STREAM QUEEN 6

Streaming services often remind you that you get what you pay for, thanks to the dozens of bad horror titles they offer. So here are the 3 most recent time killers I checked out.

THE HOUSE WITH 100 EYES (2013)

Found footage torture porn snuff film—3 reasons why I should have no use for this film. But honestly, this one actually kept me entertained.

A couple documents their technique and preparation for creating a “threesome” snuff film; they want to get a guy and two girls to fuck on camera and then kill them. After several failed attempts at luring various trios to their home, they finally succeed.

Gritty and perverse, yet oddly darkly comic, The House with 100 Eyes delivers blurred nudity (not sure why it’s blurred), super gory torture of one girl (although the footage is choppy…so to speak), a jerk-off scene (again, blurred), a legless and armless chick in a cage, and a weirdly entertaining performance as the husband begins to unravel when his video shoot goes wrong.

The ending is quite satisfying when we are suddenly presented with a final girl who doesn’t fuck around. Not to mention, the final shot leaves you wondering who actually lived….

DARK WAS THE NIGHT (2014)

Stark, gloomy, and gritty, this slow burner from the director of Enter Nowhere somehow keeps you watching. The presence of Kevin Durand of The Strain as the sheriff is a big part of it. He is so incredibly sexy and delivers a perfectly subdued performance here. His character is recently separated from his wife, they had a son that died, and they have another son struggling with the death of his brother.

Meanwhile, it’s the dead of winter, and the town is gripped by terror. Something is coming out of the woods and ripping people apart. This unseen creature is leaving huge footprints right in the streets (awesome scene), and only a few people have actually spotted it and lived to tell.

Eventually, the creature comes for the sheriff and his family in some great tension-filled scenes. Keeping the mystery and suspense tight, all we ever see are the creature’s hooves.

The film is stylish with plenty of atmosphere drenched in a stark blue-gray filter. But it’s also repetitive, with constant near sightings of the creature as Durand and his deputy, played by Lukas Haas, try to determine what is killing everyone.

It’s also nice to see indie horror king Nick Damici in a (too small) role as a bartender.

Unfortunately, the character-focused drama/creature connection never fully pans out, and we learn nothing about the creature’s existence. We do, however, finally see the creature in an absolutely AWFUL cartoonish CGI moment in the final frame! It looked like something from a Playstation 1 video game. WTF?

Even so, the final frame twist kind of rox.

THE LAZARUS EFFECT (2015)

Flatliners meets Pet Sematary? A group of young researchers, including Olivia Wilde, the freak from the gayish found footage film Creep (blog here), a completely wasted Evan Peters of American Horror Story, and a couple of others, are experimenting to bring the dead back to life.

They succeed on a dog, but then accidentally kill Olivia. So they bring her back to life. But, she’s…off. She also seems to have every psychic power imaginable, from reading thoughts to moving shit with her mind. She can also summon black demon eyes when she feels like scaring her friends. BOO!

Horror icon Ray Wise has a 2-second cameo, plus Olivia squishes a guy in a locker, makes someone swallow a penlight, and squeezes someone’s head until he dies. There are also lots of flickering lights and blackouts to make things really scary—for a ten-year old. Olivia’s final revenge plan for her friends is kind of delicious, but it’s not worth watching this piece of soulless Hollywood horror crap to get to that final zinger. Unless, again, you’re a ten-year old….