It’s a foursome of flicks that bring all kinds of horrors. I can say for starters that I was never bored, so let’s get into them.
DEATH VALLEY (2021)
Matthew Ninaber, who plays the monster in Psycho Goreman, also plays the creature in this film. Not to mention he directs the film and he’s hot!
This is pure typical creature feature fun that totally delivers on the action and monster makeup. Sure the plot has been done again and again, but if you’re looking for cheap thrills, you get them right from the start here, and the film is really fast-paced.
A couple of mercenaries are hired to infiltrate an underground bunker to rescue trapped scientists. After an action-packed gun battle in the forest, the guys get to the bunker, and full Monty monster attacks kick in almost immediately. Yay.
The monster design reminds me of something from the Resident Evil video games. As it should, because this even feels like a Resident Evil game, complete with infected people. Not hordes of them, but enough to get the point across.
The guys team up with one female scientist still alive in the bunker and they try to fight their way out. The highlight for me is one of the main guys, who is perfectly realistic and funny in his reaction to every monstrous situation they get themselves into (I particularly appreciate his feelings about getting into a vent).
Oh, wait. There are two highlights for me…
If you like the Resident Evil/Doom type of movie and concept, definitely check this one out.
SÉANCE (2021)
If you love films featuring schoolgirls delving into witchcraft and the occult, like The Craft, The Woods, and 5ive Girls, then get ready for this…slasher. Not a spoiler. I’m just preparing you for what is really going on here.
Some students at an all-girl school try to summon a ghost by saying shit in a mirror, which leads to a tragic event. When a new girl shows up at the school, the same girls target her immediately. They all end up in detention, where they decide to do a séance. And then…
Suddenly there seem to be no other students in the school except for these girls, they start getting sliced and diced by a killer, they all know their friends are disappearing and they’re all scared, yet they all keep going off on their own alone at night to become the next victim.
That for me is the biggest problem with this otherwise engrossing film. Perfect example: when there are barely any girls left, one of the girls goes by herself to dance on the stage in the dark auditorium with fricking headphones on! Give me the knife. I’ll kill her myself just for being such a dumb ass.
The death scenes are suspenseful, the tone of the film brings to mind Argento’s Suspiria, the main girl is a tough brooding bitch who doesn’t take shit from the mean girls, and the final act takes an entertaining turn…followed by more turns to avoid a denouement that feels merely like a Scream copycat.
I liked it. I really liked it. But honestly, the ending is a mess of unrealistic, dangling plot points.
FUTURE FEAR (2021)
This is not what I was expecting at all, because it comes across as a sci-fi film at first. It’s actually more of an anthology film, with the wraparound focusing on an archaeologist in the future watching clips of different horrors of the past. So, we get:
- a dude hires a prostitute, but a giant spider drops in—silly, but probably one of my favorite shorts in the movie
- an encounter with some sort of cannibals
- a science lab story
- crazies chasing a dude through the woods
- a crazy woman creating people in a shed
- a freaky art house short of a public restroom crime scene
- a young woman abducted from her house and locked away in a sleazy lair from which she tries to escape
Honestly, right from the start it seems as if there’s a glitch in the audio, because there’s no talking. At first, the hubby and I thought it was supposed to be part of a storyline. There was a group of people trying to avoid an unseen threat that we figured could hear them if they made noise. But eventually there were scenes in which lips were moving but no voices were coming out.
The most entertaining part for us was the commentary by the wraparound archaeologist in between stories. The hubby and I would look at each other like, what the hell was that, and suddenly she would pop up on screen and echo our thoughts by making comments out loud like, “I have no idea what I’m watching” and “there’s no frame of reference for this”. We laughed every time.
BEYOND WHITE SPACE (2018)
Beyond White Space is loaded with visual outer space eye candy for sci-fi horror lovers, and there is plenty of monstrous space stuff for horror lovers. There is also way too much going on.
It’s the future, and a team that scavenges in space for a living is out hunting in their space ship when they encounter what is referred to as a celestial dragon.
A female team member suggests that they should hunt the creature because there’s big money to be had in it.
That’s going to be harder done than said. They get everything thrown their way, which means so do we. Space pirates board the ship. Little alien insects crawl under human skin. Humans that get the little alien bugs under their skin turn into homicidal crazies. And watch out for that giant spider!
Is any of it related? I have no idea because nothing is really explained. The film would rather focus on action sequences and cool outer space scenes.
How do the space pirates get on board a space ship without being noticed? Why does only one person on board get infected by the little bugs? Why is there only one big space spider? Why do the men think they can leave the ship to fight a giant space centipede with nothing but space suits on? Are all these space critters of various sizes linked somehow? We’ll never know, so just watch it for the visual outer space eye candy and monstrous space stuff.
