non-gender conforming best friend character.

Our main teen boy is the member of a family of exorcists who is afraid to tap into his own supernatural powers, which could help with the exorcisms. His timidity in using those powers leads to tragedy, causing guilt that follows him as there’s a possession outbreak in his apartment building.

The movie is a bit all over the place, so the main kid and his friends accidentally open a portal that unleashes a cool demon when they unlock a door they weren’t supposed to touch in a greenhouse with weird exotic plants. Yeah, there’s a lot going on here.

The boy also has the power to see dead people so that adds a little more chaos. We have ghosts, the demon, and the people in his apartment building getting possessed. It’s a lot to juggle, but it definitely delivers plenty of blood, gore, and freaky visuals. I had fun with this one—but beware the baby eating scene and other fetal abuses.

And finally, I’ll just add that the father’s friend is hot…

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Queer guys, killer sharks, crazed killers, and a cabin in the woods

Posted on February 27, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of films that feature queer characters and queer storylines, landing them on the homo horror movies page and the does the gay guy die? page.

NO WAY UP (2024)

This is the kind of shark movie I needed after some seriously bad ones I scrounged up to watch with the hubby last summer. Sure the concept demands suspension of disbelief, but it definitely establishes a tense scenario and had me twitching like I was watching 47 Meters Down all over again.

After we first get character-establishing scenes in an airport.

The main girl, her boyfriend, and his douche bag friend board a plane, where the douche bag immediately starts making offensive comments to a gay flight attendant.

And then the plane crashes. Eek! Don’t watch this one if you’re planning to fly any time soon.

From that point on, the claustrophobia sets in. The plane sinks and lands at an angle on the bottom of the ocean, leaving just a pocket of air at the tail end for the survivors to live in for a while—including the gay guy. Yay!

Pretty quickly, hungry sharks show up. It’s the kind of formula we love. They float by the windows, they get in the plane, they demand an aisle eat.

Naturally, we start to care about (most of) the characters as they try to figure a way out of the predicament. Chances are you’ll guess exactly who is going to die and who will make it to the surface, but it’s just so suspenseful and fun the clichés don’t even matter.

BONDED (2023)

The good news is that we get a Black, gay horror flick, which is a rarity. The bad news is that the script is drastically underdeveloped and goes absolutely nowhere. It’s a rare case when instead of cheering that a movie runs only 70 minutes long, I wish it were 90 minutes long to expand on the story.

It begins 20 years ago. We see a woman give birth to a child with two heads. Awesome.

In the present day, a group of friends is going to a cabin in the woods. One is a young surgeon, and his husband is a detective. His boss is his mentor.

There are two early kills—the boss and his wife. Why? Are we to assume maybe he was the doctor from the delivery 20 years ago? Even if that’s true, why would it be his fault if a woman had a deformed child? We never even learn why she had a deformed child.

Next, the friends get to the cabin (like 30 minutes into the movie). There’s some relationship drama, none of which is ever resolved, making its presentation pointless. There’s a hot tube scene, a dance montage, and a sex scene, all tame but sexy.

At a diner, a waitress—the pregnant woman from the beginning—freaks out when she sees the young surgeon. Why? We’ll never know. He was too young to be a doctor 20 years ago. Does she somehow know he has a link to his dead boss, and that the dead boss is indeed the one who delivered her deformed child? No idea. Is she just terrified of all surgeons now?

There’s even a minor “reality show” element included for no discernible reason at all. It adds nothing to the plot or the unfolding of events.

48 minutes in, two of the guys are attacked while screwing in the woods. They run back to the cabin, and a dude with a scar on his face breaks in and attacks them all as we are subjected to a strobe effect. Safe to assume he’s the baby born at the beginning and had one of his heads removed.

It’s also clear he’s the son of the waitress, but the dynamics of their relationship aren’t defined. Was she protecting him from the world? Was she keeping him hidden? Did he resent her for having him and then removing one of his heads? Did losing one head turn him insane? What is the significance of both mother and son being fixated on the main surgeon character? And why don’t we at least get a scene with the removed head in a jar to make this more of a horror movie?

DEATH LINK (2021)

This silly slasher is trying to make a big statement about the harm of social media and how vapid influencers really are—while failing to address the fact that the general public is at fault for making them famous.

If you lived through all the bad slasher knock-offs that were spawned in the late 90s post-Scream era, you should feel right at home with Death Link.

It’s a surprisingly slow movie with uninspired death scenes (there’s even CGI blood), but there are queer and race angles that unfold as the movie progresses.

And that doesn’t even include the one lesbian character who is gone practically as soon as she’s introduced. A shame, because she was quickly turning out to be the only likable character in the cast. We’re talking about a group of kids that includes ego-driven comedian Matt Rife, who seriously strikes me as being very queer. Like remember that period when we were calling pretty straight boys “metrosexual”? Well, people still would have assumed he was totally homo.

The killer wears a black hooded robe and a skeleton mask, but it is never used to full effect to create a killer presence or any classic slasher atmosphere. There are a few twists concerning the killer, there’s a cheesy Saw “care to play a game” moment with hokey, evil laughing, and one of the final scenes is just odd in its effort to set us up for a sequel.

The director of the film shows off his hot bod playing a minor role as a “daddy”, and if you ask me, this film could have been gayer, sexier, and more compelling if he’d walked around shirtless more while having an affair with Matt Rife’s character.

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SHUDDER AND SHRIEK: girls on the edge

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Daniel

My latest triple feature focuses on girls with traumatic pasts and troubled presents. Let’s see if any of them were worth a watch.

THE COMMUNION GIRL (2022)

I think as we get older we just reach a point when every horror movie is a “been there done that” situation. This Spanish film from the director of The Damned and Hellraiser: Revelations had me saying “why would they just steal blatantly from The Ring/Ringu and call it a new movie?” Well, maybe because Ringu came out like 25 years ago and many younger horror lovers probably don’t even know it exists.

Not to say that this isn’t fun. It’s definitely a templated throwback to all those PG-13 ghost girl movies of the early 2000s, so if you loved that era, The Communion Girl totally delivers on the retro comfort.

The film takes place in the 80s, but the only real sign of it being the 80s is a Bubble Bobble arcade game. Two teenage girls go out to party at a club, and on the way home they and the two guys that give them a ride see a girl in a white dress cross their path. When they get out to look for her, they find a hung dog (don’t know why this needed to be in the movie) and a doll.

The main girl brings the doll home, and soon she and her friends are being terrorized by a ghost girl corpse in white.

To keep the pace going, there are some cheap scary scenes (which I find to be a treat in a horror movie) as the friends do what they always do in these movies…start gathering clues to what has triggered this ghost to come for them.

Would you believe it all leads to a well? The final confrontation is straight out of The Ring. And would you believe it isn’t over after they do what needs to be done with the ghost girl in the well? That’s where this one really falls apart. The final scene is not one last return of the ghost girl. Instead, it’s the sudden appearance of a CGI ghoul that looks like something out of the Lord of the Rings movies, without any explanation as to what it is or why it shows up at the last moment. Sigh.

PERPETRATOR (2023)

Yet another reminder of why I should cancel Shudder. If it’s not an endless selection of trauma porn, it’s movies that are hardly horror.

I like a good feminist flick just as much as the next gay, but this one is loaded with menstrual and fingering imagery that overshadows the story of young women finding power to fight back against the threat of a male abductor. Which is a shame, because it starts with a girl being stalked on a nighttime street by mask eyehole POV. That left me wanting so much more. Unfortunately, there’s no more of that horror goodness to be had…

Instead we get a tale I didn’t understand. A teen comes to live with her mysterious aunt, played by Alicia Silverstone, and goes to a new all-girls school with a bizarre staff. Girls begin to go missing.

The main girl starts to show signs of having some sort of magic powers. She can see and feel what girls that have been kidnapped are going through. She hooks up with another girl. And eventually she and her friends try to figure out who is abducting their classmates.

Other than a scene of what happens to the girls in the kidnapper’s lair and a vengeful gore moment, this is just bland and boring.

THE PUPPETMAN (2023)

The horror genre is just dismal these days. Here is yet another derivative film that’s been done better before and offers absolutely no chills or thrills.

A young woman’s father is on death row for killing her mother. He claims “the puppetman” made him do it and he’s innocent.

Once the main girl’s friends learn about her family’s past, they begin dying off by killing themselves, but it’s clear someone is controlling their actions and making them do it.

The friends must work together to try to figure out what’s going on. The main girl thinks her own anger is causing their deaths. The friends think death row daddy is the problem.

Michael Pare of Eddie & The Cruisers fame is a detective on the case.

The final frame “twist” is as predictable as it gets.

That’s all I got.

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SHUDDER AND SHRIEK: something queer is going on

Posted on February 20, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of films that veer away from the usual cis straight path. Let’s get right into them.

BAD THINGS (2023)

If you’re triggered by movies that make lesbians and trans women out to be a bunch of mentally unstable messes who do “bad things”, this might not be the movie for you…if any of what is happening is even real. I’ll give the movie this—it keeps you wondering and sets some sort of a tone. Nothing is concrete here, and by the end we don’t know if there are ghosts, if there’s a killer, if it’s all in the mind of the main girl, if it’s PTSD due to her mother neglecting her as a child, or if it’s all of the above.

A lesbian tramp brings her friends—all of whom she has basically fucked at one point or another—to an empty hotel she’s about to either inherit or sell. It’s just them and some dude who used to bang her mother (played by a mostly MIA Molly Ringwald, who shows up at the end…or does she?).

There are elements of The Shining here…if it took place in the kind of cheap hotel the hubby and I used to visit for 3 hours at a time when we had no place else to screw in our 20s. For instance, there’s snow outside, there are long, empty corridors, and one of the girls keeps seeing two women jogging in place and staring at her. Guess those twins from The Shining grew up and got physical.

There’s plenty of lesbian melodrama, lots of talk of ghosts, hallways with pink walls and baby blue floors (allusions to gender norms perhaps?), and what look like huge puddles of cum on the floors (more memories of my days in cheap hotels).

Suddenly, 55 minutes in, a killer in a hoodie and mask wielding a chainsaw appears.

Bad Things will keep you entertained, and it is refreshing to have an all queer cast of characters, but it won’t satisfy you if you’re hoping for a cohesive story.

SUITABLE FLESH (2023)

I love how this film captures the sexy sleazy vibe of 1980s Lovecraft adaptations like Re-Animator and From Beyond, which makes sense since it’s written by the same screenwriter of both of those films, which both starred Barbara Crampton, who is also in this film.

Crampton plays a doctor whose psychiatrist friend Heather Graham is now a patient in her institution. Heather begins to recount what led to her landing in the psych ward.

A young, paranoid man comes to Heather with a problem—it seems his dying father, played by Bruce Davison, is using magic to swap bodies with his son so that he can remain alive.

Heather gets sucked into the son’s story, and soon they’re having a sexual relationship…which is hard to fathom considering her husband Johnathon Schaech is waiting at home. Yummy.

Heather eventually discovers the sexual interludes allow the father to get inside her (in more ways than one). This leads to classic, trippy 80s Lovecraft adaptation situations.

It also becomes a very gender-bending scenario, with the father totally getting off on having a woman’s body and riding Schaech. And the exploration of sexuality and gender identity plays out right up to the end, when Crampton and Graham get into it. Awesome.

The performances of the actresses are the icing on the cake in this old school occult tale that delivers on the sex and gore as if it’s 1985 all over again.

BAD GIRL BOOGEY (2022)

Although it could be labeled as an all-encompassing queer horror, this one deserves credit for essentially being a trans horror flick. There are a lot of theys and thems being thrown around, but little in the way of he/she or gay/lesbian.

These kids even show the killer’s pronouns respect, correcting themselves whenever they refer to the killer as a he (although they do settle on calling the killer “it” rather than they). That being said, you have to wonder why such a they-positive flick would specifically call itself Bad GIRL Boogey.

On the surface, this is a slasher in which a killer targets queer kids. Intentional or not, it borrows from the classic Demons—anyone who puts on a possessed mask goes on a killing spree. However, if you look deeper, this isn’t just another masked boogeyman movie. It’s a story about how queer kids are treated—they are misunderstood, they are bullied, the adults around them ignore what they are going through when not rejecting them, and most tragically, they are being murdered by hate.

It is the queer concept—which might make straight and cis viewers groan and cry “woke”—that elevates the typical slasher aspects, which aren’t half bad on their own. The film is quirky and has a distinct visual style, with lots of choppy editing and neon lighting set to alternative music, making it feel like an artsy music video at times. Plus there are some good practical gore effects.

Also of note is that it is very clearly stated that the events are taking place on Halloween, yet there’s little in the way of Halloween atmosphere. You’d think a bunch of queer kids would make Halloween something extra special. Either way, it earns a spot on the complete holiday horror page.

And finally, although some might find the low budget indie vibe not to their liking in these days of sleek CGI horror flicks, I think this will be a pretty cathartic film for some queer kids.

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Holiday horror, from Halloween to St. Paddy’s Day

Posted on February 16, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a load of new movies to add to the holiday horror page, including Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and St. Patrick’s Day flicks. Let’s get right into them.

PROJECT EERIE (2023)

Only the wraparound of this 75-minute movie takes place on Halloween, and it’s just some kids stealing pumpkins from neighborhood houses…until they sneak into an abandoned building and find secret government documents and a Blu-ray. So much more modern than V/H/S.

So the boys take the disc home to watch it. Despite the three tales not taking place on Halloween, they all definitely deliver enough chills and thrills to make a Halloween night movie marathon scary. Exemplary found footage shorts, they do just what they need to do—put people with cameras in terrifying, inexplicable situations.

The only downside for me was the fact that the audio mixing is absolutely terrible. Only some of the dialogue comes through at full volume. I had to watch the movie with subtitles to know what was going on.

Here are the tales you can expect:

1st story – A man takes his young daughter to a park in an RV for a camping trip, ignores a “beach off limits” sign, and ends up being terrorized by a creepy park ranger. Eek! The very found footage ending is nightmarish.

2nd story – This one goes crazy in a good way. Two hunters see a suspected murderer wandering through the forest on their deer cams. Hillbilly pervs! Anyway, this one turns into a freaky flick that might be an alien/zombie hybrid story, but we’ll never know what truth is out there…

3rd story – The anthology ends strong with a haunted house tale. Two dudes with a paranormal show go to research a haunting at an Amish dude’s house, and things get terrifying.

The odd thing is that in between each story there’s brief footage from a camera on a porch, and the final one is a scene of someone hidden by an umbrella coming to the door with a knife. No idea what it’s supposed to mean.

The wraparound conclusion is also a little disappointing. The boys with the Blu-ray are terrified by “Men in Black”…with COVID masks on.

DIE’CED (2023)

I have to give this short film (only 50 minutes long minus the closing credits) props for capturing the spirit of 80s slashers and delivering on the Halloween atmosphere, beginning with an opening sequence of jack-o’-lanterns as an 80s synth score plays.

There’s nothing unique here, but the fact that the slasher tone is spot on helps make it an enjoyable and quick slasher fix for the Halloween season.

A deranged killer is accidentally released from a mental institution, immediately sneaks into someone’s house and kills him violently, and then dresses up like a scarecrow—actually, very much like The Wizard of Oz scarecrow.

We meet a teen brother and sister and their father, still reeling from the disappearance of the mother. But that doesn’t stop the main girl from going to a Halloween party.

There are several gory kills along the way, all leading up to the main girl getting a chase scene with the killer at the end, which actually drags a bit. The movie had an opportunity to deliver a high body count at the party, but it doesn’t.

The big twist isn’t much of a twist considering numerous movies with a similar theme came before this one. It’s so obvious you can’t help wonder why a filmmaker would bother going for something so cliché instead of coming up with something new.

THANKSGIVING (2023)

I haven’t enjoyed a mainstream, old school slasher as much as Thanksgiving in a long time. A departure from the late 70s/early 80s tone of the faux trailer that was inserted between Death Proof and Planet Terror in theaters years ago, the full-length feature instead goes mostly for the sleek, stylish feel of post-Scream slashers of the late 90s/early 2000s. However, it effortlessly pays homage to slashers from both eras.

Serving as a commentary on the negative impact capitalism has had on the American family and human behavior in recent years, the film begins with an unintended massacre at a department store when it kicks off Black Friday on Thanksgiving night. This unforgettable opener features gore, violence, and dark humor galore. And my guess would be that this scene is intended to serve as a mirror to the January 6th insurrection.

A year later, the small town is still reeling from the incident, but Thanksgiving must go on. However, a group of friends that snuck into the department store the previous year is soon not so cordially invited to attend a holiday gathering hosted by a killer in a pilgrim costume.

Jam-packed with brutal and bloody kills that are perfect for a watch party with friends, this thrilling holiday slasher is fast-paced, structured as a whodunit in the style of Scream, and is loaded with nods to classics like Halloween (opening POV scene), Prom Night (Wendy’s chase scene), Happy Birthday to Me (dinner party of death), I Know What You Did Last Summer (killer hunt during parade), and Cutting Class (trampoline kill scene).

Plus, the small town slasher vibe centered around a major holiday event is reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine, and the mere presence of Patrick Dempsey as the sheriff brings memories of Scream 3 flooding back.

Eli Roth may have taken the movie version of his faux trailer in a slightly different direction, but he definitely made an instant classic that is sure to be an annual holiday watch for years to come. I just wish the original faux trailer had been included as an extra on the Blu-ray.

GUESS WHO (2024)

A cool and unique Christmas slasher concept gets slammed over the head by a racial/socioeconomic commentary that might bog the final act down a bit, but is definitely a refreshing take on the themes.

A Black straight couple is headed to the man’s mixed race family home…in a trailer park. This sign is scarier than the Silent Hill welcome sign could ever be.

In a frightening suspense scene, the woman is attacked by someone in a sack mask during a restroom pit stop. Things are just as weird when they arrive at the mostly white trash trailer park. Everyone participates in this Christmas game called mummering, in which people in masks visit a neighbor and tell them a riddle, after which the neighbor has to guess who the riddler is.

And that awesome game is used as the victim selection tool of the killer, who gets a few pretty intense death scenes.

The thick of the horror centers around a big Christmas masquerade party, so it feels more like Halloween than Christmas. And as great as the slasher elements are, the film takes itself very seriously, with lots of character development and tension between family members.

It all results in a very complicated denouement that briefly feels like it’s delving into (trailer) home invasion territory then pretty much squelches the slasher fun in order to deliver its social message.

PATRICK’S DAY: THE SLUAGH AWAKENS (2022)

 

I’m a fan of indie horror director Eddie Lengyel’s movies, and I’m always happy to have another St. Patrick’s Day horror movie to add to the limited selection of flicks out there, so I was psyched to see this one hit VOD. It even stars scream queer Roger Conners—I’ve covered pretty much all his films on my site, but I think this might be his best, most relaxed and natural performance yet, which is funny, because he’s playing a straight male lead this time!

Roger and his wife come to a small town to celebrate a windfall. An Irish bartender warns them to go back to the city and talks about encountering a creature on the trails. Wouldn’t you know, Roger and wife soon encounter that very creature, which is a classic looking demon thing. It’s also a deadly killer, so the luck of the Irish totally fails Roger’s wife.

Legend has it the creature only appears every seven years, which is when Roger returns to the town to find that creature and get his revenge.

The Irish bartender happens to be the uncle of a couple of teenage girls, who are planning a night of St. Paddy’s partying and Leprechaun hunting with their friends.

They get much more than they expected when they encounter a whole horde of demonic creatures in the woods. However, the pacing is somewhat off, with not much happening for a good chunk of the film.

The St. Paddy’s demons don’t show up until about 50 minutes in. The horror action is fun once it hits and was a great reminder of why I like Lenyel’s films—they have that gritty, low budget indie feel of the late 70s/early 80s. It sort of like a mix between Evil Dead creatures and a zombie flick as a variety of demons come creeping out of the woods. They are, however, a mixed bag. Some have cool, monstrous costume designs, while others just look like plain old goth people wearing cheap makeup for Halloween (or all year long).

The finale delivers something a little different, with a sort of demonic ritual around a campfire. I can’t say I totally understood the plot—I’m not even sure why the legend of one creature turned into a gaggle of ghouls—but like I said, I just love the indie vibe Lenyel delivers.

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A possessed kid, a shark, and a horror hunk walk into my watchlists

Posted on February 14, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a mish-mosh of movies in my latest marathon, but one is a definite winner for me. Let’s find out which one.

OF THE DEVIL (2022)

I have to give this low budget possession flick credit for having a few standout moments that could have enhanced a better film, but overall it’s a rather messy, disjointed story plagued by endless moments of a couple reacting unrealistically to the situation their young son is in.

Let’s start off by noting that the hot husband is reason enough to watch the film. His performance is also one of the better ones here.

So the son is out playing in the yard with the neighbor’s dog when a CGI butterfly flutters by and apparently possesses him. The couple soon thinks they’re dealing with a son with a brain tumor, but instead of going the traditional route to treat it, they end up taking him to a witch doctor in Mexico.

We kind of end up with a Pet Sematary possession film. The son dies and then appears back in their yard playing with the neighbor’s dog, and the couple just goes on with life. Of course it soon becomes clear something is very wrong, and eerie occurrences begin plaguing the couple, their son, and the husband’s invalid mother. The son also seems to be having Sixth Sense episodes in which he sees spooky dead people roaming around the house (one of the highlights of the horror).

The unrealistic reactions to everything happening is the biggest problem here, and along with that, the narrative simply doesn’t have a clear path to travel on its way to a final, low key exorcism scene.

Having said that, there are several highlights—a zombie-like Jesus appearing in a hall (I would have taken him as the main threat over the other dead people), the son’s response when his mother tells him to go change his clothes, a creature appearing behind the invalid mother’s caretaker, and the last minute appearance of the Devil at the exorcism.

Oh, and there’s one unexpected surprise…a brief cameo by Vicky of The Real Housewives of Orange County.

Plus, Eileen Dietz, whose claim to fame was playing the stand-in for Linda Blair in The Exorcist, plays the neighbor, and not coincidentally, a statue of Pazuzu makes an appearance.

DEEP FEAR (2023)

A new shark movie popped up on Netflix and I was all excited…especially since I expected absolutely nothing from it but some cheap thrills.

A professional diver is out on a boat alone and about to get involved in a dangerous situation all on her own. And yet the film soon frames her existence in terms of her relationship to men—her love interest, her father.

Anyway, she saves a couple stranded in the water because their boat sunk. They say a family member is still trapped down there, so she offers to go save him.

Several jump scares are delivered thanks to other people who were on the boat and are now dead. There’s also a brief shark attack and chase.

Things take a sudden turn when the main woman finds herself at the mercy of criminals that want her to dive down and rescue bags of cocaine. Bags of cocaine that glitter bomb the shark, which had me expecting a Cocaine Shark movie.

I don’t know if the shark got high from the stuff, but it’s pretty low energy until the last 10 minutes of the film, when it leaps out of the water for a delicious attack scene. That is literally the highlight of the movie. Oh. And wouldn’t you know the main woman’s love interest has to show up to help save her.

HERE FOR BLOOD (2022)

Probably best known for playing Wesker in the Resident Evil franchise, horror hunk Shawn Roberts has been doing horror flicks for 3 decades now, but he’s never been beefier than in this horror comedy.

It’s great to see him as the kick ass hero in a lighter role that plays to his charisma. It’s also great to see him shirtless.

In fact, this one is filled with beefcake in leather and shirtless, reminding us there’s a fine line between a wrestling ring and a gay bar. It definitely earns a spot on the stud stalking page.

See, Shawn plays a pro-wrestler who isn’t making any money, so he takes a babysitting job at an isolated house. The little girl he’s caring for is perfectly cast, and their charming chemistry sets the tone for the night they have ahead of them.

The film starts as a home invasion flick when several masked figures infiltrate the house. One is a hunk who looks like a cross between KISS and The Crow, and another looks quite freaky wearing a mask upside down.

This quickly turns into a quirky, comical splatterfest as Shawn puts his wrestling moves to good use taking down home invaders.

And then…we go into Evil Dead territory with a dash of The Little Shop of Horrors thrown in for good measure.

Not to mention…a beefcake final boss…

Here for Blood is a blast, ideal for a movie watching party, and better fricking come out on disc so I can add it to my movie collection.

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Drama and romance in this trio of slashers

Posted on February 12, 2024 by Daniel

It’s one from 1990 and two modern slashers, all of which deliver some slasher fun and plenty of theatrics, while falling short in the end.

BLOODMOON (1990)

With this one hitting Blu-ray, I was so psyched to once again get a physical release of a flick I had never seen from the end of the glory days of slashers. Unfortunately, the slasher elements of this 100-minute movie are overshadowed by the tacky love story of the main couple.

There’s a girls school and a boys school, and in between them is a plot of forest where students hook up. It’s like…a straight Meat Rack!

The slasher aspect of the film is awesome—someone uses barbed wire (which was giving me Crown of Thorns religious vibes) to strangle horny kids to death. The kills are always at night in misty woods, and the victims are always kids having sex. Boobs abound, there’s female bush in a locker, and we even get a man butt moment.

The heavy-handed motivation is clearly about the moral issue of sex—just like in real life today, the adults in this movie are disturbingly obsessed with what teens are doing with their bodies.

There are also plenty of red herring. Anyone could be the killer, including school staff, students, parents, and even a nun! Notable is a chilling voice calling the name of the first victim as she’s chased in the woods. This could have been the unique angle of this slasher, but it never happens again.

Unfortunately, the film drags, with the hokey romance between the leads killing the tone in between death scenes. There is, however, a mandatory school dance scene with a glam band playing pop rock that sounds more like it’s from 1985 than 1990. Awesome.

Finally at the 65-minute mark there’s a great fight and chase scene with the killer…who does not wear a mask. Therefore, the killer identity is known to us for the final 35 minutes! Yet despite that, all the action is packed into the final act and relieves us of the boredom we were feeling for the first 65 minutes.

THE FINALE (2023)

As is often the case, the weakness in this slasher is its running length…112 minutes long. Argh! If it had been shaved down to about 90 minutes, the numerous highlights would have made this one a total winner.

The story revolves around a theater group participating in a theater camp. And where there are drama geeks, there’s loads of drama…and several queens. In fact, I was convinced the love interest of the main girl was gay until he became her love interest.

The phenomenal killer costume alone had me invested, not to mention the great chase and death scenes.

The film is even pretentious at times, with classical music, singing segments, dancing segments—but damn if it isn’t all lovely and artistic. There’s just something haunting about a theater setting for a horror movie.

The gory and violent kills are very reminiscent of giallo style, and adding to that feel is the presence of two detectives investigating as the theater geeks begin disappearing. The detective duo even adds a little humor to the mix, but their side story is one of the main reasons the pacing slows down.

The final act definitely delivers some great chaos, so the movie ends on a high note for sure, but I did find the Scream-esque motivation monologue a bit much. I was way more enthralled by the death scenes and atmosphere than I was with the plot.

DEPARTING SENIORS (2024)

This one is getting added to the homo horror movies page, because the whole plot centers around an openly gay, bullied teenager who scores a kiss from not one, but two guys by the time the film is done.

And despite being bullied, he’s not a helpless victim, making him perhaps one of my favorite gay horror movie characters yet.

In fact, most of the characters are likable, the teen horror vibe is on point, and there’s some good humor, but the film is lacking in a body count. If you don’t count the opening death scene, there are only two kills in the whole movie! This is because there are very few characters. Essentially we have our gay main kid, his best female friend, another gay guy who is interested in the main kid, and three bullies–a bitchy girl, her football player boyfriend, and his best friend.

The basic premise is that the main kid gets into an accident that leads to him gaining a psychic ability—when he touches people or their possessions, he can see their murders. Ironic considering he sees way more visions than there are actual kills. And that’s where the film loses steam. It’s so focused on his visions that the kills are virtually an afterthought. Not to mention we get to see them before they happen, so there are no surprises or scares when they actually happen.

The film gets a major high score for its gay content, but as a slasher it’s a huge letdown. There’s even a missed opportunity for a great chase scene and one more kill during the climax that would have left the last deserving character dead and given us one final jolt of thrills. It’s quite a weird missed opportunity, because the series of events unfold as if they are intended specifically for the chase scene to happen.

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Some humorous vampire flicks to sink your teeth into

Posted on February 1, 2024 by Daniel

It feels like ages since I watched any vampire films, so this trio was a treat. They were all pretty lighthearted and enjoyable for the most part, so let’s get into them.

A VAMPIRE IN THE FAMILY (2023)

Harkening back to all the My (Human Relation) is a (Monster) movies from the 80s, this dubbed Brazilian horror comedy has the distinction of featuring a bearish daddy as the family member that begins to suspect his relative is a vampire.

Due to the dubbing, the dialogue delivery feels a little hokey, but it still works based on the type of movie this is. And there are moments that made me laugh out loud.

The main man invites his brother-in-law into his house, and pretty soon he begins to see classic signs that his in-law is cursed with vampirism. He then has to convince his family that they need to go vampire hunting.

The guy playing the vampire is a hottie and gets a tight bathing suit scene, and he’s not the only vampire, so vamp clan action ramps up as the movie progresses. And best of all, the final battle comes during a Halloween party, complete with a little dance montage.

The vampire makeup is cool and perhaps a little scary for kids, but the movie definitely has a PG-13 vibe in general, with no nudity and not much in the way of cursing. And it wouldn’t be this type of movie without an animated sequence during the credits.

Count Dracula himself makes an appearance, and he has some awesome henchman modeled after the original Nosferatu/Salem’s Lot vampire design. Plus the final act totally rocks, with a cool final boss. Plus, there’s an opening for a sequel , and I’m totally there for it.

THE VAMPIRE NEXT DOOR (2024)

This light vampire teen dramedy is like Fright Night meets Let The Right One In. I was so pumped when it began—our geeky leading man is cute and likable, the hot girl he’s loved all through school is likable, and the seductive vampiress that moves in next door gives off a Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body vibe.

The vampire was the last thing our main guy needed. He’s still harassed by his high school bully, his dad is pressuring him to do something with his life, he hates his job, and he’s trying to hatch a plan to win the girl he loves by using his best friend for a mind game.

But once the vampire makes her presence known to him, it isn’t long before she makes him her driver, chauffeuring him around so she can claim victims on her hit list.

If only the film was shorter. It runs 110 minutes long, and while the frequent conversations help us connect with the characters, the sexy teen horror comedy feel is never fully realized.

There are just minor moments of vamp action and sexy action, so the film falls a bit flat, offering only hints of the kinds of 80s teen movies it’s emulating. Even the inevitable final battle is very low energy. Bummer.

VAMPIRE CLEANUP DEPARTMENT (2017)

It’s always fascinating how a certain subgenre of Asian horror can be gory with gnarly monsters yet also romantic and cutesy, which is exactly what Vampire Cleanup Department is. It kind of reminded me a little of Cemetery Man if it was a morbid teen romance rather than a sleazy, macabre, adult sex romp.

A young man gets bit by a vampire but is not affected, which makes his uncle realize he’d be perfect for a secret, family-run vampire hunting service.

On his first hunt, the young man has a freaky encounter in a lake. I don’t know exactly why the corpse in the water returns to its normal, cute young girl form—was it the cellphone she accidentally eats or a lip-lock with the main boy? Either way, she becomes mostly human again, just without the ability to speak.

So begins a slow bonding between the young man and the revived corpse, complete with whimsical music and humor. Does it get a little too sappy after a while? Yes.

However, hanging like a dark cloud over the romanticizing is the coming of an intense boss vampire that terrorizes the town and eventually does battle with the vampire cleanup team.

I’d say the final act saves the film from being nothing more than a cheesy tween vampire romance.

 

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