What do you know? A selection of three streaming movies, and I actually didn’t loathe any of them. I’ll admit, it’s due in large part to the fact that I just love creatures with soulless eyes and a really weak gag reflex.
THE CLOTH (2013)
The intro of The Cloth totally plays you if you’re a horror fan. We are thrust into a situation right out of The Exorcist, with two priests—one being Danny Trejo—going to town on a girl strapped down to a bed. She gets slices through her skin when they splash her with holy water, the bed rocks, shit flies around, and eventually, she gets Regan face, and it is EEK-licious. She begins doing some contortion shit that would make Linda Blair envious…and the priest (not Trejo) shoots the bitch to smithereens with some sort of holy laser gun! WTF?
“Okay. I am SO ready for that crucifix now.”
That’s the moment that everything changes. The Cloth turns into an indie version of movies like Constantine and Legion. Actor Kyler Willett, a pretty blond dude with a chest of death (kept me watching), is selected by a secret order of Catholics to help prevent the devil from possessing souls.
He joins a band of young hunters, is introduced to their weapons of apocalyptic destruction, and takes on a variety of cool demons and possessed souls before the final battle with the biggest baddie of them all.
The Cloth really feels like a video game loaded with cheap thrills (also kept me watching), and I’m impressed by what they pulled off for an indie—the effects are pretty dang tight—but despite some cool monsters, this is more of a religious action fantasy film and just not my thing. I mean, we’re talking about a movie that paints the devil’s domain as the place where threesomes and hot lesbians reside.
DARK SOULS (2010)
Dark Souls is like part Asian horror from the new millennium and part sleazy Euro horror from the 80s—a pretty wicked hybrid, I must say. Some freak in an orange jumpsuit is going around drilling holes in peoples’ heads, leaving them alive as vegetables that get all zombie-looking and puke up black shit on a fairly consistent basis.
One older man whose daughter was a victim decides the police aren’t doing enough to stop the attacks, so he begins to track the psycho in the orange jumpsuit to learn the truth about the psychotic plot behind the attacks.
While he’s busy dodging drill bits, his daughter and other victims start coming out of their vegetative states just enough to turn into crawling zombies looking to puke their black goo into the mouths of anyone they can. If it sounds confusing, it kind of is, and the conclusion may leave you scratching your head, but there’s something quite compelling about this quirky little film.
INNER DEMONS (2014)
Another documentary/found footage style possession movie, but I have to admit, I kind of liked this one. So should it come as any surprise that everyone else online seems to think it’s total shit?
This teenage girl from a religious family has suddenly gone from straight-A student to drug addict goth girl. So what better for humble, God-fearing parents to do than put her on a documentary reality show?
The small crew is on hand when the girl agrees to go to rehab, complete with group sessions. However, the young, cute guy on the crew has taken a special interest in her, and after finding books on demons in her room, he becomes convinced she’s actually possessed.
Why wouldn’t he? She begins to speak in tongues, knows bad things about the other patients, pukes all over her mom…you know the drill. She even does one of those awesome mirror tricks—contradictory reflection followed by computer-generated demon face—that you can find on hundreds of YouTube videos created by 12-year olds.
As generic as the film may be for this genre, the ending—the part everyone seems to detest most—is the best fricking part of the film for me. Typical found footage exorcism clichés abound, but in the few remaining minutes, there’s an unexpected, psychotic twist followed by another, both of which seem to get slammed by other viewers. Yet this is the ONLY thing that makes this film stand out greatly from others, so go figure. If you’re one of those people who feels that way…go watch another installment of Paranormal Activity and rejoice in the predictable.
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