Dir - Casey Tebo
Overall: MEH
Aerosmith collaborator-turned-director Casey Tebo's Black Friday is a deliberately structured B-movie that ends up being less clever and less fun than the barrage of better movies that it is coping its shtick from. As the title would suggest, the ensemble cast holds up in a retail establishment on the infamous "holiday" where stores open their doors at midnight on Thanksgiving to usher in hordes of ravenous shoppers that are chomping at the best one-time-only deals. Said shoppers turn into alien/zombie monsters because whatever, as Andy Greskoviak's script breezes through its details and only offers up enough of them to get from one mediocre set piece to the next. Hardly any of the character banter is amusing and some of it is annoying instead, but it is still difficult to hate the charm of producer Bruce Campbell as a wise-ass toy store manager who treats the doofy material as serious as he ever does which is not at all. Genre players Ivana Baquero, Devon Sawa, and Michael Jai White, (the latter wasted and offed less than halfway through), are also appreciated, as are the messy, throwback practical make-up effects which includes a giant, pulsating pink blob creature that is right out of the slime in Ghostbusters II, the mother zombie in Peter Jackson's Braindead, or, well, the blob in The Blob.
Dir - David Hebreros
Overall: MEH
Messy and overlong yet not without some, (possibly intended), camp value, Everyone Will Burn, (Y todos arderán), is the second full-length from co-writer/director David Hebreros and one of several horror films to feature Macarena Gómez in a scenery-chewing lead. Both Gómez and Sofía García make an odd couple, the former as a still-grieving mother who has been ostracized by her community, had her marriage fall apart, and whose son was bullied into suicide thirteen years prior, with the later playing a mysterious young woman posing as a child that shows up dirt-covered on the road, possesses telekinetic powers, calls Gómez "Mommy", and apparently has something to do with a vague, end of days prophesy. The script by Hebreros and Javier Kirán throws a lot on its plate, yet even at nearly two hours in length, the resulting film fails to flesh-out its loose ends. Boasting a strong opening and a bombastic finale, the rest of the running time meanders with little action as Gómez' character exhibits inconsistent behavior and the barrage of supporting characters seem melodramatically invested in their own side-arcs that come off as afterthoughts compared to the supernatural revenge agenda. The performances are on point, as is Ona Isart's striking cinematography and the artful color schemes, but nothing hangs together here.
Dir - John Mathis
Overall: MEH
A contemporary folk horror film from writer/director John Mathis, Where's Rose has a bleak ending that ties up most of the loose ends, but it otherwise plays out in a merely competent manner. Traces of Invasion of the Body Snatchers runs throughout, as the title character disappears into the woods and then quickly returns the next day, with only her brother, (who is gearing up for college and dealing with his own jock-bro posturing), seeming to notice that her mannerisms are off. Mathis' script deserves points for subverting some of the usual motifs found in genre movies where the protagonist is hellbent on convincing everyone that they are not crazy, since Ty Simpkins' character does no such thing here, instead keeping his suspicions to himself while knowing full well that his already judgemental, passive aggressive, and now recently traumatized parents will never believe that their angelic daughter is not who she says she is. While some of the choices made by the people who are on screen are difficult to buy into and the performances leave something to be desired, (especially where Skyler Elyse Philpot's title character is concerned who just comes off as a stereotypical "creepy horror movie kid"), Simpkins' arc is fleshed-out enough to make our loss of sympathy for him appropriate. Also, the monster reveal in broad daylight is more convincing than it would otherwise seem, helped tremendously by the practical effects work in place of what could have been ruining CGI.
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