Don’t expect to use these horror flicks as an escape from the horrors of reality, because they are all about the shit making the world miserable these days. Let’s get it over with.
UNEARTH (2020)
WARNING: if you hate what you consider “political” or “libtard” messages in your horror movies, then definitely don’t watch this movie about a struggling farming family that gets screwed over in more ways than one after leasing their property to a giant oil company for fracking.
Mostly a drama that turns horror very late in the game, this is a good example of how not to do a slow burn horror movie. For a slow burn to work effectively, it has to create a sense of dread about the horror to come, and this simply doesn’t. At all.
On one farm is cutie Riley from Buffy, his wife, their college age daughter, and their teen mom high school daughter and her baby. On the other farm is Adrienne Barbeau, her son, his wife, and their grown daughter. The two families are intertwined in a variety of ways, including an affair and even lesbian desire.
Characters keep ending up in a cornfield, so there’s some major metaphor going on there. I’m not saying I know what it is, I’m just saying it’s there.
Eventually, members of each family start getting sick in a variety of ways, bringing elements of body horror to the last 30 minutes or so, along with a hint of people going a little bit The Crazies on each other…all due to whatever the fracking has unleashed into the environment.
How I miss the days of 80s environmental message horror, when some sort of chemical was inflicted on nature in the first 5 minutes of a movie to get the point across and then people were mutilated by some sort of mutated monster for the next 85 minutes to get the horror across.
THE HUNT (2020)
I was putting this one off for a while because a) it isn’t really my kind of “horror” film, and b) it’s a political plot. But I finally went for it, and it’s really just a fun, funny, satirical kill or be killed flick that comes to somewhat of a Kill Bill climax.
The movie description alone manages to raise a lot of questions about hardcore beliefs on both sides.
Anyone paying attention knows that liberals lose their shit over the slightest edgy joke these days, virtually making the art of camp extinct. However, when it comes to horror, we libtards live for city kids traveling into the woods only to be hacked, slashed, raped, and eaten by religious extremists and conservative wing nuts that hate us.
Here’s the irony. Those same films often get bashed by conservative horror fans, who gripe that they are always being portrayed as the evil ones. So it’s kind of surprising that there was backlash against The Hunt when it was released because conservatives saw it as an offensive film about liberals hunting down rednecks for the thrill of it. Wait. What?
The liberals are the bad guys! The conservatives are the heroes! Watch the damn movie! It challenges both the libs and the cons. If you’re a liberal who watches this film and roots for the psychotic liberals, then you better rethink your values. The whole point is that no one deserves to be hunted down and killed by someone else for fun. Not to mention, the main girl is so bad ass it’s impossible not to root for her.
Could the conservative hero being a woman be a part of the problem for conservatives? Hmmm…
The film creates a brilliant conundrum for everyone involved. It blatantly mocks plenty of liberal talking points. It demonstrates that not all conservatives are ready to throw down with a gun and kick liberal ass when faced with a civil war. It pokes fun at gender identity and sexual orientation, conspiracy theories, free speech, race, and the military…showing that even conservatives will turn on those who have served their country in an instant.
Yet despite all those “thought-provoking” concepts, this movie is simply a blood-soaked action flick with plenty of humor. I can’t imagine anyone from either side of the aisle not having a blast with it.
The plot is as simple as this. Snooty liberals abduct rednecks, drop them off in the middle of the wilderness, and then start taking them out in gruesome ways. But the rednecks are not all going to be taken out that easily. It’s fun fun fun leading up to Hilary Swank and the main girl going all Lucy Liu and Uma Thurman on each other.
CORONA ZOMBIES (2020)
Made within a matter of weeks after COVID overtook the world in the spring of 2020, this is Full Moon at its absolute worst. I would have been fine with a terrible low budget original zombie film about the virus coming from Full Moon, but that’s not what this is.
This movie, clocking in at just over an hour long, features one character as a wraparound, acting all ditzy about the seriousness of COVID with a friend on the phone when there’s a zombie outbreak. So she turns on the news and…
The film is comprised entirely of clips from the 1980 Euro horror flick Hell of the Living Dead with new COVID gag joke dialogue dubbed over it, combined with clips from the 2012 Full Moon film Zombies vs. Strippers. The COVID humor is as timely and as cliché as it gets, and to make matters worse, they insert actual footage of Dump giving speeches about the disease. Ugh.
