A crotch hater, a masked killer, a swamp monster, a rock ‘n’ roll zombie, and a banshee. I look briefly at 5 more horror flicks from the last decade.
TWISTED SISTERS (2006)
This is low-budget, shot-on-video horror. A slutty chick is jealous of the happy, successful sister who doesn’t know she exists. So bad sister sets out to destroy good sister’s life by making her the prime suspect in a series of murders…in which bad sister gouges out the groins of all the men she seduces!
And that’s all I’ll bother to say about that one….
HOUSE (2008)
House might have a crappy title stolen from the 1986 classic, but it is a very modern flick that goes down the House of 1000 Corpses path for a while, even featuring an appearance by Bill Moseley.
Two couples have car troubles and end up in the same hotel, where they are greeted by a really creepy family. Just when they think the family is going to be the problem—some freak in a mask appears outside the front door.
This is one of those movies in which the characters all have to come to terms with something they did in the past. In the meantime, there are rooms that flood, the psycho family, satanic symbols, a little girl in red, doppelgangers, and of course, the masked killer, known as Tin Man!
Things get cheesy spiritual as the plot unravels. It comes close to ending with a really cliché purgatory twist—a virtual copycat of the movie called The Morgue that I blog about here, which came out the same exact year! Only a slight twist to the twist in House differentiates them.
SWAMP DEVIL (2008)
If you expect a cheesy SyFy Network CGI swamp monster, then you’re good to go!
Swamp Devil does what most SyFy originals did back in the day–take a common horror movie template and slap a different CGI creature into it. This one is not unlike Pumpkinhead with a tree/vine looking monster. Despite the typical plot, the only reason the film really suffers is because the CGI monster is so bad. It could even be argued it looks like a greener version of Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy.
The chick from The Shrine, one of my favorite movies, is called back home to her small town by an old friend because her dad is in trouble…and it involves murder.
While we get to see the swamp devil in all his glory during an early attack, a majority of the film is very talkie. When the fun finally begins, it’s totally SyFy creature feature absurdity, but I really like the great (kind of obvious) reveal of who and what the swamp devil is. Stupid CGI monster action follows as our group of heroes is chased through the woods until they figure out how to kill this thing. I’d suggest they just hit ctr + alt + del.
FLICK (2008)
In 1960, a bullied kid and the girl he likes crash off a bridge. She gets away, but he and the car are lost. Flash forward to modern times and the car is pulled out of the water, complete with the dead guy still in it. However, he’s now a zombie and kills anyone who gets in his way as he hunts for the girl he loved!
Flick combines the styles of Sin City, Creepshow, and 1990’s Dick Tracy to create a quirky comic book zombie movie. The zombie is still stuck in a world of burger shops and rock ‘n’ roll as he sets out to find his lady love. Meanwhile, Faye Dunaway is the detective trying to figure out who’s killing all the people left in the zombie’s trail. Soon, everyone is headed to a Halloween party where the daughter of the zombie’s long lost love is going….
Flick is fun and unique if you’re in the mood for this kind of movie, but it still could have been trimmed of about fifteen minutes to pick up the pace.
SCREAM OF THE BANSHEE (2011)
If Lance Henriksen is in it…you know it has to be SyFy!
A professor and her assistants at a university open a box in a hidden room and find this hideous head that looks like something you can buy at any Halloween store in October.
The head screams, ears begin to bleed…and then a freaky cool looking banshee starts attacking people…in their fantasies. Yeah. The movie is virtually nonstop “daydream sequences” of banshee attacks, banshee blood baths, and even banshee sex, NONE of it real.
At the end, Lance Henriksen becomes involved and then they banish the banshee. I really wish SyFy would make 20-minute edits of their movies that feature only the parts with the monsters.
