Dir - Eric Pennycoff
Overall: MEH
A demented bit of holiday horror from writer/director Eric Pennycoff, The Leech is hilariously uncomfortable up until the point where it just becomes uncomfortable. Utilizing the ole "guests from hell" premise, Jeremy Gardner and Taylor Zaudtke's white trash drifters invade the home of Graham Skipper's troubled Father with a heart of gold, who takes the couple in with the sole purpose of saving two more of god's "lost flock". Things go as awry as one would expect, humorously at first with a series of perverse, "Oh sorry about that bro", lifestyle clashes before Pennycoff's script jumps head-on into psychological terror. This tonal shift is jarring and what if any supernatural elements are at play, (likely none), are poorly executed as the third act just becomes a mess of tormented hallucinations that sacrifices the earlier established, R-rated ridiculousness for something more alarming. All four of the cast members are delightful in their respected roles though, with Gardner stealing the show as the jolly, bi-sexual, metalhead, alcoholic, drug addict dip-shit that has pushed the patience of Skipper's priest so far that he is either a demonic entity or just a scuzzy wildman who cannot walk away from a roof over his head.
Dir - Patrick Rea
Overall: MEH
Plot inconsistencies unfortunately muddle up prolific writer/director Patrick Rea's They Wait in the Dark; a dour genre piece about abused children becoming abusive adults. Done with minimal ingredients, (a small cast, a modest number of locations, most of it taking place at a single house, only a handful of invisible specter special effects, etc.), the tone is consistently bleak as we open with a quick flashback, only to primarily spend our time with Sarah McGuire's troubled mother on the run who is introduced to us while sleeping on the floor of a convenient store with her adopted son. Rea pulls of an ambitious trick by solidifying the audiences' sympathies with McGuire's character before gradually peeling back disturbing layers as her harsh mood swings and some eventual plot-twist backstory sheds a different light on what was previously portrayed as a purely victimized individual. This makes for a finale that is eons away from being a "feel good" one, but the emotional weight of the whole thing is undermined by a shoddy screenplay. McGuire flees her abusive girlfriend on foot, long enough to get to her family's still-standing house that was willed to her; a house which said girlfriend apparently has no knowledge of even after being with her for at least seven-to-ten years judging by the age of their son who was a baby when they got him. There is also lazy supernatural activity where a vengeful ghost merely toys with her victim for the soul purpose of getting the film to the ninety-ish minute mark, which is a common faux pas in virtually every ghost story out there.
Dir - Guy
Overall: WOOF
The full-length debut from a filmmaker simply calling himself Guy, The Sound of Summer blows a skin-crawling premise on a boring presentation that is largely made up of mundane montages before the last several minutes deliver some icky, body horror mayhem at long last. Shot digitally with a budget that is small enough to not afford proper miking equipment for its actors, the dialog is sparse anyway and at least the sound design was disturbingly manipulated in post, creating a cacophony of off-kilter music, wailing cicadas, squishes, scratches, and moans. Far from Eraserhead levels, (though isn't everything?), but the audio is still impressive in this regard, at least by the finale where a literal bug man shows up to make a bunch of ungodly noise in his underwear. Elsewhere though, this is an amateur-level waste of time. Our lone protagonist has no personality, is given no backstory, and an unacceptable amount of time goes by where nothing of interest happens. That is unless you consider it intriguing to watching someone wake up, listen to the radio, walk around, do a full shift at work, visit a doctor, not be able to sleep, and gradually itch her gaping insect wounds for over an hour. At seventy-five minutes, the film feels like seventy-five hours, ending with some nasty strangeness that both just abruptly stops and comes too little, too late.
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