Horror Weekly

No real losers with this week’s five films. We’ll open with “Send Help” and “Do Not Enter” from this year. We’ll pop back for a couple of 2023 films that we missed with “Malibu Horror Story” and “Baby Blue.” Lately, we’ll look at the sorta-classic “Lawnmower Man” from 1992 and see how it holds up.

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #56, for May 2026, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 Send Help

* Directed by: Sam Raimi

* Written by: Damian Shannon and Mark Swift

* Stars: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, and Dennis Haysbert

* Run Time: 113 min

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When an employee and the company president are stranded on a tropical island after a plane crash, the boss has to rely on his underling to survive. But things get more complicated and interesting as time goes on. It’s really a good mix of drama, thrills, dark comedy, and horror. It was really good, and there was more to it than we expected.

Spoilery Synopsis

Linda goes to the office and sits in her stereotypical cubicle. Her boss, Donovan, takes her detailed report and takes credit for the whole thing. Linda’s not very popular in the office, maybe a little weird.

Linda thinks she’s next in line for VP when Bradley takes over for his father soon. As she explains things to her pet parrot, we see she has lots of survivor skill books on her shelf; and she’s a big fan of the TV show, “Survivor.”

The next day, Bradley and Donovan get promoted, and Linda gets her lunch on Bradley, who decides to fire her. Donovan gets the job Linda was expecting. She goes in to talk to Bradley about it, and he explains how she’s not ready for a VP yet; he needs more of a “People Person,” or someone who golfs. He’s not super-mean about it, and invites her to a meeting in another country that’s coming up. Linda meets Zuri, Preston’s fiancee. She goes out to the car to cry.

The group boards the private jet and talks about golf, while Linda continues working on her reports. They watch Linda’s audition for “Survivor” and laugh about that. Suddenly, the plane lurches, and everyone straps in.

Then it does a lot more than lurch as the whole plane comes apart. There’s a brutal struggle to see who’s going to be thrown out the hole, and then the plane crashes in the ocean.

Linda wakes up on the beach of a small island. She then finds Bradley passed out there as well. While he’s still unconscious, she uses her “Survivor” skills to make shelter and catch water. Bradley wakes up a day and a half later.

Linda makes fire, collects food and water, and sets up a camp, but he’s not appreciative. He’s her boss after all. She gets fed up with his crap and leaves him by himself, with no food or water. By the next day, he’s screaming for her help.

Linda eventually comes back, and now she wants to hunt a boar. That doesn’t go as well as she expected, but she does kill the boar. It’s a bloody mess. They have pig for dinner.

Linda spots a boat and runs to wave at it, but then stops. “Not yet.” Yes, she likes it here. Bradley whines about being here for two weeks, but Linda’s not whining, “It’s not that bad.”

Bradley still thinks he’s the boss, and he can do all the things she can. He can’t. He’s soon down to eating bugs. Linda’s got all kinds of food, and she doesn’t hide the fact. He ends up apologizing for everything. The power dynamic has clearly shifted. They make a sorta-ceasefire.

She leads him way up onto the mountain, but he can barely walk. She shows him a part of the island that’s totally covered in vines and that he should never go over there.

That night, they get drunk, and Linda talks about how her husband died. There’s a huge storm, and they end up hiding in a cave. Their camp is washed away, so they rebuild a new one together.

Bradley makes dinner for them, and Linda falls over; he drugged her with poison berries. He’s secretly built a raft and stolen some of her supplies. The raft quickly falls apart in the waves. Somehow, Linda rescues Bradley, while puking on him repeatedly.

Linda sets down some new rules. She drugs him right back with a poisonous octopus. Then she pulls out a knife and makes him a eunuch. No, not really, but she could have.

A boat pulls up, Zuri, Bradley’s fiancee, is on board. She’s continued searching even after everyone else has stopped. It’s just her and a boat captain, so Linda shows them a “short cut” over the mountain. Zuri falls, but we don’t see exactly what happens to the two newcomers. Linda returns to their camp alone.

That night, Zuri washes up on shore, still alive, and Linda freaks out. Zuri’s not real, just a nightmare. In the morning, Bradley finds Zuri buried on the beach, her huge diamond ring still showing.

When confronted, Linda says she slipped; it was an accident. He’s not buying that and chases her into the jungle with the stolen knife. They fight, and it’s not a play fight; there’s lots of biting and hair-pulling. He pokes her in the eye, and she swallows the engagement ring.

Bradley runs to the part of the island where Linda told him to never go. Turns out, there’s a huge house over there. Linda’s there, and she explains how she already got rid of all the knives except for hers. She’s watching him on the security cameras. She admits how she’s been coming to the house for quite some time. We get a flashback to what happened with Zuri - the boat captain was about to haul her up, but Linda gave him a shove.

Bradley begs for his life when she comes in with a shotgun. “I’ve changed!” he begs. He promises to live here on the island with her forever. He’s lying, of course, and they fight some more. Linda plays golf with Bradley’s head.

We cut to Linda, now being interviewed about her ordeal in the plane crash a year ago. They’re making a movie about her ordeal, and she’s famous now.

Brian’s Commentary

A CEO of a major corporation’s airplane crashes in the ocean within sight of an island, and there wasn’t any effort to search? They couldn’t have been that far off course.

For a long time, it looked like they would be rescued, Bradley would recognize Linda’s competence, and give her the promotion. That’s not the way it went at all. It eventually went “full Misery.”

Kevin’s Commentary

This reminded me a bit of “Castaway” meets “Misery.” Trivia also mentions similarities to “Triangle of Sadness,” which I have not seen.

It was well done as it builds, and we get to see how far Linda would go.

There was much more to it than I expected, and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. It was great.

2026 Do Not Enter

* Director: Marc Klasfeld

* Writers: Dikega Hadnot, Spencer Mandel, David Morell

* Stars: Adeline Rudolph, Nicholas Hamilton, Jake Manley

* Runtime: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

* Trailer (YouTube):

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

As you might guess, they do enter. A group of urban explorer online fame wanna-bes break into a huge abandoned hotel seeking views and hidden treasure. They run into a competing group and they all run into supernatural troubles. It’s not stupendous, but it’s pretty good and entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a woman crawling slowly down a hallway and then credits roll. We see old newspaper clippings of gangsters, hotels, and murders.

We cut to Diane, Rick, Cora, JD, and Vern as they do their video show about… subways? No, they’re just disguised as subway workers to sneak equipment aboard the train which allows them to jump off and break into a place to admire graffiti. JD steals a piece of the wall, which enrages Rick, who fires JD for “going against our code.” We then see the video and learn that they’re all “urban explorers.”

Only 82 people watch their video. What can they do to boost views? They want to explore the Paragon next. That’s where gangster Meyer Lansky stashed his millions, and anyone who has ever gone looking for it has gone missing. They notice that JD has started his own channel, and he’s got way more views than they do.

Ballenger, with VICE News, comes to the motel to accompany them to the abandoned hotel. Cora vouches for the guy, but he looks more gangster than journalist. They all soon arrive at the Paragon, and there’s a big “Do Not Enter” on the old place. The only way in is by crawling through the sewers. There are trillions of rats, all running past them (away from something?).

Diane gets separated from the others and runs into something creepy. Cora and Ballenger talk about the group so we know what everyone’s job is. Vern, the photographer, finds weird bloody claw marks on the walls. Rick steps into a bear trap, and it’s pretty nasty. Still, he doesn’t want to leave without Diane, who they still haven’t found.

The group comes to a tree, and hanging from the branches are cell phones, cameras, and other things that clearly aren’t old-timey. Rick spots Diane’s phone there, and now they know something happened to her. Rick decides that they don’t have time to call the police.

JD’s gang shows up, with guns, and takes the group hostage. Tod’s the leader, and he’s more extreme than even JD expects. Ballenger admits that he’s not a reporter, he’s here to look for his wife, who went missing here a few months ago. Tod throws Rick over the stairway, and the fall looks bottomless. Rick, however, had the plans to the motel, so they have to go find him.

They run into Beth, the photographer who was with Amanda, Ballenger’s wife. “He’s coming. We’re all gonna die,” she whispers. JD is killed in the dark and something attacks the group, who start shooting. Beth is accidentally shot.

Meanwhile, Diane, who is not dead, wakes up in a room full of candles and a big pentagram. Cora finds Rick, who isn’t dead either, but knows something is coming for them. The skinny white creature comes after them, and he’s really strong. Cora runs to an elevator, which has power apparently and escapes to a security room full of monitors. She sees the room Diane is in on one of them.

Cora finds videotapes and Diane finds a book, and between the two, we get some idea of the Satanic stuff that’s been happening here. Tod and Mack find the manager’s office with some bodies and a huge pile of cash, but they don’t live long afterward.

Frank drops an elevator car on the white creature, so it must all be over, right? Frank finds Amanda’s phone, and not long after, her corpse, with heart removed.

Frank, Cora, and Vern get together in the security room and decide to find Diane. They see her on the monitor and head that direction. Then they see the creature on the screen, totally not dead.

Diane, in the meantime, has put on a wedding dress to become the bride of the creature. She smacks him in the head and runs away, where Frank tackles him; they both fall a dozen stories. Frank dies, and the creature is impaled on the “phone tree.”

Diane then finds Rick, who for some reason still isn’t dead yet. We get headlines that Lansky’s millions were found. Their video has hundreds of millions of views. Rick surprises everyone by showing them a bagful of money; he’s given up “the code.”

Brian’s Commentary

The hotel is full of sculptures, ornaments, and looks intact inside after being closed for decades (on the NJ shoreline as well). In all those years, no developer wanted that real estate? The creature is well done, but nothing outstanding. The sets are really good, although it’s more like a mall than a hotel.

The acting was fine. It had a few surprises. Nothing outstanding, but I was entertained.

Kevin’s Commentary

At first I was thinking it was a “Hills Have Eyes” situation set in an abandoned hotel, but it was quickly clear that wasn’t correct.

A fundamental flaw, it’s a huge building of prime shoreline real estate, full of salvageable decor, fixtures, and art. It’s a stretch to think that it’s just been sitting there for decades. Plus it seems to be fairly well known that there’s possibly hundreds of millions of dollars hidden in there somewhere. Supposedly everyone who goes in there is never heard from again, or something like that, but that wouldn’t hold up in the real world - action would be taken. But I suppose the dark forces were keeping things the way they were. I had a hard time buying into it.

All things considered though, the cast is good, all the technical aspects are good, the suspense was good. I’d call it a win overall.

2023 Malibu Horror Story

* Director: Scott Slone

* Writer: Scott Slone

* Stars: Dylan Sprayberry, Robert Bailey Jr., Valentina de Angelis, Rebecca Forsythe, and Tommy Cramer

* Runtime: 85 minutes

* Trailer (YouTube):

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A quartet of paranormal investigating filmmakers look into the footage and clues regarding a quartet of guys who vanished without explanation. They do indeed find out what happened to the four guys. It’s sort of found footage within a movie and well put together. The build, tension, and effects are all good. We both thought it was all right, Kevin more so than Brian.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a bunch of people camping in a cave and making a documentary about ghosts. They have a “ghost communication” device. Ashley lights a candle and starts talking to spirits. Something happens, and the camera sorta-kinda sees something. Josh, Matt, Ashley, and Jess celebrate. Jess shows Josh the footage they’ve already got which doubles as some exposition for us. Four local teenagers went missing in these same caves. Josh found video footage from the teens’ misadventure. Meta-credits roll.

Jake, Carlos, Tyler, and Carter got into a van in 2012 and were never seen again. We get news footage and interviews with their families from ten years ago. Eventually, the police gave up until the van and a video camera were found in the hills. We watch some of their video as the teens party. People were not pleased with the drunken, drugged-up teens and everyone stopped caring that they had never been found.

We’re told that the area where the boys went missing was Indian territory, so there could be all kinds of weirdness there. They did, in fact, find some burial plots. Then they found a cave and went right inside, completely unequipped to do so. They all talk about portals to “other worlds” like the ones in this cave. We then hear about how Jake’s great-grandfather murdered a bunch of Indians that wouldn’t leave his land– he buried them in one of the caves.

Carlos sneaks some of the muffins out of Jake’s bag and unknowingly eats a triple-dose of shrooms. Carlos starts seeing weird things, probably hallucinating. Jakes explains that his grandparents went missing, and they just found the skulls. Could the whole family be cursed? They follow Carlos into a cave, and that’s where the footage stops.

Ashley, Josh, and their group explains a little more about apparitions that appeared in the found footage. Their group is now camped out in the same cave. Jess manages to uncorrupt some additional old footage, and we see what was living in the cave. Carlos was possessed by an Indian demon, a skinwalker. The thing grabs Carter and drags him back into the caves while the others follow. It goes badly for the others, too.

Ashley warns that it’ll get really bad if it possesses one of them, and they did invite it in with the candle ritual earlier. They all start packing up, but it’s too late. All their ghost-hunting equipment starts signaling, and it gets weird inside the cave. Ashley is dragged off by something invisible. Matt goes off looking for her and disappears as well.

Matt gets possessed and starts crawling after Josh as Ashley and Jess search the caves. There’s a lot of wandering around in the dark. The two girls then look for an exit after narrowly avoiding the creature. None of them make it out alive but the cameras record everything…

Brian’s Commentary

About half the film is the documentary explaining what happened with Jake’s group, and the rest is about Josh’s group ten years later. The creature is well-made and looks good, but it relies way too much on loud jump scares to make it creepy. The cave is surprisingly clean, with wide hallways and perfectly level floors.

It was OK as a found footage, but not great.

Kevin’s Commentary

Even not being an expert, I can see it’s a generic mishmash of Native American history and lore, but it gets the job done for the story.

It seemed familiar at a lot of points and in a lot of ways, but it’s well put together. It’s a little on the bland side, but I’d call it a win for entertainment.

2023 Baby Blue

* Directed by: Adam Mason

* Written by: Simon Boyes, Adam Mason

* Stars: Aramis Knight, Ally Loannides, Cyrus Arnold

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A group of young people attempt a true crime documentary about the deceased serial killer Baby Blue who might still be continuing his work from beyond the grave. There were a lot of elements that we’ve seen before, but it’s well put together with a lot of interesting touches that kept it interesting enough to entertain. We both enjoyed it and would recommend it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on Laura, in an interrogation room, being questioned for murder. “He made me do it.” Who? “Blue!” She’s possessed by Baby Blue and starts singing there in the interrogation room. She then kills herself with a pencil. Credits roll.

Three half-siblings argue about the merit of making bad prank videos. August, Alice, and J.J. all seem to hate what they’re doing, but they put on the gorilla suit and start filming. Their manager, Mo, hates it; it’s not cutting edge. He wants them to do “true crime” instead. He then fires the group. Alice thinks of doing a film about The Redmont, a place with a lot of deaths. She shows them a video of a man named Kelvin being attacked in an elevator by something invisible and then jumping off the roof. It’s a supernatural true crime, and they decide to investigate.

They stop to talk to Joy, the last person to see Kelvin Jones alive. She warns them that they’re all going to die if they keep investigating. Baby Blue will kill them all; he was the first victim of the Redmont. They go to the Redmont and meet the manager, Bud. The power to the apartment has been shut off, so it’s all dark and creepy– and there are rats.

As April, JJ, and Hutch keep the property manager busy in Kelvin’s apartment, August goes up to the roof. JJ finds a bloody cellphone that used to belong to Kelvin, and upstairs, August hears someone singing a song. Everything that happened to Kelvin now happens to August– but he doesn’t die.

The group goes home and opens Kelvin’s phone. It’s got a video from Kelvin on it, saying that this is really Baby Blue’s phone, and it’s cursed. He warns them not to watch the other video on the phone, which cannot be deleted. Can an iPhone video really be cursed? JJ wants to watch it, but the others aren’t so sure. They toss the phone.

Hutch, on the other hand, digs out the phone and makes his own video with August. We don’t see much of the video, but it seems to involve cannibalism. Hutch then throws the phone into the ocean. They wonder if they’re cursed now.

They are.

Baby Blue comes to Hutch that night, and they have a conversation before Hutch cuts his own throat.

In the morning, JJ has done more research, and they learn there have been many more Baby Blue suicides. August, meanwhile, is freaking out because he knows he watched the video. They interview Manos Sloane about one of the deaths. He sold the phone to Kelvin after his son David bought it.

David lives in the dark basement, strapped to a table to keep him from killing himself. David tells his story; Baby Blue got inside his head. “He goes inside you until he’s in control. He slaughtered over 30 people when he was alive. How many more since he died?” They set up remote cameras to watch over David that night when Baby Blue comes to him. August admits he watched the video, and he’s terrified.

They go to see Ellen, a psychic, to help. She touches the cursed phone and immediately gets taken over. She’s a hoot. She suggests returning the cursed phone to its owner, and maybe the spirit will rest then.

They take August to a motel, tie him up, and gag him for his own safety. “We shoulda done that years ago,” JJ quips. JJ and Alice snoop and find out where Baby Blue lived with his mother and sister. Mama Blue and Sadie Blue still live in the old house in the country, and they invite the siblings inside. Mama says her son didn’t do anything wrong, since all his victims were sinners. Mama explains that she buried Blue’s ashes in the backyard, but she also drugged their drinks, which turned out to be breast milk.

Meanwhile, Baby Blue and August have an all-day conversation.

JJ wakes up chained to a bed with a pacifier as Mama sings the Baby Blue song as she milks herself. In the basement, Sadie makes Alice watch the cursed video of Blue’s suicide. Sadie relents and lets Alice go, and she runs right outside to bury the iPhone. Sadie then kills Mama and releases JJ.

Before she can bury the phone, Baby Blue possesses Alice, who hangs herself. Surprisingly, back at the motel, August puts up quite a resistance to Blue. Blue then comes to JJ and taunts him, but JJ never actually watched the video. JJ drops the phone into Blue’s grave. Blue puffs into a cloud of red flame. And suddenly, Alice wakes up.

In the morning, Alice and JJ return to find August in the motel, bloody but alive. The group then finds the suicide tape online, and now everyone can see it. August admits it was him.

Brian’s Commentary

There are lots of weird little visual details that you have to be paying attention to notice, which add some fun depth to this.

Milk is disgusting, no matter what it comes out of.

There are lots of cameras, and the characters are filmmakers, but it’s not a found footage film. Overall, it’s not bad!

Kevin’s Commentary

The IMDB description refers to the gang who are clearly in their 20s as teenagers, but at least they don’t play that up and aren’t shown going to high school.

If you watch closely, you can see that JJ doesn’t believe in stop signs when he drives.

Little details like smoke coming out of the back of Baby Blue’s head when he was having a cigarette was a nice touch too. Plus it’s a movie that will make you want to have a nice glass of milk afterward.

I thought it was really good.

1992 Lawnmower Man

* Directed by: Brett Leonard

* Written by: Stephen King, Brett Leonard, Gimel Everett

* Stars: Jeff Fahey, Pierce Brosnan, Jenny Wright

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A simple-minded guy becomes an experimental subject, which greatly increases his intelligence. And psychic abilities. And cyberspace mastery. The story is cool, but the computer graphics were more ambitious than the technology of the time allowed - they are basic by today’s standards. It holds up pretty well for entertainment, heavy on science fiction, but not so much on computer visuals.

Spoilery Synopsis

We are told that by the turn of the millennium, a new technology, VIRTUAL REALITY, will allow people to enter computer generated artificial worlds. It may be a new form of mind control…

At Virtual Space Industries, Larry Angelo talks about his artificially intelligent ape. He’s a great warrior in the battle simulations. We then see the ape inside the VR system, which rolls and tilts as the ape sees a “realistic” world inside. Credits roll.

Later, the ape picks the lock on his cage and escapes– straight to the VR lab, which he activates. The ape shoots a guard with his own, real gun. The security team is sent to track the ape, which they soon do.

Dr. Angelo tries to watch TV, but there’s nothing on but war. Timms his boss calls Smith about the ape, which is only doing what they trained it to.

We cut to a nearby church, where Jobe, the gardner, whistles at birds. The wounded ape approaches him and determines that he’s not a threat. Jobe hides the ape in his shed from the helicopters. Jobe introduces himself as the Lawnmower Man because he can fix things like lawn mowers. Jobe thinks the ape is Cyboman from a comic book. The priest spots them and calls Timms, who brings in the troops. Jobe is very not-smart and doesn’t really know what’s going on.

Despite Angelo’s screams, the soldiers shoot the ape repeatedly, killing it this time. They want to take Jobe in for questioning, but father McKeen says Jobe has the mind of a child. Jobe’s been a ward of the church since he was a kid, and Father McKeen has no problem using the belt on him. After his beating, Jobe gets to work repairing his special new mower, Big Red.

Father McKeen’s brother, Terry, runs the landscaping business that employs Jobe.

Angelo wants to quit, but Timms warns him that might not be a healthy thing to do. He wants to evolve the human mind and believes that VR is the way to do that. The director of the company wants Angelo returned to work.

Angelo, in the meantime, does VR stuff at home. His wife does not approve of his “hobby” and they argue. After, Angelo notices Jobe outside cutting the lawn and thinks he’s probably smarter than a chimp, so why not use him?

Angelo hooks Jobe up to the computer and shows him how to make it work. The game is a little intense for Jobe, but Peter, the boy next door, says he’ll get used to them. Angelo says he has a game that might be able to make Jobe smarter, and Jobe’s willing to try.

Angelo gives Jobe a shot or experimental chemicals, and then the psychedelic game begins. Meanwhile, Angelo is modifying Jobe’s brain by stimulating certain areas.

Fairly quickly, Jobe starts to change. He notices the sexy neighbor lady, and he’s never done that before. He gets smarter and smarter, but he also occasionally has seizures. Jobe realizes that Father McKeen isn’t such a nice guy after all. Soon, Jobe is beating Peter at all the games. Angelo reports everything to Timms, who says he’ll hold off letting the big boss know about what’s going on.

Jobe stands up for himself against the evil priest. He buys some new clothes and gets a haircut, and now the neighbor lady notices him. She wants her lawn mowed now.

Angelo can’t work from home anymore, so he starts taking Jobe to his big lab in the secret base on the mountain. The VR machines there are far more elaborate, and Jobe can’t wait. Angelo turns the juice way up, and soon, Jobe can read minds, like the neighbor lady, Marnie, which leads to sex.

Angelo realizes that Jobe’s smart, but not educated, so he uses VR to teach him pretty much everything in one afternoon. Angelo says no one can learn that quickly, but it’s true. Jobe admits that he can read minds now, and he doesn’t like it. Jobe’s abilities keep growing, even without the treatments.

The company Director wants Timms to switch out the drug for the one that they used on the ape– to make him a warrior. Timms doesn’t tell Angelo, he just switches bottles.

The next day, Jobe has an unexpected seizure, but Angelo doesn’t figure out why. Jobe can now move things with his mind.

Jobe takes his new girlfriend, Marnie, to the VR lab and wires her up. Things get carried away, and she winds up brain damaged. Angelo says Jobe is moving too fast, it’s unnatural. Jobe knows he’s smarter than Angelo now, and he’s not willing to stop the treatments.

Timms and Angelo fly out to see the Director, who spills the beans about the military drugs, which Angelo says is going to lead to unpredictable results. They want Jobe to meet the Director. Meanwhile, back at the lab, Jobe takes all the drugs and upgrades himself.

Jobe pays Father McKeen a visit and sets him on fire using telekinesis. Jake, the town jerk, also gets his due; Jobe uses his mind powers to put the Lawnmower Man in Jake’s head. Peter’s abusive father is next on the list; Big Red the lawnmower eats him.

Angelo returns home from the meeting the next day and finds the neighborhood in a bit of a mess. Angelo’s wife is now completely on Jobe’s side and pretty vacuous; she’s been changed into someone resembling a Stepford Wife. Angelo knows exactly what happened.

Jobe raves that he’s become one with the virtual world and wants to fix the whole planet. He plans to merge with all technology and make all the phones ring as a signal when it happens. Angelo thinks Jobe has had a psychotic break, but there’s nothing he can do.

Jobe mentally calls Terry for a ride to VSL, where an army of security guys wait for him. Jobe unleashes a swarm of digital bees to take care of them. The security chief shoots and kills Terry, which really gets Jobe in a mood.

Angelo shows up at VSL, and he’s got bombs, a gun, and apparently thinks he’s James Bond now. He plants bombs all over the place. Meanwhile, Jobe’s body shrivels as he enters the computer world permanently. Except he didn’t know that Timms and company already cut the computer off from the outside world. Unless he can find a way out, Jobe is going to be trapped in there and die for real when the bombs go off. And he lost his telekinesis over the real world now.

As Angelo and Jobe battle inside the computer, Peter sneaks inside and is at risk of dying from the bombs. Jobe releases Angelo to save Peter, but he’s still trapped inside the mainframe. As the bombs start going off, Jobe works furiously at the combination to escape. He gets out just in time.

Angelo vows to keep working on the VR project. He, Peter, and Peter’s mom leave town just as every phone in the world rings at the same time…

Brian’s Commentary

I assume Angelo’s going to be facing severe legal issues after destroying the whole VSL company.

I remember the effects being pretty good back in 1992, but they’re laughably dated today. I also didn’t remember it being this long, but then we were watching the extended director’s cut, which I probably hadn’t seen before.

It’s been 34 years, and VR still isn’t really a thing. It’s a pretty good story, but it may be the single worst adaptation of a book ever, having nothing in common with the Stephen King story other than the name.

Kevin’s Commentary

It has very little to do with the Stephen King short story by the same name. New Line Cinema obtained the rights to the story, and they had a script ready to go called “Cyber God.” They slapped Stephen King’s name and title on the script and made it happen. Much to Stephen King’s displeasure who sued and ended up with quite a bit of money from it.

It’s also said in the trivia that a team of 7 people spend 8 months and $500,000.00 on 8 minutes of cyberspace effects in the movie. And they don’t hold up well. I thought the movie overall does hold up. It’s dated, but entertaining.

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Four out of five new releases this week. We’ll open with “They Will Kill You,” followed by “We’re Not Safe Here,” “Touch Me,” and “The Yeti,” all 2026 releases. Lastly, we’ll conclude “The Hills Have Eyes” series with the second sequel from 2007.

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #56, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 They Will Kill You

* Director: Kirill Sokolov

* Writers: Kirill Sokolov, Alex J. Litvak, Dan Berk, Robert Olsen

* Stars: Zazie Beetz, Patricia Arquette, Myha’la

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 34 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A woman hires on as a maid in a luxury high-rise in New York and quickly finds out that everything there is not normal. And things get wilder from there. This is a good one to go into as blind as you can if possible. There is much unexpected. It’s well put together, heavy on practical effects and sets, with a strong cast and Zazie Beetz excellent in the lead.

Spoilery Synopsis

Two sisters are on the run from an abusive father, and hide in a convenience store, but they soon get caught. Asia shoots her father in the parking lot just as the police arrive. Asia runs off, but Maria is caught.

Ten years later, Asia comes to Lily Woodhouse under a different name; she’s the new maid. It’s a very high-security building. Asia meets Sharon and the other residents. There are a lot of maids in this place as well as Ray, Lily’s weird husband. Credits roll.

Right away, Asia notices something weird in the vents. And in the hallway. We see that her room isn’t as secure as she thinks it is, as a pig-man sneaks in and licks her toes as she sleeps. He knocks out Asia and lets in the others, the residents, all wearing pig masks. The cultists, or whatever they are, aren’t very good at this, and Asia came heavily armed. She decapitates one of them, shoots another, and uses various ninja skills to take out the rest. Lily walks up and says that was pretty impressive. More credits roll.

Asia tells Lily about abandoning her sister, who went home with her father, who survived. Asia spent time in prison and learned to fight there. She hired a PI to find her sister, who went missing in this very hotel.

Lily says she also has an unusual family with unusual needs. All the dead cultists then get back up and collect their missing body parts– even the headless guy. Soon, Asia’s on the run from everyone yet again. The baddies need her alive for some reason, and the hotel has quite a maze of (well-lit) secret tunnels.

Ray’s down in the tunnels as well, and he helps Asia hide. He explains about the Virgil Hotel, a temple to Satan. Their ancestors made a deal: immortality for human sacrifices. Literally nothing can kill these guys as long as a single piece of them remains. The only way they can die is if their names are removed from the devil’s list. As they crawl through the tunnels, Sharon’s eyeball follows them.

Ray takes Asia to Maria, her now-grown sister. Maria explains that she got a job at the Virgil and went through all the ordeals but then was invited to join them instead of being a sacrifice. Yeah, she’s on the list now, and she doesn’t want to leave.

There’s a lot more running and fighting as Asia tries to find a way out of the building, but the cultists have a huge number of followers who are all in on it.

Lily and the others finally corner Asia and tell her what Marie did to earn her place here– nothing yet. Asia (or Isobel, the woman she replaced) was supposed to be the sacrifice she needed to survive.

The whole group goes downstairs to see Satan, who looks like a talking pig head on a stick. The pig erases Ray’s name from the list, which is written on his head. He tells Lily to kill Ray, which she does. He then tells Maria to write her name on his head and then kill Asia.

Marie writes a name and then kills herself; the name she wrote was Asia’s, who is now immortal. Her wounds now heal instantly. Time for more fighting, but amped up a notch!

During the battle, the pig head climbs on top of Lily and uses her body as his own. The battle is crazy, but Asia ends up removing all the names from the pig’s head, killing all the main baddies permanently and turning all the other residents of the hotel mortal again.

Asia takes her sister’s body and goes outside, where the P.I. is waiting with a car. Asia, it turns out, had written Marie’s name on the pig skin before killing it; Marie revives. The P.I. is very confused.

Brian’s Commentary

This is hilarious; the fight scenes and choreography alone are worth the watch. The fights are so incredibly over the top as to make the whole film.

This was a lot of fun, easily my favorite of the week.

Kevin’s Commentary

I went into this blind, and I was quite surprised by the surprises. I’m glad I hadn’t heard anything about this ahead of time. There were elements that reminded us of “Ready or Not” and the sequel, which we’ve reviewed as well.

The violence is so over the top it crosses over into humor. I thought it was great.

2026 We’re Not Safe Here

* Directed by: Solomon Gray

* Written by: Solomon Gray

* Stars: Hayley McFarland, Sharmita Bhattacharya, Margaret Wuertz

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Two women get together late at night, and one of them tells scary stories. After far too long a period of talk and minor jump scares, things get a little real - maybe. The acting and all the technical aspects are good. But we both thought it was pretty drawn out and dull.

Spoilery Synopsis

We see shots of someone with a bloody pillowcase over their head as credits roll.

Sarah and Neeta talk about Neeta’s artist block. Later, Rachel calls and wants to come over. Rachel sees several men in bloody pillowcases banging on her car. “We’re all around you,” one says.

Rachel arrives and admires Neeta’s many paintings. She explains about her “dreams” that keep her up at night. This has been going on since she was little.

Rachel tells about her childhood friend, Lily, who told her a story about a little girl fifty years ago, who put a pillowcase over her mother’s head and killed her. The girl claimed her friend in the closet made her do it. Lily also said her dead grandma told her the story. Lily then rode her bicycle to the house where the little girl did the killing.

Rachel stops the story, thinking she’s hearing someone else in the house. There’s no one there.

Anyway, back to Rachel’s childhood story. Lily walked into the abandoned house, and Rachel went with her. They found a photograph of themselves, except Lily had a pillowcase over her head.

Rachel goes to the bathroom and sees someone with a pillowcase inside. This one removes the covering, and the woman inside is a real mess.

Rachel comes out and continues her apparently neverending story. She and Lily opened the closet in the abandoned house, and they saw something. They rode back home in a hurry, but that night, Lily and her mother just vanished, never to be seen again.

Rachel still thinks she hears something inside the house. She pulls out her diary, where she’s been making notes about the weird stuff she’s seen.

Neeta interrupts to tell her nightmare story about a siren. Rachel ignores that and continues with her story. She grew up, and the weirdness all went away– until it came back. Upset, both women turn in for the night, but Neeta takes a weapon with her just in case Rachel’s as crazy as she seems.

Nope– Rachel comes into Neeta’s bedroom and goes on with the interminable tale. She talks about how the visions eventually returned, and why she needed to tell the story.

Neeta hears the siren from her own story as someone else appears in the room. Neeta screams and freaks out but then realizes she’s alone in the silent room and Rachel’s asleep in her own room.

Neeta sneaks out and goes to the address from Rachel’s diary. Rachel, in the meantime, wakes up and deals with her own nightmares. Across town, Neeta explores the empty old house from Rachel’s diary and story. She finds a closet with a photo of her and Rachel. She gets scared and runs back to her car.

In the morning, Neeta wakes up tied to a chair and hears voices. “Fear is the path to grace. That’s what led you to us,” says an old woman, who puts a pillowcase over Neeta’s head. Nope– just a dream, maybe.

Neeta goes home, and Rachel knows what she’s done. Neeta now sees the pillowcase-head people outside. Neeta looks again at the photo she found, and it’s different now. It’s Neeta’s demon now, and Rachel is free.

Ten months later, Neeta goes to Sarah’s house and wants to tell her a story…

Brian’s Commentary

Rachel’s story about Lily takes most of the film’s run time. It’s like listening to someone telling a ghost story around the campfire. This is pretty cool in theory, but it goes on for far too long. It’s like a “creepypasta” stretched out for an hour and a half.

The set is very interesting, and the acting is fine, but it just takes way too long for anything to actually happen. Something beyond just jump scares between the quiet bits.

I thought it was pretty dull, but it might be good to watch in a dark room all by yourself some night.

Kevin’s Commentary

I turned on my iPad during viewing and a game being played on there was much more entertaining than this movie. Most of the strangeness just seemed like mental illness, distorted memories, stress, fatigue, and nightmares - which can be a sort of horror in itself. Things did get real and sort of explained at the very end, but by then I didn’t care much anymore.

It’s well made, and the acting is good, but it didn’t hold my interest.

2026 Touch Me

* Directed by: Addison Heimann

* Written by: Addison Heimann

* Stars: Olivia Taylor Dudley, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jordan Gavaris

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Two best friends find their friendship put to the test when they both fall for an alien lover. It’s very funny, very weird, and beautifully filmed with an excellent script. Plus there are plenty of horror elements. The trailer doesn’t do it justice, and we were both pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed it.

Spoilery Synopsis

Joey cleans her ear with a Q-Tip, and it comes out bloody. We then cut to her in therapy where she tells a story about meeting an alien in a bar last night. He had a whole story about seeds and saving the Earth from climate change. He touched her with his tentacle as well and then they had sex under glowing trees. There were many tentacles. It’s quite a long and convoluted story. Credits roll.

Joey then goes home to Craig, her gay bestie who lets her live with him. She sees Brian, the alien, in the coffee shop the next day, and he says he misses her. Or is she imagining him?

Due to a bathroom disaster, Joey has to get a job. She tries at the local convenience store. They whine about their financial situation and consider themselves “trash pandas.” Craig accidentally watches Joey’s alien sex tape.

Brian invites Joey and Craig to his house for the weekend. Yeah, he’s an alien, but he was good at sex, so she wants to go back. It’s quite a house. They meet Brian and Laura, the housekeeper. Brian admits again that he’s an alien and demonstrates to Craig. He explains that he’s allergic to sugar-free lemonade powder. He’s also really into shirtless dancing.

Brian shows them his chrysalis. It requires a sad story and a blood sacrifice. They tell their stories and crystal begins to glow and then knocks them all out.

Laura doesn’t like Joey and makes that very clear. Everyone has a story, and Brian tells his. Afterward, he and Joey have sex again, and this time, we see the tentacles. Very shortly afterward, He does the same with Craig. Laura watches the whole thing on a remote screen while touching herself..

In the morning, both Joey and Craig feel really good. They split up for more “therapy.” Joey tells the crystal about being sexually assaulted as a teenager.

We get a flashback to three days ago, where Noah texts Brian and hooks up. Noah drives to Brian’s house and is quickly taken prisoner and locked in a cage. Back in the present, Noah’s head explodes and makes a real mess. Brian says to Laura that he thought Noah might be “compatible.” Joey sees all this on the security cameras.

Laura is jealous that Brian won’t use his lubricated appendages on her, but Brian refuses.

Joey tells Craig what Brian has been doing to Noah, but even so, neither of them really wants to leave. They know Brian’s been murdering people, but the sex is soooo good.

Everyone stays, and dinner is awkward. Joey turns against Craig, who soon winds up in a cell. When Brian admits he wants to eat Craig, Joey is fine with that.

Laura knocks out Joey and tells her that Brian has already eaten Craig’s left hand. Brian knows all about Laura, but he has a plan to deal with her. Laura then stabs Brian in the back with lemonade powder, and his outer form melts. Laura finally gets what she wants, more or less. Brian recovers, but Laura doesn’t.

Brian thinks Joey was involved with Laura and puts her in a cell as well, right next to Craig, who is no longer as supportive as he once was.

That night, Brian eats Joey’s hand, but then it turns out to not really be Brian, but one of his glowing trees.

The three sit around the magic crystal for another round of admitting how terrible they all are. This goes badly for Brian, as Joey and Craig have this all planned out.

Craig’s got something growing inside him, and he asks Joey to cut it out– which she does. And kills Brian’s offspring. Brian shows up in his full tentacled form and clears the air for his two prisoners. Until they douse him with lemonade powder and he explodes.

Craig’s got a big hole in his stomach, falls down, and dies.

We cut to Joey, back in therapy, telling the story. The therapist has many questions. She remembers that Brian’s alien trees spit out clones. And ends with her saying “Kill” while interacting with her Duolingo app.

Brian’s Commentary

Are YOU ready for some cross-species intercourse?

There are numerous monologues and long stories told, which sounds like it ought to be boring, but it’s not. The cinematography is very interesting, with lots of cool shots and effects.

I liked this one. It’s got a good mix of humor, grossness, and weird ideas. It’s a winner!

Kevin’s Commentary

I wasn’t expecting to like this as much as I did. I thoroughly enjoyed it and chuckled many times. It’s weird and keeps your attention throughout. The script, effects, and cinematography are all excellent. I’d call it a winner.

2026 The Yeti

* Directed by: Gene Gallerano, William Pisciotta

* Written by: Gene Gallerano, William Pisciotta

* Stars: Brittany Allen, Eric Nelsen, Jim Cummings, William Sadler, Corbin Bernsen

* Run Time: 93 min

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When a group vanishes in the wilds of 1947 Alaska, a rescue party of eclectic and eccentric characters is sent on a rescue mission. The reason they disappeared, as you might guess from the title and poster, is a Yeti on the rampage. It has the look of studio work on sets and a lack of cold temperatures, but the effects are good with a strong cast. Still, things didn’t really come together. It felt like a missed opportunity that should have been better than it was.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s 1947 in the Alaskan Territory. An old man has something in a cage. Other men play cards until they hear roaring outside. “Did you feed it today?” One guy climbs up to fix the hole in the roof, and something big pulls him up and pulls him apart. Credits roll.

We then get a newsreel introducing us to the “experts” who are going to find out what happened to the oil exploration crew. Elaine Bannister gives a lecture on cartography, but all anyone cares about is her famous father. Belle Parker comes to visit her to join the rescue team, and they want Ellie to lead the search.

Within a few days in Alaska, some of the crew are already ready to leave. They can’t even make camp, so they decide to blow up the ground itself. That night, they talk about monsters, which keep people from going where they don’t belong. Dynamite Dan brags about blowing stuff up before going out to pee; that goes badly for him.

Ellie sees the creature, and soon, everyone knows about Dan’s death. They all decide to keep on moving to find their missing fathers. Parker soon goes missing, and everyone splits up to search. Margaret finds a huge footprint in the snow. She and Coates see the monster clawing on Parker in the fog. Coates mercy-kills Parker as Margaret watches.

Ellie and her group find the cabin we saw in the opening credits, blood and all. Margaret is in there hiding from the creature. Coates comes in and describes the monster. Margaret, the animal expert, explains what the creature is; an ancient, not-extinct great ape.

Then they hear the roaring outside. It reaches in through the window and disembowels Coates right in front of Ellie. They also find some of the original crew, dead in their bunks. Booker reports that the radio is down, so they can’t call for help. Booker then gives Ellie a much-needed pep talk.

Booker climbs the radio tower with Ellie’s help, and that goes badly– the yeti rips his arm off. She runs off and finds a cabin with a cage in it. Inside the cage is Mr. Sunday, the man they expedition came out here to find. She also finds big drums of morphine.

Ellie finds the records of the expedition; the men weren’t up here for oil, they wanted the creature. Turns out, Ellie’s father, Hollis, was the one who locked Sunday in the cage after being lied to about why they came up here. They found a baby yeti, and Hollis stole it and turned against Sunday.

Old man Sunday and Sunday Jr. don’t see eye to eye about all this. They pour the morphine all over Ellie’s unconscious body and use her for bait inside the cage. Margaret’s outside the cage as a second lure.

Ellie wakes up and comes face to face with the monster. The morphine takes effect and knocks out the yeti, which Sunday Jr reluctantly runs to tie up. By the time he gets to the cage, the thing is empty. Ellie sneaks up behind Junior and strangles him, but the old man gets the best of Ellie.

Ellie’s father, Hollis, comes out of the woods to negotiate with Sunday Sr. The negotiations are short.

Ellie wakes up in the cabin, and Hollis is there as well. He’s been raising the baby yeti and protecting the adults from Sunday. He takes the baby and runs off into the woods to lure the female away from Ellie.

Meanwhile, outside, Sunday Jr wakes up after being strangled, not as dead as everyone thought. He sits down and freezes to death next to his father.

Ellie pulls out her compass, grabs a rowboat, and heads home.

Brian’s Commentary

The characters are obviously all old pulp-novel hero types, each very distinctive in style and personalities. It’s all very surreal and over-the-top in the way it’s filmed. The sets are all pretty weak; it never felt like the actual, cold Alaska to me, and no one’s breath even fogged.

I liked the style and basic idea, but it was all too clean and polished, the editing left a lot to be desired. I think this one may have been a little more low-budget than it really should have been.

Good idea; flawed execution.

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought the pacing was kind of odd and clunky in this one. They were trying to make it stylized and retro, but I don’t feel like they quite pulled it off.

As Brian pointed out, it looks like it’s on sets with fake plants, fake fog, fake snow, and no indication they are actually in cold temperatures. I couldn’t stop noticing that.

This one didn’t quite work for me. I wasn’t bored, but I was only moderately entertained

2007 The Hills Have Eyes 2

* Directed by: Martin Weisz

* Written by: Wes Craven and Jonathan Craven

* Stars: Michael McMillian, Jessica Stroup, Jacob Vargas, and Flex Alexander

* Run Time: 97 min

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Set not long after the first movie released the year before and in the same desert area, a group of National Guard troops find out that the hills still have eyes. This is a remake of 1984’s “The Hills Have Eyes Part 2” and we both thought this one is miles more entertaining. It’s heavy on action, with a high body count and lots of painful looking injuries and death. We give it a thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a woman being tortured as the credits roll. It looks like she’s been there a long time, and now she’s giving birth. Her “midwife” leaves a lot to be desired, and the baby doesn’t look so great either. She’s killed as soon as the baby shows up.

We’re told that after half the family in the first film escaped, the military started monitoring the area. Almost immediately, the feed shows more people there than there should be, and then it goes dead. At the army base, people start going missing all at once. Dr. Foster runs into a couple of mutants and dies quickly. Colonel Redding knows what’s really going on, but that doesn’t save him.

We cut to a bunch of soldiers under fire in the Middle East. Turns out, it’s just a drill, and they aren’t doing well. The whole squad ships out to Sector 16, where the old-time atomic testing took place. On the truck, we get to know the soldiers a bit.

The group soon arrives at the top-secret base, but wonder where all the people there have gone. They see something shiny up in the hills and go to look, leaving Napoleon behind to guard the latrine and Amber to work the radio.

Napoleon finds a man in the porta-potty tank, and he’s not happy about it. Someone gave him shallow cuts all over so he’d die slowly of infection. He dies before he can give them much of a warning about what happened. They don’t see a thing until the company truck explodes and their weapons are stolen.

Amber runs up toward the rest of the troops, while Napoleon stays with the radio. Amber is grabbed by a mutant and is rescued by Mickey, who was on his way back down the hill. Someone in a hole grabs Mickey’s leg and pulls him in.

Sarge and the soldiers find what’s left of Dr. Foster. The mutants make an appearance, and one of the soldiers accidentally shoots Sarge. Now they all know they’re being stalked, but they aren’t sure what to do about it.

Someone steals their ropes, and now they can’t get down off the mountain. They have to look for another way, but run into many dead ends. They find Colonel Redding, who’s badly hurt but explains about mutants living in the mines here. He then shoots himself rather than be captured by the mutants.

Missy and Amber know what’ll happen to them if they’re captured, and they want to go home now. Turns out, they’re the bait that managed to lure in one of the muties who promptly get shot by the soldiers. Even then, Missy gets grabbed and hauled off.

The group goes into the mines looking for Missy, and it soon becomes impossible to go back the way they came. Amber and Napoleon fall down a chute and get separated from the others.

Missy, still alive, experiences Papa Hades, and she’s also not happy about it. Delmar, Crank, Napoleon, and Amber get reunited and meet one of the mutants who has offered to help them.

The three remaining soldiers argue about what to do next and then Crank accidentally blows himself up. The other two find Missy and untie her. Papa Hades smashes the door in and attacks everyone, and Amber finds that she has only one bullet left, but she knows how to use it. They all still have to work together to finish him off.

Still, they aren’t alone and have no way out…

Brian’s Commentary

This was far, far better than the original “Hills 2” which was one of the lamest sequels ever made. I don’t think the real National Guard trains that hard; these guys started out like Marines in combat, but I could be wrong. They’re also really good at making really bad choices at every turn.

It’s a little formulaic, but it’s well done for what it is.

Kevin’s Commentary

It moves fast, and it’s one damn thing after another for these folks getting picked off and fighting back. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s sooo much better than the original Part 2 from 1984. Such a different reboot that it’s pretty much a different movie entirely. I was entertained.

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We’ve got several new-ish films this week. We’ll start off with “The Bride!,” then visit “Souls Chapel.” We’ll try to get lost with “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” and then hide again from “Dolly.” Lastly, we’ll look at 2015’s “Muck,” which we have strong opinions about.

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #55, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 The Bride!

* Directed by: Maggie Gyllenhaal

* Written by: Maggie Gyllenhaal

* Stars: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, Penélope Cruz

* Run Time: 126 minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

In the 1930s, the Creature asks Dr. Euphronious to make him a Bride. It works, but they don’t realize she’s a murdered woman which causes complications when elements from her past life cross over. Plus, she’s a radical and feminist getting things fired up. It’s sort of Bonnie and Clyde meets horror meets weird romance. There’s a lot of humor and strangeness, and it’s entertaining, after a few minutes at the beginning, which was a questionable start. We both liked it much more than we disliked it.

Spoilery Synopsis

Mary Shelley comes onscreen and tells us that she didn’t write what she really wanted to; that was too much for the time. Now, she’s in Purgatory or something and wants to get the story out of her head.

The story begins with Ida, who is bored at a party. She seems to be possessed by Mary Shelly, who is using her to tell the story. She makes a major scene at the restaurant and gets thrown out. She then falls down the stairs and dies. Credits roll.

In Chicago, Frank, aka Frankenstein’s Creature, comes to see Dr. Euphronious, who knows who he is. She examines him and is thrilled. He doesn’t want any kind of treatment at the institute, he’s here for “an intercourse.” Yes, he wants her to “reinvigorate” him a bride. He’s become very impatient over the many years since he was created.

“I thought you were a mad scientist,” he says, which wins her over. Soon, they’re out digging up graves. Frank thinks the body they picked is too beautiful, but they can’t dig up more, so they go ahead. They throw the switch, sparks fly, and all the meters go off the scale.

The Bride sits up and thinks she had too much absinthe last night; she’s weird. They explain that she’s to marry Frank, but surprisingly, the bride doesn’t remember him at all.

Suddenly, Mary Shelley butts in and talks to the bride in her mind. Not long after, the bride and Frank break out of the lab, go to a movie and the red light district. She knows all the dance moves, but Frank’s not a dancer– but he does have an imagination. She dances most of the night, but eventually, her dance partners get carried away and Frank has to step in, violently.

Soon, the pair are on the run from the gangsters about the two men Frank just killed. He says he’s been through all this before, and there’s gonna be a mob. He doesn’t want the bride mixed up in all this, but she’s got nowhere else to go.

A couple of detectives, Wiles and Malloy, start investigating the murder, whose suspect looks like Frankenstein’s monster. Soon, “Frankenstein and his bride” are the headlines in the newspaper.

She wants the two of them to have sex, but he’s missing an important piece of the necessary equipment. They arrive in New York City, hoping to see Frank’s favorite movie star, Ronnie Reed. They’re quickly recognized as “The Killer Monsters,” and start a riot, complete with angry villagers and torches.

Frank and his bride crash a party, grab some food, and manage to spot Ronnie Reed, who is one of the guests. They have a conversation that’s very confusing for poor Ronnie. This soon turns into a dance number with “Puttin on the Ritz.”

The detectives storm in, and Wiles recognizes the bride. The bride recognizes Wiles. She grabs a gun and takes Ronnie as a hostage. She uses the opportunity to tell the police that the mob boss is paying off cops and killing women. She shoots a cop, and they escape.

They go on the run, and he gets her name tattooed on his chest. They have sex (I guess) repeatedly. Women all over the country start painting their faces like the bride’s face-marks. “Brain attack” is their new battlecry, causing mayhem everywhere as women revolt.

Lupino, the mob boss, recognizes the bride as Ida, a woman he had killed. Her killers swear they did the job, but he obviously knows they didn’t.

Detective Molloy realizes that the criminal pair has only been to places where Ronnie’s films took place. She wants credit if they solve this case, but he makes it clear that that’s not going to happen. She knows something is off about Wiles.

Frank makes up a whole story about his and the bride’s engagement. They get pulled over by an abusive cop, and Mary Shelley tells the bride to take care of him. She bites his tongue out but gets shot in the process, a minor wound.

Detective Wiles catches up to the monsters and calls the bride “Ida.” He says he got her into all this. Frank approaches him, and Moloy shoots him. Ida/The Bride then shoots Wiles in the foot and they run off. Wiles explains his connection to Ida to Molloy, but the hitman overhears the whole story. He’s a crooked cop, but he’s not all bad. He resigns and gives Molloy his badge.

Frank feels bad about lying to Ida about her past, and he also comes clean about their history. Molloy loiters outside the car and overhears his story. “I am a monster.” “Yeah, so am I.” They profess their love for each other, and he proposes to her. She refuses, which he finds hilarious. Then the police show up and kill Frank. The bride throws him in the car, and they have a high-speed chase with the cops.

The Bride and Mary talk about her identity. She drives them back to Dr. Euphonius, to patch Frank up. Both Molloy and the hitman follow them to the lab. There’s an over-the-top firefight, and the bride is shot umpteen times. She falls onto Frank’s corpse and dies.

Molloy takes charge, clears the cops out, and tells the doctor to take as much time as she needs to clean things up. Dr. Euphronius gets back to work; she can fix them.

Brian’s Commentary

For the first ten minutes, I was already mostly expecting this to be the first of over two thousand-plus movies that we didn’t finish. It did pick up fairly quickly though, and we did finish it.

It’s a remake of “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), obviously. Mary Shelley makes an appearance in that film as a narrator, but that’s totally unnecessary and distracting here.

“Puttin on the Ritz” may have been a little too on-the-point, as I saw it coming an hour before it happened. Overall, though, the soundtrack is very good here.

It looks great, it’s very stylish, and it doesn’t get boring. It seems to go “weird for the sake of weird” several times, which you may or may not appreciate. There are some good laugh-out-loud parts, but it’s not a comedy. Christian Bale, as Frank, is outstanding here, but I did not care for Jessie Buckley’s The Bride, at all. I warmed up to her a bit before the end, but I think they could have done better with casting.

Overall, I’d say it was quite good, but I had some issues.

Kevin’s Commentary

After a start that had me grimacing in displeasure, it gets past that and into a really entertaining movie. It took a while, but I warmed up to Jessie Buckley at The Bride.

It’s not a perfect movie, but I liked it quite a bit.

2026 Souls Chapel

* Directed by: Jake C. Young

* Written by: Jake C. Young

* Stars: Brian Bremer, Jake C. Young, Adrianna Curtsinger

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 23 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A young drifter seeking treasure encounters demonic forces and a church that isn’t too holy. It’s set in a post-war-apocalyptic time, retro and modern at the same time, with a steampunk vibe. We both thought it was very well put together, but it was on the slow side and could have used more action. It’s a moderate thumbs-up from both of us.

Spoilery Synopsis

We are told about the origin of evil. We then cut to a man chopping up a body and doing some kind of ritual with it. He then hides a box in the woods and kills himself. Credits roll.

The Drifter tells us that time passes differently now that the world has moved on as he walks through a ghost town. He runs into a priest dressed in red with a gas mask who explains about the talisman he just picked up. Apparently, people did some really bad things back in the day. The weird priest gives the drifter a mission.

The drifter then goes to a weird church where he’s offered coffee. The priest, Red, is insistent about the coffee. Red introduces Sister Agatha. There’s a “Soul Storm” coming, and Jim mentions he hasn’t seen anyone on the road to town.

The drifter shows Red a drawing of the thing he’s looking for. Jim says he just wants the treasure. Soon, there’s a fight with their steampunk guns, and the drifter is knocked out. Red gives the drifter 24 hours to confess his crimes against humanity.

The drifter, chained up, has a vision of the woman in white, probably some kind of witch. Agatha tries to ingratiate herself with the drifter to get more information out of him. The talisman led them all to this place. Red used to have the mark of the talisman on his hand, but now the drifter has it.

Red gets a vision and finds the treasure chest. There’s gold and a newspaper article about seven strangers who showed up in this city. Meanwhile, the drifter talks to Father Moore, another prisoner in the town jail. He says they’re safer in jail than outside because night is coming. Jim comes in and talks about getting captured by the Skeezers during the war.

We cut to the white witch, who does a ritual and conjures up a monster. The monster then quickly kills the schoolboy.

Agatha and Red then torture the drifter to find out who killed the schoolboy. Jim talks to himself in a mirror and decides to turn against the others.

The drifter escapes his chains and explores. He finds a room full of heads in jars. He also finds newspaper accounts of the former priest here sacrificing seven people.

The drifter confronts Agatha and Red, and Agatha kills Red. She wakes up Jim and splits the gold with him. No– they forgot about the monster, who kills them both. Meanwhile, the drifter finds the talisman he’s been looking for. The dead rise.

The drifter, with his talisman, runs into the white witch, with hers. He banishes her. The red priest shows up again and takes the talisman. At least he’s got a bag of gold now. The drifter laughs and moves on…

Brian’s Commentary

It’s got the moody, atmospheric post-apocalyptic, sorta-steampunk landscape done well. The sound, costumes, and lighting are well done, better than most indie films of this budget. The pacing, on the other hand, is really slow and could have used more action.

Kevin’s Commentary

“Smells like pigs liver and sacrifice.” That’s very specific.

I liked the retro look with the steampunk vibe. It’s well put together, I thought, and interesting. Jake C. Young, doing triple duty as writer, director, and main character, did a good job. My only real complaint is how slow-moving and low-action it is. But I liked it much more than I disliked it.

2026 Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

* Directed by: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett

* Written by: Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy

* Stars: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, David Cronenberg, and Elijah Wood

* Run Time: 1h 45m

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

But wait, the game isn’t over. Picking up immediately where the first “Ready or Not” movie ended, Grace and her sister (a new character) find themselves forced into the next level. The rules are clearly explained, new players enter the contest, and there’s a new site for the hunting fun. It probably wasn’t a necessary sequel, but it was really fun. And Kevin enjoyed it at least as much as the first film.

Spoilery Synopsis

Immediately after the events of the first film, Grace sits down as the house burns and explodes behind her. The EMTs load her onto the ambulance as credits roll. As they shock her chest, we get flashbacks to the previous movie.

Grace wakes up in the hospital, cuffed to the bed; she’s suspected in several murders. Faith comes in; she’s Grace’s estranged sister. Faith says Grace is a negative person. Grace eventually explains her game of “Hide and Seek” that involved devil sacrifices.

Meanwhile, old man Chester Danforth creates the news. Mr. Le Bail’s lawyer shows up with news about the now-dead family. Danforth decides to summon his children, since the game is not over. We see various characters getting their notifications. “This is our chance!” Chester tells his twin kids Ursula and Titus that the ball is still in play and they need to win to keep their power and success. The game starts with them murdering their father, Chester.

On the way out of the hospital, the detective in charge is killed by Bill Wilkinson, one of the early arrivals. As Bill closes in to kill Grace, he explodes like a water balloon of blood. The lawyer comes in, and he knows all about the devil and his rules - Bill died because he tried to start early.

Usulla and Titus head out to their “lodge” and welcome all the freaky relatives. The lawyer flies in with the two sisters, tied up and ready for the game to begin. Mr. Le Bail’s lawyer enters, and everyone pays attention. He explains the situation, the reward, and the rules. The stakes are higher this time. All she has to do is survive until dawn as the rest of the families try to kill her. Whichever family does kill her will wear the ring, and basically have so much power they control the world. There are five main hunters, but if they die, the next generation of relatives will have to join in.

The game begins. Faith and Grace wake up handcuffed to each other on the golf course. Ursula and Titus approach on a golf cart, Wan Chen Xing uses a drone to find the girls. Ignacio shoots a propane tank that almost kills Viraj.

The girls hide in the abandoned casino that’s on the property and talk about their history. Viraj makes it inside first, and he fights the girls, who have broken their handcuffs. He ends up cooked in an industrial washing machine. Mahdu, Viraj’s brother, is ordered into the field but chooses to send his own wife, Martina, instead.

Wan Chen Xing reveals herself and says there’s a loophole in the agreement that would take the power away from the Danforths. The only trick is that Grace will have to marry Wan Cheng Fu. She would be spared, and he would have the power. Wan says her son is dumb but kind and would be better for the world than the Danforths. Wan ends up accidentally stabbing Ignacio, and he’s not getting back up again. Rules broken, Wan Cheng explodes in a bloody mess; so does her son.

Titus and Ursula ambush the girls at the front date, just as Martina drives her car through the gate and escapes. This leads to more drama between the two sisters and the surviving players. Francesca shows up with a rocket launcher, but doesn’t know how to use it. Grace and Francesca both get splattered and blinded with pepper spray and have to fight blind. Meanwhile Faith faces off against Titus. It looks pretty bad for both of them.

Grace wins her fight, but Titus takes Faith as a hostage. Grace offers to marry Titus to save Faith and explains the loophole to him. The lawyer nods that this is true. Ursula doesn’t like this at all, since it eliminates her from the power position.

Suddenly, there’s about to be a wedding. Ursula comes to Grace and talks about how terrible her brother is. Titus comes in and kills Ursula, which doesn’t break the rules - they can kill their own family members, just not other families.

The wedding commences, attended by everyone we’ve seen so far and a crowd of cultists. The lawyer calls on Mr. Le Bail to witness. The wedding actually goes through and finishes. It’s all good until Grace stabs Titus with the sharp, pointy pen. It’s not against the rules to kill a family member, as Titus proved with Ursula.

Grace wins. She puts on the ring and takes over. She then immediately abdicates. Whoever’s wearing the ring at dawn, in three minutes, will be the new leader. She throws the ring down into the pit, and most everyone jumps in after it. Everyone fights to the death for the ring. Everyone in the family explodes.

Grace, Faith, and the sacrificial goat leave the estate.

Brian’s Commentary

This is a sequel to 2019’s “Ready or Not.” This one is full of familiar faces, much more so than the original. It did not, however, have the fun theme song this time around.

This was one of those sequels that didn’t really need to be made, but it was still fun.

Kevin’s Commentary

Grace can surely take a lot of punishment and damage in these movies. So can her sister. After getting beaten up and wounded as badly as they were, they walked off at the end just fine and dandy.

I went into this thinking we didn’t need a sequel and it was totally unnecessary. I changed my mind once it got going. I enjoyed it as much as the first one, if not more.

2025 Dolly

* Directed by: Rod Blackhurst

* Written by: Rod Blackhurst, Brandon Weavil

* Stars: Fabianne Therese, Seann William Scott, Ethan Suplee, Max the Impaler

* Run Time: 83 min

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When a couple goes hiking, the young woman of the duo is abducted by a crazy masked killer who wants her to be her living doll baby. It was filmed in 16mm and has a 70s grainy look to it and a vibe of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” but is in the modern day with smartphones. The gore is visceral with realistic shots that will make you cringe. We both thought it was really good.

Spoilery Synopsis

As the credits roll, we see a house full of dolls and what appears to be a crazy woman tending to a corpse in a bed.

Chapter 1: Mother

A couple of parents drop off their daughter to the babysitter’s house so they can have a day alone where Chase can propose to Macy. Macy’s not sure about the whole thing since Chase has a daughter, Evy. As soon as they get to the woods for their hike, we cut to the crazy old woman, now dismembering that corpse. The old woman then holds a funeral for the dead person, with many dolls as witnesses.

Macy noticed that there are dolls nailed to the trees in the woods. They think that’s pretty weird. As they reach the overlook, they hear a weird music box playing in the woods, and Chase goes to check it out. He soon comes across the old woman, who wears a red dress suit and a doll-face mask– maybe it’s not an old woman, since “Dolly” picks up Chase and strangles him, cuts his leg off, and then does even worse things.

Chapter 2: Daughter

Macy gets tired of waiting and goes looking for Chase. She finds Dolly and the headless corpse before she finds Chase. She runs, falls, and is knocked out.

When she wakes up, Dolly is there, and Macy stabs Dolly with a tiny pocketknife. Dolly knocks her out again and takes her home to her place.

Chapter 3: Home

Macy wakes up in a tiny crib in a child’s room. She talks through the wall to a man she can’t see. He tells her to play along with the dolls. Dolly comes in and wants Macy to wear a diaper and suck on a pacifier.

Somehow, out in the woods, what’s left of Chase wakes up. He’s a real mess. He doesn’t get very far, but he’s still alive.

Dolly finally notices the pocketknife stuck in her side, pulls it out, and starts spurting blood. Macy uses the opportunity to try to escape. That doesn’t last long before Dolly decides it’s time for Macy’s feeding. Clearly, Dolly wants Macy as a baby doll. When Macy refuses to drink milk from a bottle, it all gets pretty weird.

Macy makes it down to the basement, where she finds a doll shrine, including the head of Dolly’s mother. Dolly finds Macy and rips her ear off. Dolly then sews it back on, which is even worse.

Chapter 4: Father

In the morning, Macy wakes up and steals a key from the sleeping Dolly. She opens the locked door where the man’s voice was coming from, and she soon finds him inside, all chained up. She unchains him and then very soon regrets it. They’re family. He grabs Macy, holds a piece of glass to her throat, and calls for Dolly. He needs Dolly to unlock the back door and let him out. As soon as Dolly unlocks the door, her father goes off on her with the shovel. Macy and Dolly work together to take care of him. He’s not gonna be getting back up again.

Macy hears Chase calling her name outside and jumps through a window.

Chapter 5: Reunion

Macy tells Chase that she found his ring and that she loves him, but they have to get away. Dolly shows up and makes Chase’s problems even worse. Macy and Dolly fight it out in the woods, and Dolly loses part of her mask.

Chapter 6: FIght

Macy hides in Dolly’s mother’s grave. She gets the shovel away from Dolly and makes good use of it, but stops beating too soon.

Chapter 7: Goodbye

The park ranger literally runs into Macy, “Are you OK?” “NO!”

He calls on the radio, “Guys, we got another one.” Dolly then comes out of the woods and kills him. Macy starts the ranger’s truck and runs over Dolly. She takes back her engagement ring, gets back in the truck, and drives away to freedom…

Brian’s Commentary

There are a couple of really cringey gore shots that were painful to watch.

After the opening scenes, there’s not much dialogue, which makes it all the more creepy.

It’s pretty intense, never slows down, and has lots of good bits to it. I liked this one!

Kevin’s Commentary

The 16mm grindhouse 70s vibe was an interesting mash-up with modern-day technology and smartphones. I also liked the division into chapters.

It kind of surprised me how quickly they killed Chase off. And then I was even more surprised that he wasn’t dead yet in the condition the psycho left him in.

I said “ouchie!” more than once with some of the painful-looking injuries that take place.

I thought it was really good.

2015 Muck

* Directed by: Steve Wolsh

* Written by: Steve Wolsh

* Stars: Kane Hodder, Lachlan Buchanan, Bryce Draper, Lauren Francesca, Stephanie Danielson

* Run Time: 1h 38m

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The IMDB.com summary says “After narrowly escaping an ancient burial ground, a group of friends find themselves trapped between two evils, forcing them to fight, die, or go back the way they came.” The movie seems to start in the middle of a story, and we don’t really know what happened before. There’s much bad acting, strange choices made, random seeming editing, young women scantily dressed, and not a lot of story that’s explained or makes sense. Both of us agree this was phenomenally bad.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman runs through the swamp, screaming for help. Her three friends soon catch up, but Billy’s been injured. They’re all freaked out, as some of their friends are dead. There’s an inordinate amount of screaming and arguing before they head toward the house they see. Credits roll as another girl is left out in the swamp alone.

The group breaks into the house and quickly settles in to warm up. Billy explains that they’re in a horror movie and how they’re all going to die. He predicts that Kylie is going to be the final girl since she’s wearing the most clothes. Noah decides to go for help, since the house doesn’t have a phone.

The group settles in. Desiree goes upstairs for a shower, and Kylie goes into the basement looking for a first-aid kit.

Noah makes it to town and stops in at the bar– it’s St. Patrick’s Day and everything is green. He goes to the restroom and washes up, then gets distracted by the women in the ladies’ room. He orders a couple of drinks for himself and the ladies, seemingly forgetting to call the police or any help for his friends.

Desiree takes her long, slow shower and then comes out just to get chopped up by a man with an axe.

Noah finally calls his friend Troit, telling him he’s in the town of West Craven. Troit and his hate-girlfriend Chandi go to rescue the group. We then take a time-out to watch one of the bar women change clothes in the restroom. They talk about West Craven a dozen times so we are sure to catch the reference.

Random stuff seems to happen. Noah runs down the street. Kylie gets tortured by bald cultists. Troit and his girlfriends stagger around the parking lot and talk about buying a boat. There’s an ad for Red Bull– it gives you wings. Something has grabbed Billy and Mia that we didn’t even see. Noah then plays hide and seek in a graveyard.

There’s no point in giving more of a synopsis, as none of this makes any damned sense at all. Kevin paid good money for this Blu-Ray, so I guess I have to finish it, but oh, is it ever bad. (At least, Kevin adds, it was a really good deal on the Blu-Ray.)

Brian’s Commentary

We never really find out what happened to the group before the movie started, but people have already died by that point, and the characters already know they’re in a horror movie. Who were these bald men, cultists or something? What was any of this for?

Well, that was truly awful. Not one of the “Actors” can act, which isn’t helped by the awful dialogue and pacing. It’s got lots of barely-dressed girls running around through most of the film, so there’s that if you’re into that sort of thing, but that’s probably the only reason anyone would watch this. Even the editing is noticeably terrible, with odd, half-second bits of blackness where the shots didn’t quite align in the editing room.

Worst of the month, easily. It’s far from the worst I’ve ever seen, but it’s probably in the top twenty.

Kevin’s Commentary

The very beginning had me wondering if we’d started in the middle of the movie by mistake. After the credits roll, we realize they did that on purpose. This was intended to be the second movie of a trilogy, making the second movie first for some reason. It’s been eleven years, so that plan is doubtful.

Apparently, despite having been attacked, some people missing, one guy badly injured, it doesn’t occur to the characters to call 911. Just one of many strange and bad choices made. But don’t think about that too much, look, here’s another young woman strutting or running about scantily dressed or topless. And then, for some reason bald pale attacker guys show up. Stuff happens, and then it ends abruptly, unfinished and waiting for the third in the trilogy.

It wasn’t available for streaming, and I wanted to see it, so I picked up a cheap Blu-ray copy. That seemed like a good idea at the time. I was intensely disappointed.

Contact Info:

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Websites:

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We’ve got a fun mix of new & old this time around, beginning with “The Arborist” and “Diabolic,” both from 2025. Next, we’ll watch a really old one that surprised us with how graphic it was for being made in 1934: “Maniac.” We’ll round out the week with a pair of old sci-fi horrors, “Satellite in the Sky” and “World Without End,” both from 1956.

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #55, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2025 The Arborist

* Director: Andrew Mudge

* Writers: Andrew Mudge

* Stars: Lucy Walters, Hudson West, Will Lyman

* Runtime: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

An arborist in mourning and her somewhat surly son land a wood trimming gig, hired by a recluse living in a big mansion on big land. But there’s some haunting going on along with big loads of guilt and grief, and it’s not just a simple job. It’s beautifully filmed with a strong cast of just a few main characters, but it didn’t really connect with either of us.

Spoilery Synopsis

We hear a woman shushing a baby as a large ball of woven vines rolls into the room. Credits roll.

Ellie gets up in the morning and runs the breast pump. She goes looking for her son Wyatt, but then finds something very wrong with the baby.

One year later, Ellie and Wyatt drive to a large estate where they have been promised work. She’s still grieving over the death of the baby. She meets Mr. Randolph, the owner of the house, and he mostly just wants her to cut firewood. Meanwhile, Wyatt finds a mysterious ball of woven vines near the truck that scares him enough that he hides from it. They move into the little gardener’s cottage.

Wyatt asks about the old man living all alone in that huge mansion. He gripes about her drinking and then plays videos of the baby, which annoys her.

In the morning, the two get to work. They find what looks like an old amphitheater in the woods and then argue over how to use a chainsaw.

As Ellie works, Wyatt goes canoeing and sees something not quite human on the bank. Ellie finds him passed out on the bank and has flashbacks to the baby.

Old man Randolph brings him a fishing pole to use, and Ellie asks him why hire an arborist when anyone with a chainsaw could do the work. Why those particular healthy trees?

Wyatt believes that some thing killed his little sister, but Ellie explains it was just SIDS. A bit later, Wyatt sees the monster under the canoe, repeating his mother’s words. He also sees the vine ball again, as well as some kind of demon. “What killed her? What killed Rachel?” it asks.

Ellie talks to Randolph about quitting, but she’s already been paid. The old man shows her that Wyatt has been inside the house for some reason. When confronted with the knife, Wyatt says he dropped it from the canoe. “It followed us here,” he complains. He’s clearly got some mental issues. He goes outside and talks to the creature in the trees, who says he is dying.

Ellie finds a locked box in a hidden room in the basement. Inside, she finds many old photos of children. Also, there’s a news report about seven children dying on the estate. Randolph, upstairs, finds wet footprints in his bedroom, and he’s suddenly terrified of Wyatt.

Ellie wants to pack the truck and leave, but Wyatt refuses and runs off into the woods. Randolph explains that his older brother, Victor, looked exactly like Wyatt. Ellie’s grandfather was Randolph’s cousin. Ellie and Wyatt are all that’s left of his family. He also explains about the tragedy; his brother Victor used the gas heater to kill a bunch of orphans who were there as a treat. Randolph killed Victor afterward by drowning him in the pond.

Wyatt starts channeling Victor, and it’s clear that there really is something going on here. Ellie sees the thing in the woods as well. Outside, the ghosts of the dead children surround Randolph; they believe Wyatt is Victor and want their revenge. Since Victor is now inside Wyatt, they’re aren’t really wrong.

Randolph explains that about a year ago, he started noticing things were weird in the area. This would have been around the same time Ellie’s baby died.

That night, Randolph grabs Wyatt and tries to drown him in the swimming pool, but Ellie jumps in and saves only one of them.

Later, Ellie finds the vine ball, and it’s got a baby inside. Wyatt-Victor stabs the baby and turns it into sticks. This leads Ellie to scream and melt the vine ball.

In a dreamscape of their home in town, Wyatt explains what happened the night the baby died. He accidentally fell asleep on top of the baby and killed her.

Some time later, Ellie and Wyatt return to the house, which has now been torn down. They’ve inherited what’s left from Randolph.

Brian’s Commentary

I figured from the credits that the vine ball was guilt. Also, from the way it was filmed, it seemed likely the baby’s killer was in the closet, and I assumed it was Wyatt. Turns out, that’s not the way it was going at all, which is good. Well, not completely the way it turned out.

It’s really long, and a lot of it doesn’t make sense to me.

Kevin’s Commentary

The paycheck Ellie and Wyatt get from Mr. Randolph is $3,500.00, and that’s a heck of a lot of work for two people for that amount.

When we pause, and Brian exclaims, “What?! It’s got another half hour to go!” That’s not a good sign for how entertained we are.

It turned out guilt and grief were the monsters all along. Sort of.

All the technical aspects, the cast, and the location are excellent. But it’s a long, drawn-out affair that I thought was on the dull side.

2025 Diabolic

* Director: Daniel J. Phillips

* Writers: Mike Harding, Ticia Madsen, and Daniel J. Phillips

* Stars: John Kim, Elizabeth Cullen, and Mia Challis

* Runtime: 1 hour, 35 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A woman goes back to her childhood area in the hopes of finding answers to problems she is having now and what happened in her forgotten youth. What she finds is religious extremism, a mystery, and some witchery. It builds slowly but pretty effectively, with a good cast, great cinematography, and excellent special effects. We both dug it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We get an on-screen summary of what the FLDS flavor of Mormonism is all about, focusing on the culty bits.

We then cut to what looks to be a very strange baptism as credits roll. It’s 2015, and the group is doing baptisms for the dead. The final name is called, and a demon possesses the baptized girl.

Ten years later, Elise and Adam talk about her paintings. Later, in the garden, she digs up a dead animal’s skeleton. When Adam gets home, he finds that she’s dug holes all over the entire yard and doesn’t remember why.

She brings the incident to the attention of her therapist. Also, she’s killed the neighbor’s little dog and feels bad about that. The episodes are getting longer and more violent, and he brings up the possibility of an institution. He knows that this is a not-uncommon trait of people who exited from the FLDS. He wants her to confront the healers from the church to face them.

Adam and Elise decide to go see the healers, and they take Gwen with them. She’ll chaperone them as they take some kind of weird drug to open up their minds.

Hyrum talks to his overbearing mother about their new “patient,” Elise. He knew her in her younger days and wants to help her. “Her kind will find no help here,” she insists.

Elise’s group shows up at the baptistry, the only building remaining in the town after a historical flood. She remembers the baptismal font, and it makes her uncomfortable. Elise talks about how they baptist the dead by proxy. Eise doesn’t remember much of what went on that night. She almost remembers Clara, her almost-girlfriend from those days.

As the trio sets up camp, Hyrum and his mother, Alma, arrive. She doesn’t remember him. She tells them about her blackouts, and Hyrum talks about the hallucinogenic drugs their group has always used. Hyrum mixes up some hallucinogenic soup for Elise and Adam to drink. Bottom’s up!

Hyrum tells them to “embrace the visions,” and they do. Elise remembers Clara, and their kisses. “She’s coming,” Clara warns. In the real world, Elise starts vomiting blood, and Alma writes bloody runes on her belly. The candles spring to life. “We must get it out of her now!” Alma pulls a long black worm out of Elise, who sits up, mostly recovered. She watches as the worm melts and re-forms into a person, but no one else sees that.

In the morning, Hyrum and Alma talk about the evil in this place and then leave. Adam and Gwen wonder if Elise is actually better now or not. Elise swears it feels like a weight has been lifted from her stomach and now feels great. When Elise talks about Clara, Adam takes offense to that because they have no sex life.

Elise finds an ancient altar in the woods and suddenly wants to have sex right on top of it; Adam doesn’t complain. Meanwhile, Gwen follows a stranger into the baptistry and gets locked in with a ghost. When they come back out, they find a bunch of dead animals impaled on poles. Also, the car battery is now inexplicably dead.

Hyrum, who has had a crush on Elise since they were kids, comes to jumpstart the car and tells Elise that Alma pulled a demon out of her, and it’s free now to do as it pleases. Meanwhile, Alma prays and then hangs herself.

Hyrum gets home and finds his mother, not dead but even weirder. She talks about Larue, the witch-spirit they released from Elise. “The bodies were never found; she consumed them!” Larue vowed with her dying breath to get revenge on the church, and it was her name who caused the crazy baptism in the opening scenes. Then, Alma dies.

Back at the baptistry, Elise catches Adam and Gwen kissing and runs off into the woods. We get a flashback to Elise arguing with her father about loving Clara. Her father disowned her and threatened to send her away to an orphanage in the morning.

Gwen sees Larue in her tent, freaks out, and steals Adam’s car. Elise uses that key she found to open a padlocked cellar and the doors fly open mysteriously. She finds Clara’s ghost down there, who tells her to “Dig.” Elise digs up Clara’s skeleton and remembers how she murdered Clara back in the day. Now, Clara’s not in the basement, but Larue is, and she ain’t pretty. “I remember you; you’ve been with me all along.” Larue appears to kill Elise.

Gwen, driving down the road, stops when she sees Larue in the middle of the street. Is it Larue or is it Elise now? Either way, it goes really badly for Gwen. Adam finds her in the baptistry as Hyrum arrives to help. The baptismal font fills with blood as the men watch. Elise drowns Hyrum in the blood. She then crushes Adam’s head with her hands.

Elise, now alone, makes the bloody pool burn and smiles evilly.

One month later, Elise leads the girls to the new church for baptisms…

Brian’s Commentary

The cast is good, and the way the mystery unfolds is interesting. The whole FLDS thing is rarely handled in horror movies, but it’s really the best part of this movie. I was totally expecting Hyrum and Alma to be the evil crazies, but they were completely genuine, which made a nice little twist.

Kevin’s Commentary

“The following is inspired by true events” lost me a little right off the bat. IMDB trivia says that it refers to co-writer Ticia Madsen’s real-life experiences in the Mormon church. I’m assuming there was less magic and a lower body count in real life.

It was very effective at keeping us guessing what was really going on until close to the end. Then things get revealed nicely. Sometimes the dragon wins as the saying goes.

1934 Maniac

* Directed by: Dwain Esper

* Written by: Hildagarde Stadie

* Stars: Bill Woods, Horace B. Carpenter, Ted Edwards

* Run Time: 51 minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The poster from a 1983 rerelease touts “Sex…Drugs…Psychos” and “The First word in bad taste,” and that’s about right. It’s awful and fascinating at the same time, surprisingly gross and graphic for 1934. And it’s short at only 51 minutes, so give it a try if you’d like something historically interesting and pretty entertaining - more chuckles and eww moments than scares for sure.

Spoilery Synopsis

We get an opening scroll that talks about fear, faith, and unhealthy thought. All criminals suffer from some mental disease.

We cut to Dr. Meirschultz and Maxwell working in their lab. The old man wants to experiment on a dead body and needs Maxwell’s help to get one. He’s going to impersonate the coroner to steal the body. They enter the morgue and inject one of the bodies with the doctor’s serum. She soon begins to move, and they need to get her out of the morgue, past the guard and attendants.

The police start looking into the missing body, and Dr. Meirschultz’s name comes up right away. So does Maxwell’s name.

Back at the lab, Dr. Meirschultz wants another body that he can transplant a still-beating heart into. He doesn’t care where the next body comes from, so Maxwell breaks into the nearby undertaker’s place, but he’s run off by angry cats. After he reports failure to the old doctor, Meirschultz wants Maxwell to kill himself for the experiment. Instead, Maxwell shoots the old madman.

We then cut to another scroll about “Dementia Precox,” a very common form of insanity.

Maxwell gives himself a speech about the “spark of life” as he hallucinates the devil. One of the doctor’s patients shows up, and Maxwell makes himself look like Meirschultz using his makeup and acting skills. He then treats Mr. Buckley and gives him a shot of super-adrenaline by mistake. Mr. Buckley has… a reaction; oh-boy does he ever. He goes berserk and steals the undead woman from the morgue.

Mrs. Buckley finds the old doctor’s corpse and thinks it’s murder. As Maxwell and Mrs. Buckley talk about blackmail and murder, Mr. Buckley and the undead woman run off into the hillside. Meanwhile, Satan the cat eats the beating heart from the jar on the desk. Maxwell grabs the cat and pops his eye out and eats it.

Maxwell walls up the doctor’s corpse and the one-eyed cat behind the wall in the basement.

The police come to a man who owns thousands of cats for the skins. He’s got it all figured out.

We cut to Maxwell’s forgotten wife, Alice, who lives with three other women who don’t seem to own many clothes. They read that Maxwell has inherited a small fortune, but no one can find him to let him know. She goes to “Meirschiltz” and tells him about the inheritance. He figures she’s going to murder him for the money, so he talks Mrs. Buckley into killing Alice. When Alice shows up, he tells her about Mrs. Buckley as a double-cross.

As the two women fight in the basement, Maxwell cackles like a lunatic, causing the cat-obsessed neighbor to call the police. Everyone runs to the basement, where the police hear the one-eye-cat yowling from behind the wall.

We cut to Maxwell, in jail, who goes on and on about his need to be a great actor, but no one appreciates him.

Brian’s Commentary

The movie poster promises “Sex, Drugs, and Psychos.” We do, in fact, get all of those. It’s all pretty ridiculous, but then again, this was 1934, so this was pretty over-the-top and extreme for the time.

The acting is awful, the plot is thin, but it’s really interesting considering what they got away with at the time.

It’s… weird.

Kevin’s Commentary

This was my second viewing after recommending it to Brian for a review. It’s kind of awful, yet interesting at the same time. It’s pretty wild and graphic considering it’s a film from 1934.

The Phyllis Diller in this movie is not the comedian Phyllis Diller.

It’s a strange little movie that I enjoyed seeing.

1956 Satellite in the Sky

* Directed by: Paul Dickson

* Written by: John Mather, J.T. McIntosh, Edith Dell

* Stars: Kieron Moore, Lois Maxwell, Donald Wolfit

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes

* Clip:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The British (in their first science fiction movie in color) launch the world’s first orbital vehicle, along with a big experimental bomb, and the mission doesn’t go smoothly. It’s sort of an alternate timeline of 1956, blending real technology with science more advanced than they had at the time. It’s a little draggy in places, but it was still interesting and low-key entertaining. Not on par with other classics of the era.

Spoilery Synopsis

We are told that apparently, Nostradamus predicted space flight, as the credits roll.

We cut to “modern” jet fighters zooming around in the sky, as one of them lands and Commander Michael Hayden gets out. There’s a press thing afterward to talk about Project Stardust, which will escape the Earth’s gravity for the first time, a height of about 1000 miles, where there probably isn’t any gravity to stop it.

Mike explains that the power and fuel are the real problems with the experiment. Kim asks what we’ll gain from all this; shouldn’t we fix our own world first? She’s very negative about the whole thing. There’s a test flight this afternoon. Professor Merrity hints that there’s a more secret aspect to the mission: the bomb. The test is successful, so Project Starlight can proceed tomorrow.

After the flight, Mike and Kim argue some more about the value of space flight. He gives her a tour of the facilities on the airbase. She also sees the rocketship that Mike will be flying in the morning. She thinks it looks… evil.

Larry, one of the scientists, is having trouble with his wife, Barbara, and his money, and they argue about the rocket. He promises to take her out, but he gets called back for more rocket work.

That night, Kim sneaks back into the airbase, and apparently, there’s no security whatsoever. Nothing is locked up, and she makes her way into the rocket unseen by anyone.

The professor explains that the flight tomorrow will carry the very first tritanium bomb to test. That’s really the whole point of the flight; Mike had no idea. The bomb is too powerful to explode on Earth, but it’ll just dissipate in space. Mike and Larry are told about this, but they’re not happy about it.

Meanwhile, Barbara goes to the party alone and meets Tony there. Jimmy breaks up his date with Ellen when she has to work on a fashion show. He ends up proposing to her– over the telephone. There’s lots of character drama.

The morning of the flight arrives, and they load the huge bomb aboard. Mike, Professor Merrity, Larry, Jimmy, and Lefty board as well, and they soon launch. The G-force is tremendous, and they all suffer, but soon it’s over and they are in space. Mike explains about the bomb to Lefty and Jimmy; that’s why Merrity had come along.

Merrity goes back to the cargo hold to check on the bomb and finds Kim hiding in the closet. They report her being a stowaway to the people on the ground. Soon, Kim is making coffee for the crew. She didn’t know anything about the T-1 bomb. Merrity explains that the bomb is so powerful that they’ll feel gale force winds on the surface. Kim thinks it’s a waste of resources, and for once, Mike agrees with her. “This could be the end of the world for all we know,” she points out.

They launch the bomb out the cargo door and watch as it jets away. Kim and Merrity argue about the bomb yet again. Suddenly, the bomb turns around and floats back to their ship with failed jets. If they start the rockets, the bomb may explode. They try anyway, and the bomb doesn’t explode, but it does stay magnetically attached to the ship.

Mike puts on a space suit and goes outside to release the bomb manually. They can’t possibly land with the bomb, as it’ll destroy a huge area of the Earth. If they don’t the bomb’s going off at nine o’clock either way. He pushes the bomb away, but it floats right back again.

The men on Earth debate what to do, since the bomb can’t be defused or deactivated. They decide the crew will just have to stay with the bomb when it blows up.

Aboard the ship, Professor Merrity goes berserk and tries to take over, but they get control of him pretty quickly.

The Americans have a new experimental jet that might be able to reach the ship, but time is tight. It’s not so tight that Mike and Kim can’t squeeze in a kiss.

Merrity and Lefty go back outside to fiddle with the bomb some more– without permission. They can’t disarm the bomb, but they grab the bomb and use their jetpacks to push the bomb far away, giving the others a chance to escape. They blast the rockets and head back down to Earth.

Up in orbit, the bomb explodes, and it’s a biggie. The end.

Brian’s Commentary

There are lots of shots of jet planes flying, landing, and taxiing around; this was all still new in the 50s, and it was interesting to audiences of the time, I guess. Surprisingly, it doesn’t feel like stock footage, which was pretty common for this kind of film. This was also Britain’s first color sci-fi film.

The sets are good, the acting is fine, and the special effects are decent for the 50s. There are both pro- and anti-science and war opinions given, and overall, there’s a lot of talk.

It’s a little dull, actually.

Kevin’s Commentary

The real technology of the time, combined with the science fiction tech, was pretty cool.

I never knew that before Miss Moneypenny worked for the secret service, she had a career as a reporter.

I wasn’t bored, but it did drag in places, and the pacing isn’t continuously lively. I don’t regret watching it, but it’s not a classic worth a repeat viewing.

1956 World Without End

* Directed by: Edward Bernds

* Written by: Edward Bernds

* Stars: Hugh Marlowe, Nancy Gates, Nelson Leigh

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 20 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

What starts out as a manned mission to orbit Mars takes an unexpected turn when the craft goes through a time warp and they’re propelled into the year 2508 where Earth is populated by mutants and very few normal humans. But it’s really science fiction, not much horror. For such a short film, they fit a lot into it as far as storytelling. The effects and so forth are very dated, but it’s fun and entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open with an atomic explosion and credits roll.

XRM has lost contact, and the men at the Pentagon are concerned. Henry Jaffe’s last report was cut off in mid-transmission, but we soon see him and the other men on their spaceship– they have lost contact as well. John, the captain, wishes they could land on Mars, but that’s not the mission. They set course to return to Earth after successfully orbiting Mars, and we watch as the ship accelerates. John, Henry, Doc, and Herb all sit up and watch Mars fade into the background– BOOM! Suddenly, there’s an explosion, and everything gets crazy.

Everyone passes out, and when they wake up, they’ve already landed. It’s clearly not Mars, and the gravity seems normal, so they go outside. The radiation level is three times what the Earth’s should be; they were at a crazy speed, so they could be anywhere. Hank has a family back home, and he’s whiny about getting back to them.

They find a cave with giant spiders inside– good thing they brought pistols. They’re surprised, but no one gets hurt. They move on and camp for the night. We see that they’re being watched by what appear to be cavemen. The one-eyed cyclopean cavemen attack in the night, but the pistols again come in handy.

Then they come to a graveyard with tombstones in English. Some of the dates end with 2188, so this is actually Earth in the future. Doc says that if you go fast enough, time slows down, so they seem to have proven that to be true. An atomic war in 2188 would account for the radiation levels. Those one-eyed monsters must be what remains of humanity. What other monsters might exist here?

The cavemen attack in numbers this time, and the four men hide in a cave. In the back of the cave is a super-hard metal door that opens to a clean-looking hallway. The group is taken to a council of humans led by Timmek. The people know all about space-time warps being possible, or at least they did before the big atomic war. Timmek explains that it’s 2508 AD now. Timmek’s daughter, Garnet, leads them to a nice dinner.

Garnet explains about Deena, the daughter of the mutants outside, but she wasn’t born deformed. She escaped, and the underground community took her in.

It soon becomes clear that these people are cowardly pacifists - or at least very complacent and content, afraid to go to the surface or reclaim the planet, even though they are technologically capable. Meanwhile, John gets cozy with Garnet. Mories, one of the leaders, likes Garnet and is jealous of John already. All the women seem to be really interested in the strong, virile men from the past.

Mories makes up some stories about the men from the past planning a coup and taking over, and Timmek falls for it. John asks Timmek to give them weapons and supplies to retake the surface, but Timmek suspects they have bad intentions. Timmek refuses to make them the weapons.

Mories takes the men’s pistols, kills James in the process, and hides them to frame the men for killing James. The four outsiders are taken into custody and put on trial. Timmek banishes them back to the surface. Deena knows the truth, but Mories attacks her, too. She tells Timmek about Mories before passing out. Mories runs outside, where he’s quickly killed by the Mutates.

Timmek realizes mistake and orders his people to assist the four men with retaking the surface. The weapons they make aren’t very good, so Hank comes up with the idea of making a bazooka.

The four men go outside, alone, armed with a single rocket launcher. The Mutates are terrified of the big noisy thing. Turns out, some of the people outside aren’t mutants, but normal people enslaved by the Mutates. Deena joins them to help translate, but in the next attack, Hank gets a spear in the back, but he’ll be okay. Naga, the mutant leader, threatens to kill his normal-hostages.

John challenges Naga to an axe-to-axe fight. John is smart and has two eyes, so he wins fairly easily. John is now the “chief” of the mutates and orders the release of the slaves and hostages.

Within a few months, the underground people come up to live with the human-looking ex-slaves, who are learning English. The underground children are thriving in the outdoors. Maybe the human race will survive after all!

Brian’s Commentary

The plot borrows a lot from “The Time Machine,” and was actually sued by the Estate of H.G. Wells for infringement. One of the cast, Rod Taylor, eventually starred in the film version of “The Time Machine” (1960). The time-traveling spaceship was a newer idea, as this film predates “The Planet of the Apes” book by several years. It was also an obvious visual influence for “Star Trek,” which was also several years off.

There’s not much horror here beyond oversized spiders and one-eyed mutants, but overall, it was pretty good.

Kevin’s Commentary

It’s no Planet of the Apes, but the concept is the same. A group of astronauts end up on Earth of the future. There’s no doubt this influenced that story as well as Star Trek the original series and many other science fiction movies and shows of the late 1950s and 1960s. For only an hour and 20 minutes, a lot happens in it. And I learned a new word, “palavering.” I’d never seen this one before, and I’m glad I did. It was quite entertaining.

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Only one new film this week, “Mercy,” which just came out. We’ll then do a little bit of the Nature-gone-wild subgenre with “Squirm”(1976), “Frogs” (1972), and “Kingdom of the Spiders” from 1977. Lastly, we’ll watch the remake of “The Hills Have Eyes” from 2006.

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #55, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 Mercy

* Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov

* Written by: Marco van Belle

* Stars: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis, Annabelle Wallis, Chris Sullivan, Kylie Rogers

* Run Time: 100 minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

In the near future, a detective stands trial accused of murdering his wife. He has 90 minutes to prove his innocence to the advanced A.I. Judge he once championed, before it determines his fate. Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson star in the high-tech action-thriller Mercy. Own it now on 4K, Blu-ray™ and DVD.

The technology is believable, but it is a stretch to think it will be that advanced only three years from now, in 2029. There’s some suspense, with an arbitrary running clock, and a mystery being solved. It’s a science fiction thriller, certainly not horror, but the Horror Guys did their duty. We both thought it was interesting, pretty entertaining, very well made, but not quite a solid film when you give it a lot of thought.

Spoilery Synopsis

Chris Raven wakes up strapped to a chair. We then cut to an ad talking about Los Angeles’s crime epidemic and the Mercy program, which judges criminals with AI as judge, jury, and executioner. Crime has fallen 69 percent. Chris is the next prisoner who is to be judged, case #19. Judge Maddox is the AI in charge of the case.

Chris is not sure why he’s there, and she explains that he’s being tried for the murder of his own wife. He watches a video where his dying wife says he was the one who stabbed her. He pleads “Not Guilty.” He has ninety minutes to prove his innocence or he’s going to be executed.

She recites the facts, and he says she’s lying. But she has a video to back up everything she says. He claims he doesn’t remember any of it. She replays scenes of their wedding, birth of their child, and lots of fighting and arguing. He uses his phone calls to talk to his daughter Britt and partner Jaq. With Jaq’s assistance, they all go over the crime scene and evidence.

Jaq traces a phone in downtown Hollywood, which is a riotous wasteland now. She chases a sketchy chef across the rooftop and questions him. He’d been having an affair with Nicole, and they used burner phones for privacy. He also has a video alibi for the time of the murder.

We get more video that shows us Chris’s partner’s death, which was partially Chris’s fault.

He calls the affair partner again, and he has some information about Nicole’s job, maybe doing some shady stuff. There was a BBQ at Chris’s house last weekend, and it’s possible that one of the guests stayed over and hid in the basement. Could it be Nicole’s co-worker Holt, who may have been stealing UG chemicals, an ingredient in meth, from work.

Chris calls Holt, who says Rob, Chris’s AA sponsor, may have put him up to all of it. Rob was off yesterday, so he has no alibi for the murder. At this point, it seems that Chris is really on to something, so you’d expect that the judge would pause the countdown timer, but no. Instead, the judge starts stuttering and showing issues.

A search of Rob’s house shows a lab and lots of evidence that he might be making explosives, not meth. He’s got a whole container truck full of explosives, so he’s heading toward something big. Turns out, Rob’s secret brother was David Webb, the first man Chris brought to Mercy for execution. Rob’s also got Britt in the cab with him as a hostage. This is all a crazy revenge plot against Chris and Mercy, he wants to take them both out.

The judge admits her logic has failed her and Chris is innocent. He tries to talk her into helping him stop Rob. Chris and the judge work together with the police to stop Rob’s truck, which is quickly approaching the Mercy building.

The judge releases Chris, who runs downstairs to confront Rob personally. The judge offers Rob a chance to prove his dead brother’s innocence. Chris gets the drop on Rob, but at the last minute, Jaq comes in and kills him. Turns out, Jaq was behind David Webb’s false verdict and shot at Rob to cover it all up so that Mercy would be seen as a success.

Jaq is arrested, and the trial ends.

Brian’s Commentary

There’s a lot going on here with “the surveillance state” and tracking of people and devices that aren’t too far from reality, although I doubt we’ll be that far along in 2029 (the date on the videos). I think the whole idea of phoning people to testify in court is unlikely; I hang up on 80% of the phone calls I get.

There’s no follow-up to explain how it all worked out. The trial is over, and Mercy’s first verdict was discredited, but did that really change anything?

None of the characters, especially Chris, are likeable or particularly interesting. I thought the first hour was really pretty dull, although once Chris starts tracking down the real killer, it picks up quite a bit. I suspect this is one that the more I think about it, the more it’s going to fall apart.

Kevin’s Commentary

Yeah, I don’t see us being that advanced or apocalyptic in 2029, three years from now.

I spent most of the movie wondering if Jessica Ferguson as Judge Maddox was benign and neutral.

I was finding it pretty tedious for the first half hour, but I warmed to it as the story progressed. It does get moving and more interesting. The counting timer was really just a plot device to create suspense, arbitrary and no reason it couldn’t have been longer or extended as needed.

They lost me a bit at the end when Rob drove his truck into the building but didn’t immediately detonate it so Chris and the Judge had a chance to stop him. But that allowed for another twist at the end and wrap up. Overall, I’d say I was entertained, but I wouldn’t call it great.

1976 Squirm

* Directed by: Jeff Lieberman

* Written by: Jeff Lieberman

* Stars: Don Scardino, Patricia Pearcy, R.A. Dow

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Powerlines serving a small town are knocked down in a storm. They zap the ground and drive the local worm population into a carnivorous rage. It’s kind of slow-moving but it’s pretty good, building as it goes along.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re told that in 1975, an electrical storm knocked down a bunch of power lines that sent hundreds of thousands of volts into the muddy ground. This resulted in some weirdness, and this is that story…

We watch as the wires spark into the ground and lightning happens as credits roll. The next day, the rain stops, and we watch Geri take a shower as Roger works in the garden. Naomi, Alma, and Geri talk about the bridge being washed out, and they hear about the downed power lines on the radio.

Geri’s boyfriend, Mick, gets off the bus, since the road is blocked, and walks the rest of the way to Naomi’s truck. They stop at the store, and Mick gets a weird drink as he listens to the locals talk about the storm. Mick finds a worm in his drink. The waitress and the sheriff think he put the worm in the glass. He’s not from around here, and they all know it.

Willie and Roger, who run the worm farm, talk about all their escaped worms. Willie is not pleased, and Mick sorta gets blamed for that as well. Geri explains that the worms around here bite, and Mick admits he’s got worm-o-phobia.

Geri and Mick find a dead body, or at least a skeleton, picked clean. They bring in the sheriff, who really doesn’t like Mick, to see, but the skeleton is gone when they get back.

Back at the house, Mick and Alma smoke some pot and talk about the area; he’s got poison ivy. Later, they find another skeleton in the back of Roger’s truck– or maybe it’s the same one, they all look alike.

Roger takes Geri and Mick out on his boat fishing, and Mick doesn’t want to put the worm on his hook. Roger says he hates worms too. The worm bites Mick. Roger tells a story about how worms like electricity and how they bit off his thumb when they were little.

Mick gets off the boat to investigate the skeleton some more, leaving Geri alone with Roger. Mick steals the skull while Roger tries to show Geri his worm. Roger, in turn, gets a face full of carnivorous worms.

Mick and Alma break into the dentist’s office to try to identify the skull. Afterwards, they go back to the worm farm and find Willie’s body, now dead as well. As before, the sheriff ignores them.

Then everyone stops and has an awkward dinner. Naomi wonders why Roger didn’t come to dinner, and she’s weird about it. Suddenly, a random tree falls through the house. Turns out, a billion worms were under the tree and ate the roots.

Roger attacks Mick in the woods, and he’s a mess now. Alma wants to take a shower and accidentally fills the tub with worms. No, the whole ROOM is full of worms that spill out when she opens the door.

The sheriff and his girlfriend realize that worms exist. The worms also attack Quigley’s bar and everyone inside.

Mick returns to the house and finds a sea of worms, as well as Naomi’s body. Roger attacks again, but gets thrown into the worms and is quickly devoured. Mick and Geri climb down a tree to get out of the house.

In the morning, the power guy shows up to report that the power lines are back up, but no one in town’s answering the telephone. We see that Alma hid in a chest until the worms had gone, so she’s OK. It’s all over now… or is it?

Brian’s Commentary

What’s an egg cream?

This one is full of weird characters, and the actors mostly lean into the silliness. The number of worms used here was insane, literally causing a worm shortage since they bought all of them.

I’m not quite sure what was wrong with Naomi, the mother, who was weird and scared throughout the movie, even though she had no idea what was going on until the end. Half the house was crushed, and Mick had to walk half a mile through the woods to find a board for the window?

It’s pretty formulaic, but the humor helps. I was entertained.

Kevin’s Commentary

It’s said they used so many worms for this movie that it caused a shortage for fishermen. There are indeed mass quantities in this movie.

This is another one that I saw when it came out at the theater in 1976, and it was scarier then. It was still pretty good and entertaining though seeing it again today.

1972 Frogs

* Directed by: George McCowan

* Written by: Robert Hutchison, Robert Blees

* Stars: Ray Milland, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A rich family, and a young pre-mustache Sam Elliot, gather on an estate on an isolated swampy island for a birthday and Fourth of July celebration. The body count rises as nature rises up and attacks, including the frogs, who mostly sit around watching. There are plenty of attacks, but it’s still on the tame side, and the ending is very abrupt. It’s just okay.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a man, Pickett Smith, in a canoe, taking photos of wildlife, as credits roll. He starts out with frogs and lizards but soon gets distracted by all the floating garbage in the water.

We then cut to Clint Crockett and his sister, Karen, speeding around in circles in their high-powered speedboat. Clint’s busy drinking and driving when he nearly runs over Smith’s canoe. They at least stop and pick him up afterward and tow him to shore; Smith loses his camera and all his stuff in the process.

On shore, old man Jason watches it all with his binoculars and sends Stuart to find out what’s going on. Clint and Karen invite Smith to stay around and join in their party games this afternoon. We see many frogs around the place. Jason is combative about the photography, but the conversation soon turns towards the huge frogs on the island.

We soon get to meet the rest of the weird family. Jason is a bossy old fart, and all the others obey, since he’s the rich one. Again, they all complain about the growing frog population. Jason wants Smith to tour the island and give his expert opinion on the frog problems.

Smith does take a walk through the island woods and notices that poison has been used; there’s lots of dead birds, lizards, and other animals beyond just the frogs. He also finds Jason’s handyman, Grover, dead and covered in snakes.

Night falls, and Maybelle and Bella talk about the crazy white family. Smith returns to the big house but doesn’t say anything about finding the body; the phone is out. We see that there’s a big snake in the dining room, and Jason shoots it with his pistol. Smith does eventually tell Jason about the body.

Jason and Smith talk about living in harmony with nature; what if nature is trying to get back at them? Clint and Jenny argue about getting the old man’s money when he dies. Karen and Smith get closer.

The next morning, it’s the Fourth of July, and the family celebrates and argues. Michael goes out to see why the phone lines are down and shoots himself in the leg by mistake. As he lies there, he’s killed by spiders… and grass? Kenneth goes into the greenhouse and dies when some lizards mix up poison gas from the chemicals stored there. Meanwhile, Jason insists the family is going to have fun today, no matter what!

Smith finds Kenneth and reports to the family, which actually does interrupt the party. Meanwhile, Iris is killed by poisonous snakes and leeches while she’s out looking for butterflies; Stuart, on the other hand, comes face to face with a crocodile.

Back at the house, Jason goes back to insisting on the party, even regardless of the deaths. Smith points out that the phones are still down and there hasn’t been a boat on the lake all day– could this be happening everywhere? The servants and Bella want to leave, so Clint takes them to the boat and back to the mainland. The place is deserted; it’s happening here too. Clint never makes it back to the island. A giant turtle eats Jenny.

Karen and the kids want to leave, and Smith is in agreement. Jason, on the other hand, thinks they’re all out to get him and insists on staying home, alone. The group hops into Smith’s canoe and sets off, barely escaping a bunch of snakes.

The group makes it to shore and takes the same route the servants did. They find the servants’ luggage, but not the bodies– something got them. Smith flags down a car, and they all get in for a ride. The woman complains that she’s been driving for three hours and hasn’t seen a single person on the road.

Back on the island, Jason plays patriotic music as the frogs break the windows and get inside. Alone, he starts to realize he’s made a mistake in staying, but it’s too late.

Brian’s Commentary

Yay, Florida!

This was the first of many “Eco Horror” movies of the 70s. It was Sam Elliotts’s first starring role and Joan Van Ark’s first film. Most of the live frogs used in the film eventually escaped into the wilderness.

There’s a lot more going on here than just killer frogs, as all the wildlife on the island has turned hostile. Actually, the frogs never hurt anyone, as they seem to more the brains of the operation. Most of the deaths happen just after the camera cuts away, as it’d be nearly impossible to make a fatal turtle attack look realistic.

Kevin’s Commentary

I saw this one when it came out, and it freaked me out at the time. It’s less scary seeing it a second time as an adult. I’d forgotten it wasn’t just the frogs rising up but other critters as well.

They did the best they could with the budget they had, and the practicality of having normally harmless creatures causing fatal harm, but it’s really not a great movie. It was fairly entertaining, but just middling.

1977 Kingdom of the Spiders

* Directed by: John Bud Cardos

* Written by: Richard Robinson, Alan Laillou, Jeffrey M Sneller

* Stars: William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling, Woody Strode

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes

* Watch it:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Masses of scary, hairy tarantulas invade an Arizona farm town, and things gradually turn deadly as they step up their attacks. William Shatner, as the town veterinarian, takes the lead as things get overly dramatically worse. The movie gets made fun of quite a bit, and it might deserve it some, but they do try to take it seriously. It’s a pretty entertaining creature feature.

Spoilery Synopsis

We see lots of Arizona desert footage as the country-music-themed credits roll.

A couple admire their soon-to-be prizewinning cow out in the pasture. The cow, on the other hand, doesn’t see the vicious predators sneaking up on him…

We cut to Dr. Rack Hansen, out riding his horse doing cowboy things only with more injections. He then ropes in Terry for some hanky panky until she calls him, “John,” which is his dead brother’s name.

Rack soon gets a call from Walt, the owner of that cow we saw attacked. The calf soon dies, and Rack can’t really explain it– but he does send some blood samples to the lab. He stops at the service station, where the man inside digs through his stock of old tires and gets bitten by a spider.

Diane arrives in town and rents a cabin from Emma, who mentions that the big annual festival is coming up real soon now.

The mayor visits Rack about the quarantine at Walt’s place. He doesn’t want to panic people at the big festival in a few weeks and wants to cover it all up. Diane arrives and explains that she’s an entomologist from the university. She says the calf died from a massive dose of spider venom.

Back at the cabin, Diane and Emma meet a family of tourists. Later, in her cabin, we see a spider crawling around. She finds the spider and lets him outside.

Rack and Diane go to Walt’s farm and find Walt’s dog is also dead from venom. Walt knows all about spiders, as there’s a huge spider hill on his property. Diane explains that most spiders aren’t susceptible to poison; then they go out to dinner and talk about Women’s Lib.

Diane suggests that the spiders are readjusting their waiting habits because of the changing environment. Spiders are usually cannibalistic, but now, they’re working together to find prey. Maybe they should burn the mound?

Diane and Rack head over to Walt’s again, and Walt’s already got the gas can ready. They find a huge bull covered in spiders. Walt sets the spider-hill on fire, but it’s just the surface of the hill, so all the spiders simply hide.

Rack takes Diane to meet Terry, and Terry takes it badly. They go on a picnic, and the little girl doesn’t see the spiders approaching and narrowly escapes getting eaten.

Walt, on the other hand, decides to see a doctor to fix up his spider-bitten hand. He doesn’t see the spiders in the back seat until they’re crawling all over him and crashes over a cliff.

The sheriff calls, and he’s found 20 or 30 more spider mounds. Diane calls the mayor stupid, so that doesn’t win him over. He insists on using pesticides, which Diane insists will only make things worse.

The crop duster man takes off with a tank full of nasty pesticides. He, like Walt, doesn’t check the cockpit first. He freaks out and crashes into the gas station. Meanwhile, Walt’s wife is killed by spiders as is Terry. Rack shows up in time to rescue Linda, but Terry’s toast.

Rack, Diane, and Linda head to Emma’s lodge and get Emma to hole up there as the tarantulas assemble outside. The phones are out, since the old-style operator has been killed. We see the spiders sneaking in through the air vents.

The whole place is surrounded by uncountable spiders, and they keep finding a way inside.

Meanwhile, the sheriff drives to town, and that state fair isn’t going to happen; people are dying in droves and it’s pandemonium.

Back at the lodge, things are getting worse, as the power goes out. Rack goes into the basement to fix the fuse and gets bitten several times.

Morning comes and Rack wants to look outside. They get the radio working, and there’s no mention of spiders. Rack uncovers a window and looks outside. The whole town is buried inside webbing. It is now… the Kingdom of the Spiders!

Brian’s Commentary

They used a lot of real spiders in this one, and quite a few got squished for real. Everything is explained clearly, and it mostly more or less makes sense. The acting is mostly good, but we’re here to see spiders killing people, so does that really matter?

Of this genre of killer insect movies, this is one of the better ones.

Kevin’s Commentary

The 70s music in this one is fun. I chuckled seeing the trope of a mayor not wanting any scare or quarantine that might interfere with the annual fair, the town’s big tourist event.

Trivia points out this movie doesn’t have the disclaimer that no animals were harmed or killed in the making of this movie. And William Shatner said in a biography it was distressing how many of the spiders were killed during filming, hearing them crunch under car tires specifically. $50,000 of the movie budget went toward acquiring 5,000 spiders at $10 each.

The attacks were a little silly looking at times as people didn’t just brush or pick the spiders off while screaming and flailing about, but overall it was pretty grim and serious. It’s more entertaining than not.

2006 The Hills Have Eyes

* Directed by: Alexandre Aja

* Written by: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur

* Stars: Aaron Stanford, Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw, Emilie de Ravin, Dan Byrd, Robert Joy, Ted Levine

* Run Time: 1h 47m (Theatrical); 1h 48m (Unrated)

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A family traveling through the New Mexico desert runs into a clan/family of cannibalistic mutants and misfits. This is a remake of the 1977 film by the same name, and follows the original pretty closely but set in 2006. It’s grim and gruesome and suspenseful. We both thought it was really good, a very good remake.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re told that between 1945 and 1962, the US conducted a whole bunch of nuclear tests and have since denied that any genetic defects were caused by those tests.

We cut to some scientists checking out a radioactive place in the New Mexico desert. A man runs out of nowhere and asks for help, but a big bald man comes out of nowhere and kills them all. Credits roll.

The gas station attendant grabs his shotgun and starts calling out for Ruby, who is nowhere to be found. He finds a bag of stolen goods on his doorstep, along with a severed ear, and screams, “I can’t do this anymore!” An RV drives up containing a big family that really doesn’t want to be there. Big Bob, Ethel, Bobby, Brenda, Lynn, and Doug are on a long road trip for their anniversary. Lynn sees the bag of loot, and suddenly the attendant recommends that the family take a “shortcut” through the desert.

The family drives over some tire spikes and crashes way out in the middle of nowhere. They all argue about whose fault this all is for a while. Bob and Doug decide they need to walk back to civilization, but first, we get to know all the characters a bit as they stop and pray. We see that someone out in the hills is watching them. The two German Shepherds know something’s up, but no one listens to them.

Beauty, the dog, runs away, and Bobby goes after her into the hills. He soon finds the dog, dead, and then falls off a cliff. Doug, on the other hand, finds a whole bunch of cars abandoned in a crater. We zoom in through the crater and see a suspicious-looking mine shaft…

Big Bob finally makes it back to the gas station, but the attendant isn’t there. Someone else is stalking around outside. He goes inside and snoops around until he finds the severed ear, then he draws his gun. He reads newspaper clippings about nuclear tests in a nearby mining town. There are photos of mutated children as well. He finds the attendant, but the man shoots himself before he can answer any questions. The people in the dark soon kidnap Bob and wheel him into the mine shaft.

Brenda, Lynn, and Ethel find Bobby and patch him up. Bobby knows there’s something bad outside, but he never really saw anything specific. Beast, the second dog, gets off his chain just about the time that Doug returns. Everyone shuts up the camper and goes to sleep.

It’s all very relaxing until someone throws Big Bob on the bonfire. As the family runs out to see Bob, two mutants, Pluto and Lizard, come into the camper, where Brenda is asleep, and do bad things to her. Ethel walks in, and they just shoot her– and Lynn.

Beast the dog is still alive and kills Goggle, one of the mutants we haven’t seen before. He brings Goggle’s arm and radio to the camper, where Doug hears the bad guys talking.

In the morning, Beast leads Doug to the mine shaft, and they go inside looking for the baby. Back at the camper, Brenda and Bobby work on setting up some booby-traps.

Doug continues on and finds one of those old atomic testing mockup towns, completely abandoned. Inside one of the houses, he hears the baby crying and goes inside, where he’s quickly captured. He gets loose and runs into a mutant with a giant head who explains what’s going on. There’s lots of hiding and fight, and Doug eventually stabs Pluto, which barely slows him down. Doug loses some fingers to Pluto’s axe. Doug eventually gets the best of the mutant and kills him.

Ruby, the girl mutant, has taken the baby, but Doug has killed all the tough mutants by this point. Lizard comes in to kill the baby, but Ruby steals it away from him as well and runs off into the hills.

Back at the camper, Bobby’s early warning system pays off. No, it was a distraction while the mutants stole Ethel and Lynn’s bodies. Bobby and the mutants’ leader, Papa Jupiter, have a chase that leads to Jupiter going boom in a gas explosion.

Doug catches up to Ruby and tries to take the baby back from her. Lizard jumps down and attacks him. This goes very badly for Doug, but he doesn’t die. Doug gets back up and finally becomes a badass, shooting Lizard repeatedly. Ruby then gives the baby back to Doug. In a final horror-movie trope, Lizard gets back up and points the shotgun at them, but Ruby tackles him, and they both go over the cliff.

Bobby and Brenda finish off Jupiter and spot Doug, Beast, and the baby walking back to them. The camera pulls back, and we see that someone’s still watching them, and they’re still stuck in the desert, only now with no camper or supplies at all…

Brian’s Commentary

This is a remake of 1977’s “The Hills Have Eyes.” It’s not a sequel, but a remake. It’s shot in a more modern style, looks much nicer, but is almost word-for-word the same story. There are a few differences in the way it all plays out, but it’s almost the same.

The mutants’ makeup effects are much better than the original, but they really should have fit in Michael Berryman in some way.

It was good. Not as nasty and gritty as the original, and much more polished. Still, it was well done.

Kevin’s Commentary

It did not have a happy ending exactly, but it was a win for the survivors, and he did rescue his baby. And then what happens next, I wondered, out in the middle of a desert with no water, no food, no transportation.

I don’t know how necessary this remake was, but it was very well done. It was a good watch.

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We’ve got three new films, one newish film, and an oldie this week. We’ll begin with the much-hyped “Scream 7” and see how that holds up. We’ll then take part in a meta film about a horror writer with “I Know Exactly How You Die” and then go on a “Night Patrol,” all new films. “The Wailing” is from 2024, and the original “Ice Cream Man” from 1995 finishes us off.

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #55, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 Scream 7

* Directed by: Kevin Williamson

* Written by: Kevin Williamson, Guy Busick

* Stars: Neve Campbell, Isabel May, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Anna Camp, David Arquette, Matthew Lillard, Courteney Cox

* Run Time: 1h 54m

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Years have passed, Sydney has a new town, new home, new job, a cop husband, and a teenage daughter in her 20s. Things are idyllic in the affluent area until, of course, the killings start again. And the who-is-doing-it begins again. It’s very well put together with a strong cast, but we didn’t feel like it was much different than the rest of the series. If you’re a Scream fan, you’ll probably like this one too. If you’re tired of the Scream movies, there’s not much reason to see this one.

Spoilery Synopsis

A couple of influencers arrive at the “Stab” house. It’s a murder house based on the movie series, which was also based on the real-life murders. Numerous murders happened here, but now it’s a themed-BNB museum, with body outlines on the floor and everything. They soon come across an animatronic Ghostface and a shrine to Stu, who legend says is still alive. Scott and Madison get “the” phone call about scary movies, which is a put on for part of the tourist experience. The whole trip goes very badly after that. Credits roll.

Ben crawls through his girlfriend Tatum’s bedroom window and points out that it’s just like in the first “Stab” movie. Turns out, it’s Sydney’s house, and she’s wise to his tricks. Her husband, Mark, knows all about Sydney’s past.

We spend a while meeting all of Tatum’s friends. Lucas wants to start a podcast about Sydney’s story. They’re all involved in an unrealistically elaborate school play for the theater club. Sydney still gets calls from the Woodsboro killer, but she doesn’t believe it’s really him. The killer Facetimes her, and she immediately recognizes that it’s Stu. He threatens to do something to Tatum at the theater, so Sydney gets the whole police force involved.

Ghostface kills a girl on stage, but then Sydney shows up and starts blasting. Tatum turns out to be fine, but two of her friends are killed. Mark, a policeman, swears that Stu is really dead. Ben is a computer whiz, and he could have AI-deepfaked that video of Stu, so he’s Sydney’s main suspect.

As Sydney and Tatum argue about leaving town, the killer pops out of the attic, inside the house. They hide in a safe room, but they both decide to sneak out to see how Mark is doing. There’s a lot of cat-and-mouse, but eventually, the killer is run over by Gale, who shows up out of the blue. They pull off the killer’s mask, and no one knows who that guy is. After a bit, we hear that he’s a former mental patient with no connection to anyone. “There’s always more than one,” Sydney points out. Sydney and Gale immediately turn their suspicions on Lucas.

Stu calls, and this time, he gets Gale. Gale and Sydney go to the mental hospital to research the now-dead killer, Karl. They show the orderly Stu’s photo, and the man recognizes him as a John Doe patient who spent a lot of years there. He was released two weeks ago. Stu and Karl were close friends.

Mindy and Chad, Gale’s intern camera people, talk to Tatum and discuss their suspicions. They talk about how horror-cliched it is that no one recognized Stu after all these years. They say it’s all about nostalgia and old movie franchises.

Meanwhile, Ghostface kills Mark. Gale interviews Sydney on TV to draw out the killer. He does call, and he’s right outside where all the kids are. Sydney calls Mark, who doesn’t answer because he’s already dead. Meanwhile, Tatum finds an AI-deepfake that Ben made and smashes his face thinking he’s involved, but there’s still another Ghostface out there. Inside, Mindy points out that they are locked inside and all their suspects have conveniently disappeared. Lucas, Chloe, Mindy, and Chad all die in rapid succession.

Tatum, on the other hand, is being chased through town by Ghostface. And since there’s been a curfew established, no one is in the entire downtown to help. Ben shows up and proves that he’s not the killer– by dying. Sydney and Tatum text each other but don’t call 911. Sydney talks to Tatum about how to use a gun and to shoot through the wall where the killer is standing. As usual with a horror movie, that doesn’t kill him. On the other hand, a second Ghostface shows up and they both get her.

Sydney runs home and confronts Sydney; “Stu” unmasks himself on screen, and turns into various dead characters we’ve seen before. Eventually, we see that it’s actually the hospital worker from the asylum. Mark is there, only mostly dead, with the other Ghostface, who is Jessica, the next door neighbor and Lucas’s mother. They talk about Sydney being a scream queen and final girl.

Mark secretly cuts Tatum loose, and they turn the tables on the baddie, but only briefly. Sydney’s had enough and stabs the Hell out of Jessica, and then Tatum shoots Jessica, but not in the head. Then she does, repeatedly.

Gale shows up, along with not-dead Chad and Mindy to report on the story.

Brian’s Commentary

I like that everyone suspected that the Stu calls were AI-faked; I’ve never seen anyone in a movie go down that route before.

We’re just spinning our wheels with this whole franchise at this point. There’s really not much new going on here. It’s well-made, highly budgeted, looks good, but there’s absolutely nothing new here.

Kevin’s Commentary

That was a very affluent high school.

There were some updates using current technology, but it just mostly seemed like more of the same. I can’t fault the quality. The cast, effects, sets, everything were top notch. But the Scream movies all kind of run together for me, and a little weariness is creeping in. Oh look, there’s more than one killer, and they have crazy reasons for taking over the Screamface persona. This didn’t do much to excite me.

2026 I Know Exactly How You Die

* Director: Alexandra Spieth

* Writers: Mike Corey (Screenplay)

* Stars: Rushabh Patel, Stephanie Hogan, Bobby Liga, Summer Hernandez, Zachary Leipert

* Runtime: 90 minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When a horror writer working on a slasher story checks into a motel to get some work done on his book, the lines between reality and fiction start blurring. The problem he finds is that a writer can’t control every single thing in the world, and things get crazier as the story progresses. Who is really in charge? It’s got an ideal location where most of it takes place, the acting is good, the effects are effective, and it’s a clever script. We both thought it was quite good and entertaining.

Spoilery Synopsis

A man does laundry as another man comes in behind him and kills him excessively with a brick. Credits roll.

Rian, a writer, checks into a motel to self-isolate to get some work done. He tends to overshare and is a little bit of a creep. He gets to work writing his horror novel about Katie getting killed.

We watch as the real Katie parks her car at the very same motel and goes into a really sketchy restroom. A man comes in and has some kind of seizure, and she rescues him. She and Naja, the motel manager, watch a news report about Katie’s neighbor, who turned out to be a serial killer. Actually, she’s come to the motel to be away from the killer, who is still at large. As soon as she goes into her room, we see her stalker approaching the door with a brick…

Rian takes a break from his writing and goes outside to the indoor pool. As he swims, he thinks about Katie’s story some more. Someone steals his clothes, and then he’s attacked and kidnapped. No– he’s just dreaming, passed out on the pool room floor. Katie comes and helps him as well. Maybe that was all a dream.

Rian’s neighbors have sex 24/7, so he wants to change rooms. The new one is smaller and not as nice. He gets back to work. In another room, a woman is sick and doesn’t notice the killer breaking into her room. As the woman runs out of her room, Rian thinks he can actually hear her screams and looks out his window. He watches the woman be murdered out there, but then, when he goes outside, there’s no one else there. Could the story he’s been writing have come true?

Rian goes to Naja about the maybe-murder, and they look around the parking lot. Turns out, the woman is staying in the motel’s “haunted room,” where murders have happened before. The man who stayed there wrote down “his intrusive thoughts” and then killed his family. Rian thinks the motel makes written stories come true.

Rian tells his agent that he can “take control of my story.” Katie finds evidence that her stalker is in the area and tells Naja about it. She runs into Rian, who asks her if anything weird is going on. They find a room with the killer’s stuff in it and then hide as the stalker pounds on the door. They both find their cars sabotaged, so they can’t leave. It’s not long before they wind up in bed together.

Rian decides to “write them out of this” and gets back to work. He writes the scene we already saw with the laundry guy getting killed. He also kills the other woman we’ve seen in a nearby room. Katie finds another note, along with a bloody brick. Rian and Katie find the murderer’s room, but it’s got more victims than Rian’s story, so he loses confidence that he’s the one really in charge. The story is now writing itself.

As Rian rants to Naja and ends up restraining her in the closet. The serial killer gets her shortly afterward. Katie looks at Rian’s computer and reads the story, which is all about her. Rian tries to explain the story-thing to Katie, and she thinks he’s insane.

Rian writes that the stalker catches and sedates Katie. He then writes that the hero, Rian, storms in and saves the day. In the real world, the stalker grabs and strangles Rian.

The killer has filled a bathtub full of his victims’ blood and wants Katie to soak in it. This goes badly for the killer.

Rian finishes typing his story, but then she injects him with the same sedative the stalker used. Then she sprays him with bear spray. He put her through a lot, and she wants revenge…

Brian’s Commentary

There’s some CGI gore that’s pretty cheap-looking, but otherwise, the characters and situations are interesting and well done. This was all shot in and around a cheap motel, so they didn’t spend much on sets, which was smart on their part.

It was definitely confusing in a few parts, but it all resolves well. I liked it.

Kevin’s Commentary

I was especially impressed with the clever script. Rian does his best to write and manage his story. But there are a lot of details and free will and things happening in the background of a book, and Rian finds out there’s no way to control it all.

All the other aspects of it got the job done. I thought it was an entertaining piece.

2026 Night Patrol

* Director: Ryan Prows

* Writers: Tim Cairo, Jake Gibson, Shaye Ogbonna, Ryan Prows

* Stars: Justin Long, Jermaine Fowler, RJ Cyler, Dermot Mulroney, Freddie Gibbs, CM Punk, YG, Flying Lotus, Jon Oswald, and Nicki Micheaux

* Runtime: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes

* Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

An L.A. cop is hot to get on the special Night Patrol section, and when he does he finds out they are indeed very special. It takes a little too long to get to anything that’s supernatural or even really horror, but once it does it goes full tilt. We went into it blind, but there are plenty of hints that it’s a vampire movie starting with the fangs on the poster. It’s a unique take on the genre, dealing with class and race. We both thought it was on the long side with a weak start, but good overall.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a man in a police interrogation room, and he’s got a knife stuck in his side. A cop walks in and makes him sign a paper before he can get medical attention.

We cut to the same guy on a bicycle, painted with “Cripboy” on the side, who meets a woman in a car under a bridge. He gives her a ring and says it was his mom’s. She doesn’t want to get too close to him because of his gang affiliation. Suddenly, a police car shows up behind them and makes them both get out of the car for a search. Ethan gets out of the back of the police car and executes the girl. The guy makes a run for it, but when the cops see his ring, they back off and let him go. Credits roll.

We cut to Ethan, in uniform, talking about being a cop and “bad apples” to a bunch of kids. Suddenly, a gang member comes into the room, shoots Ethan, and terrorizes the class. No– it’s all just part of the show; the “gang member” was his partner, Xavier Carr, in a mask. We follow along with them on a few runs. Xavier used to be a Crip, but now he’s a cop.

Ethan asks Carr about a bicycle with “Cripboy” painted on it, and it might be Carr’s brother. He calls his brother, Wazi, who is the guy who ran into trouble last night. Afterwards, Wazi goes to see Bornelius, another gang guy, to tell him about the cops shooting Bornelius’s sister, Primo. They’ve all heard about “The Night Patrol,” and what they do.

The group goes to the scene of the shooting and finds pieces of the dead girl. Bornelius says there’s demonic energy in this place. They all talk about various conspiracies.

Ethan tells Carr that he’s gotten into the Night Patrol, but they’re all white guys, so Carr isn’t going to be invited.

Wazi goes home and argues with his mother, who gets angry over the ring. He tells her about what happened to Primo last night. She knows all about Night Patrol, and they’re not good people.

We cut to Night Patrol, out executing black people. Carr talks about his whole family being Crips; his and Wazi’s mother is into all kinds of weird African Voodoo stuff, and Carr says she’s crazy. Ethan says his dad was Night Patrol and died because of it. Ethan wants answers, which is why he wanted into the Night Patrol.

Ethan goes off with the Night Patrol guy, Deputy, and he’s got lots of background on Ethan’s military experience. Sarge is in charge of the Night Patrol unit, and he wants Ethan in. He’s ordered Ethan to take Wazi’s brother’s bike home to him– and then shoot him. Wazi recognizes him as the cop who shot his girlfriend. Ethan comes out and tells the deputy that Wazi wasn’t home.

Ethan gets taken to see Sarge, who is the leader of Night Patrol– and also Ethan’s “dead” father. He’s been reborn, or so he says. Ethan knows his father is dead. He talks about “Death defeating Death.” Sarge cuts his own wrist and makes Ethan drink his blood. “Drink it and live forever.” Then Sarge shoots him four times.

Carr talks to his supervisor about getting into Night Patrol. He says he’s a better cop than Ethan, and it’s not fair. He’s told to “Prove it.” Carr gets a new partner, Rivetta, and he’s weird.

Wazi’s mother wants help fortifying the house against demons. The neighbors think she’s crazy, too. Wazi calls Carr about the murder he witnessed. At the meeting, Carr’s mother kills Rivetti, and her friends beat up Carr. Meanwhile, Bornelius’s group of Bloods arms up and gets ready for war.

Sarge gives a speech to the members of Night Patrol and wants them to show Ethan how it’s done. He commands dead-Ethan to “Rise. Learn how to use your gift.” Ethan then wakes up. Their plan is to clean up the whole Colonial Courts neighborhood. Bornelius comes to Wazi’s house and declares a cease-fire with his mother, Ayanda; they all want to beat the Night Patrol.

Carr wakes up and heads to Colonial Courts, meeting up with Ethan along the way. Ethan’s not feeling quite right, but goes along. The rest of the Night Patrol puts metal vampire-fangs into their mouths and start blasting. As they kill people, they drain them of blood and fill tanks with the stuff.

Ethan can’t help himself as he bites Carr on the neck and drinks his blood. Wazi sees all this, and Bornelius shoots Ethan in the back, but that doesn’t stop him. Wazi tells them that they’re dealing with vampires, not lizard people.

Deputy terrorizes the prisoners from the neighborhood.

Wazi and Bornelius are taken prisoner and taken to a bunker to be bled out. Ethan shows up and goes against Deputy. Wazi uses the opportunity to escape. Sarge talks to Ethan telepathically, and loses control of his own body. He’s forced to drink blood, but he’s soon staked through the heart. .

Ayanda explains the vampires to Bornelius and Wazi; this is an old African Zulu thing.

Ethan wakes up; the stake through the heart didn’t kill him. He goes to the tank of blood and gets supercharged.

Ayanda tells Wazi where to find her guided missiles before she dies, but all that’s in the box is a Zulu mask and spear. His ring glows green, so he decides to go with the Zulu magic.

Wazi comes out to fight the Night Patrol in full Zulu warrior outfit. He confronts Ethan, who decides to go full-evil at last. They fight, and it looks like it goes badly for Ethan.

We cut back to the interrogation room from the opening scene. Wazi’s been stabbed and needs help. He tells the captain about the vampires. The captain knows all about the vampires and takes him to Sarge. Wazi pulls out the dagger from his side and stabs Sarge in the head, causing him to explode. Now he’s gotta beat all the others…

Brian’s Commentary

It’s nearly an hour before anything supernatural is introduced. We went into this one blind, not even knowing what kind of monster we were dealing with.

It’s got lots of racial tension, gang tension, ACAV tension, and lots more. If you want “gangs vs vamps,” this is the movie for you.

Kevin’s Commentary

I liked that it was a unique take on vampires, tying it in with cops and the hood, class and racism. It took too long to get to the good stuff, and it started to feel long. Then the ending was abrupt, and it could have used more. I wish some of the beginning could have been trimmed back, and more action tacked on to the end.

2024 The Wailing

* Directed by: Pedro Martin-Calero

* Written by: Isabel Pena, Pedro Martin-Calero

* Stars: Ester Exposito, Mathilde Ollivier, Malena Villa

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 47 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

In different times and locations, an invisible entity that only shows up on film stalks and torments several young women. It looks really good, with skilled acting and direction, but the story and explanation is a little lacking. It moves slowly, mostly steadily, and then ends kind of abruptly. Neither of us found it very satisfying.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open up to a woman at a party. She meets a guy there and they go to a dance club. As the strobes come, she has some kind of attack.

We cut to a small family having dinner. The oldest girl, Andrea, asks if there’s any news, and the father says no.

Andrea, 2022

Andrea’s in the middle of some Facetime sex with a boyfriend when the power goes out. On the way home from school, she hears someone crying, but there’s no one around on the street. Her boyfriend, Pau, is in Sydney and having a good time without her. She sends him a selfie, and he says he sees someone else in the room with her. She looks at the video, and there is someone there behind her. It’s just her father… maybe.

Andrea’s father talks to her about her adoption process back in 1999. They all live in Madrid, but she’s from Argentina, which displeases her. Also, her birth mother is dead. When Andrea researches her mother, Marie, she reads that she was a murderer who killed her friend Camila.

She looks at videos on her phone, and a lot of them have someone dark and shadowy standing in the background, just out of sight. Pau wants her to come visit, and they talk over a video call. She sees someone dark standing behind him in the video. This time, the figure comes out and beats Paul to death right on camera as she watches.

She tells her friends, but no one really believes the man who only exists on the camera is real. She starts sleeping with her camera on. We watch as the creepy man lays down next to her as she sleeps.

Two months pass, and her parents are concerned about her phone addiction problem. Andrea thinks there is something about her birth mother, Maria, that no one is telling her.

Walking home at night with her friends, they all heard the wailing in front of that same building. This time, she goes inside to investigate. Andrea sorta remembers this building from Argentina. Something bad happens in the dark, and Andrea gets locked inside with “the man.”

Camila, 1998

We cut to Camila in a film class, and she’s the smart one in the room. This is Camila, in La Plata, in 1998. She takes a bulky video camera out into the world to film “something real.” She sees an interesting-looking girl and follows her around for a while. The girl turns out to be Marie. The teacher doesn’t like the resulting video.

While out shooting, she hears a wailing cry near a familiar-looking building. She sneaks back to film Marie some more, and this time, she sees the same creepy bald man that we saw in Andrea’s video. He shows up again in several of the previous videos that she hadn’t noticed before.

Camila goes to the dance club looking for Maria and they soon become friends and spend the night together. Maria says she’s cursed and thinks she’s going crazy. Camila finds a used pregnancy test in the trash. Marie’s father talks about her mother to Camila; crazy seems to run in the family, but he won’t get specific.

Camila shows the videos to Maria, and she doesn’t know anything about the creepy old man. Suddenly, something invisible kills Camila and starts fondling Marie, just like in the video.

Marie

Marie, still in shock over all that, runs off, leaves her mother to find Camila’s body. She tells her father about the old man in the film, and maybe he’s the one who made her own mother crazy. He explains that no, her mother killed herself.

She goes to that same abandoned building and breaks in. The place is empty, but she still hears crying. The place seems to be full of crying ghosts, including her mother. The old man appears and then throws her out, where she’s arrested for murder…

Back in 2022, Lisbeth, Marie’s sister. Gets a call about Andrea from Andrea’s mother that “it’s happening again.”

Lisbeth 2023

The story continues, but the film does not.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s really slow moving, but it continually ramps up the mystery. Who is this weird old man and why does he keep showing up on video?

It’s well made, and the locations are interesting, but there’s not much here, plotwise, that we haven’t seen before, and it’s just way too sluggish.

And then it all just kinda ends. We don’t know who the old man is, why this is happening, and why that family gets to suffer.

Kevin’s Commentary

So, there’s a strange old man who is invisible and only shows up on video. But he can abruptly kill people and move things in the physical world because… We’re never told who he is or why he is and there’s nothing that could be done against him. Perhaps he’s supposed to be a metaphor for grief and madness or something but I didn’t pick up on that.

It’s a well made, well acted, well directed movie that failed to connect with me or impress.

1995 Ice Cream Man

* Directed by: Norman Apstein

* Written by: David Dobkin and Sven Davison

* Stars: Clint Howard, Justin Isfeld, and Anndi McAfee

* Run Time: 1h 26m

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Little Gregory is institutionalized after seeing an ice cream man killed in front of him. So, when he grows up and gets out, he becomes an ice cream man himself. And despite being out, he’s not at all sane. It’s weird and over the top. There is a body count and some horror for sure, but it’s oddly paced and dated. Brian was substantially more entertained by it than Kevin was.

Spoilery Synopsis

We start in black-and-white times, as a car pulls up and the man inside shoots the ice cream man in front of a bunch of children, including little Gregory. “Who’s going to sell me ice cream, Mommy?” he asks. Credits roll.

In the modern day, the ice cream man comes to the neighborhood, and it’s Gregory, all grown up. He growls at the children and makes them say “Please.” His ice cream has bugs in it.

Small Paul is reading about the Pied Piper, and that’s probably not going to be relevant later. Gregory watches a man spearing trash in the park and flashes back to his own treatment at the asylum. He then kidnaps little Roger and kills a dog. Johnny’s mother gets a call about Roger’s disappearance.

Gregory lives with Nurse Wharton, who is his caretaker. The police ask him about the missing child. We see that Gregory makes his own ice cream, using chopped-up children as ingredients.

Heather goes home and watches her reverend father get his mother to speak in tongues. Small Paul goes to the ice cream truck alone, and Gregory is weird. As Gregory grabs Paul and loads him into the truck, Tuna sees it all. Hiding, Tuna comes across Roger, who escaped from Gregory.

Tuna starts seeing Gregory everywhere and knows he’s being followed. Tuna finally convinces his mother that he’s seen something, and the police soon show up to search Gregory’s place– with an axe. They tear the place up extremely thoroughly, but they don’t find anything at all. Detective Gifford still thinks Gregory is involved, even without evidence.

Gregory has Small Paul hidden in a secret room, but he hasn’t hurt him. He talks to him and gives him butter brickle. Tuna, Johnny, and Heather pledge to bring Gregory to justice, but they’re just kids, so that’s gonna be hard. They follow him to the cemetery, where he disposes of a body. The police also follow him there. No, it’s not a body, it’s ice cream that he’s putting on the grave of the Ice Cream King, the man we saw gunned down in the opening scene.

Tuna and Johnny shoot at the cops, who pick them up and take them home. Heather takes some photos, and we get a great scene as she takes them to a place to get developed (how archaic!). Meanwhile, Gregory shows Small Paul how to make ice cream.

The police go to the asylum and learn that Gregory was Nurse Wharton’s favorite patient. They see all kinds of weirdness in the hospital. It’s a great place to be institutionalized.

Gregory grabs Tuna off the street and locks him in the truck’s cooler. “You’re ice cream!” he snarls. Johnny’s older brother Jacob wants to be a cop, and he has a gun. Gregory kills Jacob’s girlfriend, “Now that’s what I call brain freeze.” Johnny and Heather hide, but they end up getting a “puppet show” from Gregory using two dead cops’ heads.

The kids run to Nurse Wharton’s house to hide, and she lets them inside. She turns them over to Gregory right away. Small Paul pretends to be the Ice Cream King and lures Gregory inside the gigantic, oversized nut-chopping machine that chews him up good.

The next morning, the police are all over the place, and Nurse Wharton is still looking for her dog. The kids have invited Roger to join their group, but Small Paul has gone to therapy. He’s going to be the next Ice Cream Man…

Brian’s Commentary

This is a weird one, full of odd choices and goofiness.

It’s got really cheesy dialogue and funky acting, but it’s also got a lot of recognizable faces doing small cameos, and everything looks purposefully over the top. It’s oddly paced and feels a little out of date and slow.

It’s clearly making fun of horror movies, but it’s not a straight-up comedy. It’s like all the humor is derived from just how ridiculous this all is, rather than specific jokes.

It’s a little unusual, and it does have problems, but I was also very entertained.

Kevin’s Commentary

Everything about the movie is strange. And I’d go as far as saying it’s interesting. Clint Howard is a hoot, and there are a lot of recognizable faces. But I was a little bored and not very entertained. Though I did appreciate how horribly funny it was when he was using the cops heads as puppets.

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We have a more or less random mix of old and new this week. We’ll start off with the new releases, “Death Name” and “Cold Storage,” both from 2026. We’ll watch a not-so-recent sci-fi movie, “Stranded” from 2013. For an oldie, we’ve got 1986’s Alice Cooper in the not-so-spectacular “Monster Dog.” We will then finish our series on Godzilla with “Godzilla: The Planet Eater” from 2017 (We’ve now seen ALL the Godzilla films!)

All this as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #55, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 Death Name

* Director: Réi Talas

* Writers: Réi Talas and Regina Kim

* Stars: Amy Keum, Kevin Woo, and Vana Kim

* Runtime: 81 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A young woman of Korean descent tries exploring her family history and accidentally awakens a family curse that followed her grandma to America. It is slow-moving and talky with some suspense and story that builds to a climax. But it’s low on scares, and neither of us were very impressed with it. It’s just middling in pretty much every way.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on an old news report of General Eisenhower and the Korean War. A pregnant woman hides in the closet as a strange man in a hat walks in to find a woman hanging from the ceiling. The man in the hat finds the woman in the closet, and she screams. Credits roll as we see Korean immigrants coming to America.

It’s Sophie’s first day of university, and all the good classes have been taken. She asks her mother why they never bothered teaching her Korean, and she doesn’t even have a Korean name. It’s something her grandma wanted. Grandma overhears part of the phone conversation and freaks out. Her father texts her that she was, in fact, given a Korean name, but there was a fight over it. She wants to know her name, and he sends it to her, in Korean text, which makes her phone blink with static.

Brian, Kwan, and Ari meet Sophie in class, and they’re all friendly. Professor Lee runs the Korean History class. Some of the students want to be called by their Korean names. She asks them for help translating her Korean Name, since she can’t read Korean. When Kwan tries, the power goes out.

Sophie goes home on a break and eats with the family. Grandma is especially interesting, asking the same question repeatedly– she must have some dementia. She mentions thinking about going by her Korean name now, and Grandma insists that she doesn’t have a Korean name– excitedly. Sophie’s parents explain about some of Grandma’s history– her great-grandmother killed herself, which was a big scandal in Korea. Grandma says there’s more to it than that; she’s been trying to protect the whole family from the family curse. “Don’t speak that name!”

Sophie goes to a nearby bar and meets Jun, a single guy from Korea. He tells her that it’s never too late to learn Korean. They talk a lot, and he walks her home for a kiss. Later, Ari says Sophie isn’t a real Korean; it’s just trendy for her– she’s been whitewashed.

Sophie and Jun have another date, and he admits that he’s got baggage too. Something keeps dripping through the ceiling in Sophie’s dorm room.

On the next break, Sophie takes Jun home to meet her parents. Her parents are normal, but Grandma’s taken a turn for the worse. Jun has brought a gift from Seoul for Grandma, and when she sees it, she screams. It’s pearls– no, it’s berries. She calls him an evil spirit.

As they talk later, Sophie tells him her Korean name, Park Joo-Hyun. This leads to kissing and sex for some reason. Later, she hears voices calling that name. All her photos of Jun are blurry, but only on his face. Is he real?

Sophie gets a flashback to her great-grandmother and the man in the big hat, who has a melted face. When his face is intact, he looks like Jun. Sophie gets a call from her parents; she needs to drive home and check on Grandma. Turns out, Grandma is right there on campus to warn Sophie about the curse. Sophie drives Grandma home, which is a mess.

Grandma tells the story about her mother, the man in the hat, and Sophie’s new boyfriend, who knows her Korean name. One of her ancestors caused Jun to kill himself and become a ghost. We see that opening scene again, with more detail this time. She moved to the USA and took a new name; he couldn’t find them under a different name. Now, with Sophie speaking her true name out loud, the ghost has found them.

Sophie has to go out to pick up more of Grandma’s medication, and leaves her home alone. When she gets home, Grandma is unconscious on the floor. At the hospital, she sees Jun in the room, and he’s angry. He wants Sophie to be his bride in the afterlife, and she volunteers. She wants 48 hours to tie up loose ends before going with him, and he agrees to the terms.

Sophie talks to Professor Lee about some old family tree documents she needs to translate. Back in 1902, Jun committed suicide, and the family had his name cut out of the records. Sophie then runs to the Korean records library, which is closed for construction, and breaks right in. Ari follows her to see what’s going on and helps translate what they find.

Ari says Sophie’s name, and the ghost finds them immediately. Jun lets Sophie choose the manner of her death, and she chooses poison. Ari helped her find the ghosts’ true name, and she says it aloud. Suddenly, Grandma jumps out of bed, and Sophie accidentally cuts her throat. Jun the ghost vanishes.

Later, Sophie rubs her belly. She’s got Jun’s baby inside there…

Brian’s Commentary

If you don’t like this movie, you’re not a real Korean. OK, maybe you are, I dunno. A lot of the film seems to revolve around what a “real” Korean is versus a second- or third-generation immigrant.

I suspect the doctors are going to suspect foul play when they find Grandma’s throat cut in her hospital room.

Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t find it particularly compelling at all. The backstory of the curse, the deaths, none of it was particularly interesting.

Meh.

Kevin’s Commentary

There’s a lot of talk and not a lot of scare here. The Korean culture things were kind of interesting. The whole movie was kind of interesting, but I wouldn’t go much further than that.

I’d call it just okay over all.

2026 Cold Storage

* Director: Jonny Campbell

* Writers: David Koepp

* Stars: Georgina Campbell, Joe Keery, and Liam Neeson

* Runtime: 99 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A semi-retired bioterrorism agent gets called back into action with his sidekick when a deadly fungus gets on the loose. Throw a couple of civilians into the mix, and hilarity ensues. This one has lots of humor and body horror. It’s juicy and gross.

Everything was well done, and it’s entertaining, but it’s not super original. There’s a lot here we’d seen before.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re told about Skylab and the debris that mostly burned up in orbit. Some of it hit the Earth.

In Western Australia, 18 years ago, Enos rushes to make a phone call. Dr. Martins in Rome gets the call. “Something came out of your tank! We’re all dying!” The tank is NASA’s, and she doesn’t know much about it. 27 hours later, she arrives there to investigate. Robert Quinn arrives on the scene with Romano; they’re military of some sort. There was an O2 tank from Skylab that fell down here, but it had a parasitic fungus on it. We sent it up there in the first place, but what came down wasn’t the same thing.

The three check out the small town where the “outbreak” has taken place. There are no people. They soon find the tank and check it out. Dr. Martins quickly figured out what happened. Someone was trying to clean the tank and accidentally fed the thing inside. The creature finds its way into her through a hole in her boot. Then they find all the townspeople on the roofs of the buildings, dead.

Quinn calls in the military to burn the town to the ground. Martins has one sample in her bag and another in her foot. It acts really fast and takes over her mind. She shoots herself. As credits roll, the town is destroyed and the sample is taken to a secret research facility where it’s put into Cold Storage.

Years pass, and the facility shuts down and is eventually sold. Teacake drives to the new self-storage facility, which is the re-tasked cold storage place from before. He works security there, and his boss, Griffin, wants to do something illegal. He talks to Naomi, a new employee about how awful this job is.

An old woman comes in and wants to access her unit. She goes into the unit and finds her gun; this is her anniversary, and she’s thinking of shooting herself. She takes a nap first.

In North Carolina, Robert Quinn gets a phone call about the sample. There’s an alarm about a temperature change at the storage facility. He’s soon on the way to the facility.

Teacake and Naomi hear a beeping inside the wall and want to investigate. They break open the wall and see the same alarm that Quinn was notified about. There’s a whole wall of control-panel stuff back there. Naomi wants to explore the place’s sub-sub-basement, where the lab is. It takes a while, but they get there.

Naomi’s crazy boyfriend Mike drives up outside, and he’s more or less a stalker now. He calls her, but she doesn’t get the message due to being so far underground. Also, he’s got someone dead in the trunk of his car. It’s not a body, it’s a cat who appears to be infected. It climbs to the roof and explodes a load of spores that infect Mike, a deer, and gets the ball rolling.

Naomi and Teacup open the vault and go inside. They find an infected “rat king” on the ground. They nope right out and head back upstairs.

Quinn talks to Abigail and Jerabek, who explains that the man in charge of the cold storage unit died a year and a half ago. Jerabek is in charge now, but he doesn’t believe there’s any real problem here. Abigail takes it more seriously and wants to help Quinn.

We get a flashback to several years ago as the fungus broke out. It infected a cockroach just a few hours ago that got outside and into Mike’s trunk and the dead cat. Meanwhile, Naomi and Teacup watch the infected deer, which explodes. Mike shows up, and he’s acting very strangely. He starts shooting, which wakes up old Mrs. Rooney, who was asleep in her unit. Naomi calls the government agency whose name was on the vault door.

Quinn lands and meets with Romano, from the old days, and they have equipment to pick up. They get Naomi’s call. Naomi and Teacup argue about whether or not zombies are real. Outside, Quinn’s criminal friends arrive to steal stuff. They come upon the deer carcass and the hole in the wall. Ironhead, The Rev, Garbage, Cuba, and Dr. Friedman come inside to loot 4K TVs.

Mike finds and pukes all over Cuba, Garbage, and Ironhead. The Rev hears the action and just drives away. Old lady Rooney shoots Mike in the head, causing him to explode.

Teacup and Naomi get outside and run into Quinn, who has a mini-nuke. He gives the young couple hazmat suits and sends them down to the lab to place the nuke. Quinn stays outside to kill anyone who tries to leave the building. When they get down to the lab, they find that the timer is already counting down. Can they make it out in time?

Teacup, Naomi, Quinn, and Romano limp to the car and try to get away from the blast.

The bomb goes off, and it’s a BIG one. It turns the whole facility into a mile-wide crater.

Some time passes, and Abigail visits Quinn in the hospital. Naomi and Teacup are a thing now.

We then cut to another deer in the wild that explodes into green stuff.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s got loads of fairly big stars and recognizable faces in it. It takes zombie action, contagion action, and a little “Die Hard” action and mixes it all up with fun characters and a crazy setting. There’s not much new here, but it combines old tropes into a fun mix.

It’s billed as a horror comedy, but it didn’t seem all that comedic to me. It was good, though.

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought the casting was especially good in this one. It’s well made, but a bit formulaic. Everything is well done, but I didn’t feel like there was a lot new here that I hadn’t already seen before. It was entertaining though.

2013 Stranded

* Director: Roger Christian

* Writers: Roger Christian, Christian Piers Betley

* Stars: Christian Slater, Brendan Fehr, Amy Matysio, Michael Therriault

* Runtime: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes

* Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Four astronaut miners on a moon base get clobbered by meteors. Which would be bad enough by itself, but the meteors bring an alien lifeform that dials the peril and body horror up high. Miscommunication and bad choices help move the somewhat predictable plot along, but the effects are good, as is the acting. The sum total is a pretty good movie that Kevin was more entertained by than Brian.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on the moonbase ARK, with four crew. It’s day 187 of the one-year mission. There’s an incoming meteor storm, and it blasts the base. The rocks keep falling, and there’s lots of damage. Commander Gerard Brockman wants to evacuate back to Earth, but suddenly, a meteor hits them right in the control room. Credits roll.

They all work on damage control for a while. Ava Cameron goes into a damaged section to seal a leak, and she finds a piece of a meteor embedded in a machine. That goes badly, but she does bring a piece of the meteor back to the inhabitable area; it’s got an unusual spore on it.

It’s going to be several days before an evacuation ship arrives, so they have to patch up whatever’s left. The spore starts growing, and it’s obviously of alien origin. Ava works with the spore, and she’s got a cut on her hand, so we know where this is heading now. She almost immediately starts feeling weird but doesn’t tell anyone.

Bruce and Lance find her and examine her; she’s suddenly very pregnant. They put her into a very loose kind of isolation. The thing inside her grows very fast, and she has nightmares. Then the real thing comes out, and it’s even worse. This brings about lots of arguing about what to do next.

Ava wakes up to find some kind of monstrous baby feeding from her, and she doesn’t react well. It bites Bruce and runs off. Lance insists that Bruce and Ava are hallucinating from the bad air in the place. Bruce starts hallucinating that he’s infected as well after the bite. We see the creature growing and mutating into something fully grown and humanoid; it looks like Bruce, only naked and slimy.

Bruce keeps imagining seeing the alien creature, but no one believes him. He unties Ava from the “quarantine” room and lets her out. Gerard finds out and sedates her, but not before she stabs him with a scalpel. Meanwhile, the alien doppelganger kills Bruce, makes it look like a suicide, and steals his clothes.

Lance finds Bruce’s body at the same time Gerard is attacked… by Bruce. They have no choice but to release Ava to help them find the alien. The alien then traps Lance in an airlock and he gets blasted out on a very slow timer.

Gerard and Ava decide that now that there’s only the two of them that they can take the escape pod. This requires all manner of running around and packing supplies.

Soon, there’s a big three-way brawl, and the alien gets in the escape pod, launching in one minute. Can they stop it? No– the rocket blasts off toward Earth.

With only 17 minutes left to live, the escape shuttle arrives. Can they run to the shuttle with no air for three-and-a-half minutes?

We cut to Earth, where the escape pod has landed. There’s no one inside and no tracks. Not far away, the creature is mutating again…

Brian’s Commentary

These may be the dumbest space-people who ever lived. None of them know what “quarantine” means. They know there’s something alive on the base, but they all keep pretending it isn’t. Ava gets infected by an alien spore and doesn’t report it at all.

The acting is fine, the sets are good, and the creature effects are effective. The overall plot, however, requires all the characters to make every stupid decision in the book. It’s pretty predictable and more than a little dull after it gets going.

Kevin’s Commentary

It starts right out with the meteor clobbering and doesn’t let up with one damn thing after another.

For a group of astronauts isolated on a base who would have been highly vetted and trained, they don’t communicate well, and they make some dumb decisions.

The pluses outweighed the negatives overall though, and I was more entertained than not.

1986 Monster Dog

* Director: Claudio Fragasso

* Writers: Claudio Fragasso

* Stars: Alice Cooper, Victoria Vera, Carlos Santurio

* Runtime: 84 min

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A rocker returns to his hometown with his crew to shoot a music video, and they find a town infested with killer dogs. But there are supernatural forces at work, and they aren’t just ordinary doggies. It’s not awful, but there’s nothing really noteworthy either. It’s generic and pretty forgettable.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on Vincent Raven making a music video. He sounds and looks a lot like Alice Cooper. We get most of a whole music video with him, then we cut to later, while he’s in a van with Sandra, talking about how terrible it was. He wants to make something more original. They’re all heading back to his ancestral home; he hasn’t been home in decades.

Meanwhile, at the big house, the caretaker investigates some strange noises. It sounds like a dog has gotten into the house. Turns out, it’s a whole bunch of snarling, growling dogs. In the van, Vince and his friends talk about hearing about the wild dog problem in the area. Vince and the sheriff have a weird history. The sheriff warns him about the dogs– there have already been five deaths to those dogs. Back in the day, something happened with Vince’s father, and the locals remember the incident. As soon as Vince’s group leaves, the sheriff and deputy are killed by a nasty-looking dog.

Vince hits a dog with his car, and they all stop to help. Vince finishes the dog off with a blow to the head. A creepy old man comes out and says, “Now you’ve done it. Now he’s back at last. He will command the hounds, and all of you will die!” He’s fun. Vince and Sandra get a glimpse of the monster in the woods.

The group arrives at Vince’s family home, but old Joss, the caretaker, is nowhere to be found. Vince grabs a shotgun and investigates the upper levels of the house. Angela senses that they’re all in danger and horrible things are about to happen. She has a weird nightmare where she sees Vince as a werewolf who kills all of them. When she tells Vince about it, he doesn’t laugh.

Vince pulls out a big book about werewolves and explains to Sandra that it’s related to some kind of heart condition and that werewolves do exist. His own father was accused of being a werewolf; he would go out under the full moon and kill animals. The locals eventually caught and killed Vince’s father.

In the morning, the group sets about getting started filming their music video, the reason they came here. We soon get a second musical number (This is better than the first one). Suddenly, in the middle of the song, they find the caretaker’s body.

Angela wanders off into the countryside, and Vince goes looking for her. At the same time, a group of locals cut the phone lines and talk about killing Vince. They want in the house to wait for Vince, but Sandra doesn’t like their looks. Frank and Jordan invite the group inside for beers which turns into a mistake almost instantly.

Lou, the leader of the troublemakers, explains that Vince is a werewolf, and he intends to kill him. Lou explains what really happened with Vince’s father, and he’s convinced that it wasn’t a mistake. Vince controls and commands all the wild dogs in the area; that’s his special power.

Vince and Angela return to the house, and Lou shoots Angela dead by accident. The men play hide-and-seek with Vince and shotguns. Meanwhile, the pack of wild dogs arrives outside. Vince eventually shoots all the bad guys, but by this time, the dogs are inside the house.

The dogs tear up Frank and Jordan, but suddenly go away, as if they’ve been called. The big dog wants in, and he’s going to break in the door. Yep, it’s the werewolf, and the dogs obey him. Things get hectic, quickly.

Soon, it’s just Sandra and Marylou locked in a room as the werewolf tries to get them. Vince shows up, and the werewolf vanishes. Marylou puts two and two together and decides that Vince is the monster; where was he during all the attacks? Vince definitely has a calming presence on the wild dogs, who sit and whimper when he’s around.

The group runs out to Lou’s car after retrieving the keys and drives off. They don’t notice right away that Marylou is dead and the monster dog is in the backseat. Sandra jumps out the door, and Vince crashes the car.

Sandra goes to the crash scene, but doesn’t find Vince or the monster. The creepy old man shows up, apparently a minion of the werewolf, saying “We have a new king!” before dying.

Sandra finds Vince, and he warns her to stay away. He is a werewolf, at least now. He wants her to shoot him. As he turns into a werewolf, the monster dog comes out of the bushes. She shoots Vince, and everything gets calm immediately.

We get the opening musical number again, this time overlaid over a retrospective of scenes from the rest of the movie.

Brian’s Commentary

The dubbing is really poor here, and it detracts from all the performances. The story is pretty formulaic, and the film is very low-budget.

They used a bunch of real dogs for this, but the werewolf is basically a mask in the dark or a mask in the fog; we never get much of a look at it. The monster dog, which isn’t the werewolf, is a big puppet.

Overall, it’s a very generic 80s international horror film.

Kevin’s Commentary

The old man is the least subtle harbinger ever; he was awesome.

It’s said that no one did their own dubbing in the film, and the only time we hear Alice Cooper’s real voice is during the musical numbers. It’s strange seeing him just being a normal looking and acting guy when we usually see him being freaky and made-up on stage. But it would have been better with their own voices or at least better dubbing.

I had never even heard of this movie before. And I can see why. It wasn’t too bad, but it was very bland and forgettable.

2018 Godzilla: The Planet Eater

* Director: Kōbun Shizuno, Hiroyuki Seshita

* Writers: Gen Urobuchi

* Stars: Mamoru Miyano, Takahiro Sakurai, Tomokazu Sugita, Yūki Kaji

* Runtime: 91 minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is the third in the anime trilogy of a fully science fiction Godzilla movie set in the future. This one has much less action than the second movie, and a lot more talk about philosophy and religion. We thought it was okay, on the weak side for a finish.

Spoilery Synopsis

Metphies narrates about how the Exif have been watching humanity since long before Godzilla appeared. He talks about humanity’s need for heroes, religion, and God. He thinks the hero that humanity needs is Haruo Sakaki. Credits roll.

Martin talks about Godzilla and the other monsters’ origins. Maybe humanity’s whole purpose all along was to create the monsters. There’s arguing between the Bilusaludo and human leaders. After the previous battle, Yuko is now brain-dead, but not completely dead. Some of the humans have come to the conclusion that Sakaki is being divinely guided somehow. God is watching over them all, and he might be speaking through Sakaki.

Martin points out that the Hauta treatment that Sakaki got was what saved him from the nanometal. Metphies is fully aware of this, but he promotes the religious ideas of the others anyway. Metphies’ god is supposedly capable of beating Godzilla. Metphies explains that only Sakaki can summon their god to Earth– by using his hatred.

Up in orbit, Dolu-Do and the Bilusaludo revolt and take over the mothership by force. They want Sakaki’s head, so Sakaki has to go into hiding, and Maina, one of the Hauta twins, offers to help. Meanwhile, Metphies uses the religious crystal thing he had repaired in the previous film to send a signal into space.

Metphies and Miana discuss their telepathic abilities. He then does something bad to her. Maina, the twin, senses that something has happened to her sister. The Exifs, on the planet and on the spaceship, hold rituals, and all the human followers call upon their god, named Ghidorah, to come to them.

Ghidorah hears and arrives quickly, killing the human followers one at a time. Yeah, it’s that Ghidorah, coming through a black hole that suddenly appears. It surrounds the mothership and pulls it toward the black hole; time gets messed up and the whole ship explodes spectacularly.

Sakaki quickly comes to the conclusion that Metphies is crazy and has sold them out. As the disturbance from space reaches the planet, Godzilla wakes up again and heads toward the trouble. Godzilla blasts it with atomic breath, but it bends the ray away with his gravitational field. The human’s machines don’t pick up the new monster at all; is it real? Does it not have a physical form? All three of the glowing yellow monster snakes grab onto Godzilla.

Sakaki confronts Metphies, who explains everything. The Exifs have travelled around the universe, choosing planets for Ghidorah to eat, like the Silver Surfer and Galactus. They all basically have a death wish for the entire universe. As he rambles on, Godzilla’s body temperature goes up, but the energy is going somewhere else. Sakaki gets a vision of the people who have died fighting Godzilla.

Meanwhile Miana grabs Professor Martin and takes him to the Hauta’s base. They talk to the Great Egg inside. After about a month’s worth of exposition, Sakaki turns against Metphies and smashes his magic eye.

Suddenly, Godzilla is able to physically touch Ghidorah, and the big yellow monster is now visible on the humans’ sensor. Godzilla then, quite easily, defeats the three-headed monster from space. Metphies dies, and Sakaki cries.

The human survivors go to live with the Hauta and learn their natural ways. Professor starts the nuclear reactor on a crashed vulture. He can use the nanotechnology to rebuild civilization, which Sakaki realizes is the pathway to destruction, just as before. He takes Yuki’s body and steals the vulture. He flies into Godzilla.

Brian’s Commentary

This is the third of the anime trilogy. The appearance of Ghidorah is treated like a big reveal, but he’s right there on the movie poster, so that wasn’t a shock. Mothra never really did make an appearance other than a sort of telepathic messenger.

This one is very talkie, with Metphies’s explanation seemingly going on for an hour. Still, the series overall has a lot going on, with many details and interesting ideas. I guess at the end, they all learn to live with Godzilla, which is weird.

I liked the first two films of the trilogy a lot, but this one was just slow moving, too philosophical/religious, and not that much actually happened beyond all the talking. It was a weak ending to a trilogy that started out pretty great. Overall, I still liked the trilogy, but the ending really brought it down a lot.

Kevin’s Commentary

Summoning an even bigger and worse monster to fight Godzilla. What could go wrong?

I didn’t care for the first movie that much. I thought the second one was really good. So I thought the third would be even better! It’s not. There’s too much talk and not enough action. The animation is still cool and equal in quality, but the script isn’t nearly as entertaining. It wasn’t a strong finish to the trilogy.

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites:

* https://www.horrorguys.com

* https://www.horrormonthly.com

Lots of fun things this week. We’ll start off with “Bone Keeper,” a cool monster flick that just released. We’ll then get really weird with a “Dead Lover” that you’ll either love or hate. “The Kinderhook Creature: In the Shadow of Sasquatch” is the newest in a long line of cryptic documentaries. We’ll wrap up the series with “The Strangers: Chapter 3” and then continue the anime Godzilla trilogy with “Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle” from 2017.

All this as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #54, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 Bone Keeper

* Director: Howard J. Ford

* Writers: Howard J. Ford

* Stars: Sarah Alexandra Marks, Louis James, Tiffany Hannam-Daniels, and John Rhys-Davies

* Runtime: 96 minutes

* Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A group of seven young folks explore a cave infested with creatures that arrived thousands of years ago by meteor. As you might guess, it goes badly for them. The basics are laid out right away.

The effects look very good and it was entertaining. We both enjoyed it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We watch a meteorite crashing down as credits roll. Whatever it is, it’s got tentacles and slithers into a cave. It’s 400,000 years ago, and the cavepeople of the time fear it since it eats them.

In 1976, a woman narrates about her grandfather, a journalist, who went exploring in a cave. He sees cave paintings and skeletal remains. Then the monster gets him.

In the present day. Professor Harrison looks depressed. “I’ve killed him. I killed her, too,” he yells.

Olivia and Annabelle want to go search for her mother, who has gone missing while investigating the grandfather’s disappearance; the police aren’t doing enough.

They, and their friends, a group of monster hunters, head to the remote location and pick up Ashley, a travel blogger. They’re off to find the “Bone Keeper.” With the addition of Ashley, the trip just got a lot less scientific. Ethan, Nick, and Ravi plan to find the monster, and maybe get lucky with the girls in the process.

The group goes to the local pub, and everyone watches them as they come in. They look at all the “Missing Persons” posters on the wall. They’re here to meet Professor Harrison, and the locals are strangely hostile.

Harrison knew Olivia’s father, and he warns them not to go into the caves. Everyone who has ever gone in there has… stayed in there. He really doesn’t want to tell them which cave has the monster; too many people have died. He even has Olivia’s grandfather’s film footage of what happened in the cave. He even thinks the monster is an ancient alien.

The next morning, the seven characters go to the cave that Harrison told them about. They climb, crawl, and do all the usual cave-explorer-y things. They find some slime, and Ravi looks at it in the microscope he’s apparently carried into the cave with him. Ashley stays behind to film some vlogging stuff and the monster grabs her. For some reason, the others can’t hear her screaming as it rips her apart.

The others find some hair with a bit of skull attached, so they know someone has died in this cave. Nick goes looking for Ashley, but he finds what killed her instead.

Ravi and Nadia actually see one of the tentacles and get all excited. When it grabs and kills Nadia, they get even more excited.

Ravi catches up with the others and reports what he saw. There’s a whole nest of the alien creatures down here. They find a huge mound of slowly digesting merging melted bodies, including Olivia’s mother.

They decide it might be a good time to head for the exit, but now they’re lost. They find the exit, and Ethan even gets a few photos of what’s left of Nick still crawling around.

Outside now, Olivia, Annabelle, and Ethan tend to Ravi’s severe wounds. “It gets inside you. It becomes you,” Ravi rants. Ethan calls Harrison and sends him all the footage he’s taken.

The tentacle-monster attacks the girls in the campsite, outside, and Ethan runs to help. It drags Ethan and Ravi back down into the cave. When Olivia and Annabelle see just how big the thing is, they run for the road, but Annabelle is grabbed next.

Olivia hears her mother singing and prepares to go back inside. She goes through all the caves, back to the big digesting mess, and retrieves her mother’s necklace.

Outside, Harrison and the military show up and plant explosives at the cave entrance. They shoot at the many monsters inside and find Olivia, still alive. Then they blow up the cave entrance.

Six months later, Olivia wakes up in the hospital, and the doctor says she’s pregnant. They do an ultrasound, and it’s a little baby tentacle monster. Nope-just a nightmare. She’s with the soldiers and Harrison, who says blowing up the caves may not be the end of the creatures.

Naturally, for the final shot, we see that it’s definitely not over.

Brian’s Commentary

None of these people are spelunkers or regular cave explorers, and yet none of them are claustrophobic or terrified by the caves alone.

Despite being specifically warned to stick together, the group continually splits up so that one person can die at a time. One after another, they die, and no one else ever seems to hear the screams. That’s nowhere near as stupid as Olivia going back inside the cave after seeing what the creature really is.

The creatures are pure CGI, but they are really well done. We see more of them than I expected we would, and they all look good. John Rhys-Davies is too old to be climbing around in caves, but he still has a significant amount of screen time here.

Other than the stupid choices the characters made, the film is really very good!

Kevin’s Commentary

One point that deeply troubled me was the way there would be attacks and rock collapses causing much commotion, and the others who were not that far away in the cave heard absolutely nothing or very little.

That aside, the story is basic but pretty effective I thought. The creature and gore effects look really good, slimy and creepy. The cast does a nice job with it. There’s some issues here and there, but all in all I’d call it a win. I was very entertained.

2026 Dead Lover

* Director: Grace Glowicki

* Writers: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie

* Stars: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Leah Doz, Lowen Morrow

* Runtime: 83 minutes (1 hr 23 mins)

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A lonely and smelly gravedigger laments she can’t find love, then finds a man who adores her just as she is. And when she loses him, she goes to extremes to bring him back from the dead. This was a fun story with lots of chuckles and some real horror at the core. It’s unique, with the look of a stage play, and we both really enjoyed it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re told that this is done with “Stink-O-Vision,” where a number appears on the screen at various points, and we’re supposed to scratch-n-sniff at various times.

A strange-looking woman plants seeds as credits roll. She’s a grave digger and doesn’t smell very good. She’s trying to make a perfume to hide the smell of death on her. She tries to seduce the priest at a funeral; her perfume doesn’t work. When no one shows up for the funeral, the gravedigger tells us all about the too-generic dead woman.

Three old women with big hair talk about the gravedigger and the dead opera singer. We cut to the funeral and the woman’s weird funeral guests. The opera singer’s brother runs off in anguish and is attacked by a wild wolf, but the gravedigger saves him. He smells her and doesn’t hate it; could it be the smell of the wolf’s blood that makes her attractive to him?

The two go for a wash in the ocean, and he “wants to lick your stink. I want to shower in your rot, the feast on your fetid funk. I want to pick up a piece of your poo and eat it like a banana.” (Which Kevin notes might be his favorite monologue and following sex scene ever.) He might be a little weird, but then she has sex with him while holding her shovel.

The two get very close and talk about their needs and dreams. He leaves her because he can’t have children; he goes overseas for an operation to possibly fix that. His postcards are quite descriptive. In the meantime, she works on growing a rosebush to make her smell better; he loves her because of the stink. On the way home, he’s lost at sea, all but his finger. Some foreign fishermen find the finger and bring it to the gravedigger.

We-have-Johnny-Depp-at-home lights his opium pipe, and dreams of the dead opera singer, his wife.

The gravedigger gets the finger returned to her, but she’s not really willing to let her dead lover go. She thinks about the flowers and fertilizer; can she re-grow him? She starts catching lizards and stealing their regeneration-juice. She injects the finger with lizard-elixir and creates a whole Frankenstein’s Lab setup to bring him back. It works– sorta. The finger comes to life and grows… into a very long finger.

What can a lonely woman do when her lover is only one long finger? Well, yeah, that.

The finger wants a body, and the gravedigger is well-equipped to get one. How about the dead man’s sister, the opera singer? She grafts on the special finger to the dead woman’s corpse and zaps it with lightning power.

The opera star with the very long finger doesn’t look too happy to be alive at this point. She likes the lizards more than the gravedigger. The three tall-haired women go to the Dollar-Store-Depp and tell him that the gravedigger has dug up his dead wife; they also tell the priest. He goes to the gravedigger’s house and sees his undead wife there. They fight, sword vs shovel, and shovel wins.

The opera star’s husband takes the gravedigger hostage as the opera star hooks up with a blind fisherman. The gravedigger gets out of her restraints and runs off into the night. The priest, the tall-haired women, and the foreign fishermen all come after the gravedigger as an angry mob. She makes a stink that knocks the priest right out. The widower also comes to her defense and kills the tall-haired women, the foreign fishermen, and the priest.

The gravedigger finds the opera star with the long finger and realizes she’s been cheating on her with the dead, blind fisherman. The opera star gives her the finger, fatally.

The opera star makes her own dead-finger creation and lives happily ever after.

Brian’s Commentary

Note that we didn’t have a Stink-O-Vision card, so the whole Stink-O-Vision didn’t do much for us. I did fart a time or two, and that livened up the show, albeit only briefly and without much variety of scent.

There’s only a cast of four actors who play all the various characters. The sets and lighting are all very plain, giving it a very stage-play look. It’s very obviously made with a super low budget, but they still use a lot of interesting camera shots and lighting to make it visually interesting. The dialogue is ridiculous and perfect at the same time.

I wasn’t expecting much from the trailer, but it’s very funny, paced well, and super creative. I liked this a lot.

Kevin’s Commentary

The sets and the way it’s filmed and the costuming seem very much like a stage play, and actors playing multiple characters add to that vibe. I saw that it was actually filmed on a couple of black box stages, and Grace Glowicki (who co-wrote, directs, and plays the lead) wanted the vibe of experimental theater. Mission accomplished.

I wish we had our Stink-o-vision cards. They are real, I read about them online, but I couldn’t find where we’d get some. We had to imagine the smells. And it is a very smell-focused movie. So marketed only to theaters? Will home releases come with cards enclosed?

I thought it was great. Raunchy and funny, making some real horror something to laugh at. The writing is terrific. My only complaint is a big feature/gimmick of the movie that we couldn’t participate in because it was a home screener.

2026 The Kinderhook Creature: In the Shadow of Sasquatch

* Director: Seth Breedlove

* Writers: Bruce Hallenbeck (Author of the companion book, The Kinderhook Creature and Beyond: A Personal Reminiscence)

* Stars: Bruce Hallenbeck, various eyewitnesses

* Runtime: 1 Hour, 12 Minutes

* YouTube Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a documentary profiling a town in New York called Kinderhook that has a long history and maybe a big hulking creature lurking around in the woods. Bruce Hallenbeck gives us first hand memories of the place. Neither of us had heard of this cryptid before this viewing. The film is well put together, weaving in some Washington Irving history and the past of a really old town. There’s plenty of UFO talk too for folks who are into that. It was interesting and well put together.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a man talking about his grandmother living in what might be a haunted house. Kinderhook is an old rural town north of New York City, an hour southeast of Albany. We get some initial history of the town, founded in the 1600s, and famous people who have some affiliation with the area. This was the source of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” story.

Bruce Hallenback’s story soon turns to the Hudson Valley’s cryptids. There’s been lots of UFO activity there, as well as a white energy “blob” he found in 1962. His father tells us his own experience with the white blob. There is a bit of discussion about ghosts, poltergeists, and hauntings in the area.

The Kinderhook Creature, basically Bigfoot, is up next. We get an old video of Bruce’s grandmother talking about the creature on an old interview show in the 70s. Something was stealing her trash and taking the food out of the bags. Also, she saw the creature sleeping in the backyard once. Turns out, lots of people in the region had seen something like that creature and it started to become famous.

The rest of the film is Bruce and various family members telling us stories of their supernatural encounters…

Brian’s Commentary

It’s another of the “Small Town Monsters” documentaries, and we’ve done a bunch of these by now. It’s a collection of interviews, re-creations, and stories about a creature that I’ve actually never heard of before. As always, the production values are good, the visuals are decent, and the interview subjects are interesting.

The majority of eyewitnesses here are members of Bruce Hallenback’s family, which is a bit suspicious, but overall, the story is well told and kept me entertained for the runtime.

Kevin’s Commentary

It was very well put together weaving in Bruce Hallenbeck’s memories of the place with other folk’s stories and oral histories. I was expecting just Bigfoot stuff, but there’s ghost and UFO stuff too. He even manages to throw in a leprechaun story. So it covers a lot.

It might be kind of cool living somewhere with your yard backed up to the woods where you might see deer and bear and big mysterious creatures.

I thought it was interesting and entertaining.

2026 The Strangers: Chapter 3

* Director: Renny Harlin

* Writers: Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland

* Stars: Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, and Ema Horvath

* Runtime: 91 minutes

* Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The carnage continues with this conclusion of the reboot/trilogy/sequel/prequel. Maya from the previous two movies is still on the run, and we get some flashbacks showing the origin of the Strangers. Quite a bit is explained, but some points you really don’t want to analyse too deeply. We both felt this was the best of the three, with the most going on and the most backstory. And there’s not an after credit scene, but the closing credits are very cool.

Spoilery Synopsis

It is three years ago, when a woman goes to a cheap motel and the woman behind the counter is a little off. That night, there’s a knock at the door. “Is Tamara here?” Dollface takes the woman and ties her up for some wholesome torture. “Why?” “Because you’re here!” Scarecrow and Pinup watch her work and kiss. Credits roll.

Back in the present day, Maya watches as Scarecrow looks at the dead Pinup’s body and hacks at her with his ax. They all get in their truck and drive away, leaving Maya on the road. Not long after, Sheriff Rotter drives past, but Maya hides from him.

Maya comes to an old church and runs into creepy Gregory there. “Relax. Nobody has a mask here,” he says. She’s pretty sure he’s Scarecrow, but it’s not absolutely clear, because he lets her leave. She runs into the sheriff outside, and she has to go with him this time. He’s over-the-top weird at every turn, and she ends up stealing his car.

She soon crashes the car into a tree because she’s in a horror movie– right next to Scarecrow was apparently waiting for her. He throws her in the back of his truck and drives off.

We get a flashback to the trial for Tamara’s murder. The boy is Sheriff Rotter’s son. A few weeks later, the boy and his friend kill a hiker in the woods, and Rotter helps them dispose of the evidence. “I’ll fix it. No more townsfolk, you understand?”

Dollface and Scarecrow take Maya to an old lumberyard. Scarecrow turns on the shredder and puts Shelly/Pinup’s body into it. He then hits Maya with the ax.

In the morning, Maya’s family arrives in town looking for her. They ask the whole group at the diner, but no one says much. The waitress, Annie, says she’s sad that it’s all happening again; non-local people often go missing around here. She says the sheriff knows everything.

Deputy Walters wants to call in the State Police, and the sheriff kills him. Maya’s sister and family watch the sheriff carry Howard’s body out of the morgue and follow him.

Maya wakes up, not dead, to find that Scarecrow has tattooed a smiley-face on her, just like they have. He makes her put on Pinup’s mask. Then he leans in for a mask-to-mask kiss, which she doesn’t like.

Twelve years ago, young Scarecrow and Pinup scout out victims at the truck stop. They follow a pair of likely victims to the motel and do the whole “Tamara” thing. When they go in, the woman inside has already killed her boyfriend.

Back in the present, Maya, in the Pinup mask, rides along with Scarecrow and Dollface to the motel and they make her do the “Tamara” thing. They insist that she kill one of the people inside. As Scarecrow hacks up the man, Maya uses the opportunity to kill Dollface. He then makes Maya kill the woman in the motel room.

The sheriff realizes he’s being followed and leads Maya’s sister, Debbie, to the sawmill; he calls Scarecrow to meet him there. The PI that Debbie hired goes into the sawmill and finds the meat grinder– and the sheriff, who shoots him very dead. Scarecrow kills Debbie’s husband and drags her to the truck where Maya is and kills her too, as Maya watches.

Scarecrow unties Maya and leaves her alone in his truck with Debbie. She starts to drive out of town, but then decides to go back. Somehow, she knows to go to a huge underground maze of dungeons and tunnels with electricity out in the woods. She finds the sheriff there and shoots him a few times.

Maya goes to a room full of candles and photos and sees a sort of shrine to all the victims. Scarecrow comes in behind her and sits down. “I freed you,” he says. He takes off his mask, and it’s Gregory. (Which was not a surprise at this point.) “All these years, you’re the only one who’s survived.”

Everything Maya cared about is gone, and she came here to kill him, but now she reconsiders. “You’re all that’s left.” They start getting romantic, at least until she stabs him. As he lays there on the floor, she grabs his ax and finishes him off.

Maya walks off into the woods, but she’s carrying the Scarecrow mask as she goes. Will she continue as… The Stranger?

Brian’s Commentary

None of the locations in this movie (or the previous one) ever have any other people around, even the busy motel is empty, like the hospital in the previous film.

In this conclusion, we finally get answers as to how this all got started and who the people involved really are. I don’t see how the sheriff could possibly have covered up that many deaths, but I guess that’s a minor thing to nitpick about with some of the stuff going on here.

The soundtrack was very good, as was the casting. Richard Brake should have won some kind of award for creepiness in this one.

Still, this episode explains it all, has a lot of action, and things actually happen (unlike the second film), so all in all, it’s the best of the three.

Kevin’s Commentary

I do appreciate that there was more to the trilogy than just the home-invasion-slowly-torment-and-kill-a-couple formula of the original. On the other hand this was three full length movies that probably would have been fine with just one long one.

The casting was excellent for the young versions of the Strangers, the resemblance was strong..

This third movie was the best of the three, with the most steady action, explanations, and a wrap up. Or maybe a new beginning.

2017 Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle

* Directed by: Hiroyuki Seshita, Kobun Shizuno

* Written by: Gen Urobuchi, Sadayuki Murai, Tetsuya Yamada

* Stars: Mamoru Miyana, Takahiro Sakurai, Kana Hanazawa

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 41 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is the second animated movie in the trilogy after “Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters,” and continues the story right where it left off. Far in the future, Earth belongs to Godzilla and humans returning to the planet hatch a plan to get rid of the big lizard once and for all. But since we know there’s a third movie, things are still left unresolved. The animation is cool, the story is gripping and full of action, it entertained us both.

Spoilery Synopsis

We hear a report from Earth’s surface that now there’s another Godzilla. It’s been growing for 20,000 years and is the size of a mountain. His heat ray is powerful enough to kill them in orbit, so they retreat to the moon. Credits roll.

Sakaki wakes up, surprised to still be alive. He quickly meets up with a human survivor from Earth. The humans must have adapted to the changed atmosphere. He follows after the strange girl and wonders where his crewmates have gone.

Yuko’s group shoots at the girl, and Sakaki shows up right after. Then others show up and surround the group and lead them away to an underground city. Professor Martin is there, and he’s made some observations about the human-ish descendants.

Two of the natives are twins, and they seem to be telepathic. They aren’t happy about the bombings that the humans did before landing. Godzilla is the ancient enemy of their god. There are several subspecies of Godzilla now; most of the lifeforms in the forest now shares some of Godzilla’s DNA.

The group is released to find a landing ship and signal the mothership. The twins go with the group. They fight some monsters and reunite with Metphies, the Exif; they soon call for an evac. Galu-Gu and Belu-Be, the Bilusaludos, come up with a plan to beat the big Godzilla. They want to use the nanometal from the locals’ speartips. The self-regenerating metal was originally used for Mechagodzilla, but that didn’t work out so well. They all decide to search for Mechagodzilla and see how that turns out.

They find an entire city made of nanometal; it’s grown here from Mechagodzilla’s carcass. Yes, it’s “Mechagodzilla City.” The Hauta twins call it “Sinister. Evil. Poison.” The group enters the city and finds the head of Mechagodzilla. They reactivate it, and it starts to regenerate the control center.

Sakaki explains his plan to capture and kill Godzilla using the whole city as a trap. They build a new flying weapon, the Vulture, and they want to use it to lure Godzilla into the trap.

Professor Martin has noticed that the people who were treated by the Hauta seem to be feeling sick, as if their treatment and the nanometal aren’t compatible. Metphies also doesn’t like the whole idea of the nanometal, and they’re all starting to get a little creeped out. There’s also some friction between the Bilusaludo and Exif ideas. Metphies explains that his own world was destroyed by a monster far worse than Godzilla, but we don’t hear its name.

The Bilusaludo want to join with MechaGodzilla city to evolve into a superior life form. Some of them are volunteering to join with the machines. The city starts thinking for itself, and that might be trouble.

Meanwhile, the Hauta talk about their egg.

Godzilla notices the city and approaches. Everyone gets ready for a big battle. Sakaki and Yuko fly out in three vultures to slow him down. They lead him to the trap point and spray Godzilla with liquid nanometal as planned. They shoot and shoot until Godzilla’s shield collapses, then they shoot him with an EMP harpoon. Godzilla collapses but doesn’t die.

The barometric pressure suddenly changes; Godzilla’s not exploding, his temperature’s rising. It’s going to melt the city, and the vultures can’t get close enough to hurt it.

Galu-Gu becomes one with the machine and tells Yuko and Sakai that they need to join the nanometal as well. Yuko starts to change, but Sakaki’s body rejects the change. Galu-Gu and Metphies get into a philosophical argument about the war, and Sakaki has to make a decision. Sakaki blows up the command center and Galu-Gu as well.

Godzilla gets up, and he ain’t happy. He wipes out what’s left of MechaGodzilla City with his super-atomic-breath. Sakaki lands his vulture, but Yuko dies from the half-completed conversion.

Brian’s Commentary

This picks up immediately after “Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters.” It has the benefit of not needing to explain the whole situation and characters this time, but it’s definitely still the middle of the story. There’s lots of action, and it’s easy enough to follow and understand what’s going on at all times.

I liked it.

Kevin’s Commentary

I am impressed with how detailed and rich the animation is. And I enjoyed this one much more than the first movie in the trilogy. There was less gibber jabber and more action.

Contact Info:

Email: mailto:[email protected]

Websites:

* https://www.horrorguys.com

* https://www.horrormonthly.com

We’ll start off the week with “Whistle,” released this year, along with “The Strangers Chapter 2” from last year and “The Car” from way back in the seventies. Finally, we’ll continue our series coverage with “Return to Silent Hill” and “Godzilla: Planet of Monsters.”

All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #54, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2025 Whistle

* Director: Corin Hardy

* Writer: Owen Egerton

* Stars: Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Nick Frost

* Runtime: 97 minutes (Note: some sources report up to 108 minutes)

* Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A group of young people come into possession of a cursed whistle that summons the future death of anyone who blows it or hears it. So they learn about the magical situation as they are getting picked off one at a time.

It’s a little formulaic, but it’s well made and above average in quality. We were both entertained.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a basketball game with the Stalkers versus the Wolves. One of the players, Horse, sees something weird up in the audience. As he makes the winning shot, he sees someone who appears to be on fire that scares him off back to the locker room. The player runs into the locker room and smashes an old-looking urn as the smoky-ashy-man approaches. It sets him on fire in the shower. Credits roll.

Six months later, Chrys argues with her cousin Rel about unpacking her stuff. It’s her first day of high school after moving here. She’s assigned Horse’s locker and some of the kids take offense to that. We get to meet some of the other “kids” of the school, as well as a teacher, Mr. Craven. Also, Chrys may have a bit of history. Grace tries to be nice to the new girl, but doesn’t get any support.

Inside Horses’s locker, Chrys finds all Horses’s stuff, still there, including that ancient urn with an ugly skull-whistle inside. She’s about to blow it when the bell rings.

Mr. Craven looks at the whistle, and it’s got ancient writing on the side which he just happens to be able to read. Someone Googles the script and says it means “Summon the Dead.” He blows in it to see if it works and it makes the mirror shatter.

Chrys meets Noah, a youth pastor who invites her to church. He’s very sketchy– no, he’s also a knife-wielding drug dealer. Meanwhile, Rel steals the whistle off Craven’s desk. Not long after, a bloody bald man crushes Craven’s lungs and makes him lose all his hair.

At Grace’s houseparty, Grace blows the whistle, and they all cringe at the sound. Ellie is nice to Chrys and invites her to the harvest festival tomorrow night. Chrys soon develops a crush on Ellie.

Later that night, Grace works on her homework next to the pool. She hears someone scrabbling around on the deck and checks it out. She gets a jump scare, but that’s all.

The next morning, Rel and Chrys arrive at school and hear about Craven’s death from lung cancer last night.

Chrys and Ellie go to Horse’s house to return the whistle to his parents. His mother, Ivy, is broke and has to sell all her possessions. She’s very self-obsessed. “You didn’t find it, it found you,” she says about the whistle. It doesn’t say “Summon the dead,” it says “Summon YOUR death.” It shows you how you’re going to die. It brings Death to you earlier; you die in the way you were meant to, but much sooner than intended.

Could Mr. Craven have used it like Horse did? Ellie works at the hospital, so she checks on Horse’s death records. Horse’s dental records show that he was in his forties, but he was really just seventeen. He would have died in a gas leak at age forty. Mr Craven would have died of lung cancer eventually, but it happened last night because of the whistle.

It’s time for the harvest festival, and it’s quite a party. Rel and Grace are there. She buys some weed from Noah, who then tries unsuccessfully to sell some to Chrys. Meanwhile, Grace goes into the scare maze and runs into a terrifying old woman who chases her. It catches her and she ages seventy years in a matter of seconds.

Ellie and Chrys explain the whistle to Dean and Rel; they all heard the whistle, so it’ll be coming after them as well. Dean doesn’t believe any of it until he gets home and sees himself after a drinking and driving death.

Chrys tells Ellie about how she OD’d last year and her father died on the way taking her to the hospital. This leads to a makeout session. Meanwhile, Rel has visions of his death at the steel mill.

The next morning, they all go back to see Horses’ mother about Choka, the whistle of Death. She says there’s no way to stop it, but they can change its course. “Give your death someone else’s life. Offer Choka a new sacrifice. Mark another with your blood and you will be spared.”

Alone in his bedroom, Dean dies from a massive traffic accident in the grisliest way possible.

Meanwhile, at the church, Rel has decided to trade Noah’s life for his own to break the curse. Noah takes his gun away, but Rel knows he’s not going to die that way. Rel knocks him out and takes him to the steelmill. Chrys and Ellie show up and talk Rel out of marking Noah with his blood. The invisible steel-chewing machine then kills Rel as the girls watch.

Chrys says they summoned Death and have to die– but they don’t have to stay dead. Ellie’s a diabetic, and she’s got enough insulin to kill both of them and then revive. Ellie injects Chrys, she dies, and then Ellie resuscitates her.

Noah, meanwhile, breaks out of where they had him tied up, and he works on getting into where the girls are.

Noah gets in with his gun as Ellie lays on the floor dying. She’s bleeding out, but Noah dips his fingers in the puddle like it’s a religious experience. Yep, he’s marked with Ellie’s blood now. His own Death comes after him, and he doesn’t escape it.

Three months later, Chrys is back in high school and she’s with Ellie. We cut to another girl opening a locker and finding the whistle inside…

Brian’s Commentary

I went into this one blind except for knowing a cursed whistle was involved. I liked it quite a bit. The casting, soundtrack, and deaths were all good, and the plot was fairly unique. The film leaves it wide open for a sequel, and it was good enough that I’d watch it if there was one.

Kevin’s Commentary

The basic formula seems familiar. A group of friends in their 20s still in high school get their hands on a magic object that kills them off one by one in unique ways. I thought they milk things out a bit, but overall it’s well made and entertaining. The effects are excellent, the cast is good as are all the technical aspects.

I’d call it above average for this type of movie.

2025 The Strangers Chapter 2

* Director: Renny Harlin

* Writers: Alan R. Cohen, Alan Freedland (Based on characters by Bryan Bertino)

* Stars: Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Froy Gutierrez, Ema Horvath, Ella Bruccoleri

* Runtime: 98 minutes

* YouTube Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Immediately after Chapter 1, survivor Maya wakes up in the hospital and has a peaceful recovery. Okay, not really, the Strangers are still after her. There’s lots of chasing and incidental body count. The Strangers are persistent, and we get hints about their origin. And then it stops and says, “To be continued.” Yep, that happened.

Spoilery Synopsis

As credits roll, we get flashbacks to the three “Strangers” killing a man in the woods. We cut to Maya, from the previous film, who wakes up in the hospital. She describes them and tells the story to Sheriff Rotter, who is still creepy. She wonders who “Tamara” is that they kept asking about. The people in the local diner speculate about the killers, and they’re all suspicious-looking themselves. We cut to an angry little girl who has a doll that looks like Dollface.

That night, at the hospital, the place is nearly empty. Maya gets a phone call, “Is Tamara here?” Then there’s screaming out in the hallway. Suddenly, the lights go out, and her cell phone stops getting reception. Soon, she sees Scarecrow wandering around with his axe. Fortunately, it appears that Maya is the only patient in the huge hospital. Soon, they’re all playing hide-and-seek in the hospital’s basement workings.

She hides in the morgue, in the same drawer as her dead fiancé, Ryan. This works pretty well, so she gets away from the hospital and runs outside into the rain. She runs into a woman who tells her that the sheriff isn’t going to help her “Because he’s–” and then she dies. Maya runs into a horse farm or stable to hide.

Running back outside, she’s picked up by two women whom Maya obviously doesn’t trust, but at least they have a car. They pick up two guys on the road, and she finds it all very suspicious. It’s all very tense. She panics and jumps out of the moving car and back to the woods.

As the sun comes up, Maya uses a stolen first aid kit to sew up the wound in her side, screaming all the while. Somehow, the three baddies have tracked her to this location as well, even though there are miles of forest between where Maya jumped out of the car and where the bad guys were left behind. Instead, Maya gets attacked by a wild boar, which is pretty random.

She’s having a really bad day. But not as bad as the pig.

Pinup comes across the scene and has a flashback about playing with baby pigs herself.

Maya makes her way back to the murder cabin from the previous film and grabs a knife, some clothes, and food. She meets a man who says he’s with the State Police, and they get into his car. He doesn’t last long before the masked women kill him.

She hurries to another house, with a strange man inside, and passes out. When she wakes up, Turns out this is the house of the two men from the car she was in earlier. Gregory is creepy, but the women say it’s fine to ignore him.

Family has sent an EMT to pick up Maya at the house, but he stops at a gas station and maybe tells the wrong person where he’s going.

Back at the house, Gregory explains that this stuff has been going on for years, and she’s the only one who has survived. After a few minutes, Pinup arrives and tries to break in. Dollface, however, is already in her bedroom somehow. She makes it outside to find the EMT’s ambulance and his dead body outside.

Pinup is waiting inside the ambulance, and they have a quick fight. She dies. Later, Scarecrow takes off her mask, and we see a face inside; it’s– I have no idea who that is. We get another flashback to the creepy, animal-killing little girl. The little girl kills Tamara, another girl whom she was jealous of. The little boy sees what she’s done and smiles.

To be continued.

Brian’s Commentary

Takes place immediately after the first film in the reboot series. Ever notice how deserted hospitals in horror movies get at night? It’s like doctors, nurses, and patients all go home at closing time.

The film is mostly just Maya running from one bad situation to another, with The Strangers ahead of her at every turn. There’s lots of suspense and tension, but not really much in the way of a plot, except for watching bad things happen to Maya.

You know how in many horror movies, there’s a part in the middle where everything just drags a little bit before the exciting finale? This whole movie is that draggy middle part.

A waste of time.

Kevin’s Commentary

The hospital made for a good cat and mouse setting for Maya vs the killers, but it was absurdly empty of people other than them and a very few folks at the wrong place and time.

It’s quite remarkable, to the point of silly, how the Strangers are able to travel from place to place wherever Maya flees.

Brian summed it up perfectly referring to this as the draggy middle part of a mediocre movie. A looooong three-movie movie.

I was not impressed.

1977 The Car

* Director: Elliot Silverstein

* Writers: Dennis Shryack and Michael Butler

* Stars: James Brolin, Kathleen Lloyd, and John Marley

* Runtime: 98 minutes

* Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A small desert town is terrorized by a killer on wheels. As the body count and attacks climb, the local sheriff and his crew struggle to stop it, and gradually learns it’s no ordinary car and driver. The pacing is a little clunky, but a good cast and decent script with some surprises elevates it. It’s not excellent, but we were both entertained.

Spoilery Synopsis

After the credits, we open in the desert as a couple of bicyclists zoom down the desert road and into a dark tunnel. We see a car drive into the other end of the tunnel (from the car’s POV). The not-so-subtle music hints that something bad is going to happen. The car comes up behind the bikers and both young people die gruesome deaths. The car, on the other hand, honks gleefully and drives on.

Wade and his girlfriend Lauren wake up and do hanky-pankie as his young children listen outside the bedroom door. Elsewhere, John Morris plays his French Horn outside grumpy old Amos’s house. John puts out his thumb for a ride when the car swerves to hit him. It misses, but then comes back for more.

Wade is the sheriff’s deputy, and he gets called out to Amos’s place, where the car has repeatedly run over John the hitchhiker. His description is a little sketchy, but it was obviously intentional. Not long after, they find the dead bicycle girl, but they don’t find the boy, who went over a bridge at a different point.

Meanwhile, Amos’s wife, Bertha, is at the police station. Sheriff Beck wants her to sign an abuse complaint against her husband. Beck’s had a crush on her since high school. Beck watches as the car zooms toward Amos, but it hits and kills him instead. An old Indian woman sees what happened and blames an evil spirit; there was no driver in the car. Wade takes over as the new sheriff, and he’s not happy about it.

There’s going to be a parade rehearsal this afternoon, and Wade knows it’s a bad idea. They get a call that they’ve found the bicycle-boy’s body, so that distracts everyone for a while. In the meantime, Deputy Luke starts drinking again.

At the fairgrounds, the kids and teachers practice their parade marching as the wind picks up and visibility drops. Everyone panics when they hear a car horn, and the horses go berserk. The kids all run a mile or so to the cliffs instead of going into a building or onto the bleachers or something. They all hide in the old cemetery, but the car stops just outside the gate and waits as Lauren taunts it from inside the fence.

Deputy Ray spots the car in the desert and follows it. All the other cops move in sped-up footage to get to that area. Things go badly for Ray as the car slowly pushes him over the edge of a cliff.

Somehow, the car rolls over, takes out two more police cars and comes to a stop in front of Wade and his little pistol. Wade shoots the car’s tires and windshield, but it appears to be bulletproof. It then knocks him down when he approaches the driver’s door - which has no handles, and Wade passes out.

In the hospital, the deputies all discuss what they know. Lauren wonders about the wind at the parade; it was almost like magic. Luke admits he’s started drinking again and simply forgot to cancel the parade rehearsal with everything that’s been going on.

Deputy Chas drives Lauren home, and the car follows them. As she goes into the house, the wind picks up; the car wants revenge for all her taunting earlier. It drives right through her living room and kills her. We get a long scene where Wade is sad. Luke thinks the car didn’t go into the cemetery because the ground was hallowed. Wade is skeptical, but he doesn’t have a real explanation that beats that.

Wade has a plan, but he needs Amos’s help with explosives. We get a long scene of Wade repairing his motorcycle, only to find the car is in his garage. After a standoff, the car chases Wade and his motorcycle down the road. He lures the car to where the surviving deputies and Amos are rigging up dynamite in the cliffs.

Wade keeps the car busy while the deputies finish wiring everything, and blow it up excessively. Afterwards, Wade and Luke debate what they saw in the fire. As the closing credits roll, we see the car is in a city now…

Brian’s Commentary

There’s no explanation for any of this. We never find out why the car is killing people.

It’s got a lot of similarities with “Duel” from 1971 as well as “Christine” from 1983. One came before, and one after, but the influences carry over between films. It may be stretching things a little, but “Rubber” (2010) is also in the same neighborhood.

The dialogue and the pacing are really weird. They focus on lots of things that aren’t really all that important to the plot. The cast is surprisingly good for such a weak film; most of the actors were big at the time, or would become big later.

I was entertained, but it’s a long way from great.

Kevin’s Commentary

I saw this one when it came out at the theater. I was eleven, and it was a formative movie for my enjoyment of horror. I haven’t seen it since, and I was interested in seeing what I thought of it now.

In one scene a group of teachers and kids seeks refuge in an old cemetery, and the car doesn’t follow them in. It’s said that the car wouldn’t go on hollowed ground, and I thought at the time I first saw it that it made perfect sense - it was afraid of falling in the hollowed ground of graves. It was years later that it suddenly occurred to me oooooooh, they said “hallowed ground,” not “hollowed.”

The cast has lots of familiar faces of actors from the 70s that were in lots of stuff before and after. James Brolin was young once.

That’s quite a few deputies for such a small town, though they do have a big area of land to cover, but that was necessary for the action and body count.

Watching it now, almost 50 years later, I was still entertained.

2026 Return to Silent Hill

* Director: Christophe Gans

* Writers: Christophe Gans, Sandra Vo-Anh, Will Schneider

* Stars: Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson

* Runtime: 106 minutes

* Trailer Link:

* 2

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

James gets a letter from his lost love imploring him to return to Silent Hill, and so he does. Once there he goes through a series of encounters and scenes with creepy stuff, very much like walking through a video game, interspersed with flashbacks of his relationship with Mary.

While the setting and creatures are similar, this doesn’t seem to be connected to the previous two movies in terms of characters or story. The plot is sparse, mostly just a quest that goes on for quite a bit of time through scene after scene of strangeness. It was… okay.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a man driving too fast through the windy, curvy, mountain roads. Unsurprisingly, this goes badly, as he nearly hits a woman in the road, causing her to miss her bus. She talks about Silent Hill, her hometown. She’s Mary, and he’s James, and he offers to drive her home.

James wakes up– that was all just a dream. He’s very drunk and gets thrown out of the bar. His therapist calls to nag him about his appointment tomorrow. He goes home and finds a letter asking him to come back to “their place” from Mary. We get a flashback to James and Mary’s big romance. James returns to Silent Hill. Credits roll.

A woman named Angela tells James to grab a sandbag and follow her. There are ashes falling from the sky, and she says some fires are still burning. Then, there were floods, and she warns him not to go to town.

James walks into town, and it’s not only deserted, it’s also covered in ash and haze. James gets a flashback to the people of Silent Hill talking about Mary’s father, Jacob Crane, and all he’s done for the town. Meanwhile, outside, an armless monster attacks a homeless man.

Suddenly, an air raid siren goes off, and everything gets really dark. He sees all sorts of weird creatures outside, and runs inside to hide. He sees, or imagines, seeing a great deal of weirdness and calls his therapist back.

James runs into Eddie, a man hiding in town, and he talks about all the monsters that just moved into town. They find a little girl, Laura, trapped behind some bars. Eddie turns on James, but that’s not as bad as a Pyramid-Head, who starts chasing James through the old building. He then runs into a giant spider-woman who chases him some more. Pyramid kills the spider-woman and cuts her arms off.

James runs into Angela, who tells him he shouldn’t have come, as there are too many secrets here.

He next runs into Maria, who leads him through town to the hospital, but Mary’s not there. She tells him about Joshua Crane, who was an old-time cult leader in the town. The two walk into a room full of freeze-frame nurses who chase them. Maria gets injured, so James finds Laura, who says she knows where Mary is.

James finally finds Mary, who is now a four-armed monster who kills him– no, he wakes up, that was all a dream. He’s in the Silent Hill Hospital, as a regular patient. There are doctors and nurses, and it all seems normal again. They tell James that Mary has been dead for months now, but he knew that.

We get another flashback to the couple in Silent Hill arguing about what her father did to her with the cult. This ends with him storming out and leaving town. He feels like he let her down.

Suddenly, James is back in the horror version of the town, explaining what happened to Maria. She looks just like Mary, and they kiss. They take the elevator all the way down.

James wakes up next to the river and watches as the hospital burns to the ground behind him. James remembers that Mary’s full name was Mary Angela Laura Crane; all the women have been Mary all along. He remembers her getting sick; her father had been poisoning her all her life. She wanted to die, and he smothered her to death.

Back in Silent Hill, James sees Mary turn into a big, undead-looking moth with four arms and flies away. He then puts her corpse in his car and drives into the river to drown…

Nope– another dream. We’re back in the opening scene where James almost hits Mary with his car. This time around, the two of them drive to anywhere other than Silent Hill…

Brian’s Commentary

This seems to ignore all the previous films. It is much like a video game, with James running from one unexplained situation to another, because– why?

The setting is everything here. There’s no real acting or characterization to speak of. There’s only a hint of a plot; it’s mostly just one scary scene after another, just like a video game.

This was dull, made no sense, and was overall… atrociously bad.

Kevin’s Commentary

They stepped up the creepy and unsettling encounters a bit in this one. And it has the video game vibe, almost more so than a movie. The plot is thin; it’s really all about the quest and encounters. It started feeling tedious after a while.

I can’t help but think I’d be more into these movies if I was a fan of the games. This one is said to be based on the game Silent Hill 2 from 2001. I’ve never played any of them.

2017 Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters

* Director: Kōbun Shizuno, Hiroyuki Seshita

* Writer: Gen Urobuchi

* Stars (Main Cast): Mamoru Miyano, Takahiro Sakurai, Kana Hanazawa, Yūki Kaji

* Runtime: 88 minutes

* Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s far in the future, and refugees from space come back to Earth after everyone left due to the giant monsters ruining everything. Before they can resettle, they have to deal with Godzilla. This one is an anime style animated movie, but it’s still considered an official movie in the Toho series. Brian enjoyed it quite a bit, while Kevin - who has a bias against cartoons - didn’t get much of anything from it.

Spoilery Synopsis

Aboard a space station, guards point their guns at a docked spaceship. The pilot, Captain Sakaki, is refusing to take colonists to Tau-E, which everyone knows is uninhabitable. They’re just trying to dump and abandon their elderly. The old colonist in charge calls Sakaki, and he says the colonists want to land on the planet, any planet. Sakaki gives in and launches toward the planet below. From the space station’s window, Sakaki watches as the landing shuttle explodes in orbit. Credits roll.

We hear a report about monsters appearing on Earth at the end of the 20th century. The monsters came from everywhere and Godzilla was the worst of them. Aliens, the Exif, arrived, and they wanted to live here. Then the Bilusaludo, another race arrived as well. They also offered to rid Earth of Godzilla. Godzilla overwhelmed them as well.

Sakaki remembers life on Earth and the rush to evacuate to the stars. Life aboard the space station wasn’t much better. Sakaki, now in jail aboard the ship, researches the history of Earth and Godzilla. He wants to go back and fight the big monster. The ship’s chances of finding a habitable planet are really small; returning to Earth is maybe the only option. Due to relativity, over a thousand years have passed on Earth.

There’s a plan floating around that says they can defeat Godzilla; Sakaki wrote it, and the Exifs say it might be possible. Everyone rushes to the windows to see their homeworld; the younger generation have never seen it. It’s been 10,000 years on Earth, so even Godzilla couldn’t still be around.

One of the drones goes dead. It must have been Godzilla and his atomic breath. He is still alive down there, which brings on a lot of discussion. Sakaki is released from jail to lead the fight.

The space force lands on Earth and prepares the area for a battle. Sakaki explains his whole plan, and there’s a lot that has to go right. Godzilla has a hidden organ that gives him protective shields, and he hopes to disable it.

Life on Earth has changed. Some of the trees are razor sharp, and the air is barely breathable. A group of flying monsters attacks the base, and they’re something completely new. Nothing could have evolved that quickly, could they? Turns out, they were really gone for 19,200 years, so… maybe?

Martin, the scientific leader, says there’s no real benefit in staying since everything here is toxic now. He wants to set up a base on the moon instead. In order to retreat, they have to join up with another company that still has working ships to evacuate. In order to get there, they have to pass through Godzilla’s territory.

Metphies, the Exif scientist, suggests that Godzilla will be looking for them. He’s “the vengeful hammer for the arrogant.” He’s seen it before with other races.

Godzilla soon shows up on the scene, and he somehow causes the human’s ship to crash. They use a failed attack by Colonel Leland to figure out where Godzilla’s shield emitter is located. With Leland dead, Metphies is the new commander, but he puts Sakaki in charge instead.

There’s another battle with Godzilla, but in the middle of the fight, more of those flying things show up to get in the way. The group leads Godzilla to the trap point, and they set off their traps. Godzilla is mostly buried, and they hit him with everything they have.

Godzilla has been defeated– the plan worked! Martin thinks this probably wasn’t the original Godzilla from 20,000 years ago but one of his descendants. If they find another one, at least they know they can beat it.

Suddenly, there’s an earthquake. Something even more powerful than Godzilla is coming! It’s… big. Yes, it’s the original Godzilla, and he’s spent millennia growing to be mountain-sized.

Everyone retreats as Sakaki vows to kill the monster…

Brian’s Commentary

This one is animated, but still counts as an official Toho Godzilla film. It’s a much more ambitious, complicated story than more non-animated films.

Overall, it added a lot of new stuff to the far-future world, and it more or less all made sense.

Godzilla himself only shows up toward the end of the story, but he makes an impression. Overall, I liked it more than I thought I would.

Kevin’s Commentary

Anime something something cartoon blah blah.

It’s highly detailed with top notch animation, there’s a lot happening in the story, the technology is advanced, and Godzilla is more powerful than ever. All that said, this really didn’t do much for me at all.

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We’ll start off the week with a new folksy-horror film, “The Dreadful.” We’ll then take a look at some rough family life with “The Other” from late last year. “The Hills Run Red” is this week’s lame-o slasher film. Finally, we’ll continue our series coverage with “Silent Hill: Revelation” and “Godzilla: Final Wars.”

All this as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #54, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:

https://horrormonthly.com

Mainstream Films:

2026 The Dreadful

* Directed by: Natasha Kermani

* Written by: Natasha Kermani

* Stars: Sophie Turner, Kit Harington, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurence O’Fuarain, Jonathan Howard

* Run Time: 94 minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Two women in 1400s England live a quiet life on their own on the edges of society. And it’s a quiet and slow build of a movie. But the dread does build and things get darker as things go along. It’s pretty low key in every way, with beautiful scenery and strong performances. We both liked it quite a bit.

Spoilery Synopsis

Anne goes to church and has Communion. Her mother-in-law, Morwen, is a pickpocket, stealing from young mothers. They’re poor, and all the men from the village have gone off to war.

Anne dreams of her husband, Seamus, returning from war, but there’s something very wrong with him. Morwen says, “This war will make us rich.”

The next day, she runs into Jago, home from the war. He tells the story of how Seamus was rather brutally killed in the war. She still remembers when they were all little and growing up together. Anne and Morwen take the news badly.

Not long after, there’s a shipwreck nearby, and one survivor makes it to the beach. Morwen stabs him in the back, which Anne doesn’t see, and then she and Anne loot the bodies. “God is smiling on us to send such good luck,” Morwen adds. They eat well that night.

Jago likes Anne, but she’s not really interested in him. Morwen doesn’t like him either; he was always jealous of Seamus.

A wandering priest comes by and shows them his relic. He wants to sell it to them for three silver pieces. As he prays with Anne, Morwen cuts his throat. Anne is horrified, but Morwen justifies it all.

Some time later, Anne watches as a knight in armor kills a man in the field. She’s seen the knight before. She runs to Jago for protection, and he likes that. Later, she has a dream where Morwen is eating raw flesh. She sneaks out of the house late at night and goes to Jago; they have sex. He wants her to move in with him, but she thinks Morwen needs her.

Anne starts helping Morwen kill and rob travelers of their valuables. When Jago comes around for Anne, Morwen runs him off with her knife. She sneaks off to do her thing with Jago when Morwen’s asleep.

Meanwhile, Morwen watches as a knight in armor comes to their house. She follows him and kills him from behind. She takes off his helmet and loots him.

Anne tells Morwen that she’s leaving to be Jago’s wife. Morwen does not take it well, and she goes to live with Jago. That night, Anne dreams that the demon knight came and killed them both.

Anne notices discrepancies in Jago’s story about her husband’s death. Could he have killed Seamus? He tells the story about how Seamus would kill soldiers and rob their bodies– just like his mother’s been doing. Seamus killed the knight in the helmet and put on the helmet. The helmet burned Seamus and wouldn’t come off; Jago left him there on the battlefield. Anne turns against him and leaves.

We get a flashback to Morwen killing the knight, who turned out to be Seamus in that same helmet.

Anne goes to the village and finds the priest has been murdered by the knight. She runs to Morwen’s house, but the old woman isn’t home. The knight shows up, and it’s Morwen inside the helmet. She screams that she can’t get it off. Anne rips the mask off, and Morwen is all disfigured under there now. “Now you really are a demon,” Anne says.

An actual demon comes out of the helmet, and the two women run for the house. When Anne looks outside, all she finds is the helmet.

Anne and Jago talk about demons. He still wants her, but now she’s loyal to Morwen, who has gone blind from what the helmet did to her. Anne goes outside and picks up the helmet…

Brian’s Commentary

This is based on the same Buddhist parable as “Onibaba” (1964). Like that film, this one is slow-moving and atmospheric. There aren’t any jump scares or anything like that; just a slow buildup of dread that you know isn’t going to end well. And it doesn’t.

Kevin’s Commentary

The scenery and quiet of the movie are very soothing. The dreadfulness is there, but it’s pretty low-key. I thought it was a good watch. Excellent cast.

2025 The Other

* Directed by: Paul Etheredge

* Written by: Paul Etheredge

* Stars: Olivia Macklin, Dylan McTee, Avangeline Friedlander

* Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes

* Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

When a couple brings home a little orphan girl, it’s not a simple happily ever after. There’s a reason she’s holding that drill in the poster, and we get to find out why. It builds slowly to a big finish, then a very abrupt ending. It’s on the unique side, and we liked it more than disliked it.

Spoilery Synopsis

The lady at the adoption agency explains that Kathelia doesn’t speak , but they don’t know why. She’s been returned to the orphanage before. Robin and Daniel go ahead and adopt her anyway. Credits roll.

Robin’s mother has done some research and learned that Kathelia’s mother killed and cut up her whole family, which might be why Kathelia doesn’t speak. We see that all the food in the house has very suddenly gone off.

That night, everyone goes to bed, and Kathelia grabs a big knife from the kitchen as something out in the pool goes, “Bloop!”

In the morning, Daniel finds some pink sludge growing in the pool. Robin finds that all her kitchen knives are missing. Kathelia looks hard at the pink stuff.

Kathelia meets Fiona, a neighbor with Down Syndrome. They spend the morning throwing dolls in the sewer. She’s… weird. Her mother, Lizzie, comes over, and Fiona says, “That lady is a door” to Robin. Robin starts being afraid to be home alone.

The family throws a party for all the people they know with children, and Kathelia doesn’t look happy to be there. All the kids know about Kathelia’s murderous mom, which soon turns into a fight. Afterward, Robin gets into the jellyfish-infested pool. Meanwhile, Kathelia packs a bag and runs out the front door until she gets a nosebleed. They soon find her.

In the morning, Fiona knows that Kathelia “tried to get away” and couldn’t. “You’re stuck here now.” She follows this up with, “Monsters are coming. They’ll be here soon.”

The parents take Kathelia to a child psychologist, but that goes badly. Robin thinks adopting was a mistake, but Daniel wants to stick with her. Robin’s pregnant again, and her priorities have changed.

Kathelia gags Robin and ties her to the bed somehow, which is over the line for Robin, who wants to send her back. Also, it looks like she lost the baby.

Kathelia writes down an address for Daniel, which he checks out. He goes inside to talk to the old woman inside, but all the food on the table is rotten. The old woman is weird and has a worm crawling out of her leg. Turns out, the woman is insane and tied to a leash. The husband blames all their troubles on Kathelia and warns Daniel that he’ll find out. His wife got pregnant with something nasty after Kathelia came to live with them. “Get rid of that child any way you can!”

Robin goes to the doctor and shows her the thing that came out of her. The multiple things that came out of her, and they don’t look quite right. The doctor wants her to go to the hospital, but Robin says she’s fine and leaves.

By the time Robin gets home, she’s fat and really pregnant-looking. She kicks down Kathelia’s door and threatens her. Kathelia can’t scream.

Kathelia runs to Fiona’s house; she talks to ghosts and plays with bugs. Then she whacks Kathelia with a hammer, which involves a hospital visit. By the time Daniel gets home, Robin looks ready to deliver and has become completely unhinged.

The doctor calls; Kathelia has “vanishing twin syndrome,” where Kathelia “ate” her own twin in utero. Thanks to Fiona’s attack, they discovered this. The twin got stuck in her frontal lobe, which is why she can’t speak.

At home, Robin looks terrible and immediately gives birth to something nasty. Daniel and Kathelia go to see Fiona, who seems to know things. Lizzie tells Daniel Fiona’s origin story. She knew hitting Kathelia on the head would result in finding the monster in her head.

Things get weird from here.

The whole group goes up to the attic so Fiona can put on a weird raincoat and do a ritual to communicate with the monster. The twin inside Kathelia is trying to use any woman as a door to be born into the world.

The gynecologist comes to the house to talk to Robin about “the baby.” Daniel comes home, and Robin stabs him with scissors a few times. The doctor gets it even more severely. Kathelia hides and finds all of Robin’s previous dead babies. Robin drags Kathelia out to the pool, which appears to have become a gateway to Hell.

Lizzie and Fiona show up out of nowhere and rescue Kathelia, who goes over and beats on Robin’s belly. “It’s not there. She’s just a door,” Fiona explains. Robin then slices Lizzie’s neck and kills her on the spot. When Robin comes after the rest of them with a sledgehammer, they all barricade themselves in the workroom lab.

Fiona tells Kathelia that she needs to dig out the body from her brain or they’re all gonna die. Kathelia looks at the power tools on the wall and chooses a drill. Daniel puts the drill to Kathelia’s scar and lets it rip.

As the fetus gets drilled out of Kathelia’s brain, Robin stops her assault. Suddenly, a deformed little baby crawls out of Kathelia’s otherwise normal-sized head and attacks Daniel. Kathelia picks up the little thing and breaks its neck. Then she drops it in the trash.

Brian’s Commentary

I kept waiting for Kathelia to become Cthulhu, but that didn’t happen.

I’m sure the police will eat up any explanation they offer about the dead doctor, the dead Lizzie, the stab wound, and the drill-headed child.

The ending is pretty cool, but it was a bit of a slog to get there.

Kevin’s Commentary

Being understanding is good up to a point, but this kid went past the point of “time to take her back to the orphanage” early on in the movie. But it wouldn’t have been much of a movie if they had, I suppose.

It didn’t go in the direction that I expected, and I wasn’t expecting that much body horror. Like Brian pointed out, how are they going to explain all this to the police?

I thought the ending was a little too abrupt, but overall I’d say I liked it.

2009 The Hills Run Red

* Director: Dave Parker

* Writers: David J. Schow (Screenplay), John Carchietta (Story), John Dombrow (Based on screenplay)

* Stars: Sophie Monk, Tad Hilgenbrink, Janet Montgomery, Alex Wyndham, William Sadler

* Runtime: 1 hour, 21 minutes

* Trailer Link:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

A group of horror fans take a road trip to hunt down the lost film “The Hills Run Red” from 1982. It’s well made, with a decent cast, and good special effects. It takes too long to get to the good stuff though. And while there are some unique aspects, overall it wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before. We give it a weak thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

As credits roll, we watch a young man cut his own face up with scissors. He then covers the mess with an ugly baby mask.

We’re told that in 1982, Wilson Wyler Concannon, an indie director, released his only film, “The Hills Run Red,” which was sadistic and quickly pulled from theaters. It soon became a lost film, nothing left but an intriguing trailer. The director was also never heard from again.

Tyler watches the trailer, and it’s about an ax-wielding murder called “Babyface.” He wants to know why the film was banned– what was so terrible about it? There are no prints, no actors, and no director; everything about the film has disappeared. His friend, Lalo, doesn’t see the attraction.

Tyler has tracked down Alexa, Concannon’s daughter, and he wants to ask her about the movie. Alexa is working as a stripper in a bar. Tyler visits Alexa at “work” while Lalo bangs Tyler’s girlfriend, Serina, at home. Alexa, an addict, takes Tyler home to a skeezy hotel.

Alexa agrees to take them to see the film– no, not really, Tyler kidnaps her, ties her up, and apparently breaks her addiction in a matter of hours. When sobered up, Alexa tells what she knows about the film; she was in it a little, but she hasn’t seen the whole thing.

On the way out to the middle of nowhere, Lalo explains the rules of horror movies, and everyone laughs. As they stop for a pee break, still a hundred miles from their destination, Alexa sees someone in the woods filming them.

They stop at a gas station near Concannon’s old house and talk to people there who actually saw the movie.

They arrive at the woods where Concannon’s house is supposed to be, and they all make jokes about horror movies that take place in the woods. They’re obviously not alone as they hike to the remote cabin.

They find a ribcage in the woods; could some of the murders in the film have been real? Alexa explains that the guy who played Babyface was actually deformed and really wore a mask.

That night, they’re all knocked out and tied up by the crazy locals. Sonny wants to use their film equipment to make a porn film, starring Alexa and Serina. They don’t get very far before someone in the woods kills them. Someone wearing a Babyface mask. Alexa remembers him, and he remembers her as well.

Alexa runs into the woods with Babyface in pursuit. Tyler goes after them, but Lalo and Serina call 911 but don’t know where they are. Lalo tries to hold off the killer, but Babyface has a gun and uses it.

Tyler comes to a farmhouse and goes inside. He finds evidence that he’s been followed since the beginning of the film. He finds Alexa, who reveals that Concannon’s movie is still being shot. Turns out, Alexa and Babyface have been in cahoots all along.

Babyface chases Serina into his smokehouse, where he has all his victims hanging up to be cured. Serina hides in a big tub of blood, but he soon catches her as well.

Tyler wakes up tied to a chair, surrounded by cans and cans of “The Hills Run Red” films that he’s collected over the years. Alexa’s “dead” father, Concannon, comes in, not dead at all. He shows Tyler a film of him killing the original Babyface actor. He found a real method actor to play the new Babyface, Alexa’s and her father’s own son.

Meanwhile, Alexa torments Lalo, while Babyface works on Serina. Concannon gives Tyler a lesson in filmmaking, and Lalo plays the victim. Meanwhile, Concannon and Alexa argue about parenting until he shoots her. This enrages Babyface, her son, who turns on his father/grandfather and stabs him repeatedly as Tyler films it all. Babyface is just about to kill Tyler as well when Serina stabs him in the back.

Alexa, not dead, knocks Tyler back out. He wakes up in a movie theater full of corpses as Alexa starts showing him the actual film. “This is what you came here for. Are you ready?” As he watches the film, Tyler laughs and goes insane…

Brian’s Commentary

By the halfway point, no one had died, and nothing interesting had happened. It did eventually pick up, but it never really got good– it’s just another masked killer in the woods movie. He could have been wearing a hockey mask and nothing needed to have been changed. The whole theme about horror films and filmmaking gives it a little bit of a “Scream” vibe, but only a little.

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought this took too long to get to the good stuff. And then the ending seemed kind of rushed. It’s pretty well made, the cast was fun, the effects were realistic. The movie within a movie aspect made things a little more interesting than typical, but there wasn’t enough new here that we haven’t already seen.

I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t find it very satisfying.

2012 Silent Hill Revelation

* Director: Michael J. Bassett

* Writers: Michael J. Bassett

* Stars: Adelaide Clemens, Sean Bean, Radha Mitchell, Carrie-Anne Moss

* Runtime: 94 minutes

* YouTube Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Little Sharon from the first movie is all grown up now into a teenager in her 20s and on the run and in hiding with her father. But the pull of Silent Hill is strong, and when dad vanishes she visits the town with a guy pal. It very much had the vibe of walking through a video game. Both of us thought it was on the dull side and lacked entertainment value, especially comparing it to the first one.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on a woman running through a carnival while being pursued by cultists. The carnival rides are straight out of Hell, powered by the Pyramid-head man. “Do not go to Silent Hill,” warns one of the dead. No– it’s just a nightmare, and Heather wakes up.

Heather asks where her name comes from. She used to be Sharon, and now she’s Heather. Her father used to be Christopher, and now he’s Harry. She’s turning eighteen, and they’ve moved around a lot. She goes off to school, and Harry/Christopher remembers Rose, who’s been missing for so long, trapped in Silent Hill. She warns him that the cultists are still coming for their daughter.

At school, Heather is the new student, along with Vincent, another new kid. Between classes, Heather has a creepy flashback/vision.

Also, there’s a creepy man who seems to be following Heather, and she catches on to that right away, calling her father to meet her. The man chases her to the mall, where he calls her Sharon. He’s Douglas, a P.I. who has been hired to find her– by the cult. He knows about Silent Hill, and they want her back. He explains things to her as a monster attacks their elevator. He doesn’t live long.

Heather meets up with Vincent on the way out of the mall. Harry isn’t answering the phone; something might have gotten him. Vincent talks about his crazy Uncle Leonard, who’s been institutionalized.

Heather gets home and finds “Come to Silent Hill” written in blood on the wall, and her father is nowhere to be found. She and Vincent go through her father’s papers. The police have found Sharon through the P.I.’s papers, and now they suspect her of the murder. They also see the Silent Hill message on the wall.

On the way to Silent Hill, Heather reads to Vincent from her father’s notes on the town, the cult, and everything. The pyramid-head man is Elessa’s guardian and executioner. Alessa was the girl born to the cult to become a receptacle for their god, and she’s also probably Heather/Sharon. Vincent admits that he’s also been born and raised in Silent Hill, and it’s his job to get her to return.

Suddenly, the motel room melts around them and they’re soon attacked again. Heather leaves the motel and finds herself in Silent Hill, where it’s all gray and ashy. She soon runs into Dahilia, Alessa’s mother. The woman explains that the evil Alessa, who was burned alive, put her soul into a newborn orphan, Heather.

Heather then hides in a mannequin factory, and that get weird fast. Meanwhile, the cultists, led by Claudia, reward Vincent for bringing Heather to them; he’s put into the asylum for treatment.

Meanwhile, Heather breaks into the Silent Hill asylum to talk to Leonard, Vincent’s crazy uncle. Leonard says Claudia is corrupted by the darkness. Leonard is glad that the traitor Vincent is here now as well. He identifies half a key, and he has the other half, which he uses.

Elsewhere, a bunch of undead nurses kill Vincent’s guard and hack him to pieces. The nurses seem to be motion-activated, and he just waits until Heather releases him. They walk to a nearby abandoned amusement park.

Heather comes face to face with Elissa, and they don’t care much for one another. They are two halves of the same being, and Heather ends up absorbing her evil part. She walks through the cultists and finds her father.

Claudia shows up, looking all menacing, and monologues to Heather. They want their god to be born through Heather for some reason that even Claudia can’t explain. They want that key that she’s been carrying around to summon the god. The key reveals Claudia’s true form, which then has to fight pyramid-head for some reason. Heather and Vincent, who has just sort of shown up, untie Harry and head to the exit. Claudia loses her head, and Pyramid-head lumbers off alone.

Heather, Harry, and Vincent walk out of Silent Hill, but Harry warns that it’ll start up again soon. Harry wants to stay here and find Rose, who never came home after the first movie.

Heather and Vincent hitch a ride on a truck and leave town. They pass a whole bunch of police cars going into the silent town…

Brian’s Commentary

This starts out completely adding new stuff to the end of the first film so that this one has somewhere to go.

Kit Harrington’s American accent is atrocious, but otherwise, the actors and characters are OK. The creature effects and sets are also pretty good. It was filmed in 3D, and there are a few shots that highlight this, but it’s not excessive.

I assume this is all based on the videogame, as it’s basically Heather going from one weird situation to another with very little reason or story behind any of it. It all looks really cool, but I never really understood most of what was going on.

This was just awful on many levels.

Kevin’s Commentary

I think this one lacks the atmosphere and creepiness of Silent Hill that the first movie had. Heather is on a quest for the sake of questing, or at least that’s how it felt sometimes. Like a video game walkthrough. Which is what it’s based on. The story could be followed, but there were things that just popped up, and we are supposed to go with it without enough explanation.

I’m sure Kit Harington worked hard on his American accent, but it fluctuated noticeably.

I bet I would have enjoyed this one more if I were a fan of the video games. Or maybe not. It wasn’t paced very well and was on the dull side. I thought it was a big step down from the first one.

2004 Godzilla: Final Wars

* Director: Ryuhei Kitamura

* Writers: Isao Kiriyama and Wataru Mimura

* Stars: Masahiro Matsuoka, Rei Kikukawa, Don Frye

* Runtime: 125 minutes (2 hours, 5 minutes)

* YouTube Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This fiftieth anniversary movie is heavy on science fiction with super weapons, aliens, mutants, and many creatures in addition to Godzilla, and it takes place in 2044. There’s also a lot of hand-to-hand combat and fights that defy physics among humans, aliens, and mutants. This movie has it all. And unlike some of the other sequels, this one takes place in a world where apparently all the events of all the Godzilla movies have taken place. It’s a fun watch with loads of action and a lot crammed into it.

Spoilery Synopsis

We open on Godzilla versus a bunch of tanks. Suddenly, a crazy drill-vehicle bursts out of the mountains at the south pole and starts blasting. There’s an earthquake, and Godzilla falls into a crevasse. The screw-ship drops a mountain into the hole on top of him. Game over, they defeated Godzilla.

We get a report about how mankind has been so busy fighting the atomic monsters that they don’t fight with each other any more. Meanwhile, a new breed of human-mutants develops. They are the Earth Defense Force. Credits roll as we get a montage of all the previous films.

On the ocean floor, the screwship submarine Gotengo battles a giant snake, Manda. They freeze it and then shatter it. Captain Gordon and his ship win the battle, but now he’s facing court-martial.

We cut to two Earth Defense Force mutant-men fighting in an arena at M Organization. Afterward, they are evaluated. Kazama wins, Ozaki loses because he’s too soft and has a heart.

Miyuki, a biologist, is coming from the UN to examine a mummified monster they found. But she’s hot, so Ozaki is more than willing to play bodyguard. It’s some kind of alien cyborg that’s 12,000 years old. It has the same genetic markers as the modern mutants. How are they linked?

The Mothra fairies appear to them and explain that the monster is Gigan, and he destroyed everything 12,000 years ago. Mothra fought it, and the mutants have the same evil in their blood. They warn Ozaki about choosing evil and give him an amulet.

The UN Secretary General’s airplane is destroyed when something big flies by. In New York City, a flying monster attacks the ghetto. It’s Rodan, and he’s very destructive to the skyscrapers. Anguirus and King Caesar have shown up in other cities. Other CGI monsters are appearing all over the world, all at once.

The humans do their best against the monsters, but there are a lot of them. Even Minilla, Baby Godzilla, shows up. Basically, all the Toho monsters show up in one form or another (I don’t even know who some of them are). The mutants lock and load and get on the case, fighting Ebirah, the giant shrimp. They beat it, but then the body vanishes. Likewise, Rodan and Aguirus vanish as well; aliens are abducting the beasts.

The UFO stops right outside the EDF headquarters. An alien beams down– no, it’s the head of the UN; the aliens saved him from the air disaster. He says they’re friendly. The aliens say they come in peace from Planet X. They’re Xilians. They warn that Planet Gorath is on a collision course with Earth in about a year.

The United Nations becomes the Space Nations, and everyone cheers. Not everyone, as the variety shows all have debates about it. Ozaki wonders if the Xillians are related to Gigan somehow. Miyuki notices that the leader of the UN doesn’t blink since his “rescue.” He’s been corrupted by the Xiloans somehow and is no longer human. The EDF leader is also on the wrong side.

Scientists figure out that Planet Gorath is a hologram, and the threat has been a hoax. Ozaki picks out the only man he knows isn’t corrupted: Captain Gordon. Gordon wastes no time exposing the aliens’ true form and killing the head of the UN. The second-command of the Xilians then kills the leader and takes over. He doesn’t want to play nice; humans are just food, and he controls the monsters anyway. It’s now mutants versus aliens, but the mutants can’t resist X’s control and turn against the good guys.

Somehow, this leads into a motorcycle chase through the city between Ozaki and Kazama. Meanwhile, Commander X wakes up Gigan, who immediately goes on a rampage. All the other monsters are released as well.

Minilla and his new human friends see the destruction and escape in a pickup truck. Captain Gordon gets to the Gotenga and talks to the crew about waking up Godzilla. Godzilla doesn’t have the M-Base gene, so the aliens can’t control him.

The Gotengo makes it to the South Pole and wakes up Godzilla, who is not happy. Gigan is there, and the fight commences. One blast of atomic breath, and Gigan loses his head.

Next up is Zilla, the GINA from the 1998 film. He doesn’t last long, and neither does the Sydney Opera House. One stop after another, Godzilla cleans up the South Sea (South CGI?) Islands.

Godzilla makes it to the Tokyo region, and Minilla wants to get closer to him. Godzilla takes on King Caesar, Rodan, and Anguirus all at the same time, and it takes a minute or two: Godzilla is way overpowered here.

Gotenga attacks the alien mothership, and Kazma gets his chance at redemption by flying into the mothership and blows up the reactor in the center which disables the ship’s shields. The Gotenga crew gets captured.

The Mothra fairies finally send Mothra, who kills heads to Tokyo, where Ebirah and the Smog Monster are fighting each other.

Commander X has one more trick up his sleeve. A meteorite from space comes crashing down, and inside it is Monster X, a new baddie. The two seem evenly matched until Mothra shows up to fight the upgraded Gigan. Meanwhile, Command X explains to Ozaki that he’s a Keizer, a superhuman hybrid.

The four monsters continue to fight. Ozaki, now the “Chosen One,” has all kinds of powers to beat the evil Xilians. He fights hand to hand with Commander X. Everyone fights for a long time. After a lot of talk, Ozaki beats the crap out of Commander X, who sets the ship to self-destruct.

Everyone makes their way back to the Gotenga and they work to get out before it’s too late.

Down on the ground, Godzilla and Monster X go at it with atomic breath. Monster X starts to mutate and grows three– uh-oh, he’s really been King Ghidorah all this time. Ghidorah bites Godzilla with all three heads and starts to drain his life force. Only Ozaki can help now. He supercharges the Gotenga with “Infinity Power” and energizes Godzilla again. Godzilla starts ripping heads off, and the battle is soon over.

Godzilla then turns against the Gotenga, and he just doesn’t know when to quit. As he moves in for the kill, Godzilla sees Minilla come running in and pauses. Minilla tells his dad that he’s done enough and they should go home– which they do.

Now it’s time to clean up all the mess. Godzilla and Minilla swim off into the sunset…

Brian’s Commentary

Wow!

This is the 50th anniversary of Godzilla. It’s all very futuristic sci-fi, with flying ships and super submarines– it takes place in 2044, and apparently physics works differently in that year. There’s not much left of Earth after this one.

They really just threw everything into this one. Monsters, mutants, mayhem, and machines all over the place. It is so incredibly over the top that we couldn’t help but laugh a few times. It’s excessively long at more than two hours, but they’ve got a lot to deal with.

This is the last film in the “Millennium Series” and was the last live-action Godzilla film until “Godzilla” (2014), an American release came out. It didn’t do terribly well at the box office, which is weird because it’s got literally everything.

It’s way, way overblown to the point of ridiculousness, but I liked it

Kevin’s Commentary

I think this is the most science fiction loaded of any of the Godzilla movies so far. And there’s definitely some influences from “The Matrix” in the human fights and action scenes.

They fully embraced the CGI in this one, with multiple scenes being entirely CGI. But there are also plenty of practical puppets and guys in rubber suits and little model cities getting stomped and blown up. So much collateral damage in this one.

This was a good time, and I’d recommend it.

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