Dir - Demián Rugna
Overall: GOOD
The latest from Argentine genre filmmaker Demián Rugna, When Evil Lurks, (Cuando acecha la maldad), is an unflinching downer of a demonic possession movie and one that utilizes fairy tale logic with zero humor or any semblance of redemption. Notable as Shudder's first Spanish-language production, Rugna's screenplay won the 2021 runner up prize at the Sitges Pitchbox event which was hosted by the Sitges Film Festival and Filmmaker Hub, and the resulting movie is hardly for every viewer's tastes. The supernatural evil here acts as a disease that is more akin to zombie fever than straight unholy entity body-jumping and the story can clearly be seen as a metaphor for how overpowering sickness ruins a family from the inside out. These characters are fueled by their understandable yet reckless impulses under such an otherworldly strain; impulses that lead to a spreading vileness that meticulously consumes yet leaves standing only the ones that have suffered the most, all so that they can suffer even more. Such a nihilistic approach could be either refreshing or unbearable depending on the audience member, but as it steers far enough away from flat out torture porn, Rugna therefor deserves props for sticking to his guns and delivering something that is still uncompromising in its sinister brutality.
Dir - David Bruckner/Scott Derrickson/Gigi Saul Guerrero/Natasha Kermani/Mike P. Nelson
Overall: WOOF
The V/H/S series has had its ups and downs since the first entry emerged in 2012 and eleven years later, V/H/S/85 represents an unmistakable nadir not just for the franchise but for anthology horror in general. Shot back-to-back with the previous year's V/H/S/99 which had all new personnel on board, this one brings back David Bruckner who contributed "Amateur Night" to the initial movie, yet his framing narrative "Total Copy" here is just as ill-conceived as every other segment. This is the main problem in that each premise is either asinine or poorly executed, from a magical lake that grants immortality/meets a Caucasian family that has a tradition of murdering people for no reason, to an earthquake that brings forth Mayan cannibal gods or something, to an obnoxious performance artist who gets killed by a virtual reality demon, to a Goth kid who videotapes his dreams of his dad murdering people. Plot holes are rampant, nearly every character on screen is an unintentional parody of a "dumb person in horror movies", no justification is given as to why anyone keeps on pointing the camera at things once they go haywire, it is all edited like a conventional movie instead of a convincing found footage one, and it also all results in a lazy mess that throws caution to the wind with its lousy ideas from a crop of filmmakers who have all done far less embarrassing work.
Dir - Brian Duffield
Overall: MEH
A gimmick film with only one line of dialog uttered at an hour and nine minutes in, No One Will Save You serves as the second directorial effort from screenwriter Brian Duffield. Playing within alien takeover stereotypes where the quasi-adorable look of the wide-eyed, yoga-posing extraterrestrials, their flying saucers, their twitchy motions, and the aggressive monster movie noises that they make are all painfully formulaic, Duffield focuses on other ways to tweak such conventions in the presentation itself. We are given vague clues as to what trauma Kaitlyn Dever's protagonist has undergone and why she both lives alone and is aggressively shun from the other townsfolk, with such a revelation predictably arriving during the finale since Dever literally has no one to talk to the entire time. Even when such an opportunity presents itself, the script keeps finding loose enough ways for her to remain silent and that coupled with the monotonous cat and mouse nature of the plotting is something that works against the movie's would-be suspense building. Laughably unconvincing CGI is another detriment as the cartoony aliens pose absolutely zero visual threat, but Dever thankfully remains compelling throughout even if the story cannot come up with anything for her to do besides look terrified and hide.
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