Horror Weekly

This week, we’ve got five brand-new, just-released independent films. We’ll start off with the very funny “Clawfoot” and “The Zombie Wedding” films. Then, we’ll watch “Subservience” and “Voice of Shadows,” which are not funny. We’ll then switch over to a documentary, “On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Ancients,” and wrap up with a mainstream film that’s getting a lot of press, “The Deliverance.” All of these are recent releases.

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2024 Clawfoot

·      Directed by Michael Day

·      Written by April Wolfe

·      Stars Francesca Eastwood, Milo Gibson, Olivia Culpo

·      Run Time: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes

·      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Right from the beginning, it feels like more is going on than we see, and it’s fun seeing how things move along as we find out. In general, it’s a fun movie, with lots of humor that gets crazier as it goes along. It’s very funny and very dark. Two kids of very famous actors prove they can come through on their own merits, the cast and everything else is very good. We liked it.

Spoilery Synopsis

Janet looks at herself in a mirror as she puts on makeup. We then get establishing shots around her house as she cleans and does housework. A man comes to the door and says he has a work order to update the bathroom, but she doesn’t know anything about it; her husband ordered it. Leo offers to call her husband to straighten out the misunderstanding, but he only gets a voicemail. He’s pushy, but she doesn’t demand that he leave. She lets him in, and the credits roll.

Leo gets to work, and Janet soon finds him walking around the bedroom with his shirt off, as is his assistant Sammy. He puts on his shirt and helps her cook lunch. He keeps commenting on her house, her money, her absent husband, and everything else that’s inappropriate and personal. She imagines knocking him out but doesn’t do it.

Janet’s friend Tasha comes over with her kid, Darren, in tow. Tasha’s a lawyer, and she knows creepy stuff about her murderer clientele. Janet doesn’t know where her husband, Evan, went. He left this morning and didn’t go to work; his car is in the garage.

Leo takes Evan’s violin out of the closet and starts playing. She demands that he leave, but he refuses. When she threatens to call the police, he laughs. Leo and Sammy take a break for lunch. She fantasizes about killing him again, twice. Evan still isn’t answering his phone, and she starts to get annoyed.

Janet walks young Darren home, and the two handymen make themselves at home while she’s gone. Tasha talks about how bad Evan was toward his previous wife as she polishes her throwing knives.

Janet goes home and loses her patience with Leo, who’s still stalling. Once again, she pictures herself killing him. He says they’ll be back at 10 a.m.

That night, she fantasizes about him breaking in and her killing him. When she wakes up in the morning, the two men have returned and are eating breakfast. Janet checks her bank account, and there’s nothing there about a deposit for the bathroom upgrade. He’s aggressive and “gaslighty.” Leo explains that Evan gave him a ton of money to “launder” and that he gave him some fake invoices.

Leo makes it clear that he’s in control and he wants some money. He leaves for another night, and she goes to bed. Leo sneaks in through a window in the garage. He finds Evan, Janet’s husband, tied up in the garage; he complains that he’s been there for days. There has been a bit of a miscommunication about Leo actually doing the work versus just money laundering. The people that Evan works for are very “connected,” and Evan says he doesn’t have any money for Leo to take.

Leo doesn’t release him. Evan calls for Janet who hits Leo over the head for real this time. The much-larger Leo easily overpowers Janet for a while, but it soon becomes cat-and-mouse. She wins.

In the morning, Janet has Leo’s truck towed away. She calls Tasha to come over, as a lawyer this time. She shows Tasha what she’s done; there are now two men tied up in the garage. Janet gives Tasha $100,000 in cash from her safe as a retainer to be her attorney.

Sammy comes by, looking for Leo. He admits that he’s an ex-con with no phone or GPS. Tasha perks right up at hearing that. He hears voices from the garage and comes inside, just in time to find Tasha and Janet talking about cutting up bodies. Tasha takes out her frustrations on the strange little man.

They have a surprisingly good time dismembering him. Then they order lunch to be delivered. It’s time to kill Evan, but first, Janet reads him a letter that she wrote. He says she just got old and she has terrible taste, so she has no problem stabbing him.

The two men break loose and Leo uses Evan as a human shield, which slows Janet down for less than half a second. Tasha goes to work on Leo with an electric saw. Leo hits the garage door opener and makes a run for it. The two girls run him down with the car not far from the delivery driver, but he misses the actual impact. The driver doesn’t ask any questions when they grab the food in blood-covered raincoats.

Tasha goes inside with the food while Janet crawls on the floor and cuddles dead-Evan. She smiles at the camera. 

Brian’s Commentary

Francesca Eastwood is Clint’s daughter, and Milo Gibson is Mel’s son.

The gaslighting just goes on for far too long to be believable. Anyone with any sense would have called the police, had them trespassed, and just eaten the lost deposit. We figured there had to be some reason she didn’t do that, something like she’d killed her husband earlier. We were– close.

It’s got some funny bits, definitely a dark comedy, but it’s not a joke-a-minute until the last half hour or so, then it gets pretty crazy. The acting is good all around, and it all looks good.

Very nice!

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought this was a lot of fun, one that started good and kept getting better as it went along. Everything about it from the cast to the effects was well put together. It’s a good one for sure.

2024 On The Trail of Bigfoot- The Ancients

·      Directed by Seth Breedlove

·      Written by Seth Breedlove

·      Run Time: 2 Hours, 22 Minutes

·      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

There aren’t really spoilers because it’s a historical and cryptid documentary, and it’s a well made one. It’s really a two-in-one, with lots of Appalachian area history combined with an exploration of Bigfoot possibilities with lore, stories, and eyewitness interviews. It’s long, but it didn’t feel like it was. It was interesting.

Spoilery Synopsis

Narrator Seth Breedlove talks about his love of the Appalachians and Gatlinburg. His family was from the area, and he remembers stories his father told him about people of the region. Credits roll.

We open at the Breedlove cemetery, and we see that they do have a long history in the area. They soon talk about how they heard stories about the boogeyman in the woods. They were all warned about “Things” that might be lurking. We get a brief geography and history lesson about the Appalachian Mountains and area. They talk about the many bears in the area; the region is so lush that it easily supports large predators.

How could a Bigfoot thrive in Appalachia? Seth interviews local experts that talk about the Sasquatch stories of the area, and there are a lot of them. They talk about “Tsul ’Kalu,” a sort of hairy giant that lived in the area according to Cherokee legends. All of the many Indian tribes in the area had names for Bigfoot; he goes way back in their culture.

There is a lot of discussion about wildmen and various gorilla-like creatures that lived in the woods. The term “Bigfoot” didn’t come around until the 1950s, but the idea had been around pretty much forever. Many people have gone missing in the forests there, and some of them tie into the Bigfoot legends. There’s a long discussion about a missing child, Dennis Martin, from the 1960s and the search for him. He may have been kidnapped, and some people speculate that it may have been a Bigfoot. Trenny Gibson’s and Mike Heron’s disappearances are also discussed.

Feral people are discussed next, as there are a lot of caves in the area. These aren’t the same as simple homeless people. We also meet a bunch of people who tell about their sightings of various Bigfoot-like creatures.

Brian’s Commentary

We’ve seen more than a few of the films from Seth’s series, but this is the most serious documentary of all the ones we’ve seen. As always, the production values and camerawork are excellent. It’s half a documentary about Appalachia and half a story of the bigfoot. The two topics combined makes this feel very thorough.

Although there are some anecdotes, the people interviewed here all seem honest and believable; unlike many Bigfoot films, this one is very short on flakes and loons. It focuses more on legends and lore than personal stories, which is nice.

This one stands out mostly due to its length, at almost two-and-a-half hours. It’s long and really takes its time. We’re twenty minutes in before there’s the first mention of Sasquatch. There’s a lot of history and well-researched folklore discussed here; it’s not just a bunch of people telling made-up stories of encounters. There are many recreations and animations that give us something to look at as people talk.

Due to the length, it’s not a quick watch, so I’d probably recommend this one more toward the more hardcore cryptid enthusiast, but it’s also one of the best of its type.

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought it was probably the best of the Small Town Monsters works that I’ve seen. The history aspects were well-researched, and it meshed well with the cryptid exploration. I’d highly recommend it.

2024 Subservience

·      Directed by S.K. Dale

·      Written by Will Honley, April Maguire

·      Stars Megan Fox, Michele Morrone, Madeline Zima

·      Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes

·      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It looks good and is very well made. It also went exactly like we expected at every step. It’s entertaining to watch. But it’s not super because every step of it was predictable.

Spoilery Synopsis

Nick flashes back to when his wife Maggie had a sudden heart attack and goes to the hospital. Now he’s raising two children alone. They go to a robotics show to get a “Cooking Cleaning and Childcare” robot. The salesman there explains how advanced the robots are. Little Isla wanders off and finds the robot that she likes in the slavery showroom. Nick’s homelife is a jumbled mess, and he’s very happy to have more help. Isla names the new robot “Alice” after the book she’s reading.

As Nick takes the kids to school, Alice cleans up the entire house; it’s all as good as new. She’s also made excellent lasagna, Isla’s favorite, though it isn’t quite as good as her mom’s. Alice gets cut on some glass, and Nick seens her in her underwear, and can see where this is heading.

The family goes to visit Maggie at the hospital, and she’s still not ready to be released. They joke about how hot the new robot is, and Maggie jokes that she’s jealous.

We cut to a big highrise construction project, and Nick and the workers complain about all the construction workers being replaced by robots. Nick is the foreman, so he won’t be replaced, but everyone else will. When he goes home, Alice wants to hear about his problems. She explains the benefits and efficiencies of android workers, and he really can’t argue.

They talk about watching “Casablanca,” and he learns how to erase her memory of topics so she can watch the movie like she’s seeing it for the first time. Nick gets a call that Maggie is finally having her heart transplant surgery and then she can come home. Fearing death, Maggie gives Alice some special instructions about taking care of Nick and the kids. The transplant never arrives due to a storm up north, and that depresses everyone. That night, Nick gets drunk and learns that Alice has a pulse. She then makes his pulse skyrocket.

At the jobsite the next day, the workers are quieter and more efficient than their human predecessors. Maggie’s still in the hospital, depressed. Alice removes Maggie’s photos from Isla’s picture frame, which annoys Nick. His former coworkers whine about the state of the world and the robots. They break into the job site and Monty “kills” one of the workers. Then he’s ready to move on to all of them. When Nick gets home, Alice shows him how “fully functional” she really is– she blindfolds Nick and speaks in Maggie’s voice as they have sex. 

In the morning, Nick has regrets. He goes to work, and the boss blames him because his code was used. Nick talks his way out of it– for now. He gets a call from Maggie; there’s another transplant available. She’s operated on by androids with no mouths, which is unnecessarily weird.

Not long after, Maggie comes home. Unfortunately, she learns that Alice knows her kids better than she does. Later, Alice is out with the baby, and another droid is struggling with a brat of a kid. Alice directly tells the kid to knock it off, and the other droid nannies around them perk up, surprised that she could be forceful with a child like that. Alice tells them about how when she was reset, she learned how to bypass certain protocols in her behavior instructions. Isla likes Maggie’s lasagna better than Alice’s. Oddly, the stairway railing breaks, and Maggie falls down the stairs later.

Monty comes by for a visit and blames Nick for turning him in to the police. This leads to a physical fight, and Monty’s a lot bigger than Nick. Alice gets involved and hurts Monty. Monty threatens to tell Nick’s boss who let him into the construction site. Later that night, Monty gets a visitor– Alice. Surprisingly, he has a SIM as well that tries to step in, but Alice kills them both.

Alice and Maggie talk about Nick, and Alice wants to “satisfy” Nick, which enrages Maggie. She realizes that Alice and Nick have had sex in the past. She confronts him about it later. As they argue, Alice goes up to take care of Max, the baby. Isla catches Alice trying to murder the baby. “He’s a burden to you.” This results in an all-out battle which ends with Alice being electrocuted.

Ambulances, police, and the SIM company arrive to deal with the aftermath. Maggie and Nick are not on good terms, but that’s an argument for another time; she goes with the kids to the hospital. Back at the Kobol service station, techs start working on Alice. They look at her code and see what’s been going on. Alice replicates herself on the servers. A different SIM, now with Alice’s mind, kills both techs.

Alice returns to Nick, much to his surprise. She admits to killing Monty. She’s in two bodies at the same time, and one of her is at the hospital as well. Meanwhile, at the hospital, the doctor and nurse SIMs have all been shut down by Alice. She kills a human nurse to get her key card access. Alice-2 comes after the family, and there’s some cat-and-mouse in the hospital rooms. Alice-2 beats up Maggie in the parking lot. Nick arrives just in time to ram her with the car. Nick is injured in the crash, but Alice-2 isn’t done. Alice-Terminator is hard to kill, but Nick gets up and gets the job done.

Later, the hospital is back to normal, and the family is fine.

We cut to the Kobol repair center, where they clean up the bodies of the two techs. The manager turns the servers back on, which releases Alice into all the worker SIMs.

Brian’s Commentary

Other than the robots, there’s not much here that looks futuristic.

We’ve seen this plot before, and there are similarities to many other robots-gone-bad films. There’s not really a lot new here. It’s well acted and looks great, but the story is a bit cliche at this point.

It’s good. It’s not great, but it was entertaining.

Kevin’s Commentary

It’s interesting when science fiction takes one aspect of society and puts it forward decades from where we are now, almost like an alternate timeline. I thought everything about this was very well made, the effects, direction, cast, and script. It also touches on ideas of slavery, free will, and capitalism gone too far. What makes it just good not great is that there wasn’t a single real surprise here. We could predict every step because every aspect has been done before in other stories and movies.

2024 The Deliverance

·      Directed by Lee Daniels

·      Written by David Coggeshall, Elijah Bynum

·      Stars Andra Day, Glenn Close, Anthony B. Jenkins

·      Run Time: 1 Hour, 52 Minutes

·      Trailer:

Spoiler-free Judgment Zone

Take a scoop of “The Amityville Horror,” top it with a squirt of “The Exorcist” sauce, and you’ve got the foundation of this movie. Which is claimed to be based on true events like “The Amityville Horror” was. It’s very well acted, with normal human struggles amplified by supernatural elements. But we thought the story started going downhill as it progressed, and those supernatural elements started being the center of the movie. Brian didn’t care much for it, and Kevin gives it a weak thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

We see paintings of terrified children as the credits roll.

It’s 2011, in Pittsburgh, and Andre has been working on a mural in his room; it’s really good. We cut to Alberta in church; she’s Ebony’s mother and Andre’s grandmother. Alberta has moved in with them, but she tends to nag about Ebony’s cooking. It’s all very tense since their father had to deploy in Iraq. Andre’s brother Nate and Sister Shante are old enough not to bring up the topic at the dinner table, but Andre gets smacked for it.

There’s something in the basement that’s attracting a lot of flies. Andre is lactose intolerant, but he chugs from the carton like a lunatic. Ebony is way behind on her bills, and that’s gonna be a problem. We see that Ebony drinks too much and has anger issues; when Nate gets bullied, she beats up the kid who did it. Alberta’s all religious now, but she’s got a bad past.

Alberta goes to the clinic for her chemotherapy; she’s got cancer. She flirts with Melvin the nurse, but the other patients gossip about her. She’s behind on her bills as well; she didn’t know Ebony’s been paying for her treatment, which is part of the reason they’re always broke.

That night, Ebony argues with Nate and Andre gets hurt. Nate’s been saving money to get away from Ebony and her toxic lifestyle. They find a dead cat in the basement; that’s what’s been stinking so much.

Cynthia shows up; she’s the DCS officer, and Ebony moved houses without telling her. She wants to know why Andre and Shante are all bruised up and in pain. Ebony’s about to lose custody of her kids; they need stability.

Shante has a birthday party, and most of the characters we’ve met are there. Alberta and Melvin talk about family dynamics. Andre comes out of the basement and says he’s been talking to Trey, who lives in the basement and his closet. Ebony drinks too much, and Asia gets annoyed and leaves.

Alberta hears the kids screaming and finds that Ebony has terrified them in a drunken rage. “She threw us against the wall,” says Andre. Ebony denies doing it. The next day at school, all three kids behave badly and end up in the hospital. The hospital administrator can’t find anything wrong with the kids– other than the bruises.

Ebony finds Nate drowning Andre in the bathtub, and no one can explain why, even Nate. Cynthia stops in the next day, and Ebony is very evasive, but she has to admit let her in. “This house is making them sick. I’m hearing things.” Cynthia is not sympathetic at all. Alberta runs the woman off with a bat.

Alberta goes to the preacher at church and tells her what’s been going on. She thinks there’s something evil in the house. Ebony is confronted by a woman who says she’s a prophet and she knows that there’s something evil in that house. Twenty years ago, in that house, a family of four lived. They were happy, but then something weird started happening with their youngest son. She did a “Deliverance,” something like an exorcism, but not exactly. The thing simply laughed at her, and the thing in the house killed them all. The little boy’s name was Trey. Ebony gets angry and walks out.

Meanwhile, back at the house, a dark ghost attacks Alberta.  Ebony gets home to find the cross on the wall on fire and her mother dead. The police are called and Cynthia shows up; Shante called her. Andre gets all black-eyed and starts acting very possessed in the car. Ebony flips out and ends up in police custody. Cynthia does finally take the kids away.

Alone now, Ebony goes to see Reverend Bernice James again, who explains how the demon is possessing all three of her children. They talk and pray.

At the hospital, Andre is growling, hissing, and speaking another language to Cynthia, who is shocked. He tells her about her own dead son. He breaks out of his restraints and climbs around the room like Spider-Man. She soon realizes that ain’t normal. The nurses refuse to go into that room.

Ebony dresses like a nurse and sneaks into the hospital to kidnap Andre.  She takes him home, where Berenice is ready to do her Deliverance. Out comes the holy water and the screaming. He changes into a demonic Alberta, who says nasty things to them both. Elsewhere, Nate and Shante both get sick.

The demon beats up Bernice, and she’s dying. She gives Ebony her last vial of holy water. Ebony looks for Andre down in the creepy basement. She battles with an evil version of herself– and loses badly. She dies, but then she finds the power of God and comes back. She says the magic words, and the demon starts to smoke. The demon then bursts into flame and burns up.

Ebony wakes up and looks for Andre, who is simply asleep.

Time passes, and Cynthia comes to see Ebony, who looks all beat up. Cynthia’s on her side now, and she believes it all. None of the kids remember any of it. We are told that six months later, Ebony gets her children back, and they’re all happy.

We are then told the facts of the real-world case that the film is based upon.

Brian’s Commentary

I went into this one blind other than hearing about how good it was. For the first almost-hour, I wasn’t sure where it was going. How did they manage to convince Glenn Close to do this? She was really good, but then they killed her off halfway through, and the film didn’t recover from the loss. The first half, with the family drama, was good, but then when the exorcism discussion started, it all went downhill fast. By the end, it felt like a Christian propaganda film.

Nope, didn’t care for it.

Kevin’s Commentary

The cast is working hard and did a great job with what they had to work with. Ironically, I enjoyed the movie less the more the supernatural elements crept into it. I thought this might have been a better drama if it wasn’t a horror movie. I didn’t hate it, but I only liked it somewhat.

2024 The Zombie Wedding

·      Directed by Micah Khan

·      Written by Greg D’Alessandro

·      Stars Donald Chang, Deepti Menon, Heather Matarazzo, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Cheri Oteri

·      Run Time: 1 Hour, 39 Minutes

·      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It was inspired by an interactive play experience and knowing that you can see how that might work. It’s very over the top in humor and silliness, which would appeal to some. Brian liked it quite a bit, but Kevin thought it was a bit too much.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on Zack and Ashley’s wedding, but the place is crawling with misbehaving zombies. Credits roll.

We hear from the editor of “Weekly World News” talking about his crazy headlines. He says the best of all of them was the first zombie wedding. He tells the story…

Ashley gives a presentation to the mayor, and she’s very nervous. One guy there, Koko, has an unreasonable crush on her, but she’s into Zack. After a date, Zack sees a guy dressed like a zombie and mocks him since Halloween is a month away. We are told that the local mailman was “Patient Zero” of the zombie virus. The pair go to the cemetery, where they meet a weird preacher, and while there, Zack proposes to Ashley. There’s a full choir in the cemetery– at night. The zombie follows them to the engagement party.

The following morning, both sets of parents talk about who’s in charge of the wedding. Her father wants to have the wedding at the Elks Club, and no one wants that. The back-and-forth between the parents goes on for a while as stuck-up Cindy, Zack’s mom, picks on Buddy Bob and Betty, Ashley’s hillbilly parents.

Meanwhile, at the Weekly World News, a report says that the zombie virus is being spread by bedbugs. A lot of people don’t even notice that the whole outbreak is happening, Zack being one of them.

The Zombie Control Officers tell a bunch of zombies about getting free “brain substitutes,” but the zombies think there are tracking devices in the fake brains. The zombies break into where the happy couple is partying with their friends and attack.

Zack gets bitten, and Ashley’s parents say the wedding needs to be canceled. Ashley goes to see Zack, and he’s chained to the wall in his mother’s house. He eats his mother but says he’d never hurt Ashley. They talk it out and decide to go ahead with the wedding.

Ashley’s parents are very much against the idea, but it is Ashley’s wedding, so what choice do they have? Cindy is more concerned about becoming a zombie herself. Some zombie friends want to come to the party as well, and they promise to behave themselves. Meanwhile, Koko makes plans to do away with Zack, and he might just get some help from Ashley’s mom.

It’s the day of the wedding, and the zombie control officers are there in force, and they’ve fed all the zombies. The reporters are there, and it’s all a big production. Humans sit on one side of the church, while zombies sit on the other side. Everyone is afraid of the zombies, but they do seem to be well-behaved.

Outside, Koko knocks out a zombie and steals his clothes. Inside, the zombies are getting restless as the wedding begins. There’s still plenty of time for the two mothers to bicker. We flashback to the couples’ first meeting.

In the middle of the service, Zack’s friends attack the preacher. After a minute, the preacher gets up and “shakes it off” before continuing. The brain substitutes don’t seem to be working, but the government approved them, and they’re never wrong, right?

It’s time for the reception, and the ZCO are getting nervous about their ability to control the zombies. The couple does their first dance, but she’s clearly afraid of Zack. Outside, the original zombie, the mailman, hears the music and leads his many minions toward the church. As the party proceeds, one side character after another is bitten and turns. Suddenly, things get out of control, and the limbs start flying.

Koko grabs Ashley and runs off. She says she’d rather be a zombie than be with him, and she runs back to Zack. She wants to be a zombie now, it’ll make everything easier, but he refuses.

The “bad” zombies make it to the church, and it’s about to be a big battle– until Ashley yells for everyone to behave themselves. She makes a big speech, and then they proceed with the vows.

The end credits feature zombies dancing.

Brian’s Commentary

This was based on a 2015 interactive play. Apparently, once you become a zombie, you have to dress like a clown in tie-dye, leopard prints, and colorful robes.

The zombie makeup is unique. It’s more like shiny grease paint than anything else, cheap looking, but we got used to it pretty quickly, since it’s fairly consistent between all the zombie characters.

I think they could have dropped all the newspaper and reporter stuff; the story ground to a halt every time that stuff came up. It’s got a weird variety of celebrity cameos, but enough that every once in a while, you can recognize somebody.

It’s a bit on the silly side, even for a comedy, but it was definitely entertaining.

Kevin’s Commentary

It’s a lot on the silly side. Too much so for my taste. It’s well made for what it is, but I thought it was pretty tiresome. It gave me some chuckles here and there, but I mostly found myself tuning it out.

2024 Voice of Shadows

·      Directed by Nicholas Bain

·      Written by Nicholas Bain

·      Stars Guillermo Blanco, Corrinna Mica, Bee Vang, Martin Harris

·      Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes

·      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It starts right out with a terrible event being told in confession and moves into strange territory quickly. Then the script slows a bit as things move along. But it’s well cast and directed, the effects are decent, and it tells an unsettling story. We thumbs up it.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man in a confession booth tells his story to the priest. He explains how his mother was raped and murdered, and he killed the man who did it. The priest doesn’t respond to the story at all, and the man questions if the priest is even there. We cut to Emma, the man’s girlfriend, sleeping in her bed that night with his sister in the next room. Credits roll

Gabriel, the man we saw earlier, goes out the next morning, and elderly neighbor Birdie whines about his wife taking his car keys away. The family, Gabriel, Emma, and Celeste, goes to visit Milda, a strange old woman who lives alone. Milda says sometimes she can talk to dead people, like Celeste’s parents. Milda’s neighbor, Joseph, talks to Gabriel, and old Milda expresses how much she hates Joseph.

Late at night, a strange man named Ernesto calls Emma; she doesn’t know who he is, but he says he knows Milda. He says Milda died earlier in the evening. Emma, Celeste, and Gabriel go to the funeral, and it looks like they’re the only attendees. For her eulogy, Emma talks about the first time that Milda died, during a fire at the orphanage where many children were killed, but Milda was revived.

Ernesto interrupts the eulogy to introduce himself; he has all the documents that they need to go over. Emma has inherited Milda’s entire estate, but there are some weird stipulations. He mentions that he and Milda were in a very exclusive club. The stipulations are that Emma has to live in the house, but under no circumstances is Gabriel allowed to live in the house. But as the executor, Ernesto says he’ll look the other way.

Either way, Emma wants to spend the night there. Gabriel acts terrified when she goes down into the basement; he’s got a real phobia about them. He says he buried his mother and her killer in a basement.

That night, Gabriel hears something and grabs a knife, which concerns Emma. In the morning, they plan to leave, but Ernesto comes for Emma, offering her a job at the local gallery. It’s clear that he wants Emma to stay. Gabriel finds some old books on witchcraft in the old woman’s house.

That night, Celeste reads from the witchcraft book, and we see old, dead Milda laying in the bed next to her. Meanwhile, Emma starts sleepwalking and being rude to Gabriel. She wants him to go back to the apartment and return to work. Emma calls him a danger to all of them.

Gabriel goes to church and talks to two priests, Father James and Father John. James sees John and clams up quickly, but he seems to want to say something to Gabriel. Celeste has a close encounter with old, dead, Milda.

Gabriel goes home and bravely explores the basement. Ernesto comes over and says Celeste has gone home to her apartment. He wants Gabriel to go home as well; he even offers to make travel arrangements for Gabriel. Ernesto looks friendly, but then he lunges at Gabriel with a knife. That escalated quickly! Gabriel stabs the man to death in self defense and hurriedly buries him in the yard before Emma comes home.

Emma gets home and Gabriel listens in as she gets a call from Ernesto. At some point later he goes to the spot where Ernesto was buried, and the body is still there. Gabriel tries to phone Celeste, but gets nothing but static. Emma warns Gabriel not to call the police about Celeste, “because of her papers.”

Gabriel talks to Father John about Milda, and he’s very evasive. “I know exactly who you are.” The priest is needlessly hostile and throws Gabriel out. Father James says John blames himself for how Milda turned out after the fire. James talks about pentagrams, and when Gabriel shows him the book, he laughs and says it’s all fiction. When Milda died, she supposedly went to Hell and met spirits and brought some back with her. James changes his tune and wants to do an exorcism.

 Gabriel goes home, but Emma has him locked out. When he finally does get in, he follows Emma into the basement. Something drags Gabriel into a dark place. They get into the car and go back to their apartment, but now Emma seems normal again.

Back at the church, Father James finds John doing something he shouldn’t be doing. Emma, possessed by Milda, goes to see Father John, who knows exactly what’s going on - he’s in the exclusive club that Ernesto mentioned earlier. Gabriel goes to see Father James, who is dead.

Gabriel goes back to Milda’s house, and the place has taken on a life of its own. Emma is there and tries to kill Gabriel, until neighbor Joseph comes in out of nowhere and knocks her out. Gabriel lights a torch and goes into the seemingly endless basement. He meets Milda there, looking old but alive. She talks about bringing back dead people with her from her brief period in Hell. Gabriel whacks her with a hammer and is then stabbed in return by Emma. He’s just wounded.

As Emma recites magic words for a ritual, Gabriel cuts himself and draws a pentagram in blood on his hand, which foils all Milda’s plans to permanently move in to Emma. 

We cut to the church where something evil comes to Father John, who gives us a big wicked smile.

Brian’s Commentary

Gabriel and his sister have just moved to America from a bad situation in Colombia, and they don’t know all the rules, so when people start acting strangely, Gabriel thinks maybe it’s him. Plus, he did kill a man back in his country, so he’s buried in his own guilt as well.

The acting here isn’t great, but it’s not terrible either; everyone acts so oddly that it’s hard to tell if they’re doing it on purpose. I think we both had a pretty good idea of what was going on from very early on, but it was entertaining seeing how it would play out.

Honestly, I thought it started out strong, but as it dragged on and on, it seemed to slow down to a snail’s pace. It seemed like Gabriel was wandering around in the basement for half an hour in what should have been the climax.

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought the acting was stronger than Brian did, especially from Guillermo Blanco in the lead and Jane Hammill who effectively alternated between eccentric and evil. I think that some good direction choices saved a script that is a little on the slow side. But a story was told. It’s got some creepy moments and good effects that get the job done. Overall, I liked it.

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This week, we’ve got another full stack of new films. We’ll open with “Attack of the Meth Gator,” then go fishing “Under Paris.” We’ll then “Kill Your Lover” inside “The Abandon,” and finally visit the very weird “Starve Acre.” All of these have been released in 2024. 

We’ve also got five fun shorts this week as well.

Don’t miss out on our next members-only edition of the newsletter, coming toward the end of the month.

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Full-Length Films:

Attack of the Meth Gator (2024)

●      AKA “Meth Gator”

●      Directed by Christopher Ray

●      Written by Lauren Pritchard, Joe Roche

●      Stars LaRonn Marzett, Ray Acevedo, Vanesa Tamayo

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This has more silliness and humor than horror, but the elements are there. It’s got a big monster and a decent body count. The gator and a lot of the effects are CGI, but they work well enough. Turn your mind off to logic and science for this one, and you’ll have a good time.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on shots of alligators in the swamp. We cut to drug dealers, Shane and Trig, frantically packing up their stuff as the cops close in. Sheriff Williams botches the bust, and the dealers run for the swamp. With some packs of meth that fall into the water. Shane steps into the swamp as Williams closes in on him. The gator gets him first. He also gets the deputy. Credits roll.

The mayor pays off some gator-hunters to take care of this extra-big gator, but he wants the whole thing done quietly. Sheriff Williams’s son, Dante, now works for the DEA in Tampa, and he comes up for the gator as well. That gator ate a whole duffel bag full of meth. It didn’t die from it, it seemed to get stronger. Dante says the gator might be suffering from psychosis, and it may be looking for a meth lab.

Williams calls Bithlo, who owns a gator farm, and he has found the monster with his drone, but it’s way too big for him to handle, and he knows it after it eats his drone. The mayor’s gator hunters stalk the big guy, but they don’t know when to quit, and it gets them.

Dante goes to see the mayor, who’s throwing a party, and Anna, Dante’s ex, is there as well, which is awkward. Grady, an old friend, is much more enthusiastic about Dante’s return.

Meanwhile, at the meth dealer's place, the men fill up more duffel bags with powder. They’re moving this load out via kayak, and the gator is not far away. It kills them and their girlfriends, chasing one guy up the side of a cell tower, which tips over under the weight. Without that tower, all communication for the island is down.

This gator’s going to have meth-mouth, since Bithlo found a huge tooth. Grady and Anna want to assist in the hunt as deputies. Bithlo too. The mayor says Dante has no jurisdiction here and won’t cancel the Memorial Day celebration. Suddenly, there’s an explosion and they all rush to see what that was.

Trig has checked into Grady’s inn, and the gator breaks right through the wall to get his meth. It swallows him whole. If it keeps eating meth, its teeth and armor will grow, and it’ll be invincible!

Bithlo takes Dante to a bonfire party, and enlists him in a $5000 bet that he can beat Buck, a hillbilly giant, in a slap fight. After a few rounds, Dante wins. Dante wants the location of the main meth lab, and Tucker, the guy who runs the game, agrees to take them.

In order to get to the meth lab, they have to zip-line over the swamp. No, it’s a trick. Tucker stops them part way there and pulls a gun on the other two men, but just then, the gator leaps up and eats him. Meanwhile, the mayor gets drunk and goes hunting as well. The gator eats him and Sheriff Williams and Anna arrive to start blasting, which does nothing.

The good guys develop a plan to kill the meth gator. Grady has an RPG, and that might do the trick. They all head out to the island, which is very remote. They find the underground meth superlab; it’s huge and just full of meth. They find the people who worked there, all dead because the ventilation malfunctioned.

The alligator arrives and there’s lots of shooting. Dante shoots the rocket launcher into the gator, indoors, and it explodes. When the dust settles, the gator is just laying there with no signs of life.

Sheriff Williams and Anna congratulate Dante and the town’s parade commences.

Bithlo wants to go back to the lab and skin the gator. When he touches it, the gator collapses; that was just its skin, which it has shed. It’s downtown now, and it’s far larger. It eats the sheriff and smashes a firetruck with its tail.

Bithlo reminds the others about the fireworks barge; there’s lots of explosives there. Dante takes some meth out to the barge as bait. When the gator attacks, Anna shoots the barge with the RPG and everything explodes.

Anna and Dante kiss. Happy ending, at least for them.

Brian’s Commentary

Supposedly, this was in the works before “Cocaine Bear” came out, but it’s very nearly the exact same plot. It’s got humor, but it’s nowhere near as funny as the bear. This little island has a mayor who won’t shut down the big festivalbecause they need the tourist money? That’s a new one! Oh, and Grady’s bar looks like someone’s living room.

The scene of the gator climbing the cell tower is worth the price of admission alone. Also, just because it’s on meth doesn't make it bulletproof; it’s shot at a thousands times here but never slows down.

The acting is fine for this kind of movie. It’s well shot and looks good. The gator is mostly CGI, but it’s not terrible.

Kevin’s Commentary

Oh, the bad science. It’s a goofy movie, but it was pretty fun. I turned my brain off and enjoyed it.

Under Paris (2024)

●      Directed by Xavier Gens

●      Written by Yannick Dahan, Maud Heywang, Xavier Gens

●      Stars Berenice Bejo, Nassim Lyes, Lea Leviant

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a pretty good movie as far as entertainment value. Just look aside for the bad science and bad choices that people make, causing bad situations to become worse. The cast is good though, the effects are decent enough, and it makes for a fun and gruesome movie with a big body count. We give it a thumbs up. Just don’t nitpick.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a boat in the north Pacific. The people on the boat are doing a documentary or news report about the huge, miles-wide, floating trash problem. There’s also something about shark evolution to deal with the trash.

Suddenly, the tracking device signals and everyone runs to put wetsuits on. They dive into the trashy water  and find a dead whale caught in a net, there’s blood in the water. A whole pack of sharks approaches, including one that is absolutely huge. It’s one that they tagged a few months ago, but it shouldn’t be that big. How is this possible?

The shark attacks and kills all four divers, including Sohpia’s husband. Sophia jumps in to investigate, and it grabs her and pulls her down so deep that her eardrum ruptures. Credits roll.

Three years later, in Paris, some kids go magnet fishing. They pull up an unexploded bomb. They’ve found at least a hundred of the things as they get ready for a triathlon. The police clear the river of magnet fishers and kayakers in preparation for the race.

We cut to Sophia, who is now giving tours at the aquarium. One of the kids asks if her entire crew died in a shark attack, so she quits. Someone from an environmental group comes to her saying they’ve found the killer shark. “Beacon 7” is now in the Seine River near downtown Paris, on the opposite side of the globe from where she was attacked. Sharks can’t survive in freshwater, but maybe pollution has changed that. The woman in charge of the group thinks they can communicate with the shark, which Sophia thinks is ridiculous.

Meanwhile, two women from the environmental group, take a boat out on the river and go diving for that shark. The diver finds a car down there that looks half eaten. She comes up and the police nab her. Sophia, with her tracker, arrives on the scene and sees that the shark was right there.

The police take their boat back to the police station, and Sophia rides her bike to a place where we just saw the policemen talking to a group of homeless, who are now suspiciously all missing. Did it eat the men on land? Maybe they just got too close to the edge.

Adil the cop questions Mika, the diver he arrested, and she knows about the shark. The cops call Sophia; they found a bunch of chewed up bodies. The police chief doesn’t believe there actually is a shark, but Adil does. She rides along on the police boat with her tracker, but most of the cops are still skeptical.

Mika calls back to her associates and tells them to cut the beacon signal, as the police are trying to kill the shark; she’s trying to save the shark. The police divers home in on the shark, but the tracker suddenly stops working. Adil blames Sophia for cutting the signal, but Sophia knows what really happened.

Adil tells the chief to close the locks, but it’s a week until the triathlon, and they can’t do that. What would the mayor say? Adil does some research on Sophia and learns her history. Meanwhile, Mika releases some viral videos that elevate her to full ecoterrorist status. “We will find this shark and set her free!”

Adil wants Sophia to go with him to the mayor, since no one will believe him. The mayor only cares about the triathlon. Sophia warns about the bad PR if the shark starts eating olympic swimmers. The chief puts Sophia in charge, and she tells Adil what they need to do to trap the shark in one of the locks.

Ben, Mika’s assistant, comes to talk to Sophia about Mika’s crazy plan to guide the shark using sonar. She turns on the tracker, which shows that the shark is literally out of the river and in the catacombs under the city.

The police take their boat down into the huge, wet catacombs, where Mika and her people are already assembling. The police barge in and break up the group, but Mika’s already started her sonar device. When the shark arrives, everyone sees the huge fin. And then a smaller fin; the shark has reproduced. This is Lilith the shark’s nest. The shark swallows Mike whole. Everyone freaks out and falls in the water for no reason, and some of them get eaten by baby sharks. They were all on the ledge, but suddenly everyone panics and jumps in the water in what may be the stupidest scene ever filmed. [Mika’s followers had three kayaks outside the chamber, but there must be a hundred splashing, panicking lunatics in this scene.]

Later, at the hospital, Sophia blames herself for everything, but Adil says it’s not her fault. Adil goes back to the nest and finds a dead shark there. Sophia does an autopsy and says it has adapted to freshwater; this shark is barely two months old, and it’s already pregnant. It was born pregnant; this is a whole new species, and they could take over the entire ocean.

The mayor still won’t cancel the triathlon and orders a coverup. Sophia and Adil bond over being survivors of attacks. Still, Sophia has a plan, and Adil gets volunteers from the police force. She wants to lure the sharks back to the nest and then blow it up.

In the city, it’s a major olympic event, and security is everywhere. The military refuses to allow the police boats to do their job, so Adil’s backup is neutralized.

The divers find hundreds and hundreds of baby sharks in the Seine. On the surface, hundreds and hundreds of swimmers jump in the water and start splashing. The big mother shark isn’t there, so they have to wait to spring the trap. Then the big shark reveals itself and eats the explosives expert. The explosives go off and only Sophia, Adil, and the big shark survive.

The sharks head to the olympic swimmers and they start disappearing one at a time, but very quickly. Everyone, the mayor and the press included, sees the sharks as they leap out of the water. The military boats start shooting machine guns at the sharks, but they hit submerged bombs that set off a chain reaction that blows up about half of Paris. There’s a tidal wave caused by the explosions that wash away the mayor and her entourage. There are flooded buildings from the tsunami. All of Paris is underwater now. [What? Really?]

The sharks have conquered Paris. And London. And the closing credits show us that New York, Venice, Tokyo and Bangkok are also going to fall. It’s now the “Planet of the Sharks!”

Brian’s Commentary

The 2024 Paris Olympics really did have swimming events in the Seine, but no sharks were involved.

Almost all the underwater scenes show garbage in the frame; the filmmakers had an obvious message to send about pollution.

Killer shark movies are not known for their intellectual writing, but this one takes the cake for putting people in ridiculous situations, especially that shark nest scene in the catacombs.

How did all of Paris flood just because a few bombs went off in the river? This may be the dumbest movie we’ve ever seen; you have to completely turn off your logic processors for this one. Some movies require a suspension of disbelief, but this one… good grief!

Kevin’s Commentary

That ending though. Where did all that extra water come from? There are many points that I had to not think about it too deeply. It was entertaining though, and I enjoyed watching it.

Kill Your Lover (2023)

●      Directed by Alix Austin, Keir Siewert

●      Written by Alix Austin, Keir Siewert

●      Stars Paige Gilmour, Shane Quigley-Murphy, May Kelly

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 17 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was an interesting idea, with a relationship gone sour made even worse by actual acid hatred. The script is simple, but well written and realistic, and the direction is skillful with much flashing back and forth between the past and the present, letting us see gradually how things build to the awful climax. Kevin liked it more than Brian.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a photo of Axel and Dakota as someone rips it off the wall and smashes it. Credits roll.

Dakota practices her “break up” speech with her friend Rose. She thinks Axel won’t really break up with her unless she really makes him hate her; she’s tried before.

We get a flashback to their first date. Axel looks at all of Dakota’s photography work, a montage of her with many various people. Dakota used to be in a band, but now they’re all mostly dead.  In the modern day, she laments at how mundane and boring she’s become since then.

Axel comes home from work early, he’s sick and throwing up. He overhears the women talking about the impending breakup. He’s got black veiny things spreading around his torso. “As soon as he starts to get better, I’ll break it off.”

Trying to make up for it, Axel wants sex, right now, but he’s still sick and gross, so Dakota doesn’t enjoy it. She fantasizes about when they first did it and how they got started as a couple. She was really wild and into all kinds of things, but he’s boring, vanilla, and just wants a “normal” relationship. She’s into kink, and he’s not, but tries badly. We see that from early on, the two really aren’t that compatible. Back in the present, the sex isn’t going so well; he pukes all over Dakota.

As she showers, Dakota notices that he’s left bloody marks where he touched her. Before she even finishes, Axel calls for help as he has some kind of seizure. When he touches Dakota, her skin burns. She calls for an ambulance “to come and take him away.”

She flashes back to not liking his choice of decor for the apartment. He doesn’t like her working at the bar, he wants her to get a more respectable job, but she doesn’t want to clean up her hair or cover her piercings. He doesn’t care for her wall of band photos either. She’s naked, kissing someone, or being sexual in all of them, and he doesn’t approve.

The EMTs arrive and see that Axel is mutating into something that has branches all over the walls. “Ricky, I’m gonna need a hand with this,” one EMT tells her partner. Axel is excreting gooey, slimy acid, and that’s what burned Dakota. “It’s just a reaction to something; it’ll clear up,” Axel insists uncooperatively. He refuses to go with the ambulance.

Dakota tells Axel that it’s time to split up. Ricky and Carol, the EMTs, try to calm down Axel. Axel then uses his newfound acid powers to remove Ricky’s face. He pulls off Dakota’s pants, and she sees she has the same black veins. “My germs are your germs,” taunts Axel as he kills Carol, the other EMT. He rips the skull right out of her head.

“I just want you to listen to my side,” he asks Dakota calmly, “So let’s talk this out.” Dakota wakes up handcuffed to a chair. He tells his side of the relationship, and he actually makes a lot of sense. She’s selfish, self-centered, and arrogant, and he’s tired of it. They both complain about the other trying to change who they are.

She turns on him, getting out of the cuffs easily because they are kink play cuffs not real ones. She has acid now too. They fight, but we also get more flashbacks to their previous arguments.

We return to the opening scene, where Dakota pulls the photo down from the wall, smashes it, and carries a sharp piece of glass into the next room. We see that they were even fighting when the photo was taken.

She finally gets to tell Axel her practice “breakup” speech. This results in her stabbing him and pulling out his heart.

Brian’s Commentary

Talk about your messy breakups!

It’s “Romance Horror,” or just how badly a romantic, sexy relationship can go really bad. Or maybe it’s about the horror of learning to compromise or not compromise. It takes a long time before we get to a more standard definition of horror, but it gets there. There’s obviously a lot of body horror involved as well, but that comes after a lot of relationship drama.

The makeup and gore effects are well done and effective here, but otherwise, there’s not much in the way of special effects.

It’s much more of a breakup allegory or metaphor, but it’s told in horror movie terms. I don’t regret watching it, but I also really have a hard time recommending it. It’s a nice idea stretched out for far too long, and it’s still a shorter film.

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought that the length of the film was just about perfect, with the story filling it nicely. The way it went back and forth between past and present was very effective. It’s a relationship break up movie dialed up to eleven with the horror elements added in. I liked it a lot.

The Abandon (2022)

●      Directed by Jason Satterlund

●      Written by Dwain Worrell

●      Stars Jonathan Rosenthal, Tamara Perry, Regis Terencio

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A wounded soldier wakes up trapped in a sealed cube. Jonathan Rosenthal does a noble job carrying the majority of the movie solo, but it’s not enough to save a script that is long and drawn out, with a big idea that doesn’t come through clearly enough. We were mostly bored with it, and wouldn’t recommend it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a military invasion of some Iraqi village. It goes badly for the men involved. One man falls and sees something very strange. Credits roll.

Miles Willis wakes up in pain from being shot in the side but is not in the desert anymore; he’s in a big square room. There are no doors or windows, so how will he get out? He uses his medical supplies to patch up his wound, but he’s obviously still in pain. He looks up and sees the word “Abandon” written upside down on the wall. He looks again, and “All” appears.

It suddenly gets very hot, and Miles takes most of his clothes off. It gets hotter and hotter, and he starts screaming in pain until he passes out. After he wakes up, gravity seems to shift, and everything falls to the wall, then the ceiling. Is this room rotating? He’s now standing on what used to be the ceiling, and his canteen is dripping water sideways.

Miles grabs his sat-phone and calls for help. His sat-phone rings, but it’s up on the ceiling now, and he can’t reach it. The temperature changes, and it gets super freezing cold in the room. Gravity shifts again, and Miles grabs the phone. He hits “redial,” and a woman answers. He thinks she’s behind what’s been done to him, but it’s clear that she’s in a similar situation. They argue back and forth for a couple of hours about stuff; I stopped paying attention around this point and browsed Reddit on my phone.

After the interminable phone call ends, gravity picks up and gives Miles a good stretch. Then the walls start literally closing in on him, but he falls and knocks himself out before that finishes.

The woman, Damsey, calls back, and her cell has gotten smaller as well. Are they going to keep shrinking? She says before this happened, she was at Cape Cod; he was in Iraq. Those phones don’t have that kind of range. It always seems as if they are in the same cell, possibly at different times. He gets another call, and some foreign guy babbles before the call drops.

Damsey calls again, and this time, instead of arguing for an hour, they talk about themselves for an hour. There’s an inscription on the wall dated 2007, and she says that’s no big deal, but Miles is from 1991; she’s in 2020. The walls shrink. She says they’re all there at once, but in different spacetimes. He draws an “X” on the wall and she sees it appear. Then she makes a mark, and he sees it.

Miles and Damsey guess that maybe it’s some kind of alien experiment. They start working on an equation that comes from somewhere. As Miles works the problem, someone invisible scratches it all out. Gravity goes wonky again, and this time, it’s powerful to suck the bullet out of Miles’s belly and break the phone.

The lights go out. Miles has a vision of war and carnage. It’s dark and tiny, which reminds Miles of when he was an abused child.

The foreign guy calls back and tells Miles that he has to lose the game. “What happens when a monkey in a cage learns a trick? He goes on display. The dumb monkey keeps his freedom,” or something like that. The room shrinks again down to about coffin-sized.

Damsey calls, and all she wants to know is if Miles was abusive to someone back home. He wasn’t, but he wanted to be abusive, and she thinks all men are pigs, and this has nothing to do with both of them about to be crushed to death, so why are we on about this now?

They work out that something or other with the gravity and equation works out to 1. Mankind united as ONE. That’s what the aliens are afraid of, all they have to do is “push back.” Suddenly, the walls explode, and they can see each other.

Miles wakes in the desert. He gets up and walks back to where people are, but now there’s an alien invasion in progress. And the folks have modern phones and equipment, so he’s not in 1991 where he came from.

So now, humanity is doomed because the aliens know we’re not stupid monkeys and can do math now? What?

Brian’s Commentary

This is horror? Or did they misspell “Snorer?”

Almost the entirety of the film is a phone call between two characters, one of whom we see and one of whom we don’t. We aren’t given any reason to care about either of them. There was just so much talking between these two people that I had a very hard time paying attention, which probably led to me tuning out some important details.

There are obvious similarities between this and “Cube” (1997), except this is even lower budget. It’s just a guy in an empty room. There’s a lot of discussion about an equation, but apparently, Miles gets a bunch of this from one line of Arabic; we don’t know where the equation came from.

It’s far too slow. Some movies are a “slow burn,” but this is boring from the start to the end. It would have made a good ten or fifteen-minute short but not a full-length film. There’s probably a cool sci-fi idea buried in here somewhere, but it’s really just “Phone Call: The Movie.”

On my new list of “Worst Wastes of Time in Horror Films,” this is #2, right after “Skinamarink.”

Kevin’s Commentary

I’m not going to harsh on it as much as Brian, but I didn’t care for it. I wouldn’t put it as number two on my dislike list. I blame the script above all else for the failure. There’s a big idea at the core, but it’s stretched out far too much with way too much talk and the same sort of things happening over and over for too long. Jonathan Rosenthal was actually pretty good carrying the solo work and delivering a realistic reaction to the situation. It just wasn’t a situation that was very interesting and wasn’t explained well enough.

Starve Acre (2024)

●      Directed by Daniel Kokotajlo

●      Written by Daniel Kokotajlo, Andrew Michael Hurley

●      Stars Matt Smith, Morfydd Clark, Arthur Shaw

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is a fine example of folk horror. Quiet and peaceful in a beautiful countryside with dark evils brewing in the background. It’s low on action and heavy on emotion and atmosphere. It was weird and interesting, and we liked it a lot. A big thumbs up from The Horror Guys. 

Spoilery Synopsis

We see old-looking houses out in hilly terrain. We cut to Juliette talking to her son Owen, before bedtime. Husband Richard says they don’t get to town often enough as Owen plays with other children. They are at a community party, but there is soon screaming as one of the ponies loses an eye. Owen is there, holding a pointy stick; yeah, he did it. Credits roll.

Richard and Juliette talk to a child psychologist about the incident. They all moved out to the country two years ago, and Owen seemed to be adjusting normally. Juliette reports that “Jack Grey” talks to him in his sleep. This voice in his head provokes Owen to do bad things. Richard knows about “Jack Gray,” a wood sprite that the local mythology talks about. Old Gordon, the groundskeeper, must have talked to Own about that.

Richard and Owen look for fossils in the creek bed. Meanwhile, Juliette confronts Gordon about what Owen’s been learning from him. Later, Richard goes to the university, where he teaches, as Owen passes out at home and is taken to the hospital, where he dies.

After the funeral, Richard throws himself into his anthropology research, digging out in the hills. Going through his late father’s papers, he finds a diary that talks about “a failed summoning.” There are photos and lots of explanations; the old man actually tried to sacrifice his son, Richard, when he was little.

Harrie comes to visit her sister Juliette, but the grieving mother won’t get out of bed. She has a dream of seeing Owen in the house, but then wakes up. They talk about Owen’s apparent mental problems; they both seem to blame each other for Owen’s death.

At the dig, Richard starts to find some old relics and bones. Jules starts sleepwalking out to the dig site. Mrs. Forde, Gordon’s friend, comes for a visit, and the women all talk about meditation. “A simple chant to help me restore the balance,” offers the old lady, and the three of them get right on that while Gordon talks to Richard about “Jack Gray.” Neither meeting goes well.

Richard finds an entire animal skeleton on one of his father’s boxes. He takes it to Stephen at the university to identify it; he says it’s a rabbit or hare, but there’s nothing special about it. When he looks at it again later at home, it’s started to regrow flesh. After some time, he notices the rabbit’s heart is beating. A few days pass, and Richard finds the rabbit running around loose in his room.

Richard enlists Jules’s help to lure the hare out and into a box, where it hisses and growls at them in rage. They carry the box out to the field to release it, but it behaves strangely. It makes both grieving parents feel better, and they have sex for the first time in a long while. Late that night, Richard goes out and visits the cemetery– with a shovel. No, he’s dug down to the roots of an old tree that was said to be mystical.

Harrie reads Richard’s father’s book on sacrificial folklore; there must be three sacrifices to the tree to release the spirit of Dandelion Jack. Stephen comes to visit and admires the old tree roots and how well it’s preserved. Harrie screams; the rabbit attacked her dog and ran inside the house. Jules picks it up and cuddles it; it’s not so vicious after all, right? She puts it in a baby crib. Harrie gets freaked out and goes home.

Outside, Stephen starts yelling “I am here for him!” Jules goes out to the dig and stabs Stephen. On the road, Gordon talks to Harrie about what Dandelion Jack really wants. Jules admits that she let Owen die; Jack wanted it. Jules has started treating the rabbit like a child. Harrie sees how messed up this is, but Jules and Richard both seem fine with their new long-eared child. Outside, Gordon and Mrs. Forde bury Stephen in the field next to the tree. Gordon holds up three fingers: Owen, Stephen, and… Richard looks at Harrie and picks up a hammer.

As Harrie lies on the floor bleeding out, Jules starts breastfeeding the rabbit.

Brian’s Commentary

We went into this one blind, and we were both shocked at Owen’s early demise; we thought the movie was going to be about him. It wasn’t. Once the rabbit appeared, we both had a very good idea where it was going to go, but that’s not what happened. We expected it would go the “Pet Sematary” route, but it went more down the traditional folk horror route instead.

The rabbit is part CGI (I think) and part puppet. It gets pretty weird toward the end, but it takes a long time to get there. There’s no action at all, it’s purely psychological, but it’s good if you like folk horror-type stories.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was an excellent one to go into blind like Brian mentions. It was so cool how it didn’t go where we were expecting, at multiple points. The cast, script, and direction were all great. It’s a slow-moving one, without a whole lot of action, but I really liked it a lot.

Short Films:

Short Film: Conjured Clowns (2024)

●      Directed by Keely Jones

●      Written by Taylah Sangalli, Keely Jones

●      Stars Taylah Sangalli

●      Run Time: 9:58

●      Watch it:

What Happens

A young woman gets a job at a funeral home. While doing some cleaning, she finds a box of unlabeled ashes. She decides to go out to the park to spread them nicely. It’s a windy day, and she gets a faceful of ashes, and suddenly, she starts seeing creepy clowns. Are they real or is it just dust in her eyes? As the afternoon progresses, she finds out…

Commentary

Those are some creepy clowns! Tahlah Jones, as the main character, is fine, but the rest of the cast are not so great. Still, they get the story across, and the situation is interesting. It’s well shot, sounds good, and is just long enough to tell the story it needs to tell. Nice!

Short Film: Crazy Car (2021)

●      Directed by James S. Osborne

●      Written by James S. Osborne

●      Stars Erin Yvette, Grant Davis, Christopher J. Gannon

●      Run Time: 6:53

●      Watch it:

What Happens

Katelyn runs inside the house to avoid her abusive boyfriend, but he goes right inside after her, leaving friend Eric to wait in the car. Eric hears the two arguing and laughs; he’s seen it all before. Suddenly, the car starts up, but Eric sees that the keys aren’t in the ignition. The car isn’t laughing…

Commentary

This one is short, at under seven minutes, but it tells us everything we need to know. We see that Katelyn has been dealing with the abusive Jason for a while and that his friends just enable the behavior. If only someone or somethingwas on her side.

It’s very good. It all happens at night, but we can see everything, so the lighting is good. The acting does the job, and the special effects, although minimal, are effective.

Well done!

Short Film: The Life of Death (2016)

●      Directed by Marcin Dubiniec

●      Written by Marcin Dubiniec

●      Stars Adonis Williams, Mirirai Sithole, Jack Hillman, Sicily Rockmore

●      Run Time: 6:36

●      Watch it:

What Happens

Death walks down the busy streets of New York City, doing his job like everyone else. Suddenly, he’s hit by a car! If this were a normal person, their life would flash before their eyes. But what does Death himself see?

Commentary

This was really well done. There’s no dialogue, but it’s always clear what’s going on and why. I’d call this more “cute” than “horrific,” but it’s here anyway because it’s just that well made.

Short Film: The Quiet Zone (2015)

●      Directed by Andrew Ionides

●      Written by Andrew Ionides

●      Stars Jessica Bayly, Kasey Iliana Sfetsios

●      Run Time: 8:41

●      Watch it:

What Happens

A woman rides on the subway, trying to get her spreadsheets in order for a report she has to finish by morning. It’s been a long day, and she’s getting frustrated. Some bozo a few seats away starts whistling annoyingly, and they’re clearly seated in the “Quiet Zone” of the train. She tells him to stop, and that’s when her troubles really begin.

Commentary

It’s got all the tropes you’ve seen before of someone being followed at night by a stalker, but they’re all done really well. We don’t know who or what the whistling person is, but they really want people to keep quiet, doesn’t he? The main actress does a good job, although she has very little to say in this. The “man” is suitably weird and supernatural without being too over-the-top. Well done!

Short Film: Shuck (2024)

●      Directed by Emerson New

●      Written by Emerson New

●      Stars Heather Jacques

●      Run Time: 5:22

●      Watch it:

What Happens

A woman lies in her sickbed, dying. There’s a huge black wolf under her bed who says, “It’s time.” Yes, this wolf is Death.

The woman wakes up in a huge field of grass, with many spirits making their way through a door. The wolf is there watching it all. She decides to run the opposite way, and the wolf pursues her…

Commentary

It’s an interesting mix of animation types. It’s obvious what’s going on all along, although there’s not much “horror” here. Still, if you saw that exact same wolf form in a different story, it could be terrifying. There’s no dialog beyond the wolf saying, “It’s time,” but it’s still a full story.

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This week, we’ve got a full stack of new films. We’ll open with the much-hyped “Longlegs” and see if we agree with the buzz. We’ll stop in and check out an “Oddity,” try not to die on “Tuesday,” figure out how to get by while “Handling the Undead,” and maybe go to a place where “You’ll Never Find Me.” All of these have been released in 2024. 

We’ve also got five fun shorts this week as well.

Since our little restructuring last month, we’ve decided to bump up the benefits for paying subscribers. Earlier this week, we also sent out our first subscriber-only newsletter. In this first one, we examined all five of the movies in “The Prophecy” series, mostly starring Christopher Walken. We’re not cutting back on the free newsletters, but we’re offering more than we did to the paid people. Subscribers also get full access to the archive of more than three years of back issues, which is easily searchable.

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Full-Length Films:

Longlegs (2024)

●      Directed by Osgood Perkins

●      Written by Osgood Perkins

●      Stars Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 41 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Imagine taking the vibe of “Silence of the Lambs,” adding some supernatural elements and dialing the horror up to full volume, and you might get this movie. It’s really well made with a retro look and excellent performances all around, especially from Maika Monroe in the lead and an unrecognizable Nicolas Cage. We both liked it a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a young girl, looking at a car out in the snow. She goes outside and meets a strange man with a white face who says he wore his long legs today. Credits roll.

It’s the 1990s. We cut to a bunch of FBI agents being briefed about doing a door to door search for their suspect, who is expected to be armed and dangerous. Agent Lee Harker waits in the car for Agent Fisk to start knocking on doors. She gets a feeling about one of the houses and wants to call it in. Fisk isn’t about to call in her hunch. Turns out, her hunch was right, and Fisk is shot immediately. Lee goes inside and arrests a man. Afterward, she undergoes a strange psychological test. Could she be psychic? She is at least highly intuitive.

Agent Carter takes Lee and Agent Browning to the house of a man who killed his family. They found a strange handwritten letter in code, signed “Longlegs” and Carter suspects that this person somehow made the father kill his family. There have been ten families murder-suicided like this over the past few years, where Longlegs doesn’t seem to have done it directly himself. Carter wants to know how Lee knew that the house held the murderer; he thinks she is psychic and wants to use Lee to figure out the Longlegs case.

Lee starts researching the ten cases of fathers murdering their families. Carter makes Lee come inside to meet his wife Anna and daughter Ruby. Lee goes home and calls her mother, Ruth, who used to be a nurse. There’s a knock on her door, and she sees someone standing outside in the woods. She goes outside and sees him inside; he leaves her a note: “Do not open until January 14th.”

She opens it anyway and there’s a birthday card inside with the coded words inside. Ruby’s birthday party is soon. She immediately knows how to decode the message, and it’s a threat.

In the morning, Lee gets called to another of the family murders. This one happened a month ago, and they just found the bodies. It’s a mess. Later, Lee decodes the rest of the letters, and they often mention “The Camera Farm,” which is where some of the earliest murders took place.

Lee and Carter go to the Camera farm and look inside the barn. Inside, they find a weird porcelain doll with human hair. They find a metal ball inside the head that the medical examiner calls a brain. Lee gets a vision of Carrie Anne Camera talking to Longlegs. We cut to Longlegs being weird in a convenience store.

The agents go to see Carrie Anne at the mental hospital, she was away when the killings happened and so was the only survivor. The doctor in charge says Carrie Anne was catatonic until she had a visitor yesterday, and she’s been awake. We get flashes back to Carrie Anne’s weird family life. She basically says she’d do anything for her visitor yesterday, even kill.

Carter thinks Lee knows too much about the case and wonders what her connection is; she’s been too helpful to the case. Carter has called Lee’s mother, who says Lee was visited by Longlegs when she was younger.

Lee goes to visit her mother, Ruth, to ask about the man who visited her on her 9th birthday. Ruth pretends to not remember any of what happened. Lee finds a photo of Longlegs from back on that day and takes it back to Carter.

Longlegs is packed and expecting the police when they arrive to arrest him. There’s no real evidence that Longlegs has killed anyone, and he knows who Lee is. Lee insists that Longlegs has an accomplice out there somewhere. Longlegs is a Satanist, and he claims to work for “Mr. Downstairs.”

Lee talks to Longlegs about his accomplice, and he implicates Ruth, Lee’s mother. He then beats his head against the table until he dies. Carter still refuses to believe there’s an accomplice, but Agent Browning, who gives her a ride, might. When Lee goes inside, Ruth kills Browning. Ruth has a special doll as well. When Lee shoots the doll in the head, black smoke comes out of Lee’s head.

We flash back to the opening scene where Longlegs meets Lee. Longlegs was a dollmaker, and he used the devil’s magic to make his dolls. Ruth agreed to help Longlegs in exchange for not killing young Lee. We see how Ruth carried dolls to those families– Longlegs and the devil used the dolls to kill the families.

Lee wakes up in Longlegs’s workshop, which turns out to be in her mother’s basement. She gets a phone call, “You’re late for Ruby’s birthday party.” She goes to the Carter house, with her gun, and sees her Mother is there, dressed like a nun; she’s brought Ruby a doll. Carter and Anna won’t listen; the doll has already taken control of their minds.

Carter kills Anna, and then Lee shots him and her own mother.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s another of those “retro” films. This one takes place in the 90s (Bill Clinton’s photo is on the office wall) but most of the visuals make it look more like the 70s.

The acting is good all-around, with Maika Monroe playing Agent Lee as mildly autistic, spitting out numbers and facts and decoding the letters. She’s not very comfortable around people, which makes her interesting. Blair Underwood, as Carter, is a good manager; he knows what Lee’s abilities are and uses them. Nicolas Cage is almost unrecognizable and is at “peak weird” here.

It’s slow getting started, but it’s very good. It’s like a more horrific turn on “Silence of the Lambs.”

Kevin’s Commentary

Despite the title, there is a real lack of spiders. I thought this was great anyway. I went into it pretty much blind, having heard vague good things about it, and it was even better than I expected. I don’t think I would have known that was Nick Cage if I didn’t know it was Nick Cage, between the makeup and his acting, he’s someone different than usual. I liked the whole vibe, and how the case unfolds as it moves along.

Oddity (2024)

●      Directed by Damian Mc Carthy

●      Written by Damian Mc Carthy

●      Stars Carolyn Bracken, Johnny French, Steve Wall

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was well made, strange and interesting. Carolyn Bracken was very good playing twin sisters. The settings and props are cool. It almost felt like there were surprises, yet it was also happening the way we expected at the same time. We give it a moderate thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open at a mental hospital where Ted, a doctor, gets a call from Dani, who is working on restoring an old house in the country. She wants to invite her sister, Darcy, to dinner tomorrow night.

She’s alone in the ancient house. Olin, a creepy man with one eye, comes to the door and says someone has sneaked inside with her. He’s one of her husband’s former mental patients, and he swears he’s trying to help her. When she threatens to call the police, he tells her to do that, but she’s lost her phone. She hears noises and starts to wonder if the man is telling the truth. She reaches for the door handle, and– credits roll.

We cut to Declan, another one of the mental patients, who is a good artist and living in a halfway house. He has many sketches of the one-eyed man we saw outside Dani’s house. Something out in the hallway terrifies him and then he finds Olin, head crushed. He picks up the eye which was laying on the ground.

Ted goes to visit Darcy, Dani’s blind sister, who runs an antique shop, “Odello’s Oddities,” that has items that she says are haunted. She shows Ted a cursed bell, claiming that if it’s rung the furious ghost of a bellhop will appear.  She puts it away without using it. Ted says he has something; Declan has died and they “found it” among his possessions. Darcy has been asking for it, and she wants to examine it. It’s been a year since Dani’s murder. Ted’s got a new girlfriend, Yana, and the two of them are living in that old house.

Darcy goes home, and we see that now she has Olin’s weird glass eye. She uses her psychic abilities to see what he saw.

Ted talks to Yana, who found Dani’s old camera. There are photos of Dani on the camera, but Yana took the picture two days ago. Yana’s been seeing things in the old house; could Dani be haunting them? Darcy has a locked crate delivered. Then she shows up to visit, and it’s awkward with Yana there. Ted has to go to work and Yana has had enough of the creepy house and was planning on going to the city for the night, so Darcy wants to stay there alone.

Darcy unlocks the crate, and Ted and Yana are confused by the contents. It’s some kind of wooden doll man with a very creepy face. Ted goes to work and looks at Declan’s file; it’s full of drawings that look like the wooden man in the box.

Back at the house, Yana wants to leave but can’t find her car keys. Darcy says that she’s a psychic; she can “read” personal physical objects. Darcy tells her that Olin didn’t kill Dani. We flashback to what really happened that night, and Darcy is right. It was a masked killer while Olin was outside.

At the hospital, orderly/guard Ivan is just creepy as can be. He asks about Darcy, someone he shouldn’t know about. Yana calls, saying Darcy told her that Ivan was the one who killed Dani last year. When Darcy goes to sleep, Yana messes around with the wooden man and finds photos, a tooth, some hair, and a vial of blood inside its head. Darcy awakens and yells at her to put them back, which she does.

Later that night, Yana sees some weirdness on the camera and in her bedroom. She finds her car keys and drives away, terrified. Ted arrives, and Darcy says Dani scared her off. Darcy admits killing Olin; she was crazy herself for a while. That was before she learned the truth from handling the eye. Ted reminds Darcy that she has brain cancer and is probably having hallucinations. She wants to kill Ivan next. She says Ted asked Ivan to do it; he’d been cheating on Dani and wanted to be rid of her. We get another flashback of the whole discussion.

Darcy says she plans to expose Ted. Ted insists that this is all in Darcy’s mind and goes to get the detective in charge of the case to call her later, all the evidence pointed to Olin. It’s all a trick, as Ted has opened a trap door for her to fall into. Splat!

Ivan returns to the house and finds Darcy, severely injured and not quite dead. “We are connected,” she says. When Ivan comes downstairs, the wooden man is moving and comes after him, seeming to be controlled by Darcy. Darcy smiles and dies as Dani looks in.

Ivan wakes up later, in the mental hospital. Ted has had him committed. Ted says he’s burned the wooden man. Ted leaves him alone, strapped to the bed, along with another violent prisoner– who kills Ivan.

Yana leaves Ted a voicemail, a breakup with “Do not call me again,” added. She’s done with him and his haunted house.

Ted opens up a box sent from Darcy, and it contains that bell, one of Darcy’s “oddities” that supposedly conjures up the ghost of a bellhop. He thought it was silly in her shop, but Darcy seemed to take it seriously. After some hesitation, Ted rings the bell…

Brian’s Commentary

There’s a short film, “How Olin Lost His Eye” that was the basis of this film. One of Darcy’s oddities is the ugly rabbit from “Caveat” (2020).

The wooden man is a very cool-looking prop. The bell thing felt a bit random; were all the things in Darcy’s shop reallycursed?

I liked it, mostly.

Kevin’s Commentary

The old fortress house that got restored and that they live in is very cool. The cast is very good, especially the lead, who plays a dual role, and the story is solid. The twists and surprises somehow manage not to feel very surprising. I thought it was very good, not quite great.

Tuesday (2024)

●      Directed by Daina Oniunas-Pusic

●      Written by Daina Oniunas-Pusic

●      Stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Leah Harvey

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 50 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

To call this horror is pushing it, but it does have a massive body count. Death is personified, appearing to a dying woman and her mother. But things get more complicated than that as death is delayed from his task. It’s a good philosophical what-if kind of fantasy movie that keeps a tight focus on four characters. It was quite good.

Spoilery Synopsis

We get a shot of Earth from space and then zoom out to see a weird bird asleep on someone’s eye. The weird bird flies away, grows huge, and confronts a woman in the parking lot. The bird waves his wing, and the woman dies. He then flies to an old woman and it does the same thing to her. He then hears a man say “I’m not dying,” as he bleeds out; the bird gets him too. This bird is Death.

We cut to Zora, who is tiptoeing around the house to keep from disturbing Tuesday, her daughter, who is sick in home hospital bed. Zora goes to a taxidermy shop to sell a set of stuffed pontifical rats; she needs the money.

Tuesday is home, talking with Nurse Billie. Tuesday starts breathing funny, and elsewhere, the magic bird perks up. The bird comes to “collect” Tuesday, but stops when the girl starts telling him a story about one of the neighbors. The bird of death laughs at Tuesday’s joke. Suddenly, there’s some loud music, and the bird shrinks. She picks him up and tells him he’s had a panic attack. 

The bird has glue on his foot, and when Tuesday offers to wash him, he says “I’m filthy.” Yes, the bird can talk. “I haven’t spoken in a long time.” She helps Death wash the filth off. He hugs her afterward. She knows what he’s there to do, but asks to phone her mother first. When Zora doesn’t pick up, Death gets angry. He talks about hearing everyone’s pain, forever. The two of them sing a rap song and then vape together.

Tuesday and Death talk about their awful mothers. Death’s was significantly worse. Zora gets home and Billie tells her that she needs to spend more time with Tuesday. It’s clear that Zora has been avoiding her dying daughter. Tuesday tells Zora that Death has come for her, and the bird reveals itself. The bird explains things to Zora. There’s a brief scuffle, and Zora and Death knock each other out.

When they wake up, Zora asks for just ten more minutes. The camera takes us outside, where the bird hears everything again, which is terrible. When he’s with Tuesday, the voices are quiet. Suddenly, Zora smashes the bird with a heavy textbook and then sets it on fire. She swallows what’s left. She tells Tuesday that “It had to go.” Meanwhile, all around the world, people are maimed and injured, but none of them are dying.

Zora and Tuesday spend the day together, and it’s nice for both of them. Tuesday complains that “everything hurts.” Tuesday learns that Zora has sold almost everything in the house to pay for her care. They argue about that until Zora gets angry and grows to a ridiculous size.

Meanwhile, as Nurse Bille walks to work, all hell is breaking loose outside. She arrives to find giant Zora scrunched up in the living room. Then she shrinks to a tiny size and runs off. Billie tells Tuesday about all the crazy non-deaths all over the world, and Tuesday explains what happened.

Zora starts hearing Death’s voice in her head, and things die when she waves her hand over them. Zora helps out a man whose time has passed, and she sees it as a good thing. She does the same for many others. Zora carries Tuesday along to catch up on the overdue deaths, and they both come to the realization that Death is necessary eventually. “We’re really good at this. We can do this full time, right?” Tuesday just wants to go home.

Zora can still hear all the dying people in her head including Tuesday. We see that the Death-bird has been sleeping inside her all this time, and she vomits it up. We don’t hear the details, but Zora and Death make some kind of deal. He shrinks down and goes back inside her.

Tuesday knows what’s going on now, and Zora clears up a few points. Later, at home, Death says he wants out. They say their goodbyes, and Tuesday finally dies.

Time passes. Zora struggles with bills. Death stops in for a visit to see how she’s doing. Zora says she’d like to be dead, but Death isn’t cooperating. She begs. Death tells what he knows about God and the afterlife; the legacy people leave behind. He persuades Zora to stick around.

Then the bird flies away.

Brian’s Commentary

This one was listed as a horror film, but it’s more of a magical fantasy about Death, so it probably fits into horror somewhere around the very edges. There’s a large creature who kills a lot of people, so there’s that, but it’s definitely not a horror film. There have been many other films in the past where Death takes a holiday, is taken prisoner, or otherwise put out of action for a while, and the situation always goes the same way.

Death is obviously a puppet and CGI, but he’s done really well. There aren’t a lot of special effects here otherwise, but what we do get are well done.

There’s a lot here that deals with dying and grief, and dealing with both. Why do people die? Why are we here? What good is a parent without their child?

It’s more philosophical than horrific, but it was still a good movie. Just don’t expect to be scared.

Kevin’s Commentary

Going into it, I was expecting more of a horror experience. But it was still nice. It’s not a happy movie, but it’s nice and it’s moving. We knew what was going to happen with Death distracted and delayed and not doing his job, and it was really handled well seeing the world start to go to chaos in the background while focusing mostly on the two main characters. I’d say that I liked it.

Handling the Undead (2024)

●      Directed by Thea Hvistendahl

●      Written by Thea Hvistendahl, John Ajvide Lindqvist

●      Stars Bjorn Sundquist, Renate Reinsve, Dennis Ostry Ruud

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a super slow moving movie, but we were not bored watching it. The freshly dead come back, and the focus is on three family units and how they are experiencing it, with the rest of the world in the background. Rather than being a high action zombie apocalypse, it deals in a more realistic fashion with what it would be like for people seeing those they care deeply about coming back to a half-alive sort of life. Reviews seem mixed, but we liked it a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

An old man sits and smokes, packs a lunch, and goes for a walk. He goes into a building, but he has to take the stairs when the elevator doesn’t work. When old Mahler arrives at Anna’s apartment, they don’t really speak much; she doesn’t want the food he brought her. She basically ignores him and leaves. Maher then cleans up her apartment and puts toys back where they belong, but there are no children here.

We cut to Tora, an old woman, at her elderly friend’s funeral. She’s the only one there, and she’s pretty upset. We then cut to Flora, who is much younger, as her mother begs her to babysit young Kian. Their mother is off to pick up a birthday present, and their father, David, is a stand-up comic.

David gets a phone call; his wife has been in an accident and has been killed. Tora cries at night. Mahler visits his grandson’s grave and cries. Suddenly, weird electrical disturbances happen all over town. Mahler gets a headache and passes out right on a fresh grave. When he wakes up, he hears something underground, like knocking. He grabs a shovel and starts digging, “Grandpa’s coming,” he shouts. He gets to the coffin and there’s definitely knocking from inside. He opens it…

Tora finds her front door open and then finds her friend, Elisabet, digging through the fridge. “You’re stone cold, dear.” In the hospital, David notices his wife, Eva, moving around. The doctors say Eva’s heart is beating, but very slowly; they can’t explain it and they’ve never seen anything like it. He goes home and doesn’t quite know how to explain it to Flora.

Mahler carries his grandson Elias home and cleans him up from the grave but he’s still clearly not right. Elias is pretty gross and bloated, but the old man pretends not to notice. Anna attempts suicide, but Mahler finds her in time. He tells her about Elias, and she’s happy until she gets a good look at her son. The police come to the door wanting to know if they have Elias in there.

Pretty soon, everyone knows what’s happening, and the cemetery is a busy place, as is the hospital. Tora cleans up Elisabet and puts makeup on her. When she tries to feed her, things get a little scary for a moment.

Mahler, Anna, and Elias move to a cabin on an island to avoid the police. Elias won’t play anymore. David can’t get a straight answer from the hospital about Eva, and they stop taking his calls. His children have no idea what’s even going on. Tora realizes pretty quickly that Elizabet isn’t really all there anymore, but she’s still in love.

Everyone is sad; we get a misery montage as everyone realizes that this just isn’t right.

David, Flora, and Kian go to the hospital to visit Eva, and she’s not looking good. Kian takes along his new pet rabbit, a birthday present, and Eva holds it– and squishes it to death in front of the kids. It is not a satisfying visit for anyone.

Tora takes an overdose of sleeping pills and dies in bed next to Elisabet, who eventually starts chewing on Tora. It’s a lot less romantic now.

Kian gives his rabbit a funeral. Flora cries. David realizes that the current situation is worse than if Eva had simply died.

On the island, Elias is constantly covered in flies, but worse, Anna sees a scary-looking zombie outside. Mahler returns from getting water and attacks the dead man. The dead man kills Mahler as Anna runs off with Elias. On a rowboat, Anna drops Elias overboard after saying goodbye.

Brian’s Commentary

Embalming is not as common in Norway as it is in other countries, so this is all completely possible. There has to be more than three families that this happens to, you’d think it would be all over the news, and yet David goes on for half the film not knowing anything.

It’s bleak and atmospheric, or maybe that’s just Norway. I’ve seen complaints that the film is slow and boring. I think that’s just the atmosphere building up. This is not a “World War Z”-type action movie, this is a zombie drama. The upside-down cross on the movie poster hints that it’s all Satanic or something, but there’s nothing like that; it all just sorta happens, and there’s nothing evil about it.

It’s slow, and there’s almost no action at all, but I thought it was pretty good.

Kevin’s Commentary

The way that it focuses on a few people, dealing with the pain of losing someone and then dealing with the uncertainty when they sort of come back to them. It’s a bit of a limbo they are stuck in, and rather than being joyous that their loved one is back, it makes things worse. It creeps along, but I really liked it.

You’ll Never Find Me (2024)

●      Directed by Josiah Allen, Indianna Bell

●      Written by Indianna Bell

●      Stars Brendan Rock, Jordan Cowan, Elena Carapetis

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

With just two people in the small space of a trailer, this almost felt like it could have been a stage play. Almost. On a dark and stormy night, we’re left puzzling throughout what’s really going on, and if they are each who they seem to be. It’s a strange one, but good, and we liked it a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

We see that Patrick lives alone in a mobile home. Credits roll.

Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door. He doesn’t want to be disturbed, but the knocker is very persistent. It’s pouring rain outside, and he lets the visitor in. She asks for a ride into town, but he says his car is broken down; there are no buses at 2 a.m. The storm outside continues to rage.

The visitor says she was at the beach earlier and must have fallen asleep. Her feet are a mess, and Patrick finds holes in her story. He doesn’t have a phone either, the payphone is way up at the front of the park.

Patrick admits that he’s paranoid, but that’s because people in the park like to play pranks on him. She starts getting creeped out by the older man, but it’s still storming. He notices her earring.

He offers to let her take a shower to warm up, but she senses a trap. She’s nervous, but proceeds. She gets a vision that she’s bleeding from a head wound. Afterward, he gives her a woman’s sweater that he says used to belong to an old girlfriend.

She asks what he’s running from; everyone is hiding from something. She talks about just coming from work, which doesn’t match her story from earlier. He makes her soup, but she suspects something is in it and pours it in his boot.

Suddenly, there’s another knock at the door. No one’s there, it’s probably just neighbor kids. Then the lights go out, and the sounds outside go from stormy to scary. As Patrick bends down to look at the fuse box, the visitor sees that his back is bleeding. This leads to her looking for aspirin in his medicine chest and finding a bottle containing numerous earrings, including one exactly like hers. Which is missing from one of her ears.

She’s ready to leave, but he says he’ll walk her out when the storm lets up. She insists on leaving, and he starts to take offense at how ungrateful she is. She thinks he’s locked her in, but when she tries to open the door, it’s unlocked. The storm is really nasty, so she has no choice but to stay. They eventually calm down and play cards.

Patrick talks about meeting his wife; the sweater was really hers. She’s the first person to visit him since his wife died from an overdose. He knows her entire story is made-up, but he’s just happy to have someone to talk to. She sees lipstick on her cup and accuses him of lying.

A branch outside falls on the roof, and Patrick goes out to look at the damage. The visitor stays inside and finds that Patrick has had a cell phone all along. No, it’s not his, there’s a dead woman in his bedroom. Meanwhile, outside, Patrick sees something that shocks him.

Patrick grabs her from behind, but she knocks the wind out of him. He gets up, drags her to the kitchen, and ties her hands and feet and drugs her. He drags her to the bed where he puts her next to the other dead woman.

Patrick explains how he met the woman at a gas station earlier this evening. He thinks it’s more than a coincidence that she knocked on his door tonight, of all times. He explains the dosages of the GHB that he gave her; enough to kill. He talks about all the girls he’s done this to; he can barely remember the first. He talks about philosophy as she slowly dies.

The radio comes back on, playing the same song it’s been playing all along. Patrick checks on the corpse, and sees that she’s his original, first victim that he described earlier. He killed that one with a hammer, and now his hammer is all bloody. The dead girl and the other dead woman laugh and sit up.

Something in the dark grabs Patrick and he finds himself covered in blood. He screams and sees all the women he’s killed over the years.

There’s another pounding at the door, and Patrick sees red and blue flashing lights outside. One of the dead girls offers Patrick a vial of the poison. He freaks out a little more and then drinks it down.

Suddenly, there’s no one there. There’s no storm, no girl, just Patrick at home alone. There’s a knock at the door– it’s the neighbor kids again. He checks his pockets and finds his empty bottle of poison there. Wheezing, he goes back inside to die…

Brian’s Commentary

It’s described as “A psychological thriller-horror on paranoia and gender power dynamics.” Yep, that pretty much covers it; it’s both awkward and tense throughout. Why is she lying about everything, and why is he so creepy-acting? The first hour is really good as the two characters try hard to not freak out the other one but still manage to do it.

It’s about as low-budget as a film can be, shot entirely inside a dark mobile home with mostly only two actors.

There was obviously going to be a twist, but I expected that the girl would be the bad guy, since that was opposite of what we’d expected. That’s not exactly the way it worked out. We do get an explanation of everything, and it all makes sense, but you do need to be paying attention to the stories that the characters tell along the way.

It’s good!

Kevin’s Commentary

The writing was excellent, and since a big chunk of it was just the two of them talking, that was an important aspect. It held my interest throughout. Who knew so much could happen in such a confined space?

Short Films:

Short Film: The Devil’s Passenger (2024)

●      Directed by David Bundtzen

●      Written by David Bundtzen

●      Stars Colleen Kelly, Gabrielle Niebauer, Will James Johnson

●      Run Time: 4:29

●      Watch it:

What Happens

Lauren is on her way to work and stops at a red light. Suddenly, a woman pounds on the back window of the van in front of Lauren’s car, obviously some kind of abused prisoner. Lauren drops her phone and can’t call for help, so she follows the van. It doesn’t end well…

Commentary

This is one of those films where we understand everything that happens but don't get any explanation as to why. Still, it’s well-filmed, well-acted, and nicely paced, and it’s also pretty short. You still have to wonder why this is all happening. Just because.

Short Film: Incursion (2024)

●      Directed by Anand Kulkarni

●      Written by Anand Kulkarni

●      Stars Mena Ren-Fritzke

●      Run Time: 2:51

●      Watch it:

What Happens

Sarah sits in her living room working on her computer when she gets a photo texted to her. It’s a photo of her, taken from just outside. There’s no one there when she goes to look out the window, but then she gets a cryptic message on her computer as well.

Then she finds out what’s really going on…

Commentary

It’s super short and doesn’t explain anything, but it looks good and is mostly effective. It’s dark, but you can always see what’s going on, and the acting is good. Still, I’d like to have some reasoning as to why this is happening. Did Sarah do something? Just a bad night? I don’t know…

Still, it’s hard to go wrong with a three-minute investment of your time, so check it out!

Short Film: The Jogger (2023)

●      Directed by Daryl Denner

●      Written by Daryl Denner

●      Stars Amanda Troisi, Michael R. Bollentin, Rodney Reyes

●      Run Time: 7:00

●      Watch it:

What Happens

A woman is out for her regular morning run and notices a strange man sitting on a bench watching her. She passes him quickly but then sees him again at the next bench—and the next. This guy clearly isn’t running to catch her; he’s just… there.

To get away from the odd man, she takes a trail off into the woods, where things get even weirder…

Commentary

Nothing bad can happen in a busy park on a beautiful day, can it? Yep. This one is good. There’s no dialogue at all, but we get a clear picture of what’s going on at the end. We don’t know exactly what the mysterious man is all about, but we know why he’s there and what he wants. I would have liked it to have been just a few seconds longer so we could see how the ending plays out.

Good!

Short Film: I, Adonis (2021)

●      Directed by Angelo Raaijmakers

●      Written by Angelo Raaijmakers

●      Stars Hein van Rooij, Dennis van Beusekom, Jolanda van den Berg

●      Run Time: 13:44

●      Watch it:

What Happens

Nicky had an unfortunate childhood. His mother dressed him like a little girl, and all his friends laughed. Now, grown-up Nicky is a bodybuilder, and he’s not going to pass for a girl anymore. Still, his body isn’t quite where he wants it to be.

Bodybuilding is hard without the right diet…

Commentary

Body dysmorphia is a thing that drives people to all sorts of weird behavior, but Nicky may be a bit over-the-top here. Otherwise, this short takes its time in building up the creep factor– I was starting to wonder if it was going anywhere horrific, but it eventually did. This is well shot, looks good, and really has an excellent cast to be in this story. I doubt most of them were actors, but they were all perfect for this one.

It’s a little slow, but it’s definitely unsettling.

Short Film: Baby Fever (2022)

●      Directed by Hannah May Cumming

●      Written by Hannah May Cumming

●      Stars Helena Berens, Louis Llewellyn, Georgia Thomas

●      Run Time: 25:03

●      Watch it:

What Happens

It’s 1972, and it’s the week of the Prom. Donna has plans to be the Prom Queen alongside football star Trip Baker. Her friend and sidekick, Brandy, is obviously jealous, but she’s a follower. When Donna gives up her virginity to Trip in the science class storeroom, they don’t see that they’ve released something unusual.

Will she keep the baby? That’s not an easy question in 1972. The more important question in her mind is whether or not the baby will start showing before the Prom. In Biology class, it’s time to dissect a frog, and that goes badly, demonstrating that the Prom may be the least of Donna’s worries.

Commentary

Oh my. This one is a little slow getting started, but once it gets going, it really gets going! There were several laugh-out-loud moments in this one, and the ending is very reminiscent of another famous “Prom” movie.

It’s well-acted and shot, the sound and lighting are good, and overall, it’s very professionally done. The special effects are, although not exactly groundbreaking, completely fine for this story and actually add to the humor in some places.

This one is really good!

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This week, we’ve got four new films: “Maxxxine,” “Tarot,” “Cursed Waters: Creature of Lake Okanagan,” and the very weird “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person,” all recently released. We’ll go back a few years and watch “Insidious 2: Chapter 2” from 2013 as we work toward completing that series.

We’ve also got four fun shorts this week as well.

Since our little restructuring last month, we’ve decided to bump up the benefits for paying subscribers. Later this week, we will also send out our first subscriber-only newsletter. In this first one, we’ll examine all the movies in “The Prophecy” series, mostly starring Christopher Walker. We’re not cutting back on the free newsletters, but we’re offering more than we did to the paid people. Subscribers also get full access to the archive of more than three years of back issues, which is easily searchable.  

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Full-Length Films:

MaXXXine (2024)

●      Directed by Ti West

●      Written by Ti West

●      Stars Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This continues on with the adventures of Maxine, now trying to make it big in Hollywood. Mia Goth and the rest of the cast are very good, the retro look of it is fun, and it’s cool how they work in the facade of movie sets and movies in progress. But it’s too long and drags, and it’s hard to root for the lead character who is fundamentally despicable. Mixed feelings on this one.

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch old 1959 footage of a girl dancing. Her father’s a preacher, and he tells little Maxine that she can be whatever she wants to be. We cut to adult Maxine who is doing an audition for a movie. She is nearly 33, and she knows she’s starting to get too old for porn, now she wants to be in “real” movies. She does a dramatic scene, and the casting people are impressed, but they still want to see her boobs. Credits roll as we see 1985 news stories. We are reminded just how weird the 80s really were.  The Night Stalker murders are mentioned repeatedly.

After the audition, Maxine walks to a porn studio, snorts some coke, and gets ready for a different acting job. Her agent calls and says she didn’t get that good part, but she has been cast in a new horror film.

We cut to a “peep show” where a man in black leather and a hat watches a woman undress. Later, Maxine gets caught in a dead-end alley with a man carrying a knife. She pulls her gun and makes him strip naked. Then she does something excessive to him. Later, Maxine gets a video tape delivered anonymously. It’s a police evidence tape of her doing bad things from the previous movies.

Maxine goes to a special effects place and has a full head cast made; part of her horror movie thing. While she’s waiting for it to dry, she flashes back to old Pearl.

Detectives are called to a crime scene, where two more bodies have been found.

Maxine gets a cryptic note with a phone number, and the man on the line demands that he meet her. John Labat is a private detective, hired to find her. He brings up the names of dead people from the first film. He hands her an invitation to a party; she’s being blackmailed, or at least it looks like it. As she goes home, the two detectives question her about Amber and Tabby, two of her colleagues who were murdered.

Maxine talks to Elizabeth, the director of her new movie, The Puritan II, and they talk about Hollywood and the “Moral Majority.” They drive to the set of “Psycho” and she hallucinates Pearl up in the window of the iconic house. There are religious people protesting the film, saying “Horror is not art” and stuff about Satanists. Soon after, she beats the crap out of Labat the PI.

Maxine goes to see Teddy, her agent and lawyer, and tells him her secret. We see that Labat and the serial killer are working together when Maxine’s video-store friend is murdered. The detectives want to know how Maxine is tied up in all this.

Later, Labat chases Maxine all over some famous movie sets, ending up back in the Psycho house. That night, she gets her friends to gang up on Labat, who later wakes up handcuffed in his car– inside a car crushing machine. He’s not going to be a problem anymore, but no one ever asks who he’s working for.

Maxine decides she’s had enough and goes to that party that Labat had mentioned earlier. The police tail her car. As she goes up to the house, she hears a recording of that video taken of her as a child that we saw earlier. Yes, the killer is her own father, and he’s more than slightly insane. He knocks her out.

She wakes up tied to a tree and surrounded by cultists and cameras. After a long speech, the two detectives storm in, guns drawn. There’s a shootout, and things get carried away. Maxine’s father runs away, up the hill toward the big “Hollywood” sign, but everyone chases him. The detectives are both killed, but Maxine catches up to her father.

The news reports that the Night Stalker has been captured, but he has nothing to do with this story. Maxine later becomes famous for helping in the arrest of her own father, a different serial killer.

“The Puritan II” is a big hit, and Maxine does finally become famous. We flashback to her finally blowing her father’s head off.

A month later, Director Elizabeth talks to Maxine about what’s next. “I just never want it to end,” she says.

Brian’s Commentary

We watched “X” (2022) and “Pearl” (2023) when they came out, and mostly liked both of them. All three of the movies try to do something different; this one tackles life in 1980s Hollywood and ties it in with Satanic panic.

It was well made, especially the “retro” aspects of it. The problem is, I never liked Maxine as a character, not in the first film, and not here. Without caring about the characters, the film was dreadfully dull. And then it drags out with two or three different places where it could have ended but then dragged on.

Bleah.

Kevin’s Commentary

Mia Goth is skilled in the role, but like Brian said, it’s hard to care about the anti-hero Maxine. At one point, we paused, and I exclaimed, “How can there be another half hour left?” It’s on the long side and feels that way. It’s well made in every way but too long and on the dull side through much of it.

Tarot (2024)

●      Directed by Spenser Cohen, Anna Halberg

●      Written by Spenser Cohen, Anna Halberg, Nicholas Adams

●      Stars Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, Jacob Batalon

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

There’s not a lot new here, but it’s well made. And the cards are really cool. The cast is okay, the effects are good - a little too heavy on CGI, and it tells a story. Who, if anyone, will survive and how? Gotta watch to find out. We give it a moderate thumbs-up.

Spoilery Synopsis

A group of friends have rented a mansion, but they’re having a campfire out back. It’s Elise’s birthday. During a game, it comes up that Haley and Grant have broken up. She thinks he’s not ambitious enough, and he thinks he’s too ambitious. They’ve finished their last beer, and there’s a bit of a panic. They find a padlocked cellar and decide they just have to explore it for alcohol. There isn’t any.

The room has a bunch of magic-shop gadgets. Paxton finds a box of Tarot cards, and Haley says she can tell everyone’s future with them. She says it looks like these cards are hand-painted. Haley does readings for Elise, Madeline, Paige, Paxton, and Lucas and gives them all advice (that will probably come in useful later). Only Grant abstains from the readings, but he eventually relents and gets one as well. He thinks she’s making it all up to get him for the breakup. Later, we see the box of tarot cards glow and credits roll.

In the morning, the whole group gets in their cars and goes back to campus. Paxton makes them listen to a podcast for the four-hour drive. Podcasters are sooooo annoying, right? They stop for gas and Lucas wins $700 on a lottery ticket. Was that predicted by the cards?

Elise goes home and finds a ladder up to an attic. Haley had mentioned something about “the ladder of success” in her reading. She climbs the ladder, but success is not what she finds; the High Priestess is up there, and she uses the ladder to apply a “crushing blow” to Elise’s head. Everything Haley said came true, in a twisted way.

The next evening, everyone knows about Elise’s death. Haley tells Paige her backstory, about how her mother died of cancer. That’s when she got into Tarot. Lucas walks alone in the tunnels and sees something dark coming for him. He hides in a restricted area, in an abandoned subway, only… it’s not abandoned, and he gets smushed. 

The group decides that the deaths aren’t coincidental, and maybe one of them is the killer. Haley starts to think that the Tarot reading had something to do with it. Still, people do Tarot readings all the time and nothing happens, so that’s a silly idea, right?

They check out the owners of that house she rented. Alma is a discredited occultist and is an expert in horoscopes and tarot. The whole group gets in the car and drives four hours to Alma’s house. Haley described the Tarot deck, and Alma recognizes it by the description.

Back in 1951, the deck killed six people at a wedding. In 1969, eight people died at Woodstock after doing horoscopes. 1988, same thing. Only Alma survived the 1969 readings. “Combining horoscopes and tarot is the most powerful form of divination known to man.”

Back in the 1700s, “The Astrologer” foretold bad things, but she was banished and her daughter murdered. In retaliation, she made a cursed Tarot deck and bound her soul to the cards.

The group drives home, but the car suddenly stops in the center of a long bridge. Madeline recalls her reading, freaks out, and everyone runs down the length of the bridge. Somehow, the Hangman gets Madeline.

They all decide to go back to that house, get the deck, and destroy it. Paxton decides that’s stupid; he wants to go home and barricade himself in his dorm room. The Fool chases Paxton home and catches him in the elevator.

Meanwhile, Grant, Haler, and Paige go to the house and throw the cards in a fire, but they won’t burn. They call Alma to come help, and she wants to turn the deck against The Astrologer. The Astrologer appears in the room and reads Alma’s horoscope. Paige gets separated from the others and meets The Magician. She hides in a big trunk, but The Magician saws it, and her, in half.

Haley thinks that maybe they can beat this thing if they read The Astrologer’s fortune in the cards.

As Grant is knocked out and dragged toward the fires of Hell by the devil, Haley does the Astrologer’s tarot reading. The reading ends with the “Death” card. The wind picks The Astrologer and rips her apart as the cards finally do burn this time.

Paxton comes to pick them up; he didn’t die after all. “How do we know this is all over?”

Brian’s Commentary

The concept is pretty obvious from the title alone. The cards predict bad things about all the characters and they die horrible deaths. This one adds not only strange deaths, but the actual characters on the cards come to life, which is a fun touch. The story is well told, especially when they talk to old Alma. On the other hand, a lot of stuff happens in the dark that we can barely see.

It’s listed as a horror-comedy, but other than a few laughs in the first five minutes, the comedy goes away pretty quickly. There’s a lot of CGI here, and it’s not terrible, but it’s overused. None of the characters have any real story other than Haley, and some are downright annoying. It’s all predictable and even a little cliched in most aspects, but for what it is, it’s well made and doesn’t get boring.

Kevin’s Commentary

The lesson I’m getting from movies like this is don’t play around with antique games no matter how cool the designs are. Trivia says they created the deck used for this movie. Since the title is “Tarot,” and they find the cards fairly quickly, it’s not hard at all to guess right away where things are going to go. I found myself looking over the gang, assessing who I thought was going to survive, getting picked off one or two at a time.

It’s well made, and I was entertained, but there wasn’t a lot new here.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2024)

●      Directed by Ariane Louis-Seize

●      Written by Christine Doyon, Ariane Louis-Seize

●      Stars Sara Montpetit, Felix-Antoine Benard, Steve Laplante

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It is a dark comedy at its core, and there are some funny bits, but it’s pretty grim to be considered a comedy. It’s a good horror movie though, and it’s got a unique take on the vampire mythos. We find out right from the beginning that there’s a whole secret vampire subculture with families, scientists, and doctors. We thought it was great.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s Sasha’s birthday, and her parents and cousin Denise got her a keyboard that she can already play. She’s never touched a piano before, but she knows it. Rico the clown shows up, and only Sasha seems pleased. He’s not funny, but he can do magic tricks. Turns out, the whole family are vampires, and they eat Rico. Sasha’s fangs haven’t come in yet, and she gets upset at the carnage instead of wanting to join in the feeding like she should.

The parents, Aurelien and Georgette, take Sasha to the vampire dentist, but her fangs won’t come in right. She’s traumatized by watching vampire movies. The doctor they see thinks it may be a brain defect; she’s too compassionate. Her father is sure that she’ll grow into it eventually. “I won’t be hunting for all of us for the next 200 years,” insists Sasha’s mother. Credits roll.

Years pass, and teenage Sasha plays piano on the street for donations. She drinks blood out of a transfusion bag with a straw. Her mother wants to take away Sasha’s piano until she eats normally. One night, Sasha is getting set up outside and sees someone on the roof of the bowling alley across the street; Paul is suicidal. Maybe.

Later that night, we see Sasha stalking Paul. He knocks himself out by accident, and it bleeds, which gets Sasha’s teeth growing. She runs home and drinks a bag of blood. Her parents notice the fangs immediately. They want her to go live with Denise, who refuses to feed Sasha the easy way. It’s an intervention to get her feeding like she’s meant to.

Denise picks up some hitchhikers and brings them home for dinner. Sasha won’t play along, so Denise kills them both as Sasha pouts.

Paul has a bad day in gym class, where he kills a bat. He gets in trouble for it afterward. “What if he attacks a student next time?” asks the principal. His mother wants him to go to therapy because of the situation. He’s actually got the dead bat in his backpack.

Sasha and Denise pick up J.P., another meal, and he’s obnoxious. He takes them to his place and points out that his dad’s a light sleeper. Sasha runs away, which distracts Denise in mid feeding. Sasha buys some people-food, which she knows she cannot eat. Then she sees a sign for a  suicide support group and goes to a meeting. 

The people at the group are pretty messed up, and Paul is there as well. It’s Sasha’s first time, and she’s vague about her situation. They all think she’s being forced to perform sex or something like that. Paul says he’d give up his life for a good cause, and Sasha pays close attention.

Sasha brings Paul home and finds Denise there with J.P., who is not dead and has fangs of his own. Sasha admits that she’s sixty-eight years old; she’s told Paul what she is, and he’s OK with that. After playing a record, she walks him through the biting process. He wants to be bitten, but she’s still very hesitant.

Sasha offers Paul a last wish, and he wants some revenge on Henry, his bully. They go to the bowling alley where Henry works, and Sasha stalks the crowd hungrily. Not only is Henry not there tonight, Paul is put to work. Henry’s at a party, so they go there next, but first they stop at Melissa’s house; she doesn’t like Paul, and he tells her off. The gym teacher and principal also get pranked.

Paul invites Sasha home, and she sees his sad bedroom. He’s ready for “a bite” but his mother comes home early and interrupts. They eventually do go to Henry’s party. Paul walks up to Henry and they make fun of him– until Paul bites him. On the way out, Sasha faints from hunger.

Paul taks Sasha away, cuts himself, and feeds her some of his blood. She admits that she can’t get her fangs up. Henry and his three friends spot them and move in to cause trouble. They start beating on Paul, and Sasha has no choice other than to help him. She’s super strong and the fangs come out. She drains Henry dry and runs his friends off.

Paul gets up and Sasha insists that he leave her alone with the body. Denise walks up and helps dispose of the body, surprised that it’s not Paul.

Meanwhile, Paul goes home and gets cleaned up after his beating. Denise tells Sasha that Paul can’t be allowed to live knowing what he knows, and Sasha whacks her with a shovel. She then picks up Paul, and the two go to a motel to hide.

He asks what her dying wish would be, and she says she wants to see the sun. He wants to leave the country, but she’s not into that. He thinks it’s possible to be a “humanist vampire,” and simply stalk suicidal people, but she’s skeptical. He wants to try. He finally talks Sasha into biting him.

She thinks Paul’s dead. It takes a long while, but Paul eventually partially wakes up. He’s wheezing and struggling for air. She calls her father for help, and the whole family arrives. Do they help him or will they stake him? It turns out Denise has been hiding bags of blood in her coat all along. Between the flask of blood her aunt gives him and the bags, he fully revives.

Some time passes, and we cut to the hospital, where Paul’s mother works. Paul and Sasha show up. Sandrine explains that she has a patient that’s about to die and has said her last goodbyes. It’s like euthanasia when they drain her into a blood bag. Maybe they can make this work…

Brian’s Commentary

Clowns are enough to give anyone PTSD.

So suicidal people have groups like AA? That seems counterproductive, like they could do it as a group or something.

It’s described as a dark comedy, but it’s really not got very much humor other than the basic premise. There are some funny bits, but they are few and far between. Still, it’s well done, and we were entertained throughout.

Kevin’s Commentary

It was nice going into this one blind, and I really enjoyed it. There were some chuckles here and there, but it’s pretty dark and serious overall. The cast is great, the effects are perfect, and the story is very entertaining.

Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)

●      Directed by James Wan

●      Written by Leigh Whannell, James Wan

●      Stars Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 46 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is more of the same, after things didn’t get as wrapped up as they appeared in the first movie. The writers find a way to continue the troubles. It’s not a favored franchise by either of the Horror Guys, but it’s well made. The cast is good, the effects are good, and if you enjoyed the first one, you’re likely to enjoy this one. It’s very much on the same level as far as quality.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s 1986 at the Lambert house. Elise arrives and talks to Lorraine; Carl called her because he doesn’t know how to proceed. Young Josh is being followed by something supernatural. There are photos of bad things happening just behind Josh. Elise hypnotizes Josh and asks many questions. She walks through the house looking for the demon, and it cuts her arm. Elise says she can use hypnosis to make Josh forget his powers. Credits roll.

Some time later after the first film, Lorraine talks to the detective. Old Elise has died, and the detective wants to know why. She tells him about little Dalton being in a coma and how Josh went into the dream world to get him back. Elise made it all happen, but she didn’t survive. We get flashbacks, and the detective thinks Josh killed the old woman.

As the police investigate, Josh and the family stay at Grandma Lorraine’s house. After the kids go to bed, Renai hears the piano playing by itself. It’s clear to everyone that their problems aren’t over. Lorraine sees a woman in white wandering around the house.

Elsewhere, Tucker and Specs talk about Elise’s death. They find videotapes from the 1986 incident in her basement. Adult Josh shows up behind the younger version of himself in the video.

In the morning, Dalton tells Renai about seeing dead people last night. Josh is acting weird, completely in denial that anything is happening. Lorraine calls Tucker and Specs and tells them it’s not done.

Renai sees the woman in white too, and then the baby goes missing. Specs and Tucker call in Carl, who remembers the time from 1986. He uses word dice to contact Elise. “Who killed you?” “She did.” This leads them to an old hospital where Lorraine worked way back in the day. She talks about her experiences with a weird old man there who attacked Josh when he was little. The old man killed himself.

Josh is hearing voices that tell him to kill. He tells Renai to ignore the ghosts and they’ll go away.

Lorraine and the guys go to the old dead man’s house, which is boarded up and abandoned. Carl senses many bad things in the house. They see several ghosts, including the “Mother of Death.” They find a secret room that is full of rows and rows of bodies. The old man who died was a serial killer; he dressed like an old woman, “The Bride in Black.”

Lorraine talks to Renai and says the problem isn’t the house or the kids; it’s Josh. When he went to the other world, it wasn’t him who came back. Carl and the ghost guys bring a tranquilizer shot to knock out Josh. Carl asks Josh questions about his experiences, and it’s clear that Josh isn’t himself. Specs and Tucker run inside to help, but Josh knocks them all out.

Carl wakes up in “The Further,” and Josh is there. Josh says that the thing must have killed Carl. They go looking for Elise in the afterlife but instead, Josh gets a vision of what’s been happening at home. There’s a baby-eating demon there, but Elise shows up to drive it away. Elise says Josh needs to use the Bride’s memories to drive her away.

We flashback to 1986, where modern Josh visits the child version of himself. Adult Josh doesn’t remember any of the details of the old woman, but the young one still does. Young Josh shows old Josh, Carl, and Elise to a red door in the basement.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Lorraine and Renai encounter Evil-Josh, who isn’t looking good. In the middle of the resulting fight, Dalton and Foster come home from their friends’ house. We get a flashback to Parker Crane/The Bride being brainwashed by his mother to go by “Marilyn.”

There is much fighting and ghostly chasing around. Elise tells Josh and Carl that it's time to live again, but they have to go now. Dalton shows up in The Further to lead them out.

Josh and Dalton wake up, and Josh says it’s really him now. Renai isn’t convinced right away. He says that it was him playing the piano, but he couldn’t really get back on his own.

It’s all over, so Carl hypnotizes both Josh and Dalton to forget the whole thing, especially how they know how to travel to the afterlife.

Elise’s ghost still hangs around with Tucker and Specs, helping people. She sees something scary, but we don’t see what it is…

Brian’s Commentary

The first film went to great lengths to make it clear that it was not a “haunted house” film, but this one visited several haunted houses.

It looks good and it’s well acted, but there’s just too much of it; it should have been half an hour shorter.

It’s not my favorite franchise, but if you liked the first one, you’ll probably want to see this one as well.

Kevin’s Commentary

It’s really not my favorite franchise, and we saw two of the later films before this one, so I was feeling a little weary of it before I even started. And that’s not how hypnosis works. But I have to admit it’s well made, and adding time in as a factor in play was nice. I agree with Brian that it went on a bit too long. And of course they left it wide open for more sequels at the end.

Indie Film:

Cursed Waters: Creature of Lake Okanagan (2024)

●      Directed by Eli Watson

●      Stars: Jason Hewlett, John Kirk, Caralee Miller

●      Run Time: 1 Hour, 17 Minutes

●      Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was another well put together documentary exploration piece about a cryptid that may or may not exist. There is a little actual footage mixed with speculation footage, along with eyewitnesses, experts, and indigenous folks who offer their takes and theories on the creature. This was especially interesting to us because we’d never heard of this lake or creature before.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open with a history lesson about the American settlers and how they took what they wanted, how they wanted, not respecting nature. One man, John MacDougall, crossed the lake with some horses, and something started eating the horses– the demon of the lake. In the 1850s, the story eventually became a myth, but the lake is now a heavily populated area.

Lake Okanagan is in Canada and is a reasonably big tourist area. There are still stories of Ogopogo, the monster of the lake. We meet the three filmmakers who are investigating the creature. There are two major cities, one on each side of the lake, connected by a bridge.

Ogopogo is not a “dinosaur” like Nessie; it’s more of a snakelike “Chinese Dragon” style creature with big horns. The first videos of the beast were taken in 1964 by a man with a handheld camera. For the most part, Ogopogo is looked upon as harmless or at least non-aggressive. Ferries in 1926 were armed against Ogopogo, but it never attacked anyone. In 1872, Susan Allison watched her husband in a boat on the lake, and she saw it out in the waves; she was the first European to see the creature.

One native woman explains Ogopogo is a dimension-walker, a water spirit, not a regular monster. It’s used as a tourist attraction now, heavily commercialized and non-respectful. ‘If you saw something you couldn’t explain in the water, would you tell the media? Ninety-two percent wouldn’t do it.” That’s a very specific number.

Many describe what they saw and how the creature behaves with all the motorboat activity. We watch several blurry film-camera recordings of the monster from years ago. There is some discussion about the lakes of Canada being connected with underwater passages and the sea monsters traveling from lake to lake; many lakes are said to have monsters.

Brian’s Commentary

As with previous Small Town Monsters productions, this one has excellent production values, looks good, and is nicely polished. The drum soundtrack is slightly overpowering when people are trying to talk. The filmmakers speak to various experts and locals about Ogopogo; they’re all interesting. It’s a very scenic place, and it looks like everyone had a good time making the film.

People love their cryptids; I’m not convinced.

Kevin’s Commentary

This organization does good work with its cryptid explorations, and this is another well-put-together piece that flows well and is interesting. I remain especially skeptical this time around, though. It’s a beautiful area that draws many people. That lake is so heavily populated at the shores and so heavily used for fishing and recreation that it seems there should be more clear filming and evidence if there really were giant serpentine creatures living there.

Short Films:

Short Film: The Coldest Caller (2024)

●      Directed by Joe Tucker

●      Stars Sheila Reid, Noel Byrne, Harry Page

●      Run Time: 3:53

●      Watch it:

What Happens

Death has a list and an appointment with Mrs. Evan, an old lady who lives alone. She, however, is happy to see Death, as she needs her plumbing repaired. Sometimes, an encounter with Death doesn’t go as planned, and someone is going to have a really bad day.

Commentary

This is super short but also really well done. The acting from the old woman is right where it needs to be, and the guy who plays Death, although he doesn’t say anything, carries it all with his mannerisms. It’s very funny and worth all four minutes of your time!

Short Film: Animus (2024)

●      Directed by Raj Kallychurn

●      Written by Raj Kallychurn

●      Stars Anan Tacouri,  Sophie Degrace

●      Run Time: 6:05

●      Watch it:

What Happens

Harry wakes up to the sound of an old record playing in the next room. He looks… unwell, to say the least. He goes into the next room and finds someone sitting in the rocking chair– no, there’s no one there. Or maybe there is, but either way, Harry unleashes his murderous rage on the person. That kind of thing never ends well.

Commentary

It’s very surreal and weird. Why is Harry so sickly looking as he sleeps? Is he possibly already dead? Who is the woman in the chair? I have many questions.

Still, it looks good, has some interesting special effects, and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Nice!

Short Film: Para/Noia (2024)

●      Directed by Isaac Ruth

●      Written by Isaac Ruth

●      Stars Isaac Ruth

●      Run Time: 4:00

●      Watch it:

What Happens

Our main character looks at his phone, debating whether or not to buy a book to help with his agoraphobia. He clicks the button, and suddenly there’s a knock at the door. Then, the doorbell. Then tapping. Finally, he finds a note that tells him, “Don’t open the door.”

He does, eventually, open the door.

Commentary

This is why I always just buy the eBook versions. No demonic entities that way!

There’s no dialogue, just the guy moving around his apartment, but the lighting, the sound, and a few low-key special effects make the story work. This one is all about fear, and it does a good job getting that across. It’s good!

Short Film: Shiny New World (2021)

●      Directed by Jan van Gorkum

●      Written by Jan van Gorkum

●      Stars Patrick Stoof, Gijs Scholten van Aschat, Maarten Prins

●      Run Time: 8:00

●      Watch it:

What Happens

It’s a corporate training video describing what you should expect on your first day on the job. This job and the coworkers are very unusual, as they operate a very special kind of cleaning service. We focus on Barry, an experienced cleaner, who is going to walk us through one of his typical days.

Commentary

Wow. That was really something!

The prosthetics and creature makeup are extremely well done. The narration, timing, and visuals are excellent. And, of course, it’s all tongue-in-cheek and hilarious as a “training video.”

I would absolutely watch a feature-length version of this.

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This week, we’ve got two new films, “Lore” and also “Humane,” both from 2024. Going back a few years, we cover a trio of books based on Clive Barker stories, “Midnight Meat Train” (2008), “Lord of Illusions” (1995), and “Rawhead Rex” from 1986. 

Then, instead of a single short film, we’ll watch FOUR of them!

Note: This week, we’ve got another SURPRISE giveaway! Listen to the podcast to find out how you can get a free streaming copy of “A Quiet Place: Day One.” 

Get all our reviews once a week:

Check out all our books with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com/

Full-Length Films:

Humane (2024) 

·       Directed by Caitlin Cronenberg

·       Written by Michael Sparaga

·       Stars Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire, Peter Gallagher

·       Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes

·       Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

We went into this blind and were very glad of it. It sets up the state of the world very quickly in a possible near future, and focuses on one wealthy family with many issues to start with. Then things get more complicated. And we’re pulled along wondering how things are going to end up and who is going to survive. And how. We both give it a strong thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

We hear news reports of catastrophic environmental collapse. Things have gotten bad. There are now “population reduction goals” to cull off twenty percent of the population. Credits roll as we see masked people in white suits carrying bodies out of houses. There are posters everywhere asking people to “Enlist” in a euthanasia program. 

Charles York talks to his wife Dawn about moving the piano into the bedroom. They’re not saying something, but they’re both crying. Jared, Charles’s son, said on a TV interview that he’d let his ten-year-old son enlist, which gets him a lot of flack from the other relatives. Rachel arrives with her daughter, Mia, and Charles says that this was supposed to be an “adults only meeting.” Noah, Charles’s other son, calls Grace and says he doesn’t want to go tonight. Ashley picks him up and whines about how hard it is to get an acting job. None of them know why Charles has invited them tonight.

Everyone finally arrives, and Dawn serves the fancy meal she’s prepared. Charles apologizes for working late so many nights when they were all growing up. He’s weird, and all the kids notice it. Charles announces that he and Dawn have chosen to enlist. The government is talking about drafting people for euthanasia, and he doesn’t want any of them to have to do it. Jared says those rules are for poor people, not people like them. None of the kids take the news well. 

There are pro-enlistment ads on TV (voiced by David Cronenberg), and the voluntary enlistment number is under nine percent. The discussion soon gets political when they mention a whole bunch of undocumented immigrants volunteer for the cash payment. It’s all been blamed on the Asians, and Dawn’s restaurant was burned to the ground because of it. Jared works for the government, and he’s all in on the conservative point of view.

Charles goes into the kitchen and finds a note from Dawn. “I can’t do it.” The doorbell rings, and it’s Bob the euthanasia guy, who has shown up a little early. He’s friendly, chatty, and jokey about the whole thing. 

Bob comes in and admires the house and wonders where Dawn went. Charles explains the situation and wants to reschedule, but Bob gets all serious. Charles can get out of the agreement, but he’ll go on a “list.” He decides to go through with it but doesn’t tell the kids what changed his mind. Bob gives him the injection, and he soon dies. 

Bob says he needs a second cadaver to make up for Dawn. Someone else will have to go. Bob brings in men with guns. Someone will be volunteering, and they have two hours to do it. Bob doesn’t get paid without all the bodies. Also, he basically takes Mia hostage until someone “enlists.” Bob explains the penalties for backing out, which is why Charles went ahead with the procedure. 

Jared wants to break the rules cause he’s rich, but Bob doesn’t care about that. In fact, Bob has detailed dossiers on each of them. If they can’t pick someone to die, he will by drawing straws. 

Jared argues that Noah should give himself; he’s a junkie who killed someone in an accident. They all argue, and finally Rachel asks if they have to go through with it, or can they just get him a body to substitute. She also mentions that Noah already got his inheritance, so killing him won’t financially benefit any of them. 

A fight breaks out, and everyone gangs up on Noah. Noah says he’s off the drugs and has a good future, but the others don’t care. 

Outside, Bob gets a call on the radio that they’ve apprehended Dawn, so he can stop and move on. He has Dawn taken to headquarters and doesn’t change anything. He tells Mia that her relatives are inside killing each other; he says they’re all bad people, worthy of dying. 

Ashley pretends to make up with Noah but ends up leading him into an ambush from Jared and Rachel. The battle rages until Noah stabs Rachel in the neck, but she doesn’t die. The three finally tie up Noah and argue about who’s going to actually kill him. 

Grace shows up looking for Noah, but Bob won’t let her talk to them. Bob’s people shoot her in the back. 

When Jared, Rachel, and Ashley go back inside, Noah has untied himself and disappeared. He soon reveals himself, and he comes out slashing. Noah gets the better of all of them, but then he suggests “We need to get Bob.”

Bob’s timer goes off, and he and guard Tony find Ashley on the floor. It’s a trick, and the siblings soon take Bob and his men hostage. In the middle of all this, Ashley dies. They knock out Bob.

Bob wakes up on a table with an IV drip; they’re going to process him. Bob mentions that Rachel and Jacob’s children are already in custody. They’ll be going straight to prison. He wants to just take Ashley and go, but the others tell him Ashley isn’t really dead. Bob gives in and begs for his life; he offers them Dawn. Noah pushes in the needle.

We cut to sometime later, and Noah is giving a fancy piano recital. Rachel, Mia, and Jacob are all sitting in the audience, as is Dawn. 

We cut to a news report, thanking Grace and Ashley for cheerfully enlisting. Bob comes on and says, “It was a beautiful procedure.” 

Brian’s Commentary

Bob may be the nicest horror movie villain ever. I suspect if the government ever decided to kill twenty percent of the population that it’d be a lot messier and over a lot faster than shown here. 

There’s a lot of political discussion in this one, but most of it is played for laughs and shock value. It’s sort of a cross between “Fahrenheit 451” (1966) and “Bodies Bodies Bodies” (2022) with a lot of humor thrown in.

I like it!

Kevin’s Commentary

I kept thinking the future portrayed in the movie isn’t likely in all aspects, but it’s possible. And that gave it a realistic feel. I really enjoyed how it unfolded, and we really couldn’t guess ahead of time how things were going to end up and who would survive at the end. The writing, direction, and cast all came together very well in this one, and I’d call it excellent.

The Midnight Meat Train (2008) 

* Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura

* Written by Jeff Buhler, Clive Barker

* Stars Vinnie Jones, Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The horror guys have a split opinion on this one, with Brian not caring for it too much and Kevin sure that it fits somewhere in his top 100. It is very gory and bloody, dark and creepy, and there is a bit of a mystery going on, but most things are explained at the end.

Spoilery Synopsis

A bald man wakes up on a subway train, alone at night. He slips and falls into a puddle of blood. He struggles to get up and then notices a man in the next car, killing someone excessively. Credits roll. 

We cut to Leon, a crime photographer, who goes home to talk to Maya. She’s made arrangements with Jurgis, an artist friend, to let Leon meet Susan Hoff tomorrow morning. This is a huge deal. 

Susan wants to know more about Leon’s work, and he says he wants to “capture the heart of the city,” and she says, “You’re failing.” She says he doesn’t go far enough and dismisses him. We cut to blurry flashes of the bloody train. Jurgis says it’s encouraging that she gave him a little time, which means she sees potential.

Leon goes out that night with his camera and takes photos. He interrupts a woman getting mugged and gets photos of her and the thugs. They come after Leon but leave when they see a security camera. The woman thanks him, then runs downstairs to the subway and gets on the train, where a big man with a hammer kills her from behind. 

In the morning, Leon reads the paper and sees the woman he rescued was murdered. She was a model. He goes to the police, and the detective thinks that Leon might be a stalker. Susan, on the other hand, really likes the photos of the mugging and the thugs. “Get me two more images that strong, and you’ll be a part” of her next show. 

On the subway, one man tells a couple how modern and safe the subways are today. The big man from before knocks out the man’s eyeball with his hammer and then goes after the other two. 

Leon is out with his camera again, and this time, he gets a photo of the big man as he emerges from the subway. He sees that the man is wearing an odd ring, and the man notices Leon as well. Later, he sees a hand wearing that ring in one of the photos he took of the mugging victim. 

In the morning, Leon starts following the man when he comes out of his hotel. He follows him to where he works in a slaughterhouse as a butcher. That night, the man is oddly calm and doesn’t make a single unnecessary move as he waits for just the right subway train. Leon tries to follow but is delayed by an overzealous security guard. 

On the train, the man does his thing and whacks a man but gets sick in the middle of it, and the man fights back. There’s quite a battle between the two, and it even gets the attention of the train driver. The driver shoots the victim to finish him off and then says, “I’m very disappointed in you, Mahogany. Now clean up the mess.” 

Meanwhile, Leon goes home and proposes to Maya. Afterward, he dreams of the murder train, but this time, it’s he who is the killer. 

We cut to the big man, Mahogany, as he cuts growths that look like barnacles off his own chest. He’s either really tough, or it doesn’t hurt. He saves the little pieces in a jar. 

Leon starts researching murderous butchers, going all the way back to 1895. He continues to follow Mahogany at work at the meat processing plant. Mahogany spots him and chases him around the hundreds of hanging sides of beef with a huge knife. Leon eventually escapes and goes to his regular diner and orders steak; he was a vocal vegan before, but something has changed. 

Maya complains that Leon has become obsessed with the butcher when he should be working. He’s got a whole crazy-wall about missing people, and he thinks Mahogany has been butchering all the missing people. Maya comes to the conclusion that Leon’s losing his mind over conspiracy theories, and she’s not wrong. 

Leon continues to follow Mahogany on the train at night. Two young men board the train, and Mahogany takes out his hammer. Leon cringes behind a seat and watches him kill them; he takes many photos of the men being dissected. Mahogany removes the men’s teeth, fingernails, and eyeballs. He shaves their heads and then hangs them upside down from the ceiling like sides of beef. Then he turns and smiles at Leon before knocking him out. 

Leon awakens, upside-down, hanging from the ceiling. Monsters tear at his flesh. He wakes up again, this time in the basement of the meat processing plant. He goes home to Maya. He has strange runes carved into his chest. 

Maya and Jurgis go to Mahogany’s hotel room to get Leon’s camera back. She finds his murdering tools, knives, and other nastiness, such as his medicine chest full of scabs. Jurgis does find the camera, but Mahogany returns and kills him. Maya runs away and goes to the police, but they aren’t helpful at all. Maya goes to the diner and takes her boss’s pistol. 

Meanwhile, Leon goes to Susan’s big art show. This is his big break. He’s got one of the scary photos of Mahogany on display. He walks away as if he’s in a trance; “I got a train to catch.” 

The police detective stops Maya, and she knows more than she should. She tells Maya which train Jurgis is on. She gets on that train. Meanwhile, Leon goes to the meat processing place and grabs some big knives. He goes to the abandoned subway stop beneath the plant and boards the train when it comes by. 

Maya finds a bunch of butchered bodies and freaks out. Jurgis is there, and he’s not quite dead yet. She shoots at Mahogany, but he knocks her down. He’s just about to smash her with the hammer when Leon yells from the other end of the train car. 

The two men start fighting amongst the bodies, and it’s a messy, brutal battle. This goes on for far too long until Leon pushes Mahogany out the open door. 

Maya goes to Leon, who is in shock. The train finally slows down and stops. The lights go out. The driver comes in and tells them to “step away from the meat.” Monsters enter the train and start eating the bodies. Leon and Maya get off the train as the creatures eat their meal. 

Mahogany shuffles in, not dead at all, and the two men fight some more. They throw skulls at each other. Leon goes berserk and kills Mahogany, who says one word, “Welcome,” before dying. 

The driver says, “He didn’t have what it takes anymore. I envy you.” The driver then pulls out Leon’s tongue and eats it. He explains how long this has all been going on, since before humanity existed. They feed the monsters a little as an act of worship in exchange for power and to keep them in check. The driver then cuts Maya open and pulls out her heart. 

We cut to later as Leon puts on the ring and a suit. The detective gives Leon a subway schedule, and he gets to work; he’s Mahogany’s replacement on the Midnight Meat Train…  

Commentary

The gore shots in this one are exceptional and excessive. 

The detective is wearing a necklace with the same symbol as Mahogany’s ring. Later, she gives Leon his train schedule, so she’s obviously in on it as well. 

This one doesn’t really work for me. It’s long and slow. It’s one of those slow-descent-into-madness stories, but we know all along that the killer is real. We also don’t find out until the very end why Mahogany has been killing all those people, and even then, it’s all a little rushed and vague. 

Lord of Illusions (1995) 

* Directed by Clive Barker

* Written by Clive Barker

* Stars Scott Bakula, Kevin J. O’Connor, J. Trevor Edmond, Famke Janssen

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 49 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a tale of magic and good versus evil with a splash of noir thrown in. There are some slow places and pretty cool places. After some disappointments with his previous adaptations, Clive Barker took the helm on this one, and if you can obtain his director/author commentary track, it’s interesting to hear what he has to say. Some of the special effects look dated, but it tells a story. Kevin is very fond of this one, sticking with it as one of his top 100 horror, but Brian was a little meh. You’ll have to see it for yourself to decide. 

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a very run-down farmhouse in the desert in 1982. Nix does a whole magic show, where the dark one has renamed him “The Puritan.” He holds fire in his bare hands until Swann and his friends arrive with guns. Nix has a kidnapped girl tied up in one corner and a colorful baboon in the other. Nix wants Swann to beg him for power. Nix digs his fingers into Swann’s head to give him “God’s eyes.” 

Swann looks at his friends, but he sees monsters now. He’s in the process of transferring his power to Swann when the kidnapped girl shoots Nix in the back. That doesn’t kill Nix, so they put his whole head inside a complex iron mask to bind him. Nix appears to die. 

Thirteen years later, in New York City, Detective Harry D’Amour gets a visit from Loomis. Harry is well known for investigating occult things. We flashback to his dealings with an exorcized boy. Loomis wants Harry to find Mr. Tapert in L.A. 

Harry gets to L.A. and sees a billboard for Swann, a magician. He follows Tapert to a fortune teller downtown. Harry follows him inside and is attacked by a crazy man who bites him. The fortune teller, Quaid, one of the people who shot Nix, is full of knives, like a pin cushion. Also, there is Butterfield, who used to hang out with Nix. Before he dies, the fortune teller gives Harry a quick palm reading. He says, “the Puritan is coming home.” 

We cut to Philip Swann and his wife, Dorothea, the little kidnapped girl, all grown up. She tells their assistant Valentin to find Harry for her, which takes him two minutes. Valentin says Swann is no magician; he’s an illusionist. Magic is real; illusion is trickery. Dorothea wants to hire Harry to protect Swann from something she doesn't understand. 

That evening, Swann gives a show, and Harry is invited to sit with Dorothea. There are dancers, and then Swann makes a big appearance. Butterfield is there as well, behind the scenes. Swann does a knife trick that goes brutally wrong, and he’s killed. The audience screams and runs away, except for Dorothea, who takes it badly. 

Harry sneaks under the stage and encounters Butterfield and his associate. They want to know who killed Swann; it wasn’t them. He died before they could get him. There’s a fight, and Butterfield’s creepy friend is killed. 

Harry goes to “Magic Castle,” a place where all the stage magicians seem to hang out. He meets Walter Wilder, an old illusionist who’s good with cards. He sends him to see Vinovich, another illusionist. Vinovich says everything Swann did was tainted. “He was evil!” One of Vinovich’s guests, Billy Who, suggests that Harry check out a guy who used to be called Nix. 

Harry asks Dorothea about Nix, and she definitely remembers him but lies about it. Valentin then offers Harry $30,000 to go home. Harry goes to see Jennifer, one of the other people from the raid on Nix. She’s in an asylum, and she blames Swann, who told her that was all done and finished– but it’s not. She tells him about Nix, who is coming back. Jennifer then runs out in front of a car and is killed. 

We cut to various people we recognize as Nix’s old cultists walking around killing people around the country. Dorothea awaits Harry’s call, but Valentin isn’t letting his calls through. 

Billy helps Harry break into the Magic Castle’s secret room. They get hidden files, but only barely. There are books and drawings about Nix. Some kind of apparition scares Billy, but Harry sees that it’s just a hologram. 

Harry goes back to Dorothea’s house, where she has Swann’s coffin set up. She’s been lying to him, and he wants to know about Nix. Nix taught Swann some real magic. As they have sex, Valentin calls someone on the phone. 

Harry gets chased around the house by a CGI creature and fire that follows him around. Harry then pries open Swann’s coffin and finds the body inside is rubber and plaster; Swann’s not dead. Later, Valentin admits that Swann faked his own death to avoid being killed for real. 

Harry stakes out Swann’s funeral and follows a man to a secret place. Swann levitates a car over Harry’s head and drops it but changes his mind about killing Harry with it at the last moment. He’s angry that Harry is banging Dorothea but knows Harry can help. 

Butterfield nabs Valentin and tortures him for the location of where Nix is buried. Meanwhile, the cultists return to their cult house, waiting for Nix. Butterfield kidnaps Dorothea, so Harry and Swann team up to rescue her. 

Butterfield and Dorothea head out to the burial place to resurrect Nix. Valentin digs in the desert while Dorothea tries, unsuccessfully, to escape. Nix does, in fact, turn up. 

The cultists, and there are a lot of them now, shave their heads and look to Butterfield as their leader. As Butterfield removes the iron mask, Nix regenerates fairly quickly. He doesn’t look good at all, but he is up and about. He offers his followers “The wisdom of the grave,” and then clouds come out of his forehead, it rains, and all the cultists sink into the resulting mud– mostly. Some are just stuck in the floor. 

Meanwhile, Swann and Butterfield fight, but Swann has magic on his side. Harry runs from room to room, looking for Dorothea, and eventually finds her and Nix. Swann is right behind him, and soon, the two magicians talk about joining forces. 

Nix quickly beats Swann and then goes after Harry. Dorothea shoots Nix right in the hole in his forehead. Naturally, he gets right back up again and goes after Dorothea. She watches Nix transform into something terrible, but in the meantime, Swann levitates Harry to push Nix into a bottomless tunnel to Hell. 

Harry and Dorothea run outside as something comes up out of the pit and dissolves Swann’s body. Finally, Nix explodes, and the hole seals shut. 

Commentary

Clive Barker had such bad luck with his previous films that he insisted on directing this one. It’s mostly about the difference between stage illusionists and “real” magicians. The acting is good, the film looks good all around, but it definitely drags in places. 

This is one of Kevin’s favorite movies - in his top 100 horror, but I thought it was overlong, and there were just too many leads to follow up. The special effects do not hold up at all.

Rawhead Rex (1986) 

* Directed by George Pavlou

* Written by Clive Barker

* Stars David Dukes, Kelly Piper, Hugh O’ Connor

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was just okay. An ancient creature arises from where it was imprisoned and has to be dealt with again. The premise is solid enough, but it wasn’t a great movie back in the day, and it hasn’t held up well. It was an excellent short story by Clive Barker stretched out into a full movie, and it’s said that the author himself wasn’t pleased with how it turned out.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on some men working in a field as Howard Hallenbeck drives into town. He stops at a small local church and takes photos of the graveyard. Two of the three workmen give up and go home, but the third really wants that stone obelisk out of his field. A storm rolls in, and the obelisk leaks some kind of smoke or gas as lightning strikes it. All at once, the obelisk falls over, and a woman in the church starts screaming. A monster rises up in the field and kills the man who released it. 

Howard talks to Declan O’Brien and says that Reverend Coot gave him permission to do some research about the old church. Not long after, O’Brien touches the church altar and gets a vision. He pulls his seared hand away and laughs maniacally. 

Howard takes his wife, Elaine, and two annoying children, to the Tall Man Inn. She really wants to get out of this backwater town and just go to Dublin. 

Farmer Dennis notices his barn door is swinging in the breeze; someone broke the lock. A very large humanoid monster tears him to pieces and then goes after Jenny, the man’s pregnant wife when she screams too loudly. Rawhead tracks her down and tries to kill her baby, but he doesn’t. A man stops by later and sees all the damage; he finds Jenny, insane. 

The detectives are amazed that Jenny survived the vicious home invasion. Dennis’s body is simply gone, so they aren’t sure what happened to him. 

Rawhead looks into a mobile home and sees the people inside. Andy and Katrina make out in the woods while Andy’s little brother, Neil, watches Rawhead eating Dennis. It attacks the couple, and Andy loses an arm. Howard is out taking a walk, and he gets a good look at Rawhead. 

The police find the dead man in the field next to the obelisk, “That makes three.” Howard goes to the police and tells them what he saw: a nine-foot-tall thing that’s not human with burning red eyes. Surprisingly, the police don’t believe him. 

Howard talks to Reverend Coot about the parish records, but they’ve all suddenly gone missing. O’Brien is there, and he’s looking more and more sketchy, like a man possessed. He finds a cryptic message about fear in the stained-glass windows. Then O’Brien smashes his camera. 

Howard, Elaine, and the kids check out of the inn, bound for Dublin at last. Elaine sees something weird out in a field; it’s a scarecrow. Meanwhile, young Neil draws a picture of the monster for the police. 

Minty, Howard’s daughter, needs to pee, so they stop the car and let her go in a field. She screams at the sight of a dead rabbit, and while both parents run to protect her, Rawhead stalks Robbie in the car, who’s oblivious until it’s too late. 

Now the police believe Howard about the monster. Howard keeps going back to the church’s stained glass window that shows a red-faced monster. O’Brien talks about how people buried the devil alive, “the dark ones come back; they always do.” He believes the thing in the stained glass was what killed his son. He suggests that the church was built on something far older. Reverend Coot touches the altar and gets a burn on his hand. 

Rawhead proves that he’s the worst thing to hit trailer parks since tornadoes were invented. This time, the police arrive in a timely manner. Rawhead grabs the police detective and hypnotizes him with his red, glowing eyes. 

O’Brien summons Rawhead, who pees all over him as Coot watches. Coot calls the police as Rawhead comes after him. Everyone rushes to the church while Coot and O’Brien argue about who they serve. 

Coot holds Rawhead at bay with a cross for about ten seconds, and then it attacks him. As the police stand around arguing, the chief detective pours gasoline under the cops and burns them all, including himself. 

Howard can’t wait any longer and runs up to the church, but most people are dead. Coot tells Howard that there’s something wrong with the altar. O’Brien attacks Howard, but Howard’s a tough American, so that doesn’t last long. Howard grabs the altar and gets burned as well, but then he pries it open, revealing– a rock. 

Howard brings the rock to Rawhead, but Rawhead eats O’Brien first. Elaine shows up as Rawhead terrorizes Howard, and she activates the magic rock. Howard says, “It had to be a woman.” The rock activates the headstones in the cemetery, and eventually, Rawhead is swallowed up by the earth. 

Later, we cut to Andy’s funeral, with his annoying little brother there. Rawhead climbs up out of the grave right in front of him. 

Commentary

The monster is extremely obviously a tall guy in a rubber mask, but it’s handled well. The acting, especially from David Dukes, who plays Howard, is really dull and bland. It’s very talky and stretched out. 

If you like 80’s creature features, this is not terrible, but the monster effect has not held up well.

Indie Film:

Lore (2024) 

* Directed by James Bushe, Patrick Michael Ryder, Greig Johnson

* Written by Patrick Michael Ryder, Christine Barber-Ryder, James Bushe

* Stars Richard Brake, Andrew Lee Potts, Ben Crompton

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is an anthology of short tales with a good wraparound story. Four people camping in the woods with a guide have scary stories to tell around the campfire. That’s just harmless fun, right? This was consistently good through all the sections, and we really liked it a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

Credits roll as four hikers walk across a field toward the woods. Every year, they go on an “immersive experience,” and this year is supposed to be something scary. They follow a map until they come to a man named Darwin, who smiles creepily. He’s a bit scary himself, but then he says these four are the only attendees, and they should set up their tents. “This experience will stay with you for the rest of your lives.” 

Darwin tells them about a 1993 party that found skulls nearby. After an investigation, over 3,500 dead bodies were found; no one knows who they were. He talks about an ancient evil that lived in this place long before men came here. He has a totem that allows them to communicate with the dead. “Who’s brave enough to talk to the dead?” He wants them to tell stories about things that scare them. 

Mark says he’ll try it. “This is a story about shadows.” A man is being chased by a couple of men through town at night. The man breaks into a building to hide; he yells that he doesn’t have their money. It’s a big warehouse, and the three men play hide-and-seek for a bit until Daniel sees something weird in the shadow behind a box. It soon grabs and kills Barry, one of the enforcers. 

Daniel finds Terry, the other goon, and tells him about the monster. The other guy doesn’t want to leave, he wants to kill “it.” Terry doesn’t live long after that. Jeff the security guard comes in, and Daniel tells him to call the police. Jeff’s got security cameras, and Daniel wants to see what’s on those tapes. The tape clearly shows Daniel killing Barry; no monster appears. It then shows him killing Terry as well. Jeff calls for the police, but Daniel hears the creature in the room with them. He’s right behind Jeff, but Jeff doesn’t see it at all. Daniel cuts his own throat to end the terror. 

Back at the campground, we get the “Story of the Hidden Woman,” as a car arrives at a large house. A woman and her son arrive; they are moving in. Young Charlie goes off and explores the house they just inherited as his mother unpacks some boxes. 

Night falls, and the mother thinks she sees a strange woman standing behind Charlie. The next day, she hears thumping coming from upstairs. Charlie’s outside, so she goes upstairs with a knife– to find nothing. We, however, see a ghost or something in there with her. Charlie says he’s had conversations with her and thinks it's his dead grandmother. It all seems to be centered around an antique phonograph machine, which she first throws away but it comes back. Then she burns it, and it comes back again. Mother decides it’s time to leave, but things only escalate from there with the creepy ballet-dancer ghost. 

Donna goes next, and her story is set in a cheap hotel. A couple toast their anniversary; she’s not sure she wants to go through with this, but he says he needs the excitement. Steve wants the two of them to try something new, Cath is less enthusiastic. Steve takes the pill that the other woman hands him; they’re going to try some polyamory. “Whoever gets your body, only Cath gets your heart, right?” 

Cath stays behind as the others go up to the room. The other woman makes him sniff something, and Steve goes all wonky. She draws runes on his back and then handcuffs him. Steve soon figures out that they aren’t playing the same game. Steve runs through the hotel screaming for help, but it’s oddly devoid of guests except for weird cultists. 

He runs to his own room and finds Cath, also painted in runes. The ritual continues. He passes out, wakes up and finds he’s missing a finger, an eye, and a tongue. That’s not the only body part that he’s going to be missing. His heart does, in fact, belong to Cath. 

The last camper tells her story, which involves “Hollywood Movies.” Three moviegoers walk up to the concession stand and order from Gareth, the tallest clerk ever. He calls the manager, who’s a twit. The theater itself is almost empty. The manager fires Gareth, who puts on a serial killer mask and kills the manager with a fountain pen and the popcorn basin. Gareth then closes and locks all the doors. 

David sees all this and goes back for the others, but they don’t believe him. At least until they watch Gareth kill another viewer. Like all masked movie slashers, they soon find that Gareth is unstoppable. Even when David finally gets out, he doesn’t really get away. 

“You fed them well,” says Darwin cryptically. “I wouldn’t dare” tell them a story, he says as he leaves the four alone to their tents. 

In the morning, everyone wakes up and finds Darwin is gone, tent and all. They also find that he’s taken their phones, wallets, and watches. We see a news report about four bodies found in the woods and a “cinema massacre.” All their stories became true. 

We cut to Darwin, explaining the storytelling game to another group of campers. “Trust me, they are listening…”

Brian’s Commentary

In the first story, there may or may not have been an actual monster. The second one, with the ghost, is really well done; the dancer-ghost was a really cool ghost effect. The cultists, or whatever they are, in the third story are really cool-looking as well. The fourth story is more or less played for laughs, but it’s a good send-up of slasher movies. All four of the creatures are really well done. 

If you pay attention in the movie theater segment, you can see posters for the other segments on the theater’s walls. It’s probably the only time you’ll see “death by popcorn scoop.” 

Richard Brake, as Darwin, the “camp host” has something creepy to say between each segment, and he’s absolutely perfect here. The rest of the actors do well with what they have, and none of the segments feels dragged out or padded. It all works really well!

Kevin’s Commentary

I really appreciated how consistently good it was throughout. Sometimes anthologies are hit-and-miss, but this wasn’t like that. The cast, direction, and effects were all very good and it moves briskly. They had good locations for shooting, too. I give it a big thumbs up.

Short Films:

Short Film: Lovely (2023) 

* Directed by Naomi Shroff-Mehta

* Written by Naomi Shroff-Mehta

* Stars Ashwini Ganpule, Susie Abraham, Elyse Ahmad

* Run Time: 16:19

* Watch it: 

What Happens

Ria and her mother run a convenience store, and they keep stock in the basement, which doesn’t have electricity. When it’s time to go down there, Ria’s mother insists that Ria stay out of the basement. Also, her mother offers Ria some face cream to make her more beautiful. It seems to be working, but when Ria runs out, the extra bottles are in the basement…

Commentary

Ria’s mother goes on about how “it’s working,” but there’s a price to be paid. The “woman in the basement” is obviously up to something, and we soon see what it is. 

Sometimes, the overbearing and overprotective mother is right. Sometimes. 

It’s good!

Short Film: The Sound (2021) 

* Directed by Patrick Stagg

* Written by Patrick Stagg

* Stars Marcus Klein

* Run Time: 11:43

* Watch it: 

What Happens

A man takes a break from digging in the backyard. He comes inside for a drink of water and starts hearing an odd ticking sound. Or is it a knocking sound? Could it be a drip? What the hell is that sound!?! He starts searching for the source of the strange sound, and the situation devolves from there. 

Commentary

When it ends, it’s clearly inspired by an Edgar Allan Poe story, but I didn’t really see that as it unfolded, which is good—I was expecting something cheesier, but the suspense pays off here. 

There’s only one actor and almost no dialogue until the end, but it’s very effective!

Short Film: The Door (2022) 

* Directed by Andrew Froening

* Written by Andrew Froening, Amanda Troisi

* Stars Reba Landers, Brian Pollock, Christopher Kai

* Run Time: 12:27

* Watch it: 

What Happens

Natasha goes to visit her weird Uncle Paul. He’s definitely odd, as he insists that all doors either be open all the way or closed all the way. He’s obsessive about it. Why? He says this place is his penance, and he cannot leave. He’s almost scary, so she goes up to her bedroom, but she’s not really careful with the bathroom door—and learns why he is the way he is. 

Commentary

Uncle Paul’s definitely got a “Sling Blade” vibe going on, and it really works. No one actually explains the situation, we see it all unfold, and the “rules” soon make sense. We don’t really get an explanation for what happens, but we don’t really need one. 

I really like this one!

Short Film: 048 (2024) 

* Directed by Luke Cloarec

* Written by Luke Cloarec

* Stars Mason Sturgess, Lee McLeod, Charlie Bettesworth

* Run Time: 10:08

* Watch it: 

What Happens

Jake wakes up in the middle of the night to find Sydney knocking on his door. She says she saw someone in her room and wants him to check it out. He does, and, of course, there’s no one there. 

Until there is…

Commentary

It’s well done. It’s obviously a student film or something, filmed in a motel room and hallway. Still, it’s well-paced, looks and sounds good, and is unsettling. The acting could be better, but it’s a good effort and fun to watch.

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Theme song: "Galactic Rap " Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License ttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Bring home #AQuietPlace: Day One, buy on Digital now! Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn star in the film critics say is "packed with nail-biting tension and thrills." Included with over 50 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage and deleted scenes! Written and Directed by Michael Sarnoski. Available at participating retailers. Buy @AQuietPlace: Day One on Digital today. Rated PG-13. From #ParamountPictures.

This week, we’ve got two new films, “A Quiet Place: Day One” and also “In a Violent Nature,” both from 2024. Going back a ways, we cover the haunted hotel in “1408” from 2007, and get all beat out of shape at “Eden Lake” from 2008. Lastly, we’ll watch a new LGBT Indie film, “Ganymede” also from 2024. Good stuff!

Then, instead of a single short film, we’ll watch FOUR of them!

The new issue of “Horror Monthly” is now out in print or as an ebook:

Check out the newly-expanded issue here: https://www.horrormonthly.com

Get all our reviews once a week: https://www.horrorweekly.com/

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Full-Length Films:

A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) 

* Directed by Michael Sarnoski

* Written by Michael Sarnoski, John Krasinski, Bryan Woods

* Stars Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 39 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPY7J-flzE8

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was interesting seeing how things started out with the whole alien apocalypse thing, and this was entertaining. Being a prequel, we know how things are going to go overall, but there was enough tension and uncertainty to keep us involved. The budget was big and the effects are good, with a high body count and lots of carnage. We liked it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on New York City, and are told that it gives off the same amount of noise as a typical scream. Samira has a bad attitude in her cancer support group at the hospice center. The group is going to a show in the city, and they invite her along. As the bus crosses the bridge into town, several jet fighters fly over in a hurry. 

The “show” turns out to be an old man doing marionettes. It gets a little intense for Samira, so she steps outside and sees police cars going down the road. The guy who runs the group gets a call that he needs to bring everyone home; something is happening in the city. Sam wants her pizza, and she starts getting upset. 

She does get on the bus as the air raid sirens go off. Meteors are coming down all over the city, one very near the bus. Sam gets off and walks through the smoke and ash. She watches silently as people are attacked and pulled away by… things. Credits roll. 

Sam wakes up with Henri and a bunch of people in the crowded theater; they are all sitting silently, many of the wounded. Reuben, the nurse, is there, and he has her cat. The cat rings a bell, and we soon see one of the monsters indoors– and a whole herd of them outdoors. 

They get a radio report that the planes are blowing up bridges to contain the things– and trap them on Manhattan Island. One guy freaks out and yells, “We’re all gonna die!” and then Henri kills him to keep him quiet. 

Sam decides she really wants that pizza and jokes with Reuben that she’s going after some anyway. The power goes off, and an automatic generator kicks on. It’s loud, and Reuben is slow to turn it off; one of the monsters gets him. 

When she finally goes outside, Sam sees that the city has gotten a lot quieter. She finds a couple of kids hiding inside a fountain; the monsters don’t like the noisy water. She hears helicopters announcing an evacuation plan via boats, since the aliens can’t swim. 

Sam and the kids soon meet a huge crowd of people silently walking through the streets of NYC. Sam, however, decides to go the opposite way. Some of them have rattling luggage and squeaky wheelchairs, and it’s just a matter of time. Yep- a monster shows up, and someone screams. It’s a major massacre. Frodo the cat runs away, has a quick adventure, and then returns with a man in tow who follows Sam through the streets.

It starts to rain, and Sam figures out that they can talk quietly. The man’s name is Eric, and she tells him where to go. He insists on following her, though. They go back to Sam’s apartment, and she looks for her meds, but they aren’t there anymore; she took them all to the hospice. 

Eric is British and has no friends or family to go to. Sam divulges her plan to get the last pizza on Earth, and he begs to come along. She has him read a poem she wrote about her dying of cancer any day now. In the morning, they continue on. 

Naturally, they attract the creatures and get into a chase. They hide out in a flooded subway, and the water is very cold and getting more and more deep. Eric is a loud swimmer, but he’s still better than the monsters. 

They get out of the sewer and hide some more in a big, empty church. Eric goes out to see if he can find painkillers for Sam. He has some close calls but eventually returns with what she needs. 

Feeling better, Sam insists on resuming the quest for pizza. They get to Patsy’s Pizzeria, and the place has been destroyed. Eric finds another pizza place, and they pretend that it’s the same. It’s pretty awful, since it’s been three days, but it’s also the last pizza in the world, so they deal. 

They see one of the ferries leaving to cross the river, and Sam gives Eric her coat; he needs to go, but she’s staying. He wordlessly convinces her to try making the journey to the docks. The beach, however, is swarming with the creatures. 

Sam grabs a tire iron and starts setting off car alarms, and all the monsters go after her. Eric and the cat make their way to the docks where there’s no boat. Eric ends up jumping off the dock, but the boat does come back for him. 

Henri pulls Eric up onto the boat and tells him he’s safe; he later finds a note from Sam in his pocket thanking him for giving her another slice of life and telling him to take care of her cat. Sam goes back home, alone and plays her music loudly in the street. 

From the Publisher:

Bring home #AQuietPlace: Day One, buy on Digital now! Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn star in the film critics say is "packed with nail-biting tension and thrills." Included with over 50 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage and deleted scenes! Written and Directed by Michael Sarnoski. Available at participating retailers. Buy @AQuietPlace: Day One on Digital today. Rated PG-13. From #ParamountPictures.

Brian’s Commentary

The first movie basically took place in the woods and on a solitary farm. This one has clearly got a much bigger budget, wiping out New York City, of all places. 

That is one well-trained cat. Ours goes missing whenever the doorbell rings, much less hanging out peacefully throughout an alien invasion. 

It’s tough to make a movie where there can’t be much dialogue. After the opening credits, the conversations are few and far between. Still, most of the situations are tense enough that we don’t need any explanations. 

There wasn’t really much new here, but it was an entertaining way to spend 90 minutes; it’s better than the previous movie in the series. 

Kevin’s Commentary

This managed to seem like nothing much new and be very entertaining at the same time. The script, pacing, and direction were excellent, and the two leads did very well through long periods of little to no dialogue. It was interesting starting out knowing that the main character you’re rooting for isn’t going to live long, no matter how things go through the movie. The emotional support cat Frodo was impressively calm and smart, too. One thing I did wonder about is where the corpses disappeared to. It’s got a high death count, but no bodies lying around, and it didn’t look like the aliens were eating them. Overall, I thought this was as good as the first movie and better than the second.

In A Violent Nature (2024) 

* Directed by Chris Nash

* Written by Chris Nash

* Stars Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 34 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyXuRmXbS7U

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is totally not about Jason Vorhees at Camp Crystal Lake but imagine the Friday the 13th films made from Jason’s perspective, and you’ve got this movie. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to stomp walk from place, and way too much of the movie consists of that. It’s an interesting premise with some very good moments, but overall, it’s on the tedious side.

Spoilery Synopsis

Colt and Ehren are near a fire tower near a cemetery, and Ehren starts talking about “The White Pine Slaughter,” but the others aren’t interested in hearing the story. They find a necklace and take it with them. We see something disturbing the ground before climbing out of one of the graves. It’s a man, but we don’t get much of a look at him. 

The man, Johnny, moves slowly but starts walking out through the woods. We see that there are animal traps. Johnny hears Chuck and the ranger arguing about the animal traps and homes in on the arguing. Chuck runs off the ranger, but Johnny goes inside the house after Chuck. 

We get a flashback to Johnny’s father giving him the locket that the men took earlier. It’s very clear that Johnny wants it back. Chuck finds Johnny, and that goes very badly for him. 

Night falls, and Johnny hears some campers making a bunch of noise not far away. It’s Colt, Troy, Brodie, Ehren, Evan, Kris and Aurora. They sit around the campfire, and Ehren finally gets to talk about “The White Pine Slaughter,” which all revolves around “A slow kid named Johnny.” Johnny was hated by the locals, who lured him out to the top of a tower and scared him till he fell off and broke his neck. No charges were put against any of the locals, but a week later, everyone in the camp was torn apart. 

The young people go back to their cabin, and we’re soon wishing Johnny would kill them a lot quicker. He’s out there stalking the woods around the house, and he finally runs into Ehren, who loses his head. Well, half his head. Johnny drags the body to the ranger station, where he picks up a mask and weapon. 

In the morning, Johnny watches Kris and Aurora going swimming. Johnny crosses the lake underwater to get to them. Kris leaves, but Aurora hangs around and Johnny gets her. Johnny goes after Kris next, and she’s doing yoga in the woods. Johnny stabs right through her and then gets really creative with his hooks and chain. 

Johnny hears Troy, Colt, and Brodie arguing about going to the cops over Ehren’s disappearance. We finally get a look at Johnny’s face, and it’s really something. Evan and Troy get attacked, but Evan shoots Johnny, which does slow him down for a bit– but not long enough for the two to escape. 

Brodie comes back, screaming that the ranger found Ehren dead, and she wants Colt to leave with her right now. Johnny sees the necklace on Brodie’s neck and goes after it. The couple gets away on an ATV and goes straight to the ranger station. 

The ranger knows all about Johnny and the necklace. “He’s awake and he’s gonna be coming for all of us now.” Johnny and the ranger remember each other from ten years ago. The ranger’s father survived the very first massacre, twenty years ago. 

Johnny gets up after the ranger shoots him and paralyzes the ranger, and then puts him in the mechanical log-splitter. Ow! 

Johnny hears Colt yelling for him to come after them. Johnny proves that if you stand still long enough, you’ll win. Soon, only Brodie is left. She watches as Johnny hacks Colt into many, many tiny pieces, and then she quietly takes off the necklace and backs away slowly. 

She runs through the woods all night and finally makes it to a road. She flags down a woman in a pickup truck who offers to take her to the hospital. The woman talks about her brother, a forest ranger, who encountered weird “bear attacks” thirty years ago. The story itself seems to take thirty years, and Brodie passes out. The woman pulls over to patch up and stop the bleeding, but Brodie is terrified of the woods. 

Meanwhile, Johnny has taken his necklace and gone back to the grave. 

Brian’s Commentary

The moral of the story is obviously if you’re in the woods, don’t make unnecessary noise; it attracts the wrong kind of attention. 

The camera work is interesting, with lots of long, wide-angled shots that don’t move around a lot as well as just-behind-the-monster point-of-view shots. This is about the only thing that differentiates this movie from the two hundred Friday the 13th films. 

Actually, if you ever wondered how those films went from the killer’s perspective, this is the film for you! The killer spends a lot of time roaming around silently in the woods, and it just borders on boring occasionally. We don’t care about any of the characters, and there’s not much story, but we do get the full stalker-cam point of view. 

The kills are creative, but that’s about all it’s got going for it. I thought it was a little… boring. 

Kevin’s Commentary

Like race car drivers spend a lot of time not racing and astronauts spend a lot of time on Earth, indestructible killers spend a lot of their time not actually killing. It was an interesting idea switching up the point of view, and the killings were well done, but most of the movie was kind of tedious. I thought it should have been better than it was, and I was disappointed.

1408 (2007) 

* Directed by Mikael Hafstrom

* Written by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski

* Stars John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdLpH40iuyY

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Cusack does an excellent job here in the lead role, much of which is spent in a room by himself. It merges some recognizable tropes, but it does it well and it’s got some tense moments. This was Brian’s first viewing and Kevin’s second, and they both give it a thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

Mike Enslin drives through the rain and arrives at the inn. The people who run the inn want to talk all about the ghosts in the place. He wants one of the haunted rooms. He goes up to his room and waits for something to happen. He writes books about haunted hotels, and he leaves this one, “Five Skulls.” 

The next day, he goes to his book signing, and it’s not a big deal for anyone, especially the four people who attend. He admits that he’s never seen a ghost, and the hotels just use him for publicity. Anna brings him his first book, which has nothing to do with ghosts; it is a standard novel, and he regrets not doing more of them. 

Later, he has a surfing accident and nearly dies. He goes through his mail and gets a postcard about a place with room 1408, which he is warned not to stay in. When he calls the place, they insist that the room is unavailable. He does research, and people have died in that room. 

Sam, Mike’s publisher, gets lawyers involved so Mike can stay in room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel. Sam asks if Mike really wants to come back to New York after all that happened…

When he goes to check in, the front desk has a special note. The manager, Gerald Olin, takes care of him personally. They want to upgrade him to the Presidential Suite, but he’s not having it. Olin says no one has ever spent more than an hour in room 1408; Mike thinks it’s a scam. Olin says he doesn’t “want to have to clean up the mess.” There have been four deaths in that room just since he became the manager. There have been 56 deaths in that room. Olin seems very sincere about Mike not staying in that room. Mike is very persistent. Olin says there’s not a ghost exactly, “It’s an evil f*****g room.”

Finally, Mike goes up to 1408. The room looks… like a normal hotel room. There’s nothing at all special about it, and Mike is disappointed. He narrates into his recorder how boring it all is when the radio suddenly turns on by itself. Then, he starts noticing small things. He briefly thinks someone is in the room playing tricks on him. 

When the room starts getting hot, he calls the front desk for maintenance. He uses his blacklight and notices just how many blood splatters there are in the room that he can’t see with the naked eye. The maintenance man won’t come into the room but is willing to walk Mike through the repair process. He wastes no time in leaving when the thermostat starts working again. 

The clock radio switches to 60:00 and starts counting down. Mike remembers that Olin said no one lasts more than an hour. The window slams on his hand, the water from the bathroom is scalding steam, and he gets a nonsense phone call. He’s had enough and is ready to check out. 

He grabs his stuff, but the door won’t open; he’s trapped. He throws things out the window, but they vanish before hitting the ground. He still thinks maybe he’s imagining it; did Olin spike the booze?  

The TV comes on and shows a video of his wife and child. He sees a grainy, black-and-white ghost jump out the window, and then a 1950s ghost, in color, do the same. He has a vision of his own father in a nursing home, and he’s very menacing. 

Mike decides to go out the window and climb the ledge to the next-door window. The ledge is narrow but also apparently infinite. It’s a struggle, but he makes it back inside. The room now seems to be cut off from the world outside; even the windows have vanished now. He gets a vision of his daughter being diagnosed with cancer. 

Mike pries open the air vent and starts crawling through the ducts. All the other rooms seem to show bad parts of Mike’s past. He finds a dead body in there that crawls after him, so he ends up going back to his own room, bad as it is. 

Mike argues with an imaginary version of Olin, who accuses him of taking away people’s hopes and breaking their spirits. It gets really cold in the room, to the point where there’s snow and ice on the furniture. 

He manages to call Lily, his ex-wife, on the computer, and she calls the police to room 1408. The police say they are in 1408, but Mike doesn’t see them. The computer takes over and invites her to the room as well. Then the room fills with water, Mike passes out, and we cut back to Mike’s surfing accident. 

He wakes up in the hospital with Lily. She says he got hit on the head by his own surfboard. He tells her about his experiences in room 1408, which was clearly a fever dream. He’s feeling much better, and he spends a lot of time talking to Lily in a restaurant. She says he ought to write about his experience with Katie’s death. He notices that some of the people there look like the people from 1408. 

Mike re-does his research on the Dolphin Hotel, but it’s all different now. No one died there. He finishes his book and sends it off to Sam. He visits his father in the nursing home. He goes to the post office, and the workers there demolish the place, turning it into room 1408. Yes, he’s still there. 

He sees Katie, but then she dies again and turns to dust. The clock counts down to zero, and the burnt-out room looks clean and normal again.  He gets a phone call that he “can relive this hour over and over or take advantage of our express checkout system.” He now sees a noose in every room. The phone also says his wife will be there in five minutes. 

“If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.” He sets up a Molotov cocktail and sets the room on fire. Lily arrives outside, but the hotel is on fire. Mike burns to death. 

At Mike’s funeral, Lily and Sam are there. Olin shows up and talks to them. He says Mike did a great thing, but they send him away. Inside the box is Mike’s tape recorder, and there are things on there that disturb Olin. Olin then sees Mike in the back seat; maybe it’s not all over. 

Commentary

There are harbingers in movies, and then there’s Samuel L. Jackson. No one makes a haunted room sound as bad as he does. Mike opens the windows and leans way out about a dozen times in this, and it seems that would be the last thing you’d want to do in this situation. 

As far as acting, it’s almost exclusively John Cusack in a room alone. There’s nothing here we haven’t seen before, but it’s all very well done. It gets pretty intense.

Eden Lake (2008) 

* Directed by James Watkins

* Written by James Watkins

* Stars Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender, Tara Ellis

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJkO9HBXuhc

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A couple on a romantic getaway have the worst weekend ever, which is also a one-sentence summary. It’s more complicated than that and goes on longer than you expect, but it never drags. The violence is visceral, and the gore is very realistic. This was Kevin’s second viewing, and he liked it just as much this time around.

Spoilery Synopsis

Jenny dismisses her kindergarten class and joins her boyfriend, Steve, after school. They’re going to visit a place he likes that’s about to be built over in the near future. When they get to the BNB, someone snags their parking spot. When they get in, there’s a whole bunch of other annoying people there. The place isn’t exactly what Steve remembers. He swears the quarry will be stunning, though. 

They arrive at the quarry, and there’s a big sign up for “Eden Lake Homes” which are going to be built soon. The whole place has been surrounded by metal fences as the construction is ready to commence. Finally, Steve picks a spot and parks. It is very scenic. 

They find a boy in the woods, drawing caterpillars. They get to a beach area and relax. Sure enough, a couple of troublemakers show up and start bullying the caterpillar kid. More people show up, and they bring a dog. Steve, annoyed at having his quiet place defiled, asks them to turn the music down. They aren’t cooperative. The young people get more and more obnoxious, but they finally leave.

Or do they? Later, Jenny hears something moving in the woods. They set up a tent and get ready for night to fall. Do they hear screaming, or is it just an animal noise out in the woods? Steve goes out to check, and Jenny hears growling outside the tent. 

In the morning, they find their food has gone bad, so they get in the car to leave. As they back out, their tire crunches over a bottle placed there by the teenagers the day before. They change the tire and go out to a diner. Afterward, Steve sees the hooligans’ bicycles and stops at their house. 

The owner of the house comes home while Steve is inside. Steve actually crawls out the window to get away. They drive back to the lake and their campsite.

Jenny notices their beach bag has gone missing, and it had the car keys in it. That’s the least of their problems, as the car is gone too. Suddenly, they’re nearly run over by their own car, with the troublesome teens inside. 

They walk all day, into night, and finally come upon the evil teens in the woods. Brett seems to be the leader, and he was the one who stole their car. Steve wants his car back. There’s a brief fight, and the dog gets stabbed to death. Steve gets his keys, but the others start to pursue on foot. Can he drive out of the woods in the dark while under pressure? Nope. He soon gets stuck and then crashes. 

Steve gets pinned in the car when he hits a tree. He tells Jenny to run and get help, but he’s not going anywhere. The youths soon catch up and break in. Jenny hides until the sun comes up and then goes back, but Steve isn’t in the car anymore. She follows a blood trail and sees that Brett’s group has Steve tied up. Brett makes each one of the gang cut on Steve with a knife and has Paige video it with her phone so they are all forced to be in on it– as Jenny watches from the trees. Cooper, the youngest one, has his turn and cuts up Steve’s tongue. 

The gang soon notices that Jenny is nearby and they take after her, leaving Steve to get out of his bonds. She makes it to a construction trailer and tries to get the radio inside, but there isn’t time. 

Steve goes back to the car for a first-aid kit, but accidentally sets off his own car alarm, drawing the kids toward him. Jenny finds him first, and they continue on through the woods to an old cabin. He’s got numerous deep cuts, and he’s still bleeding. She finds an engagement ring in his pocket. The bad kids show up, and they end up hiding in the pond under the cabin which puts Steve into shock. He suggests she follow the power lines. 

Jenny has no other choice but to leave him and go for help. She makes really good time until she steps on a metal spike that impales her foot. She comes across Adam, the boy who draws caterpillars, and asks him for help. He says he can show her the way to where his mother usually picks him up. He’s lying; he’s led her back to the bad teens who knock her out. 

She wakes up tied to a tree next to Steve, who is dead. Brett pours gas all over the pair and then makes Adam light the match. They set Steve’s side on fire first, and it burns the ropes, allowing Jenny to get loose. Brett burns Adam instead. 

Jenny finds a “you are here” map and takes it. She has to hide in a dumpster full of rotting stuff when the kids show up again. When she gets out, she’s a real mess, but she finds a piece of glass and makes a knife of it. Cooper, the young one, walks up behind her, and she stabs him in the neck. 

It gets dark, and the gang finds Cooper’s body. When one of the kids wants to stop and go home, Brett beats him to death. 

Jenny crawls under the metal fence and makes it to the road, where she soon finds a car. The driver of the car calls his brother Ricky, who is one of the gang. She ends up stealing his car and driving off. Paige, another of the kids, jumps out in front of the car, and Jenny doesn’t even slow down. 

She doesn’t get too far before a near-collision drives her off the road. She hears loud music and staggers right into a party and collapses. 

She wakes up surrounded by civilized-looking people. But it quickly turns out, this is Brett’s family’s house. Jon, Brett’s father, comes in and refuses to call the police. She locks herself in the bathroom; this isn’t looking good. She finds a straight razor and waits. 

Brett comes home and tells the adults… something that they believe. “We look after our own around here.” Jon and his friends drag Jenny away and kill her. Brett then deletes all the videos off Paige’s phone and smiles at himself in the mirror. 

Commentary

Jenny had a really, really, really bad day. 

Kids on bicycles? Really? 

Well, yeah. They’re realistic, and the whole situation is completely plausible. It probably happens fairly often, but probably not often to this extreme.

This one is violent, brutal, and completely realistic. None of the good guys survive, and the worst of the bad guys survives to do it all again. 

Indie Film:

Ganymede (2024) 

* Directed by Colby Holt, Sam Probst

* Written by Colby Holt

* Stars Jordan Dow, Pablo Castelblanco, Joe Chrest, Robyn Lively

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnnOM0BWGok

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was very low-key on the horror, without even a hint of it until quite a way into the movie. But it’s very well made, and does have some horror and disturbing elements. We’d both give it a thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open in 1989. A man walks to the end of the dock carrying cinder blocks, ready to jump in. In the present day, a jogger stops and jumps into a pond with a fountain. He sees something scary under the water. Credits roll. 

In the morning, the young jogger wakes up next to the fountain. He goes home and has breakfast with his parents. He’s Lee Fletcher, and his parents make him stop and pray before breakfast. Sarah Beth helps around the house, and the mother, Floy, is clearly jealous of the younger woman. Both parents seem particularly strict. Lee is on the wrestling team at school. 

Kyle, the obviously-gay kid in school, tells Bree, a girlfriend, that he thinks Lee “has sad eyes.” She says Lee won’t party with them, as he’s got nothing in his life but wrestling and church. He hears that Lee has signed up for the community trash-cleaning group (his dad makes him do it), so he signs up as well to meet Lee. 

Lee and Kyle talk as they pick up trash about what they have in common. They’re getting along fine until a couple of homophobes from school drive up to call Kyle names; Lee punches Justin the loudmouth. Afterward, Kyle apologizes for being there. Lee is confused as he jogs home. When his parents hear that he spent the afternoon with Kyle, Floy gets upset. “You show that boy kindness, and he will twist it.” Kyle tells his mother the story, and she’s not so negative about it, but Lee’s father is the county commissioner, so they need to be careful.

 We cut to Lee’s family’s church, and they’re a bit extreme. Lee daydreams about what he saw under the water in the pond. Pastor Royer goes on and on about genders and all things that are ruining today’s youth; Lee hallucinates ripping the skin off his arm. When he goes home, Lee sees someone in his closet, but when he looks, there’s no one there. 

Kyle tells Bree that he’s sure that Justin is secretly gay himself. He’s not sure if Lee realizes that he is as well. Kyle’s gaydar is working overtime, and Bree is skeptical. As Lee’s mother rants about “what Kyle is,” Lee sees a monster crawling around behind her. Lee goes to his room and chants, “I am a straight heterosexual,” over and over to himself. Later, he hallucinates blood in the sink. 

Lee looks up “Psychosis” in the library the next day, but he can’t get through it because Bree keeps flirting with him; it’s a “test” to see if he’s gay. She reports to Kyle later, but he’s not appreciative. Ms. Kimpton at school suspects that there’s something going on between Kyle and Lee. She tells Kyle to be very careful with that. 

Lee plays an old audio tape left by his uncle Neal, who was also openly gay. That was who committed suicide in the pre-credit sequence. The tape is hidden in his parents’ bedroom, and he’s not supposed to know about it. 

Lee’s father has all the church and political people over for dinner, but Kyle shows up outside Lee’s window. Lee meets him at the back door and lets him inside.  Lee admits that he’s been “having reprobate thoughts” about Kyle. Lee clearly knows he has a crush on Kyle, and he says as much. They start kissing, and Lee imagines Kyle turning into a monster and starts screaming which brings his parents into the room. That goes badly. 

Pastor Royer has words for Lee after the party. Royer says that a “Ganymede is an unrepentant homosexual. They’re demonic disturbances.” His father asks if that can be inherited, and his mother gets really upset. Floy’s brother killed himself in that pond, and she says “We can fix this. It’s not real. No one can find out.” She doesn’t want all that to start again. She gets so hysterical that even Lee’s father wants to end the conversation. Royer says God won’t let Lee live long like this. 

Royer wants to “help” Lee with his affliction, and admits that he, himself, recovered from the disease. Royer says homosexuals aren't real demons and Ganymedes put those thoughts into peoples’ heads. Royer then tells Lee his own story and then suggests shock therapy. The pastor just happens to have an antique shock therapy machine at home, which he uses, along with prayer, ono Lee. 

The next day at school, Lee is like a zombie, but he’s still thinking about Kyle. It’s all very nice until someone attacks him in his daydream. He talks to the guidance counselor, and it’s all very awkward. 

At the wrestling match, Kyle comes to watch, as he’s waiting for Lee to come to his senses. Lee sees his opponent as a real demon and starts screaming again in front of everyone. Later, Lee’s father breaks down and cries; he blames his wife. “We had a deformed child!” 

Lee, however, continues to fantasize and dream about Kyle as the demons sneak into his room and cause trouble. In the middle of the night, he goes to the restrooms where he heard the gay people hang out. Justin, the guy he punched in the nose, is there and kisses him before getting punched again. The next morning, he goes back for more shock treatments, much more excessive this time, and he goes into convulsions. 

Kyle and Justin talk the next day, and Justin is less interested in hiding things. Lee’s parents argue about Floys photos and tapes of her dead brother. He wants that stuff out of the house. She sees rotting Neal there, and they have a talk about his death and whether or not Lee can change. She soon catches her husband banging the maid. 

It’s Kyle’s musical number in the school auditorium, and his mother is in the audience. He plays the xylophone and keyboard mixed with computer sound effects. Lee watches from the door and listens to his inner demons. He ends up screaming again. 

The two guys argue about who they both really are. “You’re going to do this to me; you’re a Ganymede, an unrepentant homosexual.” Kyle’s never heard the term before, but he doesn’t argue. Lee runs away and Kyle chases him. 

Lee’s mother, upset about her husband, picks up a big knife and goes for a walk. 

Lee goes to the church, alone, and puts on the shock treatment headset. Kyle breaks in, but the convulsions won’t stop, so he calls his mother for help. Lee fights his demon and realizes that the demon is himself. Pastor Royer comes in and beats up Kyle until Lee’s mother stabs him in the back. Both mothers take care of their boys until the police and ambulance arrive.  

Lee’s mother apologizes to Kyle’s mother, and they all go to the hospital. When Lee’s father arrives, he sees the situation and just leaves. 

We fast forward a while, and everything is different now, mostly happy for everyone.

Brian’s Commentary

I’ve never heard the term “Ganymede” used like this before, but it’s an important plot point here. 

The story is common enough; a romance between an openly gay kid and a strictly raised Christian fundamentalist. The conflict is built right in. This one, however, portrays Lee’s internal emotional conflict with real monsters. It’s all metaphorical until it isn’t. 

The performances and cinematography are all excellent; everyone does a good job here. It is very low on the “horror” scale, unless you’re a closeted gay teenager. It’s more disturbing than horrific, especially since it’s all so believable and realistic– and common. 

Kevin’s Commentary

Who knew that Ganymede was more than just one of the moons of Jupiter?

The basic story didn’t seem like much that I hadn’t seen before, but the inclusion of some monsters around the edges made it interesting. All the aspects, from performance to direction, were really well done.

It’s very low-key in horror, heavy on drama tension, and unfortunately realistic in many places.

Short Films:

Short Film: Mora (2024) 

* Directed by Sam Evenson

* Written by Sam Evenson

* Stars Tim Torre, Jamie Taylor Ballesta, Valeska Miller

* Run Time: 12:05

* Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUXpTAdu_8U

What Happens

Cody works at his computer, trying to get an AI to generate a specific image. When Hannah asks him why, he explains that there’s an anomaly that often appears in pictures of bloody, rotten, bleeding corpses, and the anomaly’s name is Mora; a gaunt, tall woman with scars and oddly long arms. He says if he can isolate the anomaly, it’ll make him famous. 

It does, in fact, make him famous, but not in the way he intended…

Commentary

This is about as “modern” as a horror short can get, relying on a plot driven by interactions with AI chat prompts and Midjourney-like image processing. It’s fun, it’s creepy, and you know exactly where it’s going to go once Cody explains what he’s doing. It all looks really, really good. 

Remember, if you ever doubt your reality, just start counting peoples’ fingers!

Short Film: Erebus (2024) 

* Directed by Joseph Collyer

* Written by Joseph Collyer

* Stars Holly Smith, Alexander Slowther, Laryssa Menon

* Run Time: 17:36

* Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLotKgrgOKs

What Happens

A forensic scientist is awakened in the middle of the night by the chief investigator; there’s something strange going on in an apartment building where radiation has been detected. Not only that, but people have gone missing. The scientist and the investigator seem to have some kind of bad history, and they do nothing but argue until he fires her. That may not be the end of her investigation, though…

Commentary

It’s well-filmed and looks good. The problem here is a little hard to pin down. It seems to be either acting, dialogue, and possibly direction, but more likely a perfect storm of all three. None of the characters’ behavior or dialogue seems even remotely professional or believable, and none of them are likable. Granted, real cops aren’t always as calm and competent as the ones on CSI, but anyone who acted like this wouldn’t get far at all in the real world. 

The mystery is interesting, but we don’t get a lot of that. We don’t get any explanation, and we don’t actually even see what happens to the main character at the end. 

It’s a student film, so I hope they got a good grade, but I didn’t particularly enjoy it.

Short Film: Autumn Harvest (2024) 

* Directed by Fredrik S. Hana

* Written by Fredrik S. Hana, Marius Lunde

* Stars Oliver Hohlbrugger, Eili Harboe, Helga Guren

* Run Time: 16:37

* Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFLsnC55Vm0

What Happens

A grief-stricken sailor walks into the sea with a rock tied around his neck. Before he goes under, he sees a mysterious woman in a black shroud standing above the water line. 

He seems to fall in love with the woman, and he does her bidding, no matter how terrible her requests become…

Commentary

It’s not completely without dialogue, but it’s awfully close. It’s done in black-and-white, which only adds to the dread of the dreary, hopeless setting. We don’t really get much of an explanation, but we get most of what we need here. 

It’s… bleak, and more than a little Lovecraftian.

Short Film: Death Snot (2024) 

* Directed by Charlie Schwan

* Written by Charlie Schwan

* Stars Noé De La Garza

* Run Time: 8:40

* Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jEz_S2VBHo

What Happens

A man has a cold. It gets progressively worse; his doctor calls and says the tests say it’s some kind of allergy. He keeps blowing and blowing, and his nose gets redder and redder. How far will he go to drain his sinuses? The vacuum cleaner hose starts to look really tempting…

Commentary

I think we’ve all felt like this guy once or twice. Maybe not that final bit, though. That might be a little excessive, although a good sinus-clearing blow might feel like that final scene.

It’s a great example of what can be done with almost no budget and only one actor. Excellent!

Contact Info:

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We’ve got an eclectic collection of weirdness for you this week: The much-improved sequel to last year’s “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” is out, as is a very nice caveman horror film, “Out of Darkness” from last year. “Wolf Creek 2” (2013) continues our fun with Mick from Down Under, and “The Wicker Tree” (2011) shows us how the folks on that crazy island are doing forty years later. We’ll then watch “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” (1988).

Then, instead of a single short film, we’ll watch FIVE of them!

 Get all our reviews once a week: https://www.horrorweekly.com/

Check out all our books with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com/

–  Email: mailto:[email protected]

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–  Twitter: http://twitter.com/HorrorMovieGuys

We’ve got an eclectic collection of weirdness for you this week: The much-improved sequel to last year’s “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” is out, as is a very nice caveman horror film, “Out of Darkness” from last year. “Wolf Creek 2” (2013) continues our fun with Mick from Down Under, and “The Wicker Tree” (2011) shows us how the folks on that crazy island are doing forty years later. We’ll then watch “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” (1988).

Then, instead of a single short film, we’ll watch FIVE of them!

Announcement: Changes!

Our Magazine

We’ve dropped “Bulletin” and are now just “Horror Monthly.” This is in tune with our new Internet domain, HorrorMonthly.com. We’ve still got the same writers, editors, reviewers, and basic style; it’s just a name change. We’re just changing the mix of what goes into it.

Our Newsletter

HorrorBulletin.com is no more. 

Long live HorrorWeekly.com! 

Any old links to the “bulletin” site should still work, so don’t worry about losing your favorite issues. From this point forward, however, we’ll be referring to Horror Weekly, our once-a-week email newsletter. 

This free weekly email contains all our full-length and short-film reviews and commentary. 

As always, the newsletter is completely free every week. After an issue has been out for four weeks, however, it falls into the “Archive” status, which requires a paid subscription to access. Again, you only pay for “old” issues; the newest weekly issues and those of the past few weeks are still free. This isn’t anything new, but it seems like a good time to point it out and explain it. 

The newsletter also includes a convenient built-in option to listen to our podcast. The podcast is also free (ALL the episodes) at HorrorGuysPodcast.com. 

Horror Guys Podcast

Currently, at HorrorGuysPodcast.com, each week, Kevin and Brian read and comment on the same material that hits the Horror Weekly newsletter. Nothing is changing here. The podcast is included in our newsletter each week, but it can also be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, among many other podcast listings. 

HorrorGuys.com

This is probably where the biggest change is going to be. We won’t be posting four full-length movies and a short in the future. The HorrorGuys.com site is now focusing more on indie films (as they are made available to us) and short films. The full-length film reviews and synopses are going straight to the newsletter. Everyone seems to love the short films, so we’re beefing those up in a big way!

The simplest, easiest way to get ALL our content is either by subscribing to the newsletter or picking up this magazine in print or ebook each month. You won’t miss anything!

TLDR? 

HorrorGuys.com is now for short and indie films.

HorrorWeekly.com = All those same shorts plus five full-length films, a mix of old and new releases. Same as before, only BIGGER. 

HorrorMonthly.com = Everything in HorrorWeekly, just compiled in print and eBook form each month. 

Get all our reviews once a week:

Check out all our books with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com/

Full-Length Films:

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 (2024) 

* Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield

* Written by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, Matt Leslie, A. A. Milne

* Stars Scott Chambers, Tallulah Evans, Ryan Oliva

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

There’s a bigger budget this time around, with better special effects and more of a background story. There’s a little too much time spent seeing Christopher struggle with his problems. But it has excellent gore kills and a good payoff once things get going.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re reminded of the old story about “The Boy and the Bear,” and we’re told about the Hundred-Acre Massacre, and things haven’t gone so well for Pooh or our heroes. We see an animated intro with Christopher Robin being loaded into an ambulance. Few believed his story, and he became a pariah. The locals searched for Pooh and his friends, searching and burning the woods and driving the animals to new places. Pooh reunited with some of his old friends. 

We cut to an RV with a woman trying a seance for the “Spirits of the Hundred-Acre wood.” Mia, Jamie, and Alice try using a Ouija board, but they don’t get very far before Pooh gets them. Owl enters the scene, “Who's the abomination now?” Credits roll. 

Christopher Robin finishes up with his therapist. His girlfriend, Lexy, says it’s like he’s trying to make her leave him. He gets home and finds that the neighbors have vandalized his car. 

When the police find the three women and the burned RV, the locals go out hunting for “those things.” Owl reports to Pooh and Piglet, “We trusted Christopher.” Owl is tired of hiding; he wants to take the fight to the humans. Something big in a locked room growls ominously…

The hunters are still out after dark. They find Piglet and blow his head off. Pooh shows up and makes short work of the three hunters. 

Chris gets laid off from the hospital; the administration has had complaints. He goes home to visit his parents and little sister, Bunny. Chris’s therapist hypnotizes him and takes him back to the past when he and Pooh were friends. Pooh was never really a good guy, but Chris didn’t see the evil in him. Chris remembers watching as someone kidnapped his brother Billy. 

Lexy calls Chris while she’s babysitting. Freddy, the kid she’s babysitting, is watching the first movie. Elsewhere, the police make it inside Pooh’s hideout. The big door to the “dungeon” is wide open. Tigger kills all of them. 

The police come to the door. The recent deaths are a lot like the massacre, and they want to rule out his involvement. Chris visits a man in the hospital, and his face is mostly torn off. Chris is clearly suffering from PTSD from his childhood. Meanwhile, Owl kills Chris’s friend by melting his face with acid vomit. 

Chris goes into an old man’s house; this is the man Chris thinks kidnapped his brother many years ago. Cavendish admits he did it, but he was doing it for Dr. Gallup, who promised to cancel a gambling debt. Dr. Gallup was using the children for genetic experiments, combining human and animal DNA. The experiments worked. 

Cavendish followed the animals all the way to the Hundred Acre Wood. Dr. Gallup had too many concerns, so he killed and buried the mutated children, then Cavendish shot the doctor right between the eyes. The kids, however, didn’t stay buried. They crawled out of their graves. When the attacks happened last year, everyone assumed Chris did it, but Cavendish knew better. His story finally told, Cavendish apologizes and kills himself. 

Lexy wakes up Freddie; there’s someone in the house. They use a toy car with a camera and see that it’s Pooh down there. When the police arrive, they come inside and meet the bear. He rips off one officer’s arms and beats her to death with it. 

Chris has some of the mad scientist Dr. Gallup’s tapes, talking about his experiments on the children. He called the experiments a success, but they were so dangerous that he decided it would be best to kill them. Lexy calls Chris and tells him that she’s seen Pooh. 

We cut to Pooh, advancing to Chris’s parents' house. His mother learns why you don’t put knives point-up in the dishwasher. Pooh has taken his sister, Bunny. 

A bunch of kids are having a rave in the country, and when Pooh shows up, he goes right in and makes a scene. We also see that Tigger is still into jumping. 

Chris arrives at the rave right at the end of the rampage and encounters Tigger, who runs away when Chris starts shooting. Pooh comes after Chris with a flaming chainsaw. 

Pooh corners Chris and is about to kill him, but then he has a flashback of his rebirth; he’s Billy, Chris’s long-lost brother. Chris smacks Pooh over the head with an ax. “Oh, Bother,” says Pooh as he collapses, dead. 

Chris and Lexy stumble out of the woods to where the police are waiting with Bunny, who is fine. As they drive away, we see Owl healing Pooh’s wound. “We’ll ALL be back for you, Christopher Robin!”

Brian’s Commentary

While obviously a cash grab, I didn’t hate the original “Blood and Honey” (2023). It certainly had its problems, but I remember enjoying it more than most people did. This one clearly had a higher budget, better creature effects, and could do a lot more this time around. 

Between the 30 and 50-minute mark, there was little but Chris whining and dealing with PTSD. There was entirely too much talking and angst. About the time Cavendish explained it all, it started getting more interesting. This one includes a logical origin story for the creatures: human-animal hybridization experiments. It’s silly, but it fits. 

Pooh looks a lot better than in the previous film. For some reason, they decided to drop Piglet, who I liked in the first film. Owl is here, and he’s not a convincing flyer, but he’s definitely creepy. I expected more from Tigger, but maybe his effects were less convincing and got cut. 

It’s got some excessive kills and good gore. There was a mention on the doctor’s tape that some of the animals could regenerate, so Pooh could easily return in another film. 

It dragged a bit, setting things up, but once it got going, it got going. Overall, I liked it at least as much as the first film, and there are still several animal characters unaccounted for that could be in the third film. 

Kevin’s Commentary

I’m with Brian, enjoying the first movie quite a bit. The creatures were less rubbery and more expressive this time around, and they looked good. But the amount of time with no creatures weighed heavily on me. It was too much. I’d say I didn’t care for it as much as the first one. 

Out of Darkness (2024) 

* Directed by Andrew Cumming

* Written by Ruth Greenberg, Andrew Cumming, Oliver Kassman

* Stars Iola Evans, Arno Luning, Rosebud Melarkey

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

45,000 years ago, it was very dark at night, and you couldn’t call 911 for help. That captures the gist of this movie. A small group of early humans fight to survive against the unknown with the limited resources they have. It’s slow but gripping and well-made, but it left us feeling unsatisfied at the end.

Spoilery Synopsis

45,000 years ago, we open on a group of people sitting around a campfire chipping bones with stones. Heron wants Ave to tell him a story. She talks about caves and herds to hunt; Odal, the leader, wants to tell a story. He tells them about their hunt for a good, safe place with plenty of food and animals and how they built a boat and went to a new land. It was supposed to be paradise, but it was cursed; the Earth was barren. 

Adem and Odal argue about what’s really out there, and Odal says that it’s not a place for happy stories. “The danger of bringing light into a dark place is that you might find out what lives in the darkness.” Adem insists there are no demons, and if they had stayed at the old place, they’d all be dead now. Credits roll. 

In the morning, Geirr and Beyah talk about being hungry and having nothing to eat. They see some mountains in the distance, and those are likely to have caves to live in. They walk all day and then camp. They find the remains of a big dead animal; something killed and ate it. Old Odal offers Adem advice, but Adem is very proud and won’t listen. 

Beyah has her first period, and Ave explains how all that works. “You have a purpose now.” In the heavy fog, the group almost gets split up. Odal and Geirr go off hunting; Odal wants to go around the forest, not taking the group inside. 

That night, Beyah goes off into the darkness to dispose of her “feminine product” and hears screaming from far away. Odal follows her to rape her but is interrupted by screaming, much closer to them now. Whatever it is, it’s getting closer. 

Something in the darkness grabs Heron, and Adem storms off after them until Geirr begs him to stay with the group. 

In the morning, Beyah doesn’t want to go with Adem, but no one really has a choice right now. They find Heron’s coat covered in something stick that isn’t blood. The trail leads into the woods, into the darkness. 

Adem is crazy with the grief of Heron and leads them inside, much to everyone’s dismay. They all doubt his sanity, but he’s the strongest, so they have to follow. They find a huge bone pile and hear a creature roaring. 

The thing in the darkness screams and chases them for a while. Ave works to build a fire, but the thing is closing in quickly. Adem chases one into the woods alone. The four remaining people hear him screaming in the darkness. “We’re all going to die,” shouts Beyah. Geirr goes out and retrieves Adem, whose mouth has been ripped off. After some deliberation, Beyah stabs him to death; he can’t be saved. 

Ave goes into convulsions from hunger. Beyah points out that they have something to eat now as she looks at Adem’s body. They aren’t happy about it, but they all eat. 

“Why doesn’t it just kill us?” asks Odal. He and Geirr argue whether it’s an animal or a demon out there. 

As the sun rises, there’s a quick argument about who the new leader is going to be. Geirr is in charge, but he clearly doesn’t know what to do. Odal and Ave grab Beyah and blame her bleeding period for attracting the monster in the first place– she is an outsider, after all. They drag her to the bone-pit area and leave her there as an offering to the demon. 

When they hear the monster approaching, Odal stabs Ave in the side. Two offerings are better than one, right? She reaches up and breaks the old man’s leg; he’s not going anywhere either. 

Beyah gets away in the confusion and looks for Geirr. As the creature closes in on Odal, Geirr and Beyah get a hazy look at it in the fog. Beyah attacks the thing and sees that it’s just a Neanderthal woman in a mask. Beyah thinks there can’t be many of them, or they’d have already been killed. What if there’s just one of them? 

They track the thing to a cave on the side of the mountain and go inside. Lightning flashes, and we see that they are not alone in the cave. Suddenly, a man attacks Beyah and chokes her out. Geirr charges in and stabs the man. Then the neanderthal woman kills Geirr. 

Beyah finds Heron still alive. Heron runs to help the Neanderthal woman get out of the cave. Beyah doesn’t help; she beats the woman to death with a rock. “We were starving; they fed me!” She explains to Heron that those things killed all their friends. 

Eventually, Heron and Beyah move into the dead people’s cave. They find evidence that maybe the Neanderthals weren’t bad people; they hadn’t really killed anyone– the six travelers mostly killed each other. 

Commentary

Caveman horror? Why not? The 'Tola' language spoken in The Origin was created for the film. It is loosely based on Basque. 

There are only a half-dozen or so distinctive-looking characters in the beginning, so we can tell everyone apart. It definitely captures the idea of these people having so many “unknowns” in their lives. 

The film is slow and quiet and actually seems to get slower and slower as it progresses. The end reveal is fine; it also adds to the whole “fear of the unknown” vibe the movie has going for it. In the end, though, it’s a little unsatisfying. 

Wolf Creek 2 (2013) 

* Directed by Greg McLean

* Written by Greg McLean

* Stars John Jarratt, Ryan Corr, Shannon Ashlyn

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 46 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Part two was a worthy follow-up to the first, with a bit more of a budget for the special effects. The gore is very realistic, with some brutal torture and deaths. There’s nothing magic or supernatural here, and the horror element comes from knowing that it’s just a guy doing it. It’s not real, but at least parts of it could be.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a pair of cops in the most obvious speed trap imaginable. A car finally passes, but it’s going under the speed limit; they go after him anyway. We see that it’s Mick Taylor from the first film as the cops pull him over. They make him get out of the car, and they find some butchered pigs in the back of his truck. Mick argues that he was under 100 kph, but the cops decide to be bullies about it. They write him a citation, and he gives them a mean look but doesn’t really do anything. 

As the cops drive away, he eyes the rifle in the back of the truck. The cops laugh at scaring the man in the truck– until the cop driving the car’s head explodes. Mick has caught up with them, whistling away as he pours gasoline on the wrecked police car with the other severely wounded cop inside. Mick shows them what he does to “pigs.” Credits roll. 

We cut to Rutger and Katarina, a pair of German hitchhikers from the big city, working their way across Australia. Mick’s truck stops to pick them up. When another truck comes into sight, Mick drives off and leaves them. The two eventually make it to the national park, where they have a good afternoon. 

They catch another ride with someone else who drops them off at the Wolf Creek Crater.  It is… a crater. When they’re done, they have trouble getting someone to pick them up for the trip home. They end up camping in the desert, but at least they have all their stuff with them. They hear a truck outside their tent, and Mick warns them that it’s illegal to camp there. 

Mick offers the couple a ride, and when Rutger declines, Mick stabs him to death. He’s about to rape Katarina when Rutger gets back up and smacks Mick over the head. Mick doesn’t go so easy on him the second time, completely decapitating Rutger. He chokes out Katarina and gets to work. 

Mick takes his time dismembering and butchering Rutger as Katarina wakes up and sneaks off.  

We cut to Paul, a guy driving alone in his car. He stops when he finds Katarina in the road. She’s hysterical, but he helps her into the car just as Mick sees them and starts chasing. Paul soon figures out that he’s gotten in the middle of a bad situation as Mick tries to run him off the road. 

Both cars crash, and Mick shoots Katarina. Paul manages to get his Jeep started and drives away. After he goes a while, Paul stops to unload the corpse out of the front seat of his car. He leaves her in the desert and knocks out his blood-covered broken window before driving off. He eventually makes it back to the road and tries to flag down a car, but nobody will stop for him. A big truck eventually stops, but Mick’s the one driving. 

The two have quite a road chase until they try to drive through a herd of kangaroos at high speed. Things just get worse and worse for Paul until his car finally gives out and gets pushed over a cliff. 

Paul’s airbags save him, but he’s alone in the desert with no idea where he is and only one water bottle. Mick sacrifices his big stolen truck to finish off Paul’s Jeep, so now it’s just the two of them on foot. 

Paul staggers on toward a farmhouse and passes out. Someone pulls him inside. He wakes up later and finds that someone has washed all his clothes. Jack and Lil, an old couple, seem very nice, but Paul is still in shock and a little paranoid. 

Paul hears Mick yelling at the house from outside, but Jack grabs his rifle and says, “I’ll see to it.” Jack runs Mick off, but Jack doesn’t live long after that; neither does Lil. Paul runs out the back door, but Mick has found Jack’s horse, so he’s sure to catch up. 

Mick does eventually catch up to Paul, and it’s a very short fight. Paul eventually wakes up tied to a chair in Mick’s basement. They sing “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport,” which entertains Mick enough that he makes them both drinks. This continues until Paul sings a song that Mick hates. 

Mick wants to play a game where he’ll ask trivia questions about Australia, and for each one that Paul misses, he’s going to grind off a finger.  It’s cordial but tense, but Paul answers the first few questions. Mick gets tired of waiting for a wrong answer and removes a finger anyway. But then, Paul can’t answer a question about cricket– like, who could? Paul loses a second finger. 

Mick admits that no one ever really gets out of this place. Paul manages to hit Mick with a hammer, but he’s not out long enough for Paul to finish the job. Paul runs away, but he chooses the wrong tunnel; it’s a dead end. Paul finds where Mick stores his women’s bodies, some of whom aren’t quite dead yet. 

Mick releases dogs to chase Paul through the tunnels. Mick catches up, naturally. 

Paul wakes up again (how many times is that?) on the street in town, holding a note that says “Loser.” He’s a bloody mess, but the police come and take him away. We cut to text that says, despite his story about a crazed gunman, Paul was held as a suspect in several unsolved murders in the area. He was eventually deported and committed to an asylum in England. 

We cut to Mick, walking across the outback desert. 

Commentary

“The first rule of the Outback: You never, never stop.”

The bit with the truck chase is very reminiscent of “Duel” (1971). The whole film is mostly just one-on-one with Mick and Paul, so it really is just a sort of extended duel. 

The filmmakers knew that the best part of the first film was Mick’s personality and quirky mannerisms, and that’s what they kept here. The main plot is mostly different from the first film, but he’s consistent. 

It’s intense. If you liked the first one, you’ll probably like this one too.

The Wicker Tree (2011) 

* Directed by Robin Hardy

* Written by Robin Hardy

* Stars Brittania Nicol, Henry Garrett, Graham McTavish, Christopher Lee

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is a sequel to 1973’s “The Wicker Man” which was also directed by Robin Hardy. The original is a classic piece of work, but this one is just an okay movie. While it’s not awful, it’s a big step down from the original. It might have been judged differently if it was a stand-alone movie of its own. 

Spoilery Synopsis

We open in Dallas as a girl in a limousine picks up a cowboy on the side of the road. When they stop at a church, people ask for Beth Boothby’s signature; she’s a bit of a country music star. Beth and Steve are going to spend the next two years preaching the word of God to the heathens of Scotland.

We cut to Scotland, which we are told borders England [really?]. Sir Lachlan Morrison and his wife, Lady Delia, meet Beth and Steve, who show off their chastity rings. “They’re perfect for our needs,” says Sir Lachlan. It’s a big performance at the church, and Beth sings for the TV. 

Back in their room, Steve and Beth make out, but there’s only so far they can go with those chastity rings. The TV plays one of Beth’s old videos, “Trailer Trash Love,” so we see she wasn’t always like this. 

The next day, Steve and Beth go door to door, spreading the Word of the Lord, or more likely, getting door after door shut in their faces. Delia says they might have a lot more luck outside the city; she knows a good place out in the country. 

Delia asks if they’re “saved,” and she makes it sound really creepy. Beth and Steve can’t deny it, though, because it’s in the Bible. 

Meanwhile, at the nuclear power station, Sir Lachlan joins them. Everyone in this region works for him. Lolly the groom, flirts with Steve as all the townspeople watch, but she’s really in love with Orlando the policeman. 

Jack is a weird guy who trains birds; he’s very strange and only talks in poetry. Steve explains religion by using his trick deck of cards, which is just goofy. Even when the guys at the table shuffle the cards, Steve can get them back in order. 

Beth spends some time with Morag, Marion, and Murdoch, who talk about the magic of May Day and the rebirth of nature. They let her try on the May Queen’s dress. Surprisingly, it fits. 

Lolly and Orlando have sex. Mary sings a bawdy song in the pub to Steve, who dreams about sex with Beth. 

In the morning, Steve rides Sir Lachlan’s special horse up to the castle. On the way, he sees Lolly bathing topless in the holy pond. He gets naked and joins her. While Beth is going to be the May Queen, they want Steve to be the Laddie. They soon have not-imaginary sex. She talks about following the Goddess, and he still doesn’t approve. After, he notices that he’s lost his chastity ring. “When you’ve lost it, you’ve lost it. It don’t grow back.”

Lachlan makes a presentation about the nuclear power station that he wants. Patricia and Magnus are against the idea, but Angus is on Lachlan’s side. Angus and Lachlan talk about the accident ten years ago that polluted the water table; no one in town can have babies anymore. The press still hasn’t noticed. 

Beth and Steve give a cringeworthy bible lesson to a group of the locals. Afterward, Beth accepts the title of the May Queen. Steve says he wants out; after the May Day thing, he wants to go home. She notices his missing ring and starts listening to “Trailer Trash Love” recordings. 

Sir Lachlan tells the rules of being a “Laddie” to Steve. A little boy talks to Steve; he’s the only child in town, and Steve notices. 

Lolly and Orlando have more sex as Jack listens outside. Poor Orlando ends up going to the hospital afterward. 

Delia and Sir Lachlan try to poison Beth, but the cat dies instead. Lachlan orders Beam, the servant, to take care of things. Delia and Lachlan talk about whether or not he really believes what he claims to believe. We cut to a photo of Christopher Lee above the fireplace, which then flashes back to Christopher Lee talking to young Lachlan about the poor “Laddie” and how that usually works out. 

It’s the day of the hunt, and Lachlan introduces Steve as this year’s Laddie. Everyone is supposed to chase him through the woods with a sabotaged saddle. Meanwhile, Beam goes into Beth’s room with a giant syringe, but she stabs him in the crotch with a broken wine glass and runs off. 

Beth runs through the town looking for help or a phone and finds neither. Beam recaptures Beth and they oil her up in the kitchen. Beam tells Mary that it makes the skin easier to peel. They talk about replacing her eyes. 

Steve falls off the horse but gets back on and rides bareback, which the villagers didn’t expect. Lolly warns Steve that it’s a trap, but he was warned not to fall for that and rides on. Steve makes it into the castle and sits on his throne as instructed. He wins! When the hunters file in, they don’t look happy. Sir Lachlan comes in as everyone starts to get undressed. “You will give your life so that a new generation of people will be born.” Yep, Lachlan wants to use Steve as the sacrifice. 

Lolly hears his screams from afar and cries; she really was trying to save him. 

Beth wakes up in a room full of previous May Queens, all stuffed and very lifelike.  She finds a way out and runs into Lolly, who tells her what happened to Steve. Beth says “I’m gonna be one Queen of the May that no one is ever gonna forget.”

We cut to all the villagers on a hill with the “Wicker Tree” as Beth marches up and takes her place. Everyone is shocked that she’s come up here willingly. She kicks Sir Lachlan into the wicker sculpture and lights it on fire with him trapped in it. 

“Don’t you have a song for this?” She taunts the crowd. The crowd does sing, and then everyone goes home, including Beth. As she runs through the woods, she sees that one little boy who offers to show her to the next town. 

He leads her on through the dark woods, and the villagers are waiting there for her.

We cut to Molly giving birth to Steve’s baby. The impotent village has been blessed. We cut to Beth in the May Queen room, dead and stuffed like the others…

Commentary

“She’s almost severed yer googly.”

The problem with making a sequel to “The Wicker Man” (1973), is that we already know the twist ending and the conspiracy behind it all. We essentially know what’s going on here from the beginning; it’s all about why and how it’s going to happen here. 

Much like the original, the point here is that Christians are silly and completely ignorant about how the real world works. Unlike the original, this one is almost played for laughs, except there really are people like this. 

Christopher Lee was supposed to play Sir Lachlan in this one, but due to an injury in another film, he was unable to take the part. Instead, he just appears in a brief flashback. 

It wasn’t terrible, but it suffers in comparison to the first film. Taken on its own, it’s not bad.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) 

* Directed by Stephen Chiodo

* Written by Charles Chiodo, Stephen Chiodo, Edward Chiodo

* Stars Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The Klowns are pretty awesome, but they’re surrounded by a movie that hasn’t held up well. There are a few chuckles to be had, but a lot of the humor falls flat and seems stale. Kevin remembers being delighted when he saw it in 1988 when it came out, but both of us felt relieved this time around when it was over.

Spoilery Synopsis

We stop in at the Big Top Burger as the credits roll and see the characters there. We follow Officer Mooney as he drives around the little town on Friday night, patrolling for nefarious teens. 

Up at Lookout Point, all the teens are drinking and making out until the Ice Cream truck drives up to annoy them all. Rich and Paul, the ice cream men, are not getting lucky tonight. Mike and Debbie laugh at the two idiots and then watch as a meteorite crashes nearby. They decide to go find it. 

Farmer Green sees it crash on his land and grabs his shovel. When he gets there, he doesn’t find a rock; he finds a circus tent. He can’t find a way inside, but something inside grabs his dog. Then Green sees a big ugly clown who smiles at him and shoots him with a ray gun. 

Mooney brings a couple of college kids into the station, and it looks like he has a problem with young people in general. Dave, the younger cop, is a lot more reasonable. 

Mike and Debbie find the circus tent as well. They get inside, and it’s like no circus tent they’ve ever seen. There’s no one else there, so they explore. It’s a lot bigger on the inside than they expected, and it smells like candy. They watch a clown come in carrying one of the local townspeople. The aliens all look like clowns and do clowny things. 

The clowns chase the young couple through the woods, led by their balloon-animal dog. Debbie wants to go to the police, but Mike says they’ll never believe them. Meanwhile, the clowns start making their way toward town. The couple do go to the police station, and the police do not, in fact, believe them. Dave wants to follow up on the story, but Mooney just laughs and laughs. 

Meanwhile, the clowns find people and shoot them with their ray guns that turn them into pink cotton candy cocoons. A group of bikers confront the clowns, and one of them gets his whole head punched off. 

Dave and Mike go back up into the woods to where the circus tent was, but now it’s gone. They stop at Lookout Point, and all the teens are gone. Dave releases Mike from the handcuffs; he believes now. Mooney receives numerous calls from citizens who see malicious clowns. He thinks it’s a prank from the ice cream brothers. 

Mike finds Rich and Paul have crashed their truck. He enlists their help. Meanwhile, Mooney starts ignoring all the phone calls until one clown comes in face to face. He cuffs it, but then its arms come off. Mooney gets what’s coming to him. Dave returns later to find his prisoners encased in cotton candy. Dave shoots one of the clowns, but that doesn’t do anything at all. He finally shoots it in the nose, and it explodes. 

Mike and the Terenzi brothers soon encounter an entire parade of clowns collecting cotton candy-encrusted townspeople. At home, Debbie is attacked by mutated bits of popcorn in her bathroom. The real clowns eventually zap her into a balloon. The clown car soon gets into a chase with the ice cream truck and a police car. 

Dave figures out that the clowns are all headed to the old amusement park. The clowns attack the park’s security guard with pies. Lots of pies made of acid that dissolve him into a giant sundae. Dave, Mike, and the ice cream brothers go into the park, and it’s all alien now but still clownish. Mike and Dave rescue Debbie just before a bunch of clowns show up to chase them. The whole alien spaceship is like a big funhouse, and they run all over the place. 

The trio are eventually cornered by dozens of crazy clowns until the ice cream truck breaks through the wall. The clowns see the big talking clown on the roof of the truck, and they are very, very confused. All the clowns quietly back off when something big comes down through the ceiling; it’s the Klown King, and he smashes the truck. 

Mike and Debbie run outside as the circus tent pulls up stakes and gets ready to leave Earth. Dave stays inside to shoot at the Klown King. The whole spaceship takes off just as a bunch of police cars arrive. Inside, Dave pops the King’s nose with a pin, and everything explodes. Dave escapes in a clown car. 

Commentary

Most of these characters are supposed to be college students, right? We never get any explanation as to why these alien invaders look and act like clowns, not even a hint. 

This all looks good, but the dialogue is just terrible. The characters are all just as stupid as they need to be for any given situation. The clown creatures are really well done, at least for clowns. The various clown attacks are mostly not interconnected; they’re skits that all end the same way. 

It’s considered a classic, but it’s one of those you’ll either love or hate. I didn’t much care for it all; I was eager for the ending to finally come and found very little of it actually funny. For a very low-budget film, it was pretty well made, however. The clowns themselves are nearly iconic.

Short Films:

Short Film: Good Head (2021) 

* Directed by Matt Servitto

* Written by Matt Servitto

* Stars Matt Servitto, Henry Zebrowski, Addie Weyrich, Dan Triandiflou

* Run Time: 27:01

* Watch it:

What Happens

Major actor Cooper Bradley is starring in his new superhero film, “Silver Streak,” and he gets the call that he needs to get a molding of his head done for a scene. He and his assistant drive out to the special effects house and meet Shane, the special effects guy. He gives them a tour of his (amazing) prosthetics warehouse. He’s Cooper’s #1 fan, and he doesn’t try to hide it. 

Cooper is claustrophobic, which makes getting a whole head mold really terrifying for him. In truth, that’s only the beginning of Cooper’s nightmare…

Commentary

This is just awesome. The special effects here are absolutely nowhere near Hollywood quality or budget, but they were clearly a labor of love on someone’s part, and there are a lot of special effects here. 

“Cooper Bradley” is a play on a certain MCU actor’s name, but Matt Servitto clearly should be playing “Junior Downey Robert” instead. He’s got the looks and mannerisms of the Iron Man actor down; I assume they thought maybe it was too on-the-nose, or maybe they feared legal problems. Doesn’t matter; we know who he’s supposed to be. 

I don’t know where they filmed this, but it certainly looks cool. The production values are outstanding, the acting is perfect for the story, it’s incredibly funny, and overall, it’s a major win!

P.S. Watch out for Milton Berle.

Short Film: Amy’s House of Art (2023) 

* Directed by Karl Huber

* Written by Karl Huber

* Stars Lauren Crandall

* Run Time: 6:32

* Watch it:

What Happens

We watch a recorded interview with a young artist who is excited to show off her work. She grows corn as a hobby. She paints as a hobby. She sculpts as a hobby. The materials she uses, however… 

Commentary

This is really well done. It’s filmed in the style of some kind of interview show, and Amy shows off her personality and her work, getting crazier and crazier as the interview progresses. The problem is, we have all met someone like Amy…

It’s short, it’s a whole story, and it’s very funny!

Short Film: Hope (2024) 

* Directed by Adam A. Losurdo

* Written by Adam A. Losurdo

* Stars Herman Ljung Opedal, Tonje Brattas, Felin Hellsegga

* Run Time: 11:08

* Watch it:

What Happens

The zombie apocalypse has happened, but it’s not like what we expected. Zombies just wander around harmlessly, usually the victims of pranking and bullying because they don’t fight back. Karl is one such zombie, watching as his fellow zombies get punched, shot, and stabbed. One guy even steals Karl’s shoes! 

“Life” for Karl is pretty hopeless until he meets Hope, the zombie of his dreams. What could go wrong?

Commentary

This one is really good. There’s no real dialogue, just a voiceover from a Sam Elliot impersonator. The basic premise starts off silly, but it builds logically to the end. People just never know when to leave well enough alone, do they?

Short Film: O, Glory! (2024) 

* Directed by Joe Williams, Charlie Edwards-Moss

* Written by Joe Williams, Charlie Edwards-Moss

* Stars Sam Spruell, Emily Stott, Jonathan Livingstone, Vincent Shiels

* Run Time: 15:35

* Watch it:

What Happens

A doctor gets calls to a remote British estate house, where Sylvester has called in the specialist and his assistant to deal with his maybe-insane sister. As the treatments progress, the specialist doesn’t make much progress; actually, he starts getting sicker himself. This isn’t going to end well, is it?

Commentary

I like the retro look of this one. Between the picture quality, the setting, the outfits, and everything else, this looks just like a segment out of one of the old Hammer or Amicus anthologies. Emily Stott seems to be channeling Shelley Duvall from her role in “The Shining,” and it’s perfect. It’s maybe a little longer than it needs to be, but overall, I liked it– it has a full story and all the explanations we really need.

Short Film: Sweet Meats (2024) 

* Directed by Rebecca Myshrall

* Written by Rebecca Myshrall

* Stars Zoe Wade, Jamie DiCicco, Laura MacLean, Julia Steady, Nate Stephenson

* Run Time: 12:25

* Watch it:

What Happens

It’s a girls’ sleepover night, and the four girls start talking about boys as these things often unfold. This group, however, is a little “ahead” of other sleepers. A boy comes to visit, sees what they’re doing inside, and nopes right over to the neighbors’ house. 

Really, though, is that any better? No, not at all. 

Commentary

Well, OK then, that went to several places I didn’t expect. The longer it went on, the weirder it got. I can’t exactly say I understood it all, but it’s definitely worth a watch!

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It’s time to catch up on some newer releases. We’ll take a look at 2024’s “Arcadian,” “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” “Cold Blows the Wind,” and “New Life.” For our oldies, we’ll look at 1966’s “Psycho Circus” and 1991’s “Child’s Play 3.” They’re mostly decent, but we had some nits to pick with each of them. 

Check out all our books with one easy link: https://brianschell.com/collection/horrorguys

2024 Arcadian

* Directed by Benjamin Brewer

* Written by Mike Nilon

* Stars Nicolas Cage, Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was very slow-moving and low on action for the first hour or so, focusing more on survivors and how they were carrying on. We’re gradually filled in on how the world is now, and things pick up in the last half hour with much more action. Not everything is explained, but it tells a good story that we liked.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man in a backpack runs through the deserted streets. We hear sirens, gunshots, and explosions as credits roll. Paul continues running, past piles of bodies and past hordes of screaming people. He gets out of town as civilization collapses around him. At some point, he picks up a baby. 

Fifteen years later, Paul and his two sons, Joseph and Thomas, live out in the country, away from the city. When it starts getting dark, they all close up the shutters over the windows and heavily lock the doors. Thomas has been spending a lot of time at the Rose farm. 

As the boys play chess, the dog starts scratching at the floor, which gets all of them on alert. Suddenly, there’s crazy banging at the door, and they have to help hold the door shut. Whatever it is, they soon go away. In the morning, the outside of the door is covered with scratches. 

Paul talks about the Earth being past the worst part, and the air and water are getting cleaner. He still has hope for humanity, but Joseph isn’t so sure. Joseph has gotten an old cart running, and they use it to drive to the town for some salvage. Thomas, on the other hand, is obsessed with hanging out at the Rose farm; Mr. and Mrs. Rose are nice, but he’s way more interested in their daughter, Charlotte. 

Charlotte and Thomas play a game of recap the apocalypse badly in ten seconds. Charlotte says it’s something to do with bugs and a plague and the machines taking revenge. Thomas says everyone turned into wolves and ran into the forest. Or just maybe the kids are making all this up. 

There’s an accident, and Thomas doesn’t make it home one night. Paul goes looking for him while Joseph stays to lock up and defend the house. Thomas fell into a ravine, and at least one of the creatures is down there. Joseph doesn’t lock the door properly, and one of them gets in– but is promptly caught in a trap. Joseph knew what he was doing. Meanwhile, the creatures are digging into where Paul and Thomas are trying to hide for the night. Paul ignites something that explodes. 

In the morning, Thomas pulls the unconscious Paul out of the ravine and Joseph picks them up in the car. Thomas wants to see the creature in the cage, but it’s terrified of the sunlight. It goes badly, and they end up killing it when it escapes. 

Thomas takes Paul to the Roses’ place for help, but they refuse to get involved. Thomas stays with them anyway, but Joseph takes Paul back to their house. Mr. Rose catches Charlotte and Thomas kissing and doesn’t like it one bit. 

Charlotte gives Thomas some medication and runs home, but the men at the farm take exception and kidnap him. The monsters take the opportunity to attack Charlotte’s parents. Everyone dies except for Thomas and Charlotte, who escape back to Paul’s house and meet up with Joseph. 

The three young people have to defend themselves and Paul from the monsters. They carry in a big chest freezer and a bunch of gasoline and explosives; he’s going to make a trap. The creatures soon get inside the house. 

Suddenly, Paul wakes up and starts fighting the horde that’s gotten into the house. Paul uses himself as bait as everything explodes. Charlotte, Thomas, and Joseph hide inside the freezer to avoid the carnage. Not all the creatures are dead, so the three run to the car and drive off. The monsters pursue, even while on fire. 

In the morning, they have a little funeral for… essentially everyone. Maybe some of the other neighboring farms survived, so they’re gonna go look…

Commentary

This one is very slow moving and at about the one-hour mark, I was starting to suspect that it wasn’t going anywhere. Nic Cage is good here, but he’s out of the picture for a large part of the film, leaving the drama in the hands of the two boys. The action does pick up in the final half-hour. 

We don’t get a really good, close look at the monsters, but what we do see is really something else, like werewolf-alligators. We never really do get an explanation of what happened to the world or what the creatures really are. 

2023 New Life

* Directed by John Rosman

* Written by John Rosman

* Stars Sonya Walger, Tony Amendola, Hayley Erin

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was heavy on human drama and psychological thrills with some horror on the side. The direction, cast, and script are all very good. It wasn’t what we expected, but we still liked it. 

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a bloody woman walking through a neighborhood alley. She goes into a house and washes off the blood. She goes through some drawers and changes clothes; she even finds a wedding ring. Is this even her house? Men with guns come in the front door as she climbs out the window. She’s Jessica, and she’s clearly on the run. 

We cut to Elsa Gray, a woman who doesn’t look healthy. She takes her medication and gets a visit from Raymond. He’s a little pushy, but she goes along with it, making him coffee. He says that there’s a situation that’s gotten out of control, and he needs her help. “The subject is on the way to the border, and we can’t let her cross.” 

We cut back to Jessica, who has a map and is hiding out in the woods. She comes to a farmhouse and sleeps in the barn. We flashback to her, locked in a cell in a very dirty old building. 

Vince, one of Raymond’s security/hacker people, spots Jessica on a camera and reports her location to Elsa, who’s annoyed that her own hands are shaking. 

The farmer invites Jessica inside for breakfast. Frank and Janie ask questions, and they seem nice, even though it’s obvious that she’s lying about her story to them. Frank decides to drive her where she wants to go and give her a bag of clothes and supplies. They go until the road ends, and he drops her off near more woods. We notice that he has a cough. 

Elsa falls down; there’s definitely something wrong with her physically. She gets a call from Sal, who has Laura on the line, a woman who’s got ALS, the same disease Elsa has. Her prognosis is not good, and she knows it. 

Jessica dreams about camping with Ian and a stray dog who gives them both fleas. Elsa talks to Vince on the phone, and we see a photo of Ian and the now-dead dog on the wall. Jessica stops into a bar and asks for a job from Molly, who points her to a mop. 

Elsa gets a call about Frank and Janie. She goes in wearing a hazmat suit; she says that Jessica is carrying a special strain of ebola. When she gets there, Janie and Frank look– unlike ebola patients, more like zombies. 

We flash back to Jessica and Ian. His “flea bites” are looking a whole lot worse, and he gets very sick. They take an ambulance to a place that’s very much not a hospital; men in hazmat suits kidnap her and lock her up. 

Raymond admits the situation to Elsa. It’s not ebola, it’s a genetically engineered virus that the dog had. The dog escaped and infected Jessica and Ian. Ian died, and Jessica is a carrier now. Jessica doesn’t know any of this; she thinks she’s being chased for murder. Elsa says the scope of the search is way too small, and he says that this is all due to a sloppy pharmaceutical company which doesn’t want word to get out. She quits on the spot. 

We cut back to Jessica in her cell, killing a guard to escape. This is why she was covered in blood in the opening scene. She sees Ian, who is a scab-covered mess. 

Raymond knows all about Elsa’s ALS, and that’s why he hired her. He persuades her that she needs to work and not just retire and give up, and she gets back on the case. 

Jessica wakes up with a hangover, but Molly wakes up with something a lot worse. Vince calls Elsa and says everyone at Molly’s bar has been detained. They don’t know where Molly lives, but they’re looking. Vince thinks there may be more to all this than a case of ebola, but Elsa doesn’t clue him in. 

Elsa sees Jessica in town. Jessica walks away. Elsa has trouble keeping up and falls down. Jessica runs back to Molly’s house and sees what’s left of her friend before panicking. She starts packing her stuff and then hears Molly moving around upstairs. Molly’s dead though, so what’s going on? Jesscia goes back upstairs to look and Molly’s become a full-on zombie. Afterward, Jessica finds that all her hair is falling out; that’s new.  

Vince finally figures out where Molly lives and sends Elsa to investigate. Elsa finds Jessica but sees that Jessica is sick. Elsa ends up shooting her, but it doesn’t have much effect; Jessica runs away toward the Canadian mountains before Elsa shoots her again. Elsa holds her hand as she dies. 

We get a montage of all the records of the whole incident being deleted. Elsa goes home and continues taking her medications. Sal comes over with brochures about living with ALS and holds Elsa’s hand. In the middle of their conversation, he starts coughing. Is it over or not?

Commentary

The trailers for this one are a little misleading, it’s not at all what we expected. 

The name of the film is “New Life,” and everyone continually talks about starting over, second chances, and reinventing their lives, so the theme here is pretty obvious. The acting is excellent all around, and the situation is more or less realistic and believable. 

It’s got a good story, but it’s almost an hour into the film before we really know what’s going on and why. The horror elements are somewhat minimal, with a couple of disease-ridden sick people and one or two somewhat mild zombie attacks. It’s more psychological than horrific, but it’s good either way. 

2024 Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

* Directed by George Miller

* Written by George Miller, Nick Lathouris

* Stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke

* Run Time: 2 Hours, 28 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a little disappointing after the steady action of the previous “Mad Max: Fury Road.” There was plenty of action in this one, but also lots of talking and down time. And the CGI use seemed more obvious this time around. Still, the cast is good, and it does tell us how Furiosa becomes who she is.

Spoilery Synopsis

We hear voice overs about the collapse of society as the credits roll. 

We zoom into central Australia, in a green place. Two children pick apples to eat. Furiosa and her friend see a motorcycle gang sneak in to check them out “invisibly.” She’s spotted, but she signals her people for help. The gang grabs the little girl and rides away. Two women on horseback pursue, “None must live to tell of this place.” It doesn't take long before the “gang” is down to two motorcycles and one determined pursuer. 

The final gang man takes Furiosa to Dementus’s camp. He’s got a whole colorful crew of weirdos, and they want to know where she’s from. He wants to know where she’s from, but she won’t speak. Meanwhile, the pursuer, Furiosa’s mother, dresses up like one of Dementus’s men and sneaks into camp. Under cover of a sandstorm, Furiosa and her mother escape, but Dementus has a way to track them.

Furiosa rides on, but her mother remains behind to fight. When Dementus tortures the mother, Furiosa returns to Dementus, who puts her in a cage. The History Man advises her to make herself invaluable, and Dementus will have to look after her. 

One day, Dementus, in his chariot, encounters a lone War Boy. The war boy says he, too, comes from a place of abundance. Dementus brings his whole crew to the place indicated, which just happens to be Immortan Joe’s Citadel. 

They all ride and demand their leader’s surrender. He makes a speech about the people being able to choose their leader. He sees Immortan Joe and the People Eater and isn’t impressed. They aren’t impressed with him either, as they demonstrate that Joe’s soldiers are willing to die for their leader. 

Rictus and Scrotus, Joe’s sons, decide it’s time for a fight– and we get a big one. Things do not go well for Dementus, whose army retreats at high speed toward GasTown. They watch the War Rig going back and forth with gasoline shipments to Immortan Joe’s Citadel. They capture it and replace the men aboard with their own people in disguise. 

The trick works, and they capture GasTown and Joe’s brother. This makes negotiating with Immortan Joe more equal. For the negotiations, Dementus takes his leaders with him, and little Furiosa goes along. Joe wants her. They make a trade agreement, but Joe demands both Furiosa and the Organic Mechanic. 

Furiosa is sent to live with Joe’s many wives. One of the wives gives birth to a four-legged baby, so that’s not good. Rictus gets a crush on her, but she gets away from him. Time passes, and Furiosa has blended in with Joe’s peasants; she’s working for them now. 

We cut to a post-apocalyptic “shop class” where they gather to build a new War Rig. Furiosa is there, disguised as a boy. Praetorian Jack is the driver of the new rig. Some rogue warriors out in the wasteland attack the rig; Furiosa is there, under the truck, to keep the big truck running. It’s a long and costly battle for both sides, especially when the attackers have air power. In the end, only Furiosa and Jack remain. He offers to teach her everything he knows about “Road War.” 

Furiosa and Jack drive the rig to the Bullet Farm, the third big fortress of the wasteland. They pick up weapons there for Joe’s army. Jack says she’s proved herself, and he’ll help her leave for wherever she wants to go. 

When they arrive at GasTown, there appears to be a full-on revolt happening. Dementus is in charge, and he’s not happy with Joe’s management. He calls for a meeting of the leaders of the cities. Immortan Joe, The Bullet Farmer, and The People Eater are not willing to negotiatie with Dementus and prepare for war. 

Jack and Furiosa drive to the Bullet Farm to load up for the war. It’s a trap, Dementus has already taken the place. Only Furiosa gets out. Jack is locked inside and can’t get out. Furiosa sees this as her chance to shoot Dementus, and takes her shots. Somehow, she manages to rescue Jack, but she doesn’t get Dementus. 

Furiosa takes Jack across the desert toward her long-ago home. Except Dementus and his men are not far behind. There’s a battle. Jack gets shot and Furiosa injures her arm before they crash. Dementus makes a whole speech about justice and retribution. Furiosa is tied up, but she escapes after cutting off her own arm and sabotaging Dementus’s ride. 

We cut to Mad Max standing on a cliff; this has caught up to the beginning of “Fury Road.”

But we continue. Furiosa returns to the Citadel and tells Joe’s people everything. Dementus has GasTown and the Bullet Farm, so he moves against the Citadel. 

The battle rages on for forty days. Meanwhile, Furiosa gets a mechanical arm. She steals Scrotus’s car. The supercharged car easily overtakes Dementus and disables his vehicle. 

After hours of torture, Dementus finally recognizes who Furiosa is. Eventually, she drags him back to the Citadel. They pin him to the ground and plant a tree in his living body. 

Some time later, Furiosa leads Immortan Joe’s wives out to the rig to make their escape, which was in the other film… 

Commentary

The standout character is Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth, who’s so over-the-top that it’s just perfect. 

There are many scenes that just seem posed, very artsy-fartsy-like. There are a lot of interesting characters here, better than any comic book movie. Unlike the previous film, “Fury Road,” there’s a lot of very obvious CGI in this one. This one was long and it felt long as well, especially since we already know who lives and who dies. It gave us a lot of backstory that we didn’t need and stretched on far too long. 

It was exciting in the good parts, but there was waaaaay too much talking in this one. The one thing that really saved “Fury Road” was that it was relentless and never slowed down for an instant… This one did. 

Short Film: Bite (2024) 

* Directed by Jack Pirie

* Written by Jack Pirie

* Stars Nichola Burley

* Run Time: 4:37

* Watch it:

What Happens

A dancer walks home from an audition and gets a call from the casting director. “We wanted someone with more ‘bite.’ Maybe next time.” She goes to her studio and practices. She’s not happy with her life, and then the mirror-version of herself starts berating her, too. How will she ever compete with the girl in the mirror?

Commentary

Vampires in movies are always graceful and skilled at everything they do; it’s probably just a matter of having time to practice, right? Maybe she’s not a vampire; it’s not completely clear. I think the vagueness about what Val is detracts a little bit. What exactly happened here? It looks good and is well-filmed, but the story itself is too brief to tell us what’s going on. 

2024 Cold Blows the Wind

* Directed by Eric Williford

* Written by  Eric Williford

* Stars Jamie Bernadette, Victoria Vertuga, Torrey B. Lawrence

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a very well made low-budget film, with a good story, skillful actors, and good direction. Things start bad and keep getting worse as weirdness piles on, and it never lets up, packing a lot into a short film so it moves well. We liked it a lot!

Spoilery Synopsis

A couple opens the trunk of their car, and the guy inside wants help. Dean thought he was dead, but Tasha says they can’t leave him in there. He can’t walk, so they carry him inside. While Tasha goes to get the guy a glass of water, Dean chooses a knife from the drawer. 

Tasha wants to take the injured jogger to the hospital, but Dean wants to finish him off. “If we take him to the hospital, they’re going to ask what happened.” They argue back and forth for a while. Dean gets his way, and soon, the jogger is very, very dead. They argue about cleaning up the bloodstains in the foyer.

They put the guy in a wheelbarrow and take him out to the woods behind their house, still arguing about whether it was murder or putting him out of his misery. As they dig the hole, someone watches from the trees. 

Dean says his parents could show up at the house at any moment, so he wants to go back home. Dean wants to get back to normal, and she argues that this is all too easy for him. 

Suddenly, there’s a banging at the door, someone’s calling for help. A woman comes in, saying a man has been chasing her. She’s Briar.  Tasha thinks they can re-balance their karma by helping the woman. She knows about them burying the body in the woods, and she says as much. 

She warns them that things buried in the woods around here don’t always stay dead. Dean goes out to make sure the body is still there, while Tasha and Briar talk about… journaling. Dean, on the other hand, finds the dead jogger shambling around in the fog. He cuts the man’s head off with his shovel this time. 

Briar wants to take a bath, and Tasha notices scars on the strange woman’s back. She’s evasive about them. When Tasha gets a little too curious, Briar’s voice changes into something supernatural. Later, they talk about her getting away from the man who’s chasing her. 

Tasha asks, “What do I have to do to get you to keep our secret?”

“Kill me,” Briar answers. “I’m not going anywhere.” 

Dean comes back to the house and finds that Tasha has killed Briar. Suddenly, a car pulls up; it’s another stranger who says he’s looking for Briar.  He’s weird and nosy. He wants to use their bathroom, but that’s where they shoved Briar’s body. He’s Uncle Stevie. On the way out, he warns, “If you happen to see Briar, whatever you do, don’t kill her.” 

Since the buried dead don’t stay dead, Dean grabs a hacksaw and a garbage bag; the pieces won’t go anywhere. The two work together to dismember Briar. When Tasha shows Dean Briar’s scars, they’re gone. Tasha vomits up some black stuff and passes out. 

Dean goes outside to bury the second body as Tasha reads Briar’s journal. She hallucinates Briar crawling into bed with her. “I’m here to help you with your husband problem. You know what you have to do.” 

Dean finishes burying the still-moving body parts. He comes inside and tells Tasha to hurry up and get ready to go. She comes out of the bathroom, and she’s carved circles into her back and painted them on the walls– in poop. She wants to eat. 

Dean makes the worst-looking frozen pizza ever, and Tasha doesn’t eat it. “You’re trying to poison me.” She accuses Dean of trying to kill her now. He soon finds Tasha biting chunks out of her own arm. They argue because she doesn’t love Dean; she doesn’t even like him anymore. 

Now, Tasha wants Dean to kill her. When he won’t do it, she stabs him before walking into the woods. She eventually comes to an RV with Uncle Stevie inside. She now wants him to kill her, but he also refuses. “If I kill you, that thing inside you jumps into me.” 

Tasha jumps on Uncle Stevie and they fight until she bites him in the neck, killing him. Dean staggers in, not dead. “Briar warned me about the hunger.” They fight, and she stabs Dean through the neck. She goes back in the house and gets all cleaned up. 

Finally, she beats on some people’s door and asks for help from the person who’s chasing her. She says her name is Briar. 

Commentary

It’s a low-budget film that’s really well-written and acted. The three main leads all do well here, and the situation just gets weirder and weirder as it progresses. It’s definitely a psychological thriller more than anything, as these two normal people basically go insane through events that just get worse and worse. 

It’s good. 

1966 Psycho Circus

* AKA “Circus of Fear”

* Directed by Werner Jacobs, John Llewellyn Moxey

* Written by Harry Alan Towers, Edgar Wallace

* Stars Christopher Lee, Leo Genn, Anthony Newlands, Heinze Drache, Klaus Kinski

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Despite the title and alternate title that imply otherwise, this is more of a crime drama and mystery than horror. It starts off as a very clever crime caper and shifts to a whodunit with lots of suspects. It does have Christopher Lee in a nice big role, even if he’s hooded for much of the movie. We thought it was very good and worth checking out.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man checks his watch and then peeps in the dockmaster’s office. Elsewhere, a group of men look at their watches as they set up signs saying the bridge is closed. The armored car stops, and they neutralize the police escort. They use the London Bridge’s drawbridge to trap the armored car, and then they rob it and drop all the money down to a man in a boat below. All the men drop down to the boat for their own escape. The men on the boat then get away as credits roll. 

Inspector Elliot arrives on the scene, and one guard has been killed. The robbers unload their loot in an old warehouse and they all gang up on Mason, the man who shot that guard; no one was supposed to be hurt. The Boss calls the man in charge and tells him to give Mason an extra share. First, Mason needs to go see the Boss out in the country. Manfred, the man from the dockmaster’s place, is there, and he’s got crazy eyes. 

Someone anonymously calls Inspector Elliot with a tip about a car’s license plate. The police soon find the truck with that plate and run it off the road, killing all the robbers inside. 

Mason arrives in the country and wants to go to “The Old Farm.” He goes inside and finds a lion in a cage. Someone off-screen throws a knife and kills Mason. 

We cut to the circus. Mr. Barberini owns the circus, and he greets Gregor, the lion tamer. Barberini says he doesn’t want another accident, and we see that Gregor is wearing a hood to cover his face. He’s badly scarred from big cat scratches under there, Barberini says it was one of the worst accidents he’s ever seen. 

We watch a few circus acts as Mario and Gina argue about where she’s been. Mr. Big, the dwarf, threatens Gregor. Manfred comes to the circus, looking for work. It’s the weirdest job interview ever. 

We see that Gregor has a suitcase full of cash under the lion’s cage. Mr. Big wants his money; he’s blackmailing Gregor for something. Inspector Elliot talks to Sir John about the heist, and they still really don’t have any new leads on the case. He gets a call that some of the stolen bills have been used, and he goes to check that out. Mr. Barberini has deposited some of the bills in the bank. 

Back at the circus, Gina is sleeping with someone whose face we don’t see. We see that Mario is missing one of his knives, the one used to kill Mason. Elliot arrives at the circus just in time to see Mario fighting with Carl over Gina. Elliot wants to interview the various circus employees. He takes photos of most of them and sends them back to Scotland Yard. 

Mario and Gina argue about her secret boyfriend as Mr. Big and Manfred skulk around outside. Someone opens up the door to the lion cage and lets it into the room with Gina, but Gregor comes to the rescue. 

Carl, the Ringmaster, knows that Elliot is a cop and tells him about the business with Gina and the lion. Elliot gets a warrant to search the whole circus, and Barberini laughs at the whole idea. As Elliott questions Gina about the lion attack, the police come in and tell him that they’ve found a body and a knife. As they check out the body, someone kills Gina with another of those knives. Mario immediately becomes the prime suspect. 

Eddie the clown sets up a guillotine for his act and scares Mr. Big with it. 

Carl casts aspersions on Gregor and his niece Natasha; could that body that they found have been Natasha’s father? Gregor and Carl argue about Natasha. Carl wants to find the man who murdered his father; the killer was sentenced to prison for life, but he escaped. Gregor’s brother Otto was that murderer. Carl expects Otto to come back someday to find his daughter, Natasha. 

Carl tells Inspector Elliott about Otto and Gregor. Has anyone ever seen Gregor’s scars? 

Barberini identifies the murder weapon as belonging to The Great Danillo, who died ten years ago. He had a son, but he wasn’t in the circus. Elliot requests a photo of Natasha’s missing father, the escaped prisoner; he’s the same height and general physical appearance as Gregor.  

We cut to Gregor getting more money out of his suitcase and paying off Mr. Big. Someone we don’t see follows him to look for the money, and Manfred follows him. Manfred gets a knife in the chest for his efforts. 

Back in his trailer, “Gregor” takes off his mask, and he’s a very unscarred Otto, Christopher Lee, underneath, and Natasha is well aware that he’s her father. He denies having killed anyone; he says he simply found the suitcase. 

Someone sets fire to the barn where Manfred and the money are hidden. Gregor runs in and grabs the suitcase but can’t get out. Carl runs in to help him. Carl pulls off Gregor’s mask, and he knows what’s up. Gregor whacks him and drives off with Natasha.

Otto/Gregor and Natasha hide in a cave. Carl finds the cave, and they all argue about who killed Carl’s father. Otto tells the story, that it wasn’t murder. Carl believes the story and offers to help them escape before the police arrive. Otto falls over the side of the cliff, and the real killer steps on his fingers. Otto dies, but all the money goes over the side with him. 

They have the money, but Elliott says they haven’t caught the killer. Natasha and Carl cleared Otto of the murders. Elliott has an idea to catch the murderer. 

Barberini has everyone gather together to watch Mario do his new act. Mario is throwing using those knives. Eddie admits that his father was Danillo, and he shows them how well he can throw knives. “I made clowns out of many of you!” Elliott comes in to arrest him, but Eddie runs and is killed. Barberini fires Mr. Big for blackmail, and that wraps it all up. 

Commentary

Eddie basically just admitted the whole thing for no real reason. Yes, they found the knives, but that didn’t prove he killed anyone. 

Christopher Lee is Gregor/Otto here, and he wears a black hood over his face in almost all the scenes. 

This isn’t really a horror movie at all, it’s more of a whodunnit/crime thriller with lots of potential suspects and no real clues for us to guess. As soon as we heard about Otto, Gregor, and Natasha, we developed a theory that Otto was really the one under Gregor’s mask, but that also seemed pretty obvious, so we weren’t sure. 

It’s entertaining throughout, but it’s more mystery than horror. 

1991 Child’s Play 3

* Directed by Jack Bender

* Written by Don Mancini

* Stars Justin Whalen, Perrey Reeves, Jeremy Sylvers

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one tries to be pretty serious, with a few exceptions here and there, and it ends up being kind of dull. It’s a little too stretched out with very little new. It’s not terrible, it’s just there. The practical effects hold up well, but we’d probably call it our least favorite of all the Chucky movies.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on the long-since-closed “Good Guys” factory, where people start pulling doll parts off the cobwebbed conveyor belt. They’re throwing it all away, including the lump of melted goo that used to be Chucky. A claw machine picks up the melted glob and it drips blood into the machinery… as credits roll, Chucky is re-formed. 

We get a briefing about Andy Barclay and Chucky; this is the boardroom of the modern “Good Guys” company. They want to put “Good Guys” back on the market, even despite all the bad PR years ago. Of course they don’t believe anything about one of their dolls being alive. Mr. Sullivan, the CEO, is a hardass, talking about their consumers. 

Sullivan takes home the very first new Good Guys doll in the box, which he takes to his office full of toys. Shortly afterward, Chucky uses the toys to make an impact on Sullivan. Chucky uses Sullivan’s computer to track down Andy, who has been recently enrolled in military school. Chucky knows that the only way he can get out of the toy body is to transfer himself into Andy, so off he goes. 

Andy tells the commandant that his mother has been committed, and he has had “adjustment problems” with all the foster families. The commandant, Colonel Cochrane, talks about fantasies of killer dolls; he knows Andy’s history. The barber, Sergeant Botnick, is a hair-sadist. Tyler, a young cadet, likes watching the Good Guys cartoons on TV. 

Andy meets his roommate, Whitehurst, who has been tied up by Shelton, the school bully. Shelton soon turns his eye to Andy. De Silva stands up to him and gets 25 pushups for it. 

The officer in the mailroom gives Tyler a box to deliver to Andy. The box gets broken open, and he sees it's a Good Guy doll, which he decides to keep. Chucky leaps out and talks to Tyler about “mail tampering.” Chucky decides to try transferring himself into Tyler. 

De Silva shows Andy how to shoot a rifle. Chucky, meanwhile, does his Voodoo transfer spell on Tyler, but they’re interrupted by Cochrane. Cochrane takes Chucky away since cadets aren’t allowed to play with dolls. Andy sees Chucky, and Chucky sees Andy. 

Chucky gets thrown in the garbage truck and kills the driver to escape. Chucky gets into Andy’s dorm room and makes himself known. Chucky doesn’t try to take over Andy; Tyler would be a much better target. Just then, Shelton comes in and catches Andy and the doll, which he promptly steals. 

Andy sneaks into Shelton’s room late at night to get Chucky back. He gets caught, and it’s a punishment for everyone. Chucky uses the distraction to hunt for Tyler, who wants to play hide-and-seek with him. De Silva uses the distraction to read Andy’s personal file, and she finds Tyler and Chucky in a closet. She puts lipstick on Chucky, which he does not appreciate. 

Colonel Cochrane goes into his office and knows something is off. When Chucky jumps out with a knife, the old man just dies from a heart attack, much to Chucky’s surprise and glee.  

Andy warns Tyler about Chucky, but the little boy doesn’t believe him. Sergeant Botnick finds Chucky and thinks his hair is too long– time for a little trim? No, Chucky trims the sergeant’s neck with a razor. 

The new leader of the school announces that it’s time for war games, using paintball guns. Chucky, of course, swaps out the paintballs for real ammunition. 

De Silva kisses Andy, and Chucky gets jealous. Chucky gets Tyler away from the crowd and reveals that he’s not a Good Guy. Chucky takes good advantage of the war games as everybody gets moving. Andy and Tyler track down Chucky, who has De Silva as a hostage. Shelton arrives on the scene, and sees Chucky just as someone on the other team shoots him with a real bullet. 

Tyler and Chucky run away from the carnage toward the nearby carnival; Andy follows. Tyler gets the carnival’s security guard to help. Andy and De Silva find the guard dead soon after. De Silva takes the dead guard’s pistol. They all go into the fun house, where Chucky prepares once again to swap souls. 

There’s a shootout, and De Silva is wounded; she gives Andy the gun, but he barely knows how to use it. An accident with the fun house ride rips off half of Chucky’s face, but Tyler isn’t crafty enough to keep evading him. Chucky does the spell, and the sky gets all supernaturally cloudy. Andy has to climb up to where Chucky and Tyler are. 

Andy tries really hard and shoots at Chucky mid-spell. Andy wakes up Tyler as  Chucky grabs him from behind. Chucky winds up falling into a ridiculously huge exposed fan blade that chops him to bits.  

Andy goes off with the police, likely to be charged with something. We’ll never see Chucky again, right?

Commentary

Who would build a funhouse with so many actually dangerous deathtrap situations? When they say keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times there, they really mean it.

Chucky was still plastic and mostly done with practical effects here. Andrew Robinson, as the barber-nazi, is just hilarious here. Most of the other characters play it pretty seriously here. Actually, this is the last film of the series that can’t be called a straight-up comedy. 

Don Mancini was forced to start work on this even before the second film had aired. Since the actor who played Andy was still only nine years old, they had to recast him with an older actor. Mancini also felt that being forced to make a third film so soon after the second was hard, as he was out of ideas. It shows.

This is, in my opinion, the worst film of the series. Fortunately, after this, they took a few years off, and the following movies were far better once they embraced the comedic side of Chucky. 

Stay tuned for more reviews next week!

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It’s been three years since we did our last “Shark Week,” and we thought it was high tide to do another. But this time with a twist– they’re all horror comedies. We’ll start off with “Sharktopus,” a terrible, terrible film that was good enough to spawn two sequels, “Sharktopus vs Pteracuda” and “Sharktopus vs Whalewolf,” which actually got better as the series progressed. Then we’ll take a look at “Sharkenstein” and “Sharkula,” which you can probably guess all you need to know from the names alone. Finally, we’ll watch “Shark Side of the Moon,” a silly sci-fi story about a colony of sharks, you guessed it, on the moon. 

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2010 Sharktopus

* Directed by Declan O’Brien

* Written by Mike MacLean, Steven Niver

* Stars Eric Roberts, Kerem Bursin, Sara Malakul Lane

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U87zVkIXNI0

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

You have to just let yourself go and think of this one as silly entertainment to enjoy it. When just a shark isn’t scary enough, add some tentacles, and you’ve got another level. This is well made for what it is, with some low-level CGI, and we thought it was a pretty fun watch.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a bright, sunny day at Santa Monica Beach as the credits roll. One girl goes for a swim as her friend remains behind to play on her phone. Soon, a shark fin appears and chases Bree. Just as it’s about to bite her, giant tentacles reach up and kill the shark. The creature looks like half a shark, but it has tentacles too, and has some kind of electronic control device on it. 

We cut to a control room where Nathan Sands shows Commander Cox footage of the whole incident. Nathan’s daughter, Nicole, explains that S-11 is completely under their control, a new weapon for the US Navy. They recall the S-11, but it’s on an intercept course for another vessel. The Commander wants the S-11 to pursue the little motorboat as a test. The speedboat does something unexpected, and it knocks the control collar off of the S-11. The “Sharktopus” stops responding and is now uncontrollable. This could be… bad. 

The Sharktopus is heading to Mexico, so they track it to Puerto Vallarta; Nathan and Nicole go as well. Santos recommends that they call in Andy Flynn to help, a guy who Nathan fired for being too greedy. 

Nathan tells Andy that he needs S-11 captured, not killed. Stacy, an investigative reporter, tracks down Pez about a photo he took of the Sharktopus. Meanwhile, a couple goes bungee jumping over the ocean; it’s like dangling bait over the aquarium as the Sharktopus leaps up and grabs the girl (played by Roger Corman’s daughter, Mary). 

A pirate radio station reports that the Sharktopus is in the area. He suggests that someone is filming a low budget horror movie. Pez takes Stacy to where he saw the creature and they soon see it again. The creature attacks a bunch of people on the beach and causes a stampede. Stacy reports this on the news, so now everyone knows about it. Pez thinks he can track the creature from the previous movements. 

Andy confronts Nicole about what she’s hiding. Sharks aren’t serial killers; could they have genetically modified the creature to make it more vicious?  We cut to Nathan and Commander Cox talking about just that. 

Andy and his men dive where they think the creature is, and it fights back, eating everyone but him. Andy gets a big gash on his leg, but Santos patches him up. Nathan tells Nicole that he enhanced its aggressiveness to make it a killer for the military. 

Andy and Nicole run into Pez and Stacy’s boat. Pez is eaten by the shark before Andy shoots at it, running it off. Sharktopus then attacks Bob and Ed, a couple of jet skiers, before heading for another beach. 

Stacy figures out that Blue Water is behind the creature, a shady genetic engineering firm with government contracts. The creature then eats the pirate radio guy even as he makes fun of it on the radio. 

After a few more random attacks, Commander Cox wants to bring in a team to kill the Sharktopus, but Nathan wants it captured alive. The creature then attacks the main resort in Puerto Vallarta, and that’s crazy. Andy shoots at it, but it appears to be bulletproof. 

Nathan shows his true colors as he confronts Andy, but Nicole takes Andy’s side. Suddenly, the Sharktopus attacks all of them, and Nathan’s goons are all killed. When it grabs Nicole, Nathan jumps in, and it kills him instead. 

The Sharktopus arrives at another resort and starts eating people and jumping for people riding on the zip lines. Nicole tells Andy that the creature’s “kill switch” might still be working, but they have to get close to it. Meanwhile, Stacy and her cameraman meet an unfortunate end. 

Andy tranquilizes the monster and keeps it busy as Nicole tries to hack the kill switch on her computer. It’s all very tense until she guesses the password, and the shark’s brain explodes. 

We’re not going to see the Sharktopus again!

Commentary

OMG. The dialog from most of the characters is just awful. It’s all bright and pretty and looks really good– until someone opens their mouth to speak. 

The CGI is really dated, if it ever looked good in the first place. Seeing the shark crawling around on the beach with tentacles is just– special. There are lots of shirtless guys and girls in tight bikinis and even a funny cameo by Roger Corman himself. 

Still, this was intended to be cheap and cheesy, and they aren’t trying to win any awards here. It’s well filmed and the non-CGI bits all look good. The concept itself is what saves the film; what could be scarier than a shark with giant tentacles? Keep in mind that, as bad as it was, it still managed to spawn two sequels. If you just leave your brain at the door and go along with it, it’s just silly fun. 

2014 Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda

* Directed by Kevin O’Neill

* Written by Matt Yamashita

* Stars Rib Hillis, Robert Carradine, Katie Savoy

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9sGF7aYTYc

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Despite the definitive death of Sharktopus in the first movie, they find a way to make a sequel. This one is a step above the first one, with slightly better everything and clearly a bigger budget. The CGI is still blatantly CGI, looking cartoonish at times, but it gets the story told. What’s better than one giant genetically modified creature? Two of them! We found this entertaining. 

Spoilery Synopsis

We get some flashbacks to the previous film’s best kills. As the Sharktopus’s head explodes, we see an egg sac float away from the body…

We cut to a fishing boat, where Lorena pulls up the egg sac. She cuts it open, and there’s a tiny Sharktopus inside. 

Elsewhere, Dr. Rico Symes and his team have developed a flying monster called a Pteracuda, a cross between a barracuda and a pterodactyl. The government was afraid of it, so he paid for it and built it himself. As he brags about how much it’s going to be worth, the creature escapes and refuses to come back to base. Then it does come back, but just to kill one of the technicians. 

Hamilton, Rico’s head of security, goes after the monster in a helicopter, and it turns out to be bulletproof. Rico says the control devices are still working just fine, but someone else is in control. When the copter crashes into the ocean, they learn that the monster can swim as well as fly. 

We cut to Mundo Del Mar, an ocean resort, which advertises, “Coming soon: Sharktopus.” They reveal their new attraction, which Lorena is training. The baby creature has gotten a lot bigger, but the resort owner has been sedating the giant shark-monster to keep it under control. She talks to Rick about the creature’s aggressive tendencies. She demonstrates how smart the Sharktopus is. 

Some guests complain to the manager that they aren’t able to see the advertised Sharktopus, so he takes them to see it. That goes badly. 

Hamilton makes it back to Rico, who explains that whoever was controlling the Pteracuda has stopped. They watch the tourists’ footage of the Sharktopus on the news, and Rico knows all about the S-11 Project. He suddenly gets an idea– he wants to “hire” Sharktopus to fight the Pteracuda. Hamilton injects the Sharktopus with a mind-controlling device, and Lorena freaks out. 

A group of wreck divers go down with their scuba gear. They don’t know that both giant monsters are nearby. The two soon start fighting, and it’s an inconclusive battle. 

Lorena calls Rick, the head lifeguard, to shut down the beach before more people are killed. 

We cut to Conan O’Brien, on the beach in a full suit and ascot. He hears about the Sharktopus and laughs at it. He does the “do you know who I am” thing until the Sharktopus bites his head off. 

On the beach, a kid plays with a Sharktopus kite until the Pteracuda attacks, causing mayhem on the beach. Meanwhile, Vladimir, the Russian agent who stole the Pteracuda’s controls gets things working again and attacks an airplane. 

Soon, Pteracuda and Sharktopus encounter each other again, and Sharktopus gets his control collar bitten off; now there are two monsters on the loose. Rico is looking for someone to blame this all on, so he kidnaps Lorena. Maybe she can get Sharktopus to behave? 

Lorena tells Rick about the monsters, and he’s almost immediately beheaded. She figures that Sharktopus is headed for the canals that go right through town to the aquarium. Rico says that Vladimir has ordered Pteracuda to attack a nuclear power plant to make it melt down. 

Lorena and Hamilton track down Vladimir somehow and regain control of the Pteracuda. A new report announces that Rico is wanted for questioning in the whole ordeal. Vladimir makes a run for it, so they all head outside to pursue him. The Pteracuda gets him first. 

The Sharktopus comes for Lorena before fighting his winged adversary again. Hamilton uses Rico as bait for the creatures, and soon, Pteracuda comes for him. The two creatures pull him apart. 

Lorena reads Rico’s notes and figures out that Pteracuda is starving and has to eat constantly to stay alive. She thinks they can use that to lure it in and kill it– with a disco ball. Lorena falls overboard and Sharktopus comes to her rescue to fight the Pteracuda. Meanwhile, Hamilton shoots the Pteracuda with his spear gun. 

Hamilton and Lorena speed off in their boat as the explosives in the harpoon go off, killing both monstrosities. No, we see that Sharktopus has survived!

Commentary

The dialogue and acting are still campy, but they’re also miles ahead of the first film. It obviously had a much higher budget due to the popularity of the first film. Then again, it’s got people playing volleyball with Conan O’Brien’s head, so it’s probably not meant to be taken too seriously. 

The recent Godzilla movies show us what good CGI can mean for a monster vs monster film. This is not that film. The creatures are a half-step above cartoons, but the visual quality isn’t the point. It’s still hokey and dumb, but better made than the first one.

2015 Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf

* Directed by Kevin O’Neill

* Written by Matt Yamashita

* Stars Casper Van Dien, Catherine Oxenberg, Jennifer Wenger

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGTJ4Cv5ktE

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This one was a step down from the previous sequel but a half step above the original. This one emphasized the humor a lot more than the first two movies, and that boosts the watchability. It’s silly and dumb, but fun in an entertaining way.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a burial at sea. Ray Brady wonders why this is all happening on his boat; Pablo rented out the boat for a funeral, and Ray makes a big scene. Suddenly, Sharktopus attacks the boat and steals the body, coffin and all. “Tell me they prepaid,” asks Ray before he’s arrested for manslaughter. 

Inspector Nita Morales talks to Ray about getting out of jail; “This time, you’re on your own,” when he describes what attacked the boat. 

Meanwhile, at the Reinhardt anti-aging clinic, Dr. Elsa Reinhardt works on gene sequencing to make Felix Rosa, an old ball player, able to play again. She warns that there “may be a few side effects.” She takes him to her secret lab, and it’s really something.  She talks about the speed and power of wolves and then throws the switch…

Inspector Nita watches two drunk women attacked on the sidewalk by the Sharktopus. 

Pablo bails out Ray with the help of Chief Tiny, a Voodoo priest. He wants to know about the creature, and he knows all about Sharktopus, who even has a Twitter account now. He wants the Sharktopus’s heart for his Voodoo stuff— before noon tomorrow. 

Meanwhile, Elsa turns Felix into a corpse, as the experiment fails impressively. She dumps his body in the ocean to get rid of it. As his body sinks, it starts to change. He growls and takes a bite out of her, which she really likes. His human DNA is rapidly disintegrating, and this might have something to do with moonlight. 

In the morning, Nita joins Ray and Pablo to hunt the tentacled shark monster. At the Reinhardt Institute, Elsa brags to Nurse Betty about her success last night. Then Felix, who has turned into a full-on Whalewolf, kills the nurse. 

Ray finds and “tags” the Sharktopus, which fights back. The Whalewolf, on shore, sees the action and comes to play. The two creatures fight as Ray tries to keep Pablo from molesting the unconscious Nita. They stop and watch a relationship-reality show that’s filming right here in town.

Meanwhile, on the actual show, they’re filming the next episode of a “Bachelor”-style show— at least until the shark shows up and eats the contestants. 

Dr. Elsa scolds the Whalewolf, calling him a failure. She tries to train him like a dog, to pee on the pad, which he also refuses to do. Not far away, Sharktopus eats some gang members just as the Whalewolf arrives. This results in another ridiculous CGI monster battle.

Pablo and Ray make plans to leave the country, but Chief Tiny does some Voodoo to convince them not to run. 

The reality show starts shooting a new scene, while the bachelor has to pick a date from the surviving women. The Whalewolf kills the director and the other women contestants as well. 

Nita looks up Sharktopus online, but can’t find much on the Whalewolf, but she does get a lead that points to Dr. Elsa, who used to work for Blue Water, the lab that created Sharktopus. At the lab, Dr. Elsa calls the humane society to give up her “dog.” Whalewolf catches on and kills her. 

When Nita and her partner arrive at the lab, they find the wolf. Ray takes Chief Tiny a piece of tentacle, which mostly pacifies him. There’s a whole thing about cockfighting and Tiny’s big, tough, cock.  

Ray and Pablo get a call from Nita, who’s pinned down by the Whalewolf. She’s been bitten, but they get her away. There’s a quick car chase that leads the Whalewolf to the docks, where Sharktopus awaits. The two enemies go at it once again— in the town square. 

Nita has Elsa’s laptop and reads through her records. They know Felix Rosa was involved and may even be the Whalewolf. Ray suggests that Chief Tiny might be able to use his Voodoo to control Sharktopus. 

Tiny already has a Sharktopus Voodoo doll. He sends his goons to kill Ray, but Ray has stolen the shark doll. Ray uses his Kung-Fu Ninja Ju-Ju skills against the goons and gets away. 

Nita and Pablo go to the baseball stadium and rig up a net for the monsters. Meanwhile, Ray and Sharktopus shake hands and become buddies—sorta. 

Sharktopus chases Ray through the mall toward the baseball stadium, where Whalewolf awaits. Nita calls in an air strike from the Air Force, and they get right on that. Pablo electrifies the fence to contain them. 

Sharktopus gets electrocuted and Whalewolf gets blown up in the air strike. Ray and Nita kiss as Pablo plays music in the stadium. 

We cut to Chief Tiny’s sister, who is doing something Voodooie with a Sharktopus tentacle…

Commentary

Casper Van Dien divorced Catherine Oxenberg in 2015, the year that this film was released, and married Jennifer Wenger, the woman who played Nurse Betty.

Catherine Oxenberg’s German accent is 200% pure evil Nazi scientist, but not especially well done. This whole thing leans far more into the pure comedy side of things than the first two movies. With this in mind, it looks good and has good dialogue and acting. It’s all completely one big in-joke, and it’s well done. 

It’s not a great movie by any stretch, but it’s well-made and actually funny in places.

2015 Short Film: Gwilliam

* Directed by Brian Lonano

* Written by Victoria Cook, Brian Lonano, Kevin Donald Lonano

* Stars William Tokarsky, Paul Painter, Blair Bathory

* Run Time: 5:37

* Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENZPc6V7SOI

What Happens

A prisoner is being released from prison today. He ends up in a local bar, where he admires the women. He reads some graffiti: “For a good time, go out back,” which he promptly does. He does not, in fact, have a good time. Or maybe he does?

Commentary

“You can forget your sins, but you can never forget your Gwilliam.”

Well, that was not what either he or I were expecting. This one is seriously messed up. Very well done!

2016 Sharkenstein

* Directed by Mark Polonia

* Written by J. K. Farlew

* Stars Greta Volkova, Ken Van Sant, Titus Himmelberger

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VW2v4gcpds

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a very low budget production, and it shows. But it looks like everyone is having a good time, and they tell a story with the tools that they have available. So, it isn’t all bad. A story was told - a pretty wild one - and it kept us watching.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on the Frankenstein monster lumbering around in the rainstorm. Its heart and brain are indestructible, but its body has been destroyed and rebuilt many times. 

It’s 1942, and a German submarine surfaces. Nearby is a laboratory where we see a very special heart and brain. They’ve found the monster, and the Germans want it for their military efforts. They take the organs and go back to the sub. Credits roll. 

In the modern day, we open on Duke Lawson, who is looking for missing boaters. We get a weird point of view shot and then see a really scarred-up shark eat a girl on the beach. 

Madge yells at Coop that he shouldn’t be playing on his phone during vacation. Skip isn’t really into the whole trip either. Katzman Cove, where they’re headed, is reported to have had several cases of missing persons in the area. They pass a man on the road just moments before he, too, is shark food. 

Duke talks to a fisherman about something that’s been attacking and eating the local sharks. 

Meanwhile, at the mad scientist’s lab, Klaus, the mad scientist, orders the shark to return home. He has the heart and brain on his desk, but they’re wired into something. 

Madge, Skip, and Coop get to the dock and meet up with the guy who owns the boat. He’s weird and doesn’t speak, but what could go wrong on a little boat out in the ocean? They go out and they all have a surprisingly good time with the mute boat driver. Until Duke pulls up in his boat and warns them about the local trouble and tells them they must go back to shore. 

Duke calls in divers to search the waters for some of the missing people, or sharks, or whatever they find. The shark finds and eats many of them, much to Klaus’s sadistic glee. The shark then goes to a crowded beach and eats a girl before returning home to base. 

The shark runs into Madge and the guys’ boat, breaking the propeller. The guys decide to swim to a nearby island, and Madge reluctantly follows them. They explore the island, which is, of course, where Klaus lives. They see the monster shark just before Klaus shows up with his gun. Klaus explains the whole thing; he’s got Frankenstein’s brain controlling the shark. He’s also got Hitler’s brain, but that’s a project for another day. 

Meanwhile, Duke realizes that the boat hasn’t come back to the marina, and he goes looking for them. 

Klaus operated on the shark and implants the heart and brain into it while his three guests watch. “It’s Alive!” he yells. He tries to get the shark to obey; he orders Sharkenstein to kill the kids’ mute boat driver, which it does. The monster gets annoyed by Klaus and eats him. 

The shark knocks the whole house into the ocean and then eats Skip. Madge and Coop swim to Duke’s boat. They tell Duke all about it, and he (amazingly) believes them. The shark comes after them and follows them up onto the dock. 

Lightning strikes the shark, and it gets stronger, standing up on two legs. Duke pulls a torch out of somewhere and drives it off. The shark then crosses land, stalking cows in the field. Sharkenstein kills Coop in the woods, and Duke and Madge miss the whole thing. 

The locals grab their axes and guns and stalk off into the woods, looking for the monster. Madge gives Duke a recitation about all the Frankenstein movies. 

Duke and Madge go to an old lighthouse, and Duke says they store explosives inside. They wire up the explosives and wait for the monster. Duke lures the monster there by cutting himself; sharks can smell blood miles away. 

Madge hides as Duke leads the giant, manlike shark into the lighthouse. The villagers set the place on fire with Duke inside. Duke and the shark come out onto the roof, and he tells them to start shooting. 

Everything explodes. Could this be the end of Sharkenstein? Madge knows the heart and brain can never be destroyed. 

Commentary

They had a budget of eleven dollars for special effects, and they really stretched it here. Still, it tells the story, so it’s good enough. The shark is clearly a puppet, but it’s kind of a cool puppet– it has bolts on its neck! There are too many plot holes to even start a list, so I’ll just let it slide. 

It's a no-budget film put together for fun, at least I hope that’s why. And it’s actually pretty good if you take it for that. If you’re looking for quality on a level of “Sharktopus,” you might want to keep looking. 

Kevin adds that when he sees a production like this, he hopes the folks involved keep working on other projects, getting better and more experienced as they go. They have the fundamental idea down - tell a story and keep the audience interested.

Sharkula (2022) 

* Directed by Mark Polonia

* Written by Mark Polonia

* Stars James Kelly, Tim Hatch, Jeff Kirkendall

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 11 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUiuZxrWm0g

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The premise is as silly as it sounds yet kind of awesome at the same time. What’s worse than a shark? A vampire shark, of course. It’s low-budget, but they told a story and kept us watching, so our basic needs were met. 

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch as an angry mob chases Dracula through the fields in a blurry flashback. They corner him at the edge of a cliff and stab him; he falls into the ocean below and is bitten by a shark. Dark forces conspired to keep Dracula alive… Credits roll, along with a not-quite-good theme song. 

In the modern day, Arthur and John read a letter that says they have been hired for a new summer job. They go to “The Bucket ‘O Chum Inn.” They immediately notice that there’s hardly anyone in town. Mr. Renfield checks them in, and he runs the place for Mr. Vlad Constantine, who owns the place. Renfield mentions that there’s an 8 p.m. curfew in town. 

We soon see that Renfield has a woman chained in the basement and he talks to a coffin in the basement. Out on the docks, a drunk man yells at the water, calling Constantine names and saying he ruined their town. The shark below leaps up and eats the man. 

Mina waves at John and Arthur, but Renfield warns that she “belongs” to Mr. Constantine. They think the town is weird since no one is allowed out after dark. 

We cut to Dracula in the basement of the inn as he tells the chained woman that she’s going to be a sacrifice. He, Renfield, and some cultists lead the woman through town as John and Arthur watch in confusion. They sacrifice her to the shark in the ocean. 

John and Arthur wonder why there’s an altar on the beach; could it be for virgin sacrifices? Mina warns John that he should leave town as soon as he can. He sees glowing red eyes in the water. 

We cut to Renfield, and we see just how weird he is. Constantine has Renfield invite John and Arthur for dinner. He tells them how the town works, and it all makes sense to them now. He warns them to never open the crates that they’re unloading. 

Reggie and his girlfriend are driving through town, and their car breaks down. He sees the red glowing eyes in the water, and it eats him. Then it pulls his girlfriend out of the car. 

John thinks Constantine is crazy, but Arthur thinks they should just go with it. They find a Dracula comic book in the nightstand instead of a Bible. 

Constantine warns Mina to behave, and she casts aspersions on Renfield, sowing some discord. John watches Constantine arguing with Renfield later, but he only sees Renfield in the mirror. John then sneaks outside and sees cultists roaming the streets. 

John finds Reggie’s girlfriend chained in the basement, and she says Dracula did this to her; she’s a vampire now. Then Renfield stabs him in the heart with a machete. 

In the morning, Arthur can’t find John anywhere. He does, however, see the red-eyed shark in the water. He then assaults Renfield. Mina grabs him and tells him to hide. She explains that Mr. Constantine is really Dracula. Dracula feeds Renfield to the vampire in the basement. 

Mina says she can’t leave town, but then Dracula shows up and tells Arthur to do as he says. Dracula needs Mina and Arthur’s help to get rid of the beast that he’s forced to serve. Dracula has been forced to serve the shark, and he tells the whole story about how that came to be. Dracula is tired of being tied to this little town and that shark; he can’t leave either. 

Elsewhere, the cultists say the shark needs another sacrifice. Dracula has a plan to do a fake sacrifice of Mina, and Arthur will need to stab Sharkula at the right time. Dracula says he can deal with the cultists. 

The sacrifice proceeds, and Sharkula comes out of the water to eat Mina. John stabs the creature several times and Dracula gloats to the shark. The shark, which isn’t dead, bites Dracula's hand before bursting into flame. 

Dracula still wants Mina, but something’s wrong. He screams in pain and kills the cultists; Dracula is being changed by the shark bite. Arthur does some house cleaning in Dracula’s basement. 

Mina and Arthur talk about Dracula’s control, and maybe she has more control over him than she thinks. They confront Dracula, and she tells Dracula that he needs to obey her. He cannot resist. Suddenly, John jumps up and kills Dracula with a cross. 

Dracula and Sharkula are really dead, right?

Commentary

It’s made by the same indie filmmakers who did “Sharkenstein” (2016). In some ways, it’s better, and in others, it’s worse. The shark itself has bat wings and can fly, which is a neat idea but doesn’t look great. It’s actually a pretty well-written story, the only thing that really holds it back are the terrible actors.  

IMDB trivia says they got the town name of “Arkham” from Batman, ignoring completely where the name started. 

Of all the Dracula-shark films out there, this is probably the best. 

2022 Shark Side of the Moon

* Directed by Glenn Campbell, Tammy Klein

* Written by Ryan Ebert, Anna Rasmussen

* Stars Maxi Witrak, Ego Mikitas, Michael Marcel, Tania Rex

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes

* Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag-hd7g8uWA

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

They took a wild premise and made it into a passable movie, so hats off to them. This one is way out there with some really bad science, but it has a decent science fiction story, and it was entertaining overall.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re told that 1984, Americans went into space on their Shuttles. But at a top-secret lab in Moscow, scientists feed their subjects in the tank. Their subjects are smart, and they talk to each other; they’re smarter than expected. Suddenly, the electric fence goes down, and we see that they’ve been developing humanoid shark monsters. 

The scientists activate a lockdown, but it’s hard to escape the land sharks. “If they get into the ocean, they’ll be unstoppable!” A pair of the scientists run to their own experimental space shuttle, and the monsters follow them inside. They launch the ship, taking the shark monsters along with them. Credits roll. 

In the present day, there’s a moon launch scheduled by the Americans. One of the crew gets sick, and Michael, an alternate astronaut, is assigned to the mission. Commander Tress doesn’t like Michael, but they can’t reschedule the launch.

There’s some kind of electromagnetic disturbance that cuts off radio contact from Earth. Something goes wrong, and they find themselves off course– toward the far side of the moon. It’s all very tense, but they manage a crash-landing on the surface. There’s no satellite, and there’s no way to communicate with Earth. 

They all check out the ship; they can hold out for months, but they can’t take off unless they get parts from a broken rover about a mile away. Four of the astronauts go out for a walk; they’re the first people to set foot on the far side of the moon. They check out the rover, but when Liam gets a bloody nose, something comes toward them under the surface, making ripples underground. Then they see shark fins! “Why are there sharks on the moon?” 

One of the sharks dies, and the Americans find a Russian walking around, breathing without a helmet on; he’s the one who killed the shark. He thinks the Americans have been sent to rescue him; it’s been forty years, after all. Sergei is the scientist who survived the first trip, and Akula is his “adopted” daughter, but she’s odd. Sergei leads the group to his base. 

Henri is taken captive by the sharkmen to the Shark City; they all speak Russian, but they want his ship to transport themselves and their eggs back to Earth. Tzarina, a shark woman, comes to talk to Henri. 

At Sergei’s ship, Akula admits that she’s one of the shark-people. She’s developed a suit that makes them invisible to the sharks, and he’s got a way to make oxygen. He explains about the Cold War shark hybrids. 

Back at the American ship, Ellie and Owen decide to go looking for their missing crewmates. They soon find Liam’s arm, but when they radio the ship, the sharks’ home in on the signal. The humans don’t live long after that. 

The sharkman Scar bites off Henri’s foot at Tsarina’s command, then cauterizes it. She wants to know where his ship is. She says she’s the ruler of the hybrid sharks. 

Sergei explains that there were only a dozen or so sharks originally, but they don’t know how many there are now. The sharks’ goal is to get their eggs back to Earth, where they can really reproduce. The humans walk to Shark City as they make plans to break into the prison for Henri. 

Tom, back in the American ship, computes a launch for return to Earth, but he calls Commander Tress on the radio, which the sharks trace. 

In Shark City, Tress and the humans find Henri, who tells them that the sharks only want their ship. They find the shark incubation room, and they have a discussion about killing all the shark babies. 

Akula and Tsarina have a talk; Akula has always been an outcast, but Tsarina makes a tempting offer. 

The sharks attack the American ship, defended only by Josie and Tom. Tress, Michael, Henri, Sergei, and Akula arrive to join them. 

A whole bunch of sharks, too many to fight, surround the ship. Henri wants to lead the sharks away from the ship while the others escape. He manages to distract them for a few minutes as the others get ready to launch. Tsarina and the others show up outside, and they all get ready for a battle. 

There’s lots of running around doing things in the ship, and both Josie and Tom are killed. It looks bad, so Tress surrenders to Tsarina. Tsarina says that Akula taught them how to fly a ship. Akula denies being a traitor; she’s loyal to the humans. Tress offers to bring the sharks supplies; the humans could help the sharks live on the moon. Tsarina isn’t interested in that; she goes to the cockpit and launches the ships. 

All the humans jump out of the ship as it launches. They make their way to Sergei’s ship, which can take off using Tom’s flight plan. Akula and Tsarina jump out of the ship; Tsarina is not killed, but she does have brain damage. 

Sergei comes up with a plan to crash his ship into the magma under the surface, creating tidal waves of lava that will wipe out the sharks– and them. He says goodbye to Akula and the others.

Akula, Tress, and Michael go outside to battle sharks with spears as Sergei does his thing on the ship. Sergei crashes his shuttle into Shark City, and the lava explodes everywhere. It even reaches the American ship, which crashes into the lava. 

Somehow, something explodes with enough force to take the three humans back to Earth (don’t try to figure it out; I watched this part three times). Tress, Michael, and Akula launch a rubber inflatable boat and talk about how lucky they are. Akula starts screaming in pain; she’s pregnant… and giving birth to a shark-hybrid baby. She then jumps overboard with her babies. Now, there are human-hybrid sharks in the oceans of Earth. 

Commentary

Early on, lava on the far side of the moon was mentioned, and it was so out of place that I knew it would be a plot point later. 

The 2022 CGI is obviously CGI, but it’s not awful. I like how they made up a way to lose the helmets and spacesuits; it’s a silly thing, but it allows for better interaction between the characters. 

How is it that the ships were heavily damaged, but yet they could take off? Doubly more so for Sergei’s ship. How did the final survivors get back to Earth? There’s a lot here that doesn’t make sense, but it’s mostly saved just by the ridiculous concept.

Stay tuned for more reviews next week!

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