How’s that for a theme to use to knock three more off my Tubi watchlist? Let’s find out if this trio grabbed me by the throat…
MEATHOOK (2024)
This one really surprised me. I was expecting just the usual, generic, cabin in the woods slasher, but a decision is made here to trash the template for a different approach. It almost works for me, but something seriously bizarre happens in the final act.
The traditional opening scene has a straight couple hiking through the woods when a killer wearing some sort of tribal garb and an animal skull mask appears and wielding a hook appears. There’s a good chase scene, which includes the girl tripping and fucking up her ankle. Classic. However, overall, we never get any really good shots of the killer’s full form, so I had to go with this fleeting, close-up mask shot.
Next, everything changes. We meet our main girl, who is such a great, unassuming final girl. Again, classic. She is a college student suffering from PTSD, and the surprisingly serious portrayal of her struggle is played perfectly by the lead actress. She was the survivor of a slasher situation in which she saw all her friends die at a cabin in the woods.
The flashbacks of the incident sprinkled throughout the film present an intense slasher and had me convinced this movie is a sequel to a movie I somehow missed. But it’s not. The flashbacks are essentially used to deliver slasher scenes to satisfy the audience, and it works. Like, I really wanted to see that whole movie. Prequel in the works, perhaps?
There is a slasher going on within the main story as well. While the main girl is becoming a downer for her college friends, who are trying to enjoy campus life while she’s avoiding any fun, people start to get killed off in random locations. The main girl is (rightly) paranoid that someone is out there and coming for her, which is getting on the nerves of her friends as they plan a big party.
The main girl’s fears only heighten when word gets out about the new murders. A detective from the first round of kills is called in because these new kills seem like a copycat situation. When he comes to speak with the main girl, her trauma kicks into high gear.
Inevitably, this is going to turn into a situation in which the killer targets her and her friends at the party, but just when that is about to happen, a sequence unfolds that left me baffled and took me out of the rest of the movie. One of her friends is in a bathtub, getting gruesomely hooked by the killer in the worst possible part of the body, when there’s a fourth wall break. Suddenly, she’s an actress surrounded by a film crew and director making a movie. There’s no explanation for this moment, and the movie goes right back to the real plot line with the killer targeting all the friends. I cannot wrap my head around what the intention was here. Was it a meta moment to ensure us that this girl didn’t actually have a hook in her hole? No idea.
Either way, once we’re back in the main story, we finally get the traditional slasher finale, with our main girl facing off against the killer, and it’s just as satisfying as her slasher flashbacks.
But wait! There’s another interesting choice made in the movie. There’s this adorable dude wearing an 80s-style half-shirt as they prepare for the party, and he’s totally into slashers and final girls. He also wears leopard print undies and gives his booty a spank when he’s being pressured by his girlfriend to get married.
All I could think the whole time was that this dude is so gay! Apparently, he either inexplicably is a closeted gay or he’s supposed to be in the bi closet, because later on, he starts feeling himself up while ogling a photo of a muscle bod on his phone, which lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page.
FEAR CABIN: THE LAST WEEKEND OF SUMMER (2024)
This is a case of a movie that has so much potential with the main through line but opts instead to distract with time jumps and side plots.
What it delivers in its main story is tried-and-true, straightforward, popcorn movie fun—a group of friends goes to a cabin in the woods and accidentally unleashes benevolent evil.
In this case, it’s a witch. Love me a good witch, and this witch is a blast. In the opening scene, she kills a bunch of people in colonial times with her powers.
In modern times, we meet our main group of pretty people, with the guys being shirtless in a pool, including this stud muffin.
Thank you, Mr. Director, who also happens to be one of the shirtless stars of the film.
For no reason other than to give us an early kill, we then see a random jogger get dragged into the woods.
When our likable group heads to a cabin in the woods, they are unpleasantly welcomed by Jeremy London, who the audience knows is a ghost since he was in the opening scene. He warns the group to stay away from the gravestones in the woods. That’s all the use we get out of him aside from a familiar name in the credits. His role is unnecessary. His ghost adds nothing to the proceedings, he doesn’t help take on the witch, and the main cast never even learns he’s a ghost.
They do, however, not only go near the gravestones inadvertently, but they also read from a book they find in the cabin before throwing it on their campfire. That’s it. That’s all we needed to get the ball rolling.
The witch appears. She’s just a regular, vengeful girl, not all gnarly or anything, but she does do the neck tick thing to deliver some creepiness. She also just pops up all over the cabin and tosses people around magically, which is good enough for me. It’s also the one and only special effect exploited here. There’s not even any gore.
Instead, this film veers into those confusing time jumps, made even more convoluted because the director plays a different role in each of them. They’re merely other cases of people that have gone to the cabin and encountered the witch. That only manages to steal from the time we get to see the main group being terrorized.
In fact, when we finally return to them, the witch has to make haste and kill most of them off one after the other, when what we could have had was a classic scenario of the suspense, tension, scares, chases, and kills ramping up to a major climax. This was so close to being the witch equivalent of an Evil Dead scenario, but it tried a little too hard to be different. Even so, overall, it’s a pretty fun flick.
SPOOKT (2023)
The opening of this one really hooked me. A young boy walking home from school runs in terror past an infamous house where a child disappeared after going inside on a dare. The house the filmmakers found for the exterior shots is totally perfect.
In some flashback moments, we learn about a doctor, played by Eric Roberts, who previously lived in the house and was believed to have done horrible things to patients. Another unnecessary cameo.
The main story is about an online debunker and a psychic medium both arriving at the house at the same time to bring their personal perspectives to the story. What is quite cool here is when the skeptic arrives and a man in a dress answers the door, she immediately apologizes after fearing she misgendered him. It’s smooth and simple and the way anyone could do it in real life.
Anyway, the skeptic and psychic are at odds with each other from moment one as they take different approaches to investigating the events that took place in the house.
Resting debunker face.
The problem is that the movie just isn’t compelling. There are a few slightly spooky moments, but the two women don’t experience anything terrifying enough to hold your attention.
There are some side characters, but they don’t get much focus until the single moments when their horrific additions to the backstory are revealed. In fact, two of those instances have more “eek!” factor than anything the two main women experience throughout the course of the movie. The climax is just weird and confusing, and I didn’t quite understand it.
