STREAM QUEEN: rashes and puking, zombie animals, and rockin’ demons

This threesome of random flicks I checked out tickled my horror bone just enough to keep me watching. Here’s a quick rundown of each.

WEAVERFISH (2013)

Weaverfish is such a difficult movie to pigeonhole. Based on the plot, it should logically be considered a horror film, but to even imply it’s a slow burn horror film will leave many horror fans disappointed, because it’s virtually just a melancholy character study with very little happening until the last moment.

The main character narrates the film, and it’s all poetic and meaningful, setting the glum tone that carries all the way through. He and his friends take a boat trip down a river that is known to be contaminated…and then they go swimming in it. Yet they’re surprised when they smell something gross. Well, at least there are no toxic barrels laying around. Oh…

Unlike your usual kids become infected in the woods film, there are no gross transformations, attacks, or flesh eating here. There are loads of conversations, a weird karaoke scene by the campfire, and the main kid coming across as a total closet case every time he’s alone with one of his male friends.

Adding to that impression is the fact that he totally reminded me of Love, Simon.

As for “horror”, we occasionally see glimpses of a masked figure in the background, which keeps us anticipating all hell finally breaking loose. It never does. The kids puke, they get rashes (offering the single ickiest moment in the film), and yet they still just hang around and talk.

I don’t know why I didn’t give up on the film at some point. I just always feel like something simply has to happen in a slow film eventually, and with only minutes left here, there’s finally a turn of events. It jarringly takes us to a whole different situation, but the subtle, understated way in which the final zinger comes on is so compelling I wish that at least something slightly more interesting had happened throughout the film to keep viewers riveted.

ZOOMBIES 2 (2019)

The director of The Coed and the Zombie Stoner, one of my faves, handles this sequel to the SyFy original. Now if you’ve seen the first Zoombies and go into a sequel that went virtually unnoticed expecting some sort of work of horror art or at least something that even vaguely lives up to the cheap entertainment value of the first film, you came to the sequel for all the wrong reasons.

It’s as lowbrow as you should expect (although there was a huge anal penetration moment right there after the perfect setup), and I’m surprised it doesn’t get heavy rotation on SyFy.

The CGI effects are as bad as you’d expect, and the zombie zoo animals are hilariously cartoonish. But this is the quality that SyFy has built its brand on, so if you spend boring Sundays just watching endless marathons of their ridiculous nature strikes back creature features, you’ll be more than satisfied with this one when there is nothing else to watch.

Set up is simple…poachers and park rangers team up to survive when the zombie animals attack.

The men are sizzling hot, the kills are hilariously bad, and the scene of the women being terrorized by the CGI zombie porcupines is comedy gold.

THE 27 CLUB (2019)

This is a fun little rock star “demon” indie that takes a fascinating real phenomenon of the music industry and builds it into a fictional horror film. The 27 Club refers to famous rock musicians that have all died at the age of 27—pretty much all the iconic ones you can think of.

The main kid is doing a college paper on the mystery, so references to those rockers are interwoven into the story, but it’s really just a background device, with the focus being on his investigation after a fictional rocker dies at the same age.

We happen to know from the start that it was the work of a cool demon, but it’s up to him to find out as the film progresses. He has a best buddy, he gets a sort of love interest, he tracks down another rocker who never quite hit stardom, there’s a satanic book, and rock legend Todd Rundgren appears as his college professor.

The plot is simple, just as it should be, and the demon action is fun, but I do wish it had kicked in sooner because there’s not enough of it for my tastes, and there aren’t enough victims.

But as a music maniac, I was totally feeling the reality-based approach to the music industry being turned into a demon flick. And the guys showed off their sleazy druggy rocker bods.