This is one of those streaks of films that barely motivated me to write anything. But, since I sat through all of them, I might as well share what I discovered, so I’ll make these brief.
THE SHADOW PEOPLE (2013)
Whenever I start movies like this and I see where they are going, I say to myself, “Maybe it will be different this time.”
It never is.
How hard was it for me to stay focused on this one? Apparently C. Thomas Howell is in the movie, and I never had an “Oh! It’s C. Thomas Howell!” moment because, well, I never noticed him in the movie. And apparently his character played a rather significant role.
So, a couple moves into a new house, the wife begins to be terrorized by visions of a little girl. The husband thinks she’s seeing things. She is. And she just keeps seeing them throughout the whole movie.
Suddenly, however, she refuses to leave the house. And she gets sort of possessed and talks like a demon!
In the end, the big twist is one that has been recycled over and over for the last two decades thanks to M. Night Shymalan.
THE NIGHT CREW (2015)
This one barely makes the cut as a horror film, even though it has plenty of familiar horror names like Luke Goss, Jason Mewes, and Danny Trejo.
Trejo’s presence, the Mexican desert setting, and the eventual reveal that gives it a horror twist make it easy to compare this one to From Dusk Till Dawn, but believe me, the horror aspect is virtually irrelevant for a majority of the film. Thinking it was just an action flick, I actually watched it with my hubby to give him a break from horror movies!
A group of hunky bounty hunters is hired to abduct a stripper from a club and bring her to Danny Trejo. Unfortunately, the people they take her from are not happy, and aren’t messing around.
This is a shoot ‘ em up action movie for almost the entire running time. But the group does start to sense there’s something different about the chick they kidnapped. Only at the end of the film does she reveal it…. But don’t expect any actual horror on the level of From Dusk Till Dawn, because this is not at all about horror thrills or chills.
CANNIBAL COP (2017)
The plot: a young woman is determined to document crooked cops in the act, so she begins following one around. This leads to indie king Jason Crowe shooting a guy, who is then sort of resurrected by voodoo…leading to Jason Crowe becoming a cannibal cop.
The title, poster art, and grindhouse filter during the opening scene had me expecting something wacky along the lines of an Astron-6 flick. Instead, this is a 70-minute movie of people walking and talking. There is barely any plot beyond the main girl trying to get another girl to air her videos on the news.
To give you an idea of what you can expect, the climactic amusement park scene is 10 minutes of the cast just walking around looking for the cannibal cop to the strains of an ear-ritating guitar solo.
Jason Crowe’s presence is really the only thing that kept me watching the film.
