It’s always a treat when I finish a movie marathon from my streaming watchlist and don’t find any real duds among the selection, as in this case. So let’s get into these three.
HOAX (2019)
This is how you start a movie. Kids at a campfire tell stories of Bigfoot, have sex, show some skin, and then get their skin shredded. Yay!
Next we meet a team assembled to do a TV documentary on the disappearances of the campers and the possibility that Bigfoot actually exists. Adrienne Barbeau has a tiny cameo in the beginning so that her name can be added to the cast…and so there can be a meta reference to The Fog. I was so there for it.
Soon after the group sets up camp, team members start getting slowly snatched away by Bigfoot.
There’s suspense and some gore, but it isn’t until the last 20 minutes that all hell breaks loose and shit gets really nasty. Let’s just say nothing is as it seems…while everything is exactly how it seems. The title Hoax is quite fitting. For me, this one was the most satisfying of this trio of films.
THERE IS A MONSTER (2024)
This is a pretty simple, low budget take on a familiar supernatural theme—a man is being haunted by a shadowy figure that only he can see.
This one gets trashed online because the “shadowy figure” is just a guy in a skintight, black body suit, sometimes combined with a CGI effect, but even so, a shadowy figure in a skintight black suit standing in the corners of my home would freak me out. In other words, the figure’s presence gets the point across and delivers some eerie moments even if the presentation is quite simple.
In fact, the creepy moments are the highlight here, because the story isn’t all that compelling. A professional photographer is cheating on his wife while desperately trying to keep his business afloat. His life is sort of falling apart when this apparition begins haunting him. As a result, his health begins to deteriorate.
There’s not much more to it than that. There’s an odd conversation with the wife and her friend in which the friend implies that a threesome might fix their marriage. Also bizarre is that the main guy goes to see a doctor (not a therapist) seeking help for his apparition issues.
Don’t expect a grand finale, because there’s no big battle to the death. It seems we’re contending with more of a metaphorical apparition in the end—sort of suggesting that darkness that sometimes consumes us can slowly chip away at our lives.
WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS (2023)
This film comes from a family known as the Adams Family, who also made the movie Hellbender. Like that one, this is visually arresting, so the atmospheric eye candy alone is enough to keep you watching.
However, this is not ordinary horror. This is a more artistic creation that serves as an exploration of PTSD.
We meet a family that runs a struggling carnival sideshow but also has a side gig that keeps them going—they are cold-blooded killers! But this isn’t some typical psycho slasher. It’s a dark, brooding movie, with the grisly murders serving to propel character studies.
The sideshow leader has gory flashbacks of fighting in war. His struggles rub off on another family member, who feels a need to kill to protect him. A younger girl in the family is low key, and her one job is to photograph all the murders.
On top of that, there’s an occult element as well. The sideshow leader made a deal with a demon and has a heart in a box that gives him the ability to chop off his fingers to wow audiences in his show and then simply sew them back on.
It’s engrossing but slow-paced, so it won’t be for everyone.
