It’s a trio of 2023 films that came from Prime, Hulu, and Netflix, and in every case it feels like we’ve been here before. But does that mean they weren’t fun? Let’s find out.
THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE CHILDREN (2023)
When a movie opens with “More” by The Sisters of Mercy during the intro credits, it definitely catches my interest.
I went into this one mostly blind beyond knowing that many thought it was a rip-off of Here Comes the Devil. While it gets a lot of hate online, I thought it was an engrossing and tense flick.
2 straight couples are staying at a cabin in the woods. One couple has two kids. After the group explores a derelict building, the kids sneak off and go back in. When they return, they are acting odd. But only the guy without kids seems to notice, and they begin terrorizing and taunting him.
I’ve seen more than one comment online about the kids’ acting being really bad, yet I personally thought they were good…they started off acting like kids, and then began acting bad kids.
The suspense grows as the guy tries to convince his woman that the kids are no longer themselves, and then the terror takes hold as an intense cat and mouse kicks off in the cabin at night. Yikes!
Although this is mostly just a popcorn film, there is some nice little commentary on childless couples vs. couples with children, how parents act quite privileged and think the world owes them something for having children, and of course…that children are little monsters.
Speaking of little monsters, I’m convinced the filmmakers originally intended for a reveal in which the kids have morphed into some sort of giant bugs, but then decided it would be too expensive to create…despite already showing us two different shadows of the kids looking like praying mantises while a buggy sound plays in the background.
Perhaps that plot element will be explored in a sequel, considering this movie’s final frame definitely leaves room for one.
WAR OF THE WORLDS: THE ATTACK (2023)
This is an 80s-esque War of the Worlds lite film in which three teens ride around on their bicycles escaping the classic, spider-like aliens…which are referred to as Martians. How cute.
The production is pretty impressive, with the large aliens vs. military battles looking quite cinematic and grandiose.
However, the film gets mostly into a cycle of the kids running from the war so as not to be incinerated by alien lasers, chilling at a new location for a while and meeting new survivors, and then having to pick up and run off again due to another Martian threat.
A few iconic War of the Worlds moments are recreated (like the tentacle coming into the house in search of humans), and there’s a whole commentary on sin and religion when the kids encounter a doomsday priest, but in the end the film feels very simplistic and tidy.
KILLER BOOK CLUB (2023)
This Spanish slasher should be watched purely for the familiarity fix. Don’t expect anything new—just a good scratch of your itch for cookie cutter slashers.
It’s I Know What You Did Last Summer meets Scream 2 as kids at a very modern looking university campus are stalked by a killer in a mask while talking out their deathly dilemma through massive amounts of meta horror knowledge.
As an author, what I like most about this slasher is that it often takes place in the school library, and the focus is not on horror movies as much as it is on horror fiction.
In fact, the killer, who knows what the main students did—not last summer but like two days ago—sends them chapters of a book that describe what is going to happen next in the horror story that is their lives. Awesome.
The kills are sleek and violent and there are some good chase scenes, and that’s what you need to cling to, because you’ve seen it all before. There’s even a meta moment in the final frame, which promises a sequel.
