Dir - Alexandre Bustillo/Julien Maury
Overall: MEH
French film-making duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury apparently still had the taste of schlock in their mouths after their pointless yet inevitable stab at an American reboot with 2017's Leatherface, as Kandisha is a conventional boogeyman slasher that seems beneath the writer/director's talents. This is not to say that it is an outright misfire though. The urban French setting provides a Candyman-adjacent landscape for loyal yet naive and relatably rebellious young adults, one's who summon an ancient spirit of vengeance without the necessary life experience or respect for the otherworldly to to walk on the side of caution. This is helped by a wonderful cast whose natural chemistry with each other makes the gradually harrowing chain of events hit that much harder, plus Bustillo and Maury are solid enough screenwriters to not shoehorn in any insultingly pandering humor once things get rough. On that note though, the presentation leaves much to be desired since plausibility is stretched as far as the character's behavior and hare-brained decision making skills are concerned. Also, the title villain is too ham-fisted to take seriously and several scenes break the otherwise verisimilitude of the performances, especially a ridiculous exorcism sequence that comes off as if it was taken from a bargain bin B-movie.
Dir - Eric Bress
Overall: MEH
Screenwriter Eric Bress' sophomore effort behind the lends in Ghosts of Wars arrives a full sixteen years after his debut The Butterfly Effect and is one of several to use a historical war setting to implant some supernatural shenanigans into. Sadly, Bress has zero sense of inventiveness when it comes to scares, delivering every last one of them in the most hackneyed fashion imaginable. Yup, this is yet another one of those B-horror movies that follows up every quiet moment where characters are looking around with a big, loud, stupid screechy noise and a cartoon scary ghost face with its mouth wide open. Both Su-chang Kong's 2004 film R-Point and 2018's Werewolf from Adrian Panek have an identical set-up, but Bress' take on people during war time who are held up in a mansion is completely generic and downright lazy in its horror-pandering aspects. That said, the performances are good, as everyone comes across like broken young men who have succumbed to PTSD while still being in the heat of battle. Perhaps because the ghost story gag has nothing at all going for it, Bress decided to pull a genuine rug-pull in the last act. Said move is bold and it forces one to reinterpret everything that came before it, but it at least, (finally), gives the film a unique edge that it desperately needs after being a "Who cares?" haunted house yarn with insulting jump scares.
Dir - Sam Casserly/Airell Anthony Hayles
Overall: WOOF
As bad as found footage gets, They're Outside is the laughably inept debut and only collaboration between indie filmmakers Sam Casserly and Airell Anthony Hayles. Right from the beginning, virtually everything goes wrong as even the film's title is proven to be a type-o since there is no "they" outside, but instead a single folk horror boogie man called Green Eyes. We get an awful introduction by a man who is never seen again and constantly smirks as if to challenge the audience to take what they are about to see seriously. Then we meet our even more appalling protagonist; a far too young, douchebag alleged psychologist YouTuber with a poorly-thought out gimmick to help an unfortunate woman overcome her agoraphobia after the death of her child. It cannot be overstated how unlikable Tom Wheatley's character is. He goes from openly mocking everyone else's supernatural beliefs that are brought on by trauma to being a hostile asshole about them, refusing to leave Chrissy Randall's house after being sternly asked multiple times. Then he cheats on his girlfriend camera operator, (yet she continues to provide video journal interviews because this script is terrible), and smugly continues his aggressive therapeutic services while he and every other character relentlessly exhibits inconsistent behavior. The supernatural ideas would be interesting under any other presentation than the mockumentary one chosen, (with scary music and conventional editing of course because this script is terrible), but it fails at both being creepy and in tackling sensitive mental disorders that deserve at least some semblance of respect.
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