The horror that Hellmouth spawned….

It’s always great to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum doing horror movies. Or is it? I take a look at one each from some of our favorite Buffy TV show characters!

CORDELIA – Voodoo Moon (2006)

Really bad impulse buy! Voodoo Moon feels like it could be a badly condensed version of one of the worst sci-fi/fantasy TV shows the SyFy Network never aired. Such a waste of a great cast. Aside from Cordelia, we have plenty of horror faces, including Eric Mabius of Resident Evil, Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace, and Geoffrey Lewis. There’s even a leading performance for Good Times dad John Amos—who looks uber hot as a big bald biker daddy. Yes. The Good Times dad is the highlight for me.

As for the movie, Eric is a demon hunter and Cordelia is his psychic sister. They gather together a motley crew of friends to take down a pretty boy demon who killed their parents years before. Nothing much happens until the final battle…next to a cornfield…with glowing Xanadu aura effects as the demon and demon hunter battle it out while floating in the sky.

Really need to get around to listing my DVD on ebay….

FAITH – Open Graves (2009)

Faith stars opposite horror hottie Mike Vogel (Under the Dome, Bates Motel, Cloverfield, The Deaths of Ian Stone, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) in Open Graves, a Final Destination clone with a board game.

Vogel and his college friends are living it up in Spain when he gets a board game from an occult shop. They all play the game, which involves selecting cards that tell you your fate. Picking a death card detailing how exactly you die means you’re out of the game. Oh…you also die in real life in the way the card described.

Watch out Final Destination, because Open Graves is gruesome and gory and even has ghosts of the dead!. On the other hand, there are plenty of bad CGI creatures—snakes, crabs, dragonflies—to balance things out. And in the end, Eliza does something that totally sets Open Graves apart from Final Destination. WTF?

XANDER – Pinata: Survival Island (2002)

Just when Xander was getting all buff on Buffy, he made this film, which gave him an excuse to run around in a tank top. A bunch of college kids comes to a deserted island for a Cinco de Mayo scavenger hunt. Little do they know a big piñata they find holds all the evil that once plagued the island. Naturally, some stoned dim wits crack it open, unleashing a big tribal killer piñata.

Considering the absurd looking CGI creature, it’s hard to believe Pinata: Survival Island takes itself so seriously. Humor is virtually non-existent. Hell, there’s not even any gratuitous nudity despite it being a movie about half-dressed college students getting high on a tropical island.

The best thing the film has going for it is the presence of Xander and Jaime Pressly, plus the wickedly gory kills. And actually, the Pinata actually looks goofy cool sometimes and could easily have made this an unintentionally campy film, but then it jumps from being a costume/prop into awful CGI that looks like a video game character.

ANYA – Darkness Falls (2003)

Blogged about this tooth fairy horror flick here.

TARA – One-Eyed Monster (2008)

I blog about this classic killer cock film here.

DAWN – Black Christmas (2006)

I cover this holiday remake here.

BUFFY – The Return (2006)

Sort of a premonition thriller, The Return has Buffy as a sales representative who travels to a small town that has her feeling wicked senses of déjà vu even though she’s never been there. She keeps seeing the attack and murder of a woman in a barn and soon comes in contact with the dead woman’s husband.

Eventually, Buffy’s premonitions help her uncover the truth of who was the killer, leading to a chase scene in the very barn where the original attack took place. Plus we get flashbacks revealing the truth of why she felt such a kinship with the man who lost his wife.

This melancholy film offers just enough suspense and mystery for a one-time viewing, but you’ll most likely forget everything about it within a week.