The latest trio of films I watched were plucked from three different streaming services, and it was quite a variety.
THE INHERITANCE (2024)
This Hulu selection is somewhat of a slow burn, and it’s not a terrifying experience, but I actually had fun with it.
A 75-year-old man assembles his estranged children together at his secluded mansion and informs them “something” is going to come for him that night, so he locks them all in the house to stay safe, an option that never ends well for anyone.
Naturally, these uppity siblings are at each other’s throats, but they try to play nice and go along with daddy’s delusions because of all the money they each stand to inherit.
Then something supernatural starts stalking, terrorizing, and killing the siblings. The first kill from the perspective of under the water in a pool is a perfect sequence to grab your attention.
There are plenty of suspense scenes, ghostly entities crawling from paintings Ringu style, a room full of creepy collectibles (including a huge statue of Pazuzu!), a dark twist, and best of all, someone actually asking another character in a horror movie, “Why are you sitting in the dark?” FINALLY.
DON’T LOOK AT THE DEMON (2022)
Ever watch a movie that just throws so much chaos and plot points at you that you get exhausted and simply go for the ride for the horror scenes? That’s how this one was for me.
Fiona Dourif plays a psychic medium in a group of paranormal investigators that also includes horror hottie Randy Wayne.
They head to a house to start investigating ghostly disturbances, and before long this turns into a possession film.
In Evil Dead fashion, the possession has a domino effect, hitting one person after another until it finally settles in a shirtless pretty boy. I was jealous that the demon was the one inside him.
We get loads of action, plenty of freaky and bloody horror moments, a nasty fetus extraction scene, and the unfolding truth of how Fiona’s character has encountered this demon before.
NOWHERE LAND (2022)
I’m a big fan of the indie flicks of the Crum brothers, so I was looking forward to this one. However, it ended up being their most disjointed venture yet.
Did you ever watch a movie, and you hear every word of dialogue and see every action of the characters, but you haven’t a clue what they’re talking about or what they’re doing? This is that kind of movie. Somehow, it keeps moving forward, but I have no idea why or how.
It has something to do with a kid’s TV show. A few barely developed characters set out to try to figure out what has happened to their children…I think. It appears they were mutilated by or possessed by something that comes out of the show. Again…I think. Not sure.
The characters bounce from location to location speaking with different people about the troubling power of the TV show, and eventually they start clashing with some visually awesome, hideous looking mutants. Unfortunately, it is just hard to grasp how these monsters are materializing as they do.
According to the IMDb description, “Children’s TV show puppets come to life, but take a sinister turn. Following the dark events unfolding as the initially cute puppets wreak havoc in reality”. I’d say the hard-to-follow composition of that description bleeds into the structure of the movie itself, because neither one is easy to comprehend.
I was intrigued by a brief flash of shirtless men looking as if they’ve been impaled on posts in Cannibal Holocaust fashion, but how it relates to anything else that happened in the film is beyond me.
