It’s a gay stalker, alien possession, and man vs. psycho family.
THE GUEST HOUSE (2016)
Single White Female goes gay male in this low budget stalker flick that lands a place on the homo horror movies page. It even features actress/Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Eileen Davis and her husband Vincent Van Patten in small roles.
The plot involves a kind of douchy dude who cheats on his wife, gets the boot, and moves into the guest house of a rich dude.
At first they bond and have a good time, drinking, watching ball games, and talking about girls. The landlord even gets close to the douche dude’s teenage daughter.
But then one night the douche comes home early and sees his landlord in the hot tub with another guy. Not surprisingly, the douche is a homophobe and immediately starts to distance himself from the landlord, which is of course where the trouble begins.
It’s about as predictable as these movies get if you grew up on erotic thrillers of the late 80s/early 90s, but it’s satisfying to see the plot involving two guys for a change—especially since it doesn’t play coy with the gay desire at all. Of course some might be offended that the gay dude is portrayed as a total psycho preying on a straight dude. For me, the only letdown is the fact that because only one man is gay, this film lacks any sense of sexual tension beyond a moment when the landlord grabs the douche from behind during a fight and says “this is what jail’s like”. Sigh.
There are two major problems with the film considering it’s molded after erotic thrillers of the past. First, the douche feels like too much of a racist/homophobic white asshole to be the object of anyone’s desire—the film could have upped the sexy factor if his much more likable Latin buddy had played the lead role.
On top of that, there are no good scares, and no good kill scenes…of humans. The most brutal scene is the killing of a dog! WTF?
The creepiest part of the film is actually the guy playing the landlord. He may not be the best actor, but his lack of emoting and blank expressions worked to great effect in making his character quite unnerving.
BLASTED (2022)
This Norwegian sci-fi/action/comedy feels like it’s going for the same vibe as the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost goodie The World’s End. It eventually hits its stride in that style, but it’s hindered for a while not only by a totally unnecessary, near 2-hour running time, but perhaps also by the comedic tone getting lost in translation a bit due to the dubbing.
A dude is having a bachelor party that is also, in part, a business trip, which is derailed by the arrival of his longtime slacker friend. Problem is that for quite a while all the talk between the group of guys lacks any charm or humor. The film really starts to drag until they begin playing laser-tag and encounter a dude with glowing green eyes in the woods.
From then on it’s totally action and thrills as the guys initially think they’ve got a zombie situation. However, it turns out that they’re instead dealing with people being possessed by green glowing blobs of alien life forms. Awesome.
It’s a fast-paced adventure as the guys use their laser guns to extract the green blobs and destroy them in bursts of green goo.
It morphs into buddy movie fun, with the guys eventually finding their way onto the alien ship to stop the madness…and take on an awesome final boss.
BLOODY HELL (2020)
It’s a backwoods comedy horror flick with violence, gore, and quirky time jumps reminiscent of Tarantino and Guy Ritchie films. To top it all off, hottie Ben O’Toole (Nekrotronic) carries the film in a dual role as his character and his character’s conscience…while bound and shirtless for a majority of the runtime (earning it a spot on the stud stalking page).
Ben takes a gamble when caught up in the middle of a bank robbery, which leads to him being a semi-celebrity for both good and bad reasons. To escape his unintended fame in the U.S., he escapes to Finland…and ends up in the basement of a psycho family from hell.
At first I was getting flashbacks to the 1989 classic Parents, but this film takes on a life of its own as our main man has to figure out a way to get out of his predicament. Luckily, he has his conscience by his side as his guide and cheerleader…and sometimes as the devil on his shoulder.
In between his banter with his conscience, he hopes to win over some members of the family to help him escape. Plus, we eventually get to see what really went on during that bank robbery to make him go down in infamy.
Naturally, the money shot is the final battle between our main man and the psycho family in the last act. If I have one gripe it’s that the sequence feels like it’s over way too fast…especially since there are some satisfying surprises thrown in that could have been milked a bit more to up the suspense, violence, and gore even more.
